DampeS8N

870 reputation

bio	website	dampes8n.com
	location	Columbia, MD
	age	29
visits	member for	11 months
	seen	13 hours ago
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I'm William Brall, a Sr. Web Developer at ZeniMax Online Studios working on the community site and patcher of Elder Scrolls Online.

	870 reputation	bio	website	dampes8n.com	visits	member for	11 months
11 badges		location	Columbia, MD		seen	13 hours ago

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17h	comment	Sources for additional (summonable) creatures in Anima: Beyond Fantasy Unrelatedly, it is nice to see people playing this game. I was skeptical about it when Wen-M first started working on the art for it.
1d	comment	How can I run games in Shadowrun, without going overboard? If your players are able to change the world quickly in any way other than by littering it with their rotting corpses, you aren't playing Shadowrun right. Your players should be scared, always on the edge of failure, constantly planning for every possible contingency and only if they have really really planned things well should they succeed. If you have not killed a PC in a session, you probably aren't being hard enough, IMHO.
May 6	comment	How hard is it to stake a vampire? You should accept the answer if it answers your question. Click the little check mark under the score on the answer.
Apr 16	comment	How to handle wealthy player characters as a GM? Bilbo/Frodo's Mythril armor was, as said in the book, worth greatly more than the entirety of the shire and surrounding countryside.
Feb 19	comment	Making epic combat interesting and challenging but not complicated I do these things: Cheat on recharge rolls, and just use those powers sparingly; Cheat on saves in the same way, often not expiring them at all; Generally not worry too damn much about it.
Feb 18	comment	What is the significance of a Basic Attack vs. any other sort of attack? It is also problematic that Essentials and earlier books and tools appear to be all part of the same game to outsiders/newbies. So it is not uncommon for a game to go on for a long time before anyone realizes they are mixing and matching. The confusion that then arises can tear games apart.
Jan 11	comment	What's the difference between a roleplaying game and a board game? @SteveCooper I've made no requirement. Those at the end are just common ways to spot RPGs. A most-common case guide. "A role playing game is a subset of all games that features the players taking on the roles (actions and/or affectations) of characters in an attempt to tell a shared story" Nothing about number of characters there.
Jan 10	comment	What's the difference between a roleplaying game and a board game? I consider Everyone is John to be an RPG. In fact, it is one of the best RPG's I've ever played. So much room for awesome creative role play.
Jan 10	comment	What's the difference between a roleplaying game and a board game? @SteveCooper A GM is really more of a referee than a player. I mean, they call the players players and not "character players". And there are RPGs with no GM. I also said that most players would be playing a single character, but sometimes it is more. The GM plays lots of characters, so that fits too.
Jan 10	comment	Systems giving XP based on roleplay - How to avoid jealousy/party balance problem @MrJinPengyou It is good to have a regular supply of new dead runners to pile up in an alleyway. Make good blankets for my orks.
Jan 10	comment	How does the disease recovery mechanic work? Twist it. Have a bad guy infect the party, perhaps via drinks, with the same plague, only a terrible variant. The players that caught it before, are immune to it! There, saved your hook. And fudge those DCs so they don't overcome the disease.
Jan 10	comment	When GMing in a high-tech game world how do you handle potentially disruptive tech? I have to say that Hotfix is not fun. It should be your last resort because it is and will feel like a Deus Ex Machina cop out. Generally it is best not to surprise your players with something like that. Give them a challenge to overcome, not a surprise that leaves them with no option other than to deal with the down-side. Give them every possible chance to figure out a way to avoid the issue. Caveat: if the hotfix happens during down time, it could be a good story hook. But if they prepare and are hit with it at the last second, they'll probably not stay in your game much longer.
Jan 10	comment	What's the difference between a roleplaying game and a board game? I think this is missing an important criteria. RPGs advance stories. There are games that feature role play but that don't advance a story. For example, there is a reverse version of the popular "Who am I" party game where players take on the role of someone else and others have to guess who they are.
Jan 9	comment	What are the most effective ways to protect a character against critical hits? @corvec Jeor is on the right track. More is always better, though. Take a coin for instance, to judge if it is fair you can't simply flip it 4 times (2^2). A D20 should be rolled at least 400, better 4000 times.
Jan 9	comment	What are the most effective ways to protect a character against critical hits? @JonathanHobbs Statistically speaking, that's not enough rolls.
Jan 7	comment	Did piracy problems bring down White Wolf? Piracy only rarely inhibits sales, and in a niche market like this probably doesn't effect them at all. Like with most media, most pirates would never have bought the books to begin with. It almost certainly translates into more sales. It certainly did in my own case. I downloaded the entire D&D 4E set of books as PDFs and since then have acquired about 25 books legitimately and subscribed to DDI. I wouldn't have taken the plunge otherwise. (also bought all of the dungeon tile sets and most of the map packs and several of the power card sets.)
Jan 7	comment	Systems giving XP based on roleplay - How to avoid jealousy/party balance problem Specifically about Shadowrun. If your party is cohesive, all on the same level, and everyone survives more than a few sessions; you are doing it wrong. Shadowrun works surprisingly well with long-running players standing next to just-born characters, and the less the party trusts each other and everyone they meet, the better. At least in my experience.
Jan 3	comment	Star System Summary Sheets This book is amazingly well organized along these lines. Also, it is a hell of a resource for RP The one big missing set of stats is population, but this aims to be 'timeless' so population as a fluctuating stat wouldn't fit.
Dec 27	comment	How do you get a new player engaged in an old campaign? @Ravn Specific to the question, yes.
Dec 27	comment	How do you get a new player engaged in an old campaign? @Ravn However, it might be what someone else needs. Remember, these questions are not just for you and me. :)