The Gaming Den

Preassembly and half-decent formatting, mostly. As much of the potential character as could be jammed on to a few pages, was. Much less need to reference the book, and about zero if the MC coaxes the group through chargen, which is helped through having more similar breakpoints in chargen (as oppose...

That's the Kardashev Scale, which I assume he didn't credit its creator for.

You can say a lot of unbearably terrible things about Apocalypse World, but the playbook structure is golden. I would bet money the ease and accessibility of the playbooks, MC and player, is why anyone even talks about it. One sheet of paper with everything prefabbed for you, two sheets, back and f...

the main advantage to group initiative is that it means you have specific times you hassle the shit out of your players and specific times you move the monsters, I find that convenient as a DM, and theoretically, your game should be able to have challenging fights where the PCs are surprised, and w...

If you really want to make moving in combat interesting, why not just make it your attack action? https://www.atlus.com/rondoofswords/route.html

The second major issue is that unlike in a board game, no RPG can maintain clear and consistent lines between combat and non-combat. Movement abilities can get you across a chasm, but they can also get you into a favorable position in combat . Stealth abilities can get you info dumps via spying, bu...

The end result is that not only are there a flood of M-16s and AKs on the market, but the demand for such things is much lower than it would be if the US descended into Mad Maxian hellscape today. M-16s are, for Freikorps of the future, "cheap crap" that they would use if and only if they...

Can't you defeat ballistic marking forensics with a barrel change? ... But in most cases, changing a barrel might as well involve getting a new gun. It's not a massive monetary savings to just have backup barrels rather than backup guns. And there just aren't a lot of places you can get a gun barre...

"Prinny Horde" should obviously just be an ability where you are Etna and have a surplus of prinnies to use as artillery, or to stack so you can hop up on them, or whatnot.

Because Im a crazy person with nothing better to do, I have been keeping up with the changes that PP has been doing. Its fascinating for PP to slowly descend into the same company practices that GW was doing, and how people defend them for it despite the action being impossible evil a month ago. Bo...

Seeing what happens to WotC now should be interesting after their attempt to roll back the Platinum appearance fees.

In spite of my favoring of less rolling for minor details and other such things, yeah, you gotta decide that some content is missable by some mechanism. Telling a story at all requires the elimination of other stories you can tell, even in kitchen sink fantasy. That's how the world works. Two paths ...

The idea that skills give certain specific options just by having them is one I can get behind. However I don't mind the idea players miss out on something just because they failed a skill check. For instance not knowing something despite having the knowledge isn't something that's out of place in ...

While I agree that content that is missed can be fine, I am broadly in favor of binary skill keys for the locks on things. Either you have it or you don't. This shouldn't be used for every category of action but definitely for things like Craft or Knowledge where the results of not knowing or not cr...

Caucuses take a long time... Caucuses involve a lot of standing and shouting... Caucuses have no secret ballot... Basically Caucuses are all bad and if you think that getting people involved in their government is an abstract good you should be opposed to them in all circumstances. -Username17 This...

So uhm, arrows made to penetrate breastplates existed? So Frank's point is that direct fire piercing armor is well-attested in the literature, and lo and behold, it turns out that the deciding factor is not necessarily the bow , but perhaps the arrow ! Or maybe all the test bows in the previous vide...

Considering people play games "at their own will" I am going to basically dismiss you as a ranting idiot now.

@Almaz: I can't see how Vampire may be considered a lesson on genre-emlation, except as a cautionary tale about how NOT to do it. Really, I never saw a single group, mine or otherwise, to actually explore its supposed central theme of "personal horror" like, ever. Pendragon precedes it an...

*some good stuff* This is pretty much why I was recommending HERO, yes. It is a great example of a 1) generic-ISH RPG, that 2) teaches effects-based design. I think it both shows the limitations of generic RPGs and also their strengths very well. Vampire is pretty much "the otherwise-typical R...

Better question: Given that a lot of people who buy WoD also buy "supernatural romance" novels featuring hot, hot Vampire x Werewolf (x Human, sometimes) action, why would you pass up the market? Sure, the werewolves are usually second-string to the vampires in those stories, but I'll be d...

I haven't gotten far into Descent 2nd edition but 1st edition was kind of a mess rules wise. If we're going to go with an example of an ongoing campaign along with tight rules design within the board game space, I'll tip towards Pandemic Legacy. 2nd edition seemed pretty decent to me! But I admitte...

Regarding the justification for Shadowrun, there are profoundly more bad ways to do something than good ways. I wouldn't want anyone to play a game to learn how not to do something, because you could spend most of eternity exhausting the list. For the most common mistakes, you can just tell them. Fo...

So just for starters, feats should do absolutely no Voltroning. The thing where [Subtype] Heritor feats all give you bonuses for how many Heritor feats you have of that subtype? That's fucked, and it needs to not happen. All the feats should stand alone, and all the feats should be shitty enough to...

I am working on a D&D- ish RPG off and on, like most people are, and one of the first things I decided to do was give all the "fighting" characters full access to at least one mode of 1) unarmed combat, 2) ranged combat, and 3) melee combat. The reason being is that if you can't wrestl...

I broadly agree with that, save that I would say that in many cases the armies are important in a fairly concrete fashion. For every scenario where Mulan cuts off an army from splattering the heroes by creating an avalanche or has to fight the main villain in single combat while the army is locked ...