The Gaming Den

So if games have drifted towards rules-lite and mindcaulk, how do we add mechanical rigor to rules-lite and mindcaulk? How do we add useful scaffolding to magical tea party?

I still don't know what Dogbert is talking about with gangsters and Fate, but I've played Accelerated and MotW. MotW is one of the least bullshit PbtA hacks, has a good one shot session generator (although that might be Demon Hunters: Comedy of Terrors). I liked the narrative bullshit point meter se...

I've been very sparsely creating something or other for years now. I don't have a lot of free time or rest so I tend to work on it only during vacations during the year. That being said part of the elevator pitch includes the fact that I intend on making use of downtime similarly to how it's done i...

That's pretty cool and kind of sounds like the Stash/Lifestyle stuff in AT.

I don't have a heartbreaker, but I've been working on tweaking systems for friends. That's close enough, right?

E: the retirement money sweetens the pot for their contacts, I would assume.

I think there's a very big gulf between two of the classes of activities you're lumping under "Tactics." The guy who shows up to D&D expecting to play a skirmish wargame wants to optimize his Fireball blast radius coverage and get the most bang out of his action economy buck. He is ca...

Ok, admittedly this is a big broad question, and I don't expect a definitive answer, but still... A common complaint for many games is that the fluff doesn't match the rules. Is it generally wiser to try to come up with an evocative setting, and try to make rules that work for it, or to come up wit...

What do you want, a setting where every mud farmer knows Teleport and Fabricate? You know, that would at least be ORIGINAL. The current status quo of every other fantasy game being where creating a tower out of stone is a once-in-a-generation power reserved for the best of the mages? SEEN IT. Be th...

In less decrepit news: local shitposter wins battle royale.

C is the best option, because you can also start a consulting gig on the side as they pay you.

Fuck, you're stupid. Institutionalized American racism, of which our White Nationalist movements come from, was designed to keep broke white people from realizing they had it just as bad as broke, emancipated black people. White people were indentured servants right along black chattel slaves, and t...

If we're talking about 3.5 splats, they made the 3.5 paladin and ranger a lot more playable with plenty of cool unique spells (and the bard gets plenty of cool prcs besides unique spells), also 3.5 ranger ACF for wildshape and plenty of other nice goodies, while the 3.0 paladin and ranger spellcast...

Mostly, I just play less games. There's no time, and everyone wants to do improvisational theater or lurch from made up thing to made up thing to "see what happens." I feel like I'm the only person left looking for "a series of interesting decisions" in the TTRPG space. Which is...

Snow Crash takes the piss out of cyberpunk, at least partially. Neal Stephenson would make a habit of dunking on the literary equivalent of Pink Mohawks in his sci-fi.

I'm still sad movie Thanos wasn't literally courting Death, like comics Thanos. But my understanding of the time fuckery was setting up alternate universes for a Crisis on Infinite Earths-style event down the line. You have the Stones as quantum locks. The snap and destruction of the Stones locked U...

My condolences. You'll get through this. Gi too.

Super-ultimate thread necromancy ho! Your current write-up has carnivore asuras and vegetarian elves. This seems backwards. The Sidhe and the Vanir were famous hunters, illusion magic is great for hunting, and you've already specified that elves are psychologically adapted for solitude and self-rel...

Someone once told me of a milk bar in New York that uses human breast milk, but I'm not sure how real that is. This is the closest I could find https://www.theguardian.com/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/mar/09/breast-milk-cheese-new-york https://japandaily.jp/tokyo-serves-lactation-bars-2679/ There'...

In other news, the orgy of wrestling that was Mania weekend is finally over. GCW affiliated shows (except maybe Joey Ryan's) and DDT put on insane events, the NJPW parts of the G1 Supercard rocked the house in, NXT was NXT and Mania sent the fans home happy-ish. Now they may have fucked the finish t...

Condolences to both Maj and DSM.

Since the MC never rolls any dice, they can only make a move when the player has met the conditions. If this were strictly true, that'd probably help improve player agency by forcing the MC to be purely reactive. Unfortunately, in AW it's not. The rules are as follows: However, when a player’s char...

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Ever consider you might be an oversensitive Berkshire hunt?

Honestly, have you?

If you have a problem, tell them to suck a barrel of cocks like a proper Denner instead of trying to dodge the censor.

Just because there's always a winner and a loser doesn't excuse bad options. It's a bad thing that 'dorf is dogshit most of the games he's in, even if people like GW can make him work. It's a bad thing that Clerics and Druids are better than you in D&D 3.5. People pick characters they click with...

Jodorowsky is an enigma.

As variation between artists goes, that's not a bad likeness at all and certainly not a change towards "giant fuckin noggin" by any stretch of the imagination. Are we seriously going to fret over tone on the Den? Some people think she looks less physically imposing and a clear explanation...

*I disagree with the notion that Inquisitors are a clear case of Rogue/Cleric hybrid. I agree that they match the spirit of one rogue concept, that being violent social engineering, but that’s not an explicitly core competence of the d20 Rogue class, it’s just something they can do. My deliberately...