Call me a pessimist, but this looks like a killer game...as in, it will kill Bioware.

Just sad as shit.

I feel like the major issue with pushing the boundaries of gaming doesn’t rely on the hardware, but the cost and complexity of development. We are hitting the road block of games being too complex and too large in scale to the point where it isn’t cost effective to the developer. The ps4 is doing great, making great…

Great thread here. One of my guiding principles when I was a DM was “always carrot, never stick”. When you have a great story, your characters will want to follow it. Always keep your players’ interests in mind when designing it and improv along the way as necessary. That’s how everyone has the best time.

But that’s a legit issue, I’ve been doing cons for 20+ years and smells are just...they keep getting worse.

Over the last 30ish years of playing RPGs, I’ve found there’s really 3 types of games that are played:

1. (As you stated so eloquently) Collaborative Story Games (aka sandbox and/or ‘let’s see what the players burn down and go from there’)
2. GM vs. Players (aka Let’s see how long they can survive as I throw the worst…

I think a good way to approach this in a structured way while keeping a bit of flexibility is to create a setting with NPCs that would act even if the players weren’t present. For example, say a blacksmith’s son intends to elope with a passing bard. Players can ignore all this, which could lead to the son eloping and…

As a GM, I value improvisation. Don’t railroad your players. An ideal case is where you are running mental models of your world, and whatever the players do, you can adapt to. It’s not as hard as people think.

Everyone’s talking about price hikes and microtransactions; meanwhile I’m wondering why studios don’t reign in budgets more. It seems like every game these days is either an indie or a AAA; they need to bring back PS2-esque “B” games.

I’m sorry, but the fact that the Rock apparently doesn’t get himself mutated and grow to massive size to fight against the monsters in a tag-team brawl next to his buddy George makes this a no-go for me.

Eh. Somehow, I lived through the great social panics over rap (and Tipper Gore’s eventual push to implement those lovely “Parental Warning: Explicit Content” stickers on albums), Mortal Kombat (seriously, Congressional hearings over that shit), and DOOM without ever developing the desire to harm anyone.

...and I was a…

Okay!!!

Keep writing about D&D!!!

Agreed.

My wife and I have a rule: We’re married, not dead. It’s okay to appreciate the Mona Lisa, but don’t take it off the wall and bring it home, don’t say reprehensible things to it because you find it attractive, and don’t break your neck staring.

...other than that, be a human being, and accept that you have…

In fairness, while I have no love for Sargon of Akkad, interrupting a panel to single out one member of the crowd, calling him “human garbage”in what I can only imagine was an attempt to get the crowd to turn on him doesn’t let you claim the moral high ground on harassment. Anita came off as the harasser to an outside…

Agreed! many current players of monster hunter were not around since it’s inception, so I feel that they may be missing something. but, for me, as the series went on I could distinctly feel the difficulty dropping. And as such I was less crafty as the series went on. That isn’t to say that the elements weren’t there…

And we will be ceding the millions of clean energy jobs to those countries. If Trump truly wanted to create good paying jobs he would make America the clean energy leader of the world.

I’m not against diversity, but I am against “diversity for diversity’s sake.” What does who she has sex with matter in an online shooter?

I’m immediately reminded of one of my favorite games of all time: Aliens versus Predator 2 (2001 pc game). There were lots of Aliens/Predators/Versus games, but that was the best as it really nailed the different mechanics of playing as the different species, plus the plot and ambiance of the different zones was…