Shrine of the Nephilim

As usual, when we get into a topic we have keen interest in, we tend to fall down the rabbit hole and go on at length. A side-effect of our autism. In this case, we're going to tweak our comments in a Twitter thread about Judaism and Christianity. Are the 66 chapters of the Bible "God-breathed" inerrant? Of course not. Preamble:  "Here's the thing.  We, ourselves, don't see much wrong with the Bible, flaws and all.  It's a good book.  It teaches lessons. It provides a history. None of which is bad.  It's what people do with it, treating it as the ultimate authority, we disagree with."   And yes, this is what annoys us the most, and makes us respond. Because there's people that consider the Bible the ultimate authority, and then turn off any critical thinking. They ignore anything like why the Bible says what it does, what the cultural context for any given text was, the history associated with those parts of the Bible, even the theology surr...

You know what we want? An actual to Goddess Magic the Gathering roleplaying game.  Not 'you play normal peeps in a very few settings we've published for 5e', we're talking Planeswalkers who call upon mana they draw from lands they've visited - sacred pools and ancient forests and decaying marshes. They have spells they've learned and stolen from various realms and from rival duels. They call upon heroes and monsters they've met and formed bonds with (though not actually summoning said heroes and monsters, but their likenesses), and unleash spells which could, with enough power, destroy entire nations. We wanted characters who walked from world to world, looking for new adventures, facing new rivals, and taking down new threats as they grew in power. You know, the stuff they talked about way back in Beta . Because that's where we came in, and the very idea was inspiring. The original concept: two (or more) Planeswalkers throwing down against one another ...

Welcome to 2024. We've moved!  If you've followed us on our old Blogger, welcome to the new site.  If you've new here, this is where we discuss everything gaming -- game theory, world building, mechanics and setting, rules, and other related topics.  We have, you see, opinions . So tonight's topic is Saving Throws . Or to be a bit more general, 'rolls a player can make to avoid the consequences of an action or event in the game'. Dungeons and Dragons first introduced the concept, and other games have since followed suit - the idea that the character can escape at least some harm by making a roll to 'resist the effect'. Over the decades, saving throws have become more plentiful, and the damage from failing them has generally been reduced. We think Saving Throws can have a place at the table, but we also think they've become too prolific. Our view of this is relatively simple:  "not everything can be (or should be) avoidable". For instance? ...