# Why Do You Hate An RPG System?



## Reynard (Jan 23, 2020)

I don't want to gum up the Dishonored thread with this tangent, but the fact that so many people expressed a revulsion for the 2d20 system got me thinking how I don't hate any system I can think of off the top of my head. There are some i prefer not to play, but no game makes me feel like the developers shot my dog (or favorite sci-fi franchise, as the case may be).

So if you HATE a system, why? Explain it to me.


----------



## Nagol (Jan 23, 2020)

There are two reason I have for hating systems:

1) The system doesn't do what it says on the tin.  In other words, the mechanics and the game description do not correlate.  Old World of Darkness products had this problem, for example.  To run an adventure the way it was "supposed" to go required the GM to ignore the provided mechanics and apply enough force to push the square block through the round hole.

2) The system is built around terrible and insupportable premises.  The classic in this camp is of course, F.A.T.A.L.


----------



## Nagol (Jan 23, 2020)

I don't hate 2d20. I gave the rules a thorough going-over during the Star Trek beta and was seriously underwhelmed.  From memory, the advancement system mostly sucked, Threat/momentum was an interesting, but mechanically flawed design.  And like almost every RPG, it fails to handle hierarchy and organisational values/rules at all -- which I think are pretty integral to the whole military organization / ship assignment part of Trek.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 23, 2020)

I've never hated a system either. There's so many good games out there right now that if I don't like something I move on. 

It could stem from disappointment, especially if a certain system is grabbing up a lot of licences you like.. 
Sometimes hatred seems to be directed at systems that go against a person's gaming philosophy. So games like Fate can be subjected to this, as well as D&D.

In the old days, you could buy a shiny new game that looks cool and then discover it is broken and practically unplayable. This problem doesn't seem to exist anymore. I can't think of any recently published games that were objectively broken.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 23, 2020)

Nagol said:


> There are two reason I have for hating systems:
> 
> 1) The system doesn't do what it says on the tin. In other words, the mechanics and the game description do not correlate. Old World of Darkness products had this problem, for example. To run an adventure the way it was "supposed" to go required the GM to ignore the provided mechanics and apply enough force to push the square block through the round hole.
> 
> 2) The system is built around terrible and insupportable premises. The classic in this camp is of course, F.A.T.A.L.



1) I totally understand this, and even agree with the system you presented by way of example. Although I think Vampire is the only real offender in that regard. And I can see why people might have that reaction to 5E if they were looking for, say, the 1E playstyle or something like tabletop Game of Thrones.

2) Yeah. Thanks for dredging up those memories. Ugh.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 23, 2020)

I hate any game that claims to be an RPG, while simultaneously operating by rules that are inherently antithetical to role-playing.

FATE is the classic example. In order to play FATE, you need to engage with the meta-currency of fate points, or else you won't be able to sway the narrative when you need to. The rules encourage you to get in trouble early on; not because it's the smart thing to do, or even necessarily because it's what your character would realistically do, but because you want the fate points. You're supposed to make decisions on behalf of your character, by taking into consideration that this is a game which operates on principles that are unknown to the character. It's pure meta-gaming.

From what I recall, based on an earlier thread about Conan, the 2d20 system works on similar principles. The GM is supposed to actively antagonize you, and you're supposed to make decisions by accounting for a meta-currency which enables them to do so. You aren't allowed to actually think like your character at any point, or else DOOM will bury you.

I'm not even saying that I hate those games as games (although I still wouldn't play them under any circumstances). I just hate that they pretend to be about role-playing, while simultaneously undermining any sort of in-character decision making. It's highly disingenuous of them.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 23, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I hate any game that claims to be an RPG, while simultaneously operating by rules that are inherently antithetical to role-playing.
> 
> FATE is the classic example. In order to play FATE, you need to engage with the meta-currency of fate points, or else you won't be able to sway the narrative when you need to. The rules encourage you to get in trouble early on; not because it's the smart thing to do, or even necessarily because it's what your character would realistically do, but because you want the fate points. You're supposed to make decisions on behalf of your character, by taking into consideration that this is a game which operates on principles that are unknown to the character. It's pure meta-gaming.
> 
> ...



Role playing means taking on a role and acting in the way that you imagine said role would act. In both of the examples you cited, you are supposed to choose a role that would in fact engage in the activities that work with the metacurrency system. That's why you have Trouble in FATE games, for example. There are similar mechanisms in, say, Champions where you buy a bunch of Disads, but no mechanism that actually encourages you to play the role of the character possessing those Disads.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 23, 2020)

1) if it does things in ways I find counterintuitive or unnecessarily complicated

2) if it uses confusing and/or complicated language and terminology.  I’m a lawyer, I don’t appreciate RPG systems that read like legal codes, _especially _since most game designers and players don’t use language that way on a regular basis

3) if it’s a revision, it changes so much that I find it difficult or impossible to create analogues of the characters I made in previous editions.  Note- I’m not talking about mechanical backwards compatibility, but being able to make PCs that feel & play similarly to those from before


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Role playing means taking on a role and acting in the way that you imagine said role would act. In both of the examples you cited, you are supposed to choose a role that would in fact engage in the activities that work with the metacurrency system. That's why you have Trouble in FATE games, for example. There are similar mechanisms in, say, Champions where you buy a bunch of Disads, but no mechanism that actually encourages you to play the role of the character possessing those Disads.



I'm not familiar with how Champions does its Disadvantages, but in GURPS, it's covered by a random roll to see whether you succumb (with the value of the Disadvantage scaling with the difficulty of the roll). So if you're playing a typical fantasy thief, you might have a compulsion to steal valuable objects, and overcoming that compulsion requires rolling 6 or under on 3d6. Both the player and the character are entirely in the same headspace, that stealing this valuable object right now would be a bad thing, because of the inevitable trouble which it will bring. But they may not be able to help themself, which is what the roll represents.

FATE literally says that you should steal that thing, and invite the accompanying trouble, because you want the fate point. That means either 1) You're making an in-character decision based on out-of-character knowledge, which is the definition of meta-gaming as it is commonly used; or 2) Your game world actually does work on narrative causality, and everyone knows this. Neither option great for role-playing, unless you're in Discworld.

I'm only saying this because you asked why I hate these systems. I don't know if you were unaware of how many people hate the concept of meta-currency, or why, but I hope I've explained the position sufficiently. In any case, I will now disengage with this thread, for my own safety.


----------



## ccs (Jan 23, 2020)

Nagol said:


> 2) The system is built around terrible and insupportable premises.  The classic in this camp is of course, F.A.T.A.L.




I don't think that actually counts as a game.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

The systems I detest are:

1) Mechwarrior - Doesn't handle scale well, and really needs to. Too lethal to really serve to support the fiction it wants to support.
2) RIFTS - So, so, so many reasons, including the worst handling of scale of any system.
3) Storyteller - Wants to be a rules light Nar game based on character introspection. Hasn't a clue how to do that and actively thwarts its own ambitions. In practice, it's a system best enjoyed by ruthless power gamers.
4) FATE - Wants to be rules light Nar game based on character growth and development. Hasn't a clue how to support that and actively thwarts its own ambitions. In practice, it's a system best enjoyed by ruthless power gamers.
5) Mouseguard - Wants to be a rules light game. Is in practice more fiddly than D&D.

I really don't want to put Mouseguard on that list as there are elements of the design that I really like and I really want to run Mousegaurd but oh wow are there so many things about it that are terrible, and after some playing around with it's just so much work to save the system that I can't see me ever investing in it. 

I've heard bad things about a ton of systems that sound like really reasonable criticism but without first hand knowledge I don't want to dis anything.

As for category #2, I'm not going to invite more discord than I have already to list the systems I'd put in category #2 alongside the usual suspects that deservedly come up.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 23, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> 4) FATE - Wants to be rules light Nar game based on character growth and development. Hasn't a clue how to support that and actively thwarts its own ambitions. In practice, it's a system best enjoyed by ruthless power gamers.




I'm not sure you have the right game there...


----------



## Reynard (Jan 23, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I'm not familiar with how Champions does its Disadvantages, but in GURPS, it's covered by a random roll to see whether you succumb (with the value of the Disadvantage scaling with the difficulty of the roll). So if you're playing a typical fantasy thief, you might have a compulsion to steal valuable objects, and overcoming that compulsion requires rolling 6 or under on 3d6. Both the player and the character are entirely in the same headspace, that stealing this valuable object right now would be a bad thing, because of the inevitable trouble which it will bring. But they may not be able to help themself, which is what the roll represents.
> 
> FATE literally says that you should steal that thing, and invite the accompanying trouble, because you want the fate point. That means either 1) You're making an in-character decision based on out-of-character knowledge, which is the definition of meta-gaming as it is commonly used; or 2) Your game world actually does work on narrative causality, and everyone knows this. Neither option great for role-playing, unless you're in Discworld.
> 
> I'm only saying this because you asked why I hate these systems. I don't know if you were unaware of how many people hate the concept of meta-currency, or why, but I hope I've explained the position sufficiently. In any case, I will now disengage with this thread, for my own safety.



You are demanding complete immersion as a prerequisite for "role playing" and, well, it isn't.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> You are demanding complete immersion as a prerequisite for "role playing" and, well, it isn't.




I don't think Saelorn is. I think she is only making the narrow claim that a system should not give a an incentive for making a particular choice if it wants to promote role-playing, since having a mechanical incentive to make a particular choice tends to discourage playing a character.

There are equivalent examples in other media. For example, while I consider the original Mass Effect one of the greatest cRPGs in history (possibly even the greatest), one valid complaint you can make against it is the Alignment system only rewards always taking either the Noble choice or the Rebel choice, and tells you ahead of time how your choice is characterized. If you want to get the best result, you have to strictly adhere to making 95% of your choices one way or the other, or else you can't maximize your social skills. This creates disincentive to play your character in the way you would like or according to how you think your character would behave in this situation and instead rewards you for playing an simplistic character whose every impulse in every situation is predictable.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I'm not sure you have the right game there...




You asked what the board hated.  Is it going to bother you if we explain why?


----------



## Tonguez (Jan 23, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I'm not familiar with how Champions does its Disadvantages, but in GURPS, it's covered by a random roll to see whether you succumb (with the value of the Disadvantage scaling with the difficulty of the roll). So if you're playing a typical fantasy thief, you might have a compulsion to steal valuable objects, and overcoming that compulsion requires rolling 6 or under on 3d6. Both the player and the character are entirely in the same headspace, that stealing this valuable object right now would be a bad thing, because of the inevitable trouble which it will bring. But they may not be able to help themself, which is what the roll represents.
> 
> FATE literally says that you should steal that thing, and invite the accompanying trouble, because you want the fate point. That means either 1) You're making an in-character decision based on out-of-character knowledge, which is the definition of meta-gaming as it is commonly used; or 2) Your game world actually does work on narrative causality, and everyone knows this. Neither option great for role-playing, unless you're in Discworld.




But the RPG world does work on narrative causality whether its GURPS or FATE or DnD the decisions made by the Players get a reaction from the GM - who narrates the consequences. 

Fate incentivises players to Roleplay their characters and not just leave the decision to rolling a dice


----------



## Tonguez (Jan 23, 2020)

Palladium and RIFTS - OMG
Rolemaster had too many tables
4e DnD - eek
ADnD - classes are too restrictive


----------



## Reynard (Jan 23, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> You asked what the board hated.  Is it going to bother you if we explain why?



It doesn't bother me at all, but that doesn't mean I have to quietly agree with it.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 23, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> I don't think Saelorn is. I think she is only making the narrow claim that a system should not give a an incentive for making a particular choice if it wants to promote role-playing, since having a mechanical incentive to make a particular choice tends to discourage playing a character.
> 
> There are equivalent examples in other media. For example, while I consider the original Mass Effect one of the greatest cPGs in history (possibly even the greatest), one valid complaint you can make against it is the Alignment system only rewards always taking either the Noble choice or the Rebel choice, and tells you ahead of time how your choice is characterized. If you want to get the best result, you have to strictly adhere to making 95% of your choices one way or the other, or else you can't maximize your social skills. This creates disincentive to play your character in the way you would like or according to how you think your character would behave in this situation and instead rewards you for playing an simplistic character whose every impulse in every situation is predictable.



I am not sure a CRPG with inherently limited choices has much bearing on the situation.

Be that as it may,games that mechanically incentivise maintaining a consistent role actually improve role-playing IMO. Role playing doesn't mean "do whatever you would do." it means "do what the character would do." In a game like FATE (and there are lots of other examples) you are supposed to decide what role you want to play, build that character and then play that role. If you were on stage in an improv show, you would be expected to maintain your role even if you wouldn't do what your role would do. Same thing here. Since most gamers are not actors, having mechanical incentives just keeps that behavior at the forefront.

I can't count the number of times some player has made a decision based on their gut morality or preferences that was completely at odds with the game, the genre or their previously established character. Just because you have the freedom to do whatever doesn't mean that whatever choices you make are "in character."

Now, all that said, in practice I don't worry so much. I don't mind if people role-play in third person. I don't mind if they basically play themselves. I don't mind if they play a 2 dimensional character. If they are having fun and not ruining the fun for everyone else at the table, all is good. But I totally disagree with the notion that games with mechanical narrative elements somehow inhibit role-playing.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jan 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> So if you HATE a system, why? Explain it to me.




I'm not sure I hate any particular system (exception granted for silly things like FATAL). However, there are few things that irk me no end, and yet seem horribly common.

1) Advertising your system as some kind of "story" engine....when its really just another bog-standard combat/skirmish system with some RP wrapping (i.e. a standard rpg). Or really, just missing the mark entirely on your genre or promises. Which, sadly, is just about so common that its painful anymore. And its not that I even hate that kind of thing. Heck, I'm happy to play a wargame or skirmish game....just tell me that's what it is upfront.

2) lists...lists....lists.... weapons, spells, 50+skills/feats/tweaks. I'm old enough to be pretty done with it. In the end, the differences between most of the items on these lists are minor, and _maybe_ matter within the combat (and usually nothing else) statistics/math of the system. Yet, players are always looking for those tiny bonuses, etc. I mean, really, if there's a narrative difference, either make it matter or shut up.

3) Going along with #1. Mechanics that don't deliver what they're supposed to, especially if they create incoherent narrative. Things like Fate points and aspects don't bother me at all, because they at least do what they say they will.* But rules that create nonsense or incoherent narrative just curdle my blood. The generics of the traditional HP/damage are the worst offender for me (although some games and editions have taken steps to ameliorate it). I'm really done with "combats" that are glorified accounting exercises with die randomizers.

Just to throw out an example. We are currently playing a Boot Hill 3e game. And I'm no expert on the system, so I don't even know if we are playing it correctly (I'm not the GM), but....  The damage/wounding mechanics are a vast improvement over just a pile of HP. However, the movement/initiative rules seem almost designed to ensure that perfectly sensible combat actions and positions are just about impossible to achieve.

*Which, I think, is just another way of saying "stance" (Actor vs Author vs Pawn) is not so important to me as the nature of the story/narrative that gets created. Board game, war/skirmish, rpg...its all the same to me.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jan 23, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> I don't think Saelorn is. I think she is only making the narrow claim that a system should not give a an incentive for making a particular choice if it wants to promote role-playing, since having a mechanical incentive to make a particular choice tends to discourage playing a character.




I hear this complaint a lot, and I don't quite get it. Its not like in old-school DnD, where you can get stuck with requirements by class with little or no input on how those will be adjudicated (and indeed, I've seen many vastly different interpretations of what counts as "lawful good" over the ....god help me...decades). In Fate, you get to pick/declare up front what your recurrent challenges and defining characteristics will be. So, if you don't want to face compels for stealing things...don't take an aspect that would be compelled that way. Essentially, Fate is asking you to tell me about your character upfront, and then reward you for playing that way...its got Role-playing rewards baked right into the system! You can even "self-compel" by offering one up to the DM, if they overlook the opportunity.  

Now...the other part of the complaint which is..."I don't want to think about non-sim mechanics" (Fate points are no more "meta" than HP or XP). That, I get. That person likes what some would call "Actor" stance, and they don't like being drawn out of it...fine. No problem. But the idea that a mechanic that directly incentivizes you to play the character which you said you wanted to play somehow discouraging roleplaying....? Wut?


----------



## pickin_grinnin (Jan 23, 2020)

There are some systems that I dislike and don't want to play or GM, but I don't have an all-abiding hate for them.  They just aren't ones I enjoy.  Those include anything PbtA, FATE, 2d20, GMless systems in general, and most games that fall under the general "storygames" category.


----------



## macd21 (Jan 23, 2020)

Ratskinner said:


> I hear this complaint a lot, and I don't quite get it. Its not like in old-school DnD, where you can get stuck with requirements by class with little or no input on how those will be adjudicated (and indeed, I've seen many vastly different interpretations of what counts as "lawful good" over the ....god help me...decades). In Fate, you get to pick/declare up front what your recurrent challenges and defining characteristics will be. So, if you don't want to face compels for stealing things...don't take an aspect that would be compelled that way. Essentially, Fate is asking you to tell me about your character upfront, and then reward you for playing that way...its got Role-playing rewards baked right into the system! You can even "self-compel" by offering one up to the DM, if they overlook the opportunity.
> 
> Now...the other part of the complaint which is..."I don't want to think about non-sim mechanics" (Fate points are no more "meta" than HP or XP). That, I get. That person likes what some would call "Actor" stance, and they don't like being drawn out of it...fine. No problem. But the idea that a mechanic that directly incentivizes you to play the character which you said you wanted to play somehow discouraging roleplaying....? Wut?




I think the problem some people have is that they don’t like being ‘told’ how to role play their character. That the system is, essentially, too crude to reflect how they see their character. They don’t like it when the system tells them ‘you should steal that thing’ when in fact they believe their character would never steal that particular thing.


----------



## pemerton (Jan 23, 2020)

I can't think of a system that I _hate_. I'm not a big fan of Tunnels & Trolls - too silly, too mechanically bland and too deadly all at the same time. (Admittedly my experience is limited.)

I love Runequest in principle, but in practice find that it is too brutal when used in the sort of way that it implies it should be used (ie to run heroic bronze-age or S&S-type fantasy). Rolemaster is superficially similar in ethos but has a lot of differences of mechanical minutiae that significantly reduce the brutality, especially once the PCs reach mid-levels.

Probably my most-disliked RPG is AD&D 2nd ed, because mechanically it is just AD&D reheated and lacks the capacity to actually deliver the play experience - heroic fantasy - that is promised on the tin. This is an instance of the point about _system honesty_ that other posters have mentioned.


----------



## Morrus (Jan 23, 2020)

"Hate" is a strong word. I can't hate a game. There are some I prefer to others.


----------



## Ulfgeir (Jan 23, 2020)

Well, the ones that comes to mind:

* Old World of Darkness - Especially vampire (Claimed to be about personal horror, but the rules made into superbeings with claws and teeth). And the claim that the separate games were not in the same world, even though it was obvious they were. And then of coure the incompatible rules between the different games.

* Exalted 2e: A system that is broken by even White Wolfs standards..  You have a gazillion separate rules for how things for every bloody charm.  And if you didn't have perfect defences, then you were screwed. And again rules that were different depending on what type of exalted you played.

* Shadowrun. Cumbersome systems with multiple separate subsystems.

* Eclipe Phase 1e. You needed custom-made spreadsheets to make a character to take into effect all the varying costs and limits based upon what you were and what kind of sleeve you had. You were supposed to switch often, and then had had to redo everything...

Edit:  I love the setting of Shadowrun, but I hate the system. I thought FASA was bad at making rules-systems, the current makers are worse.


----------



## JeffB (Jan 23, 2020)

Everyone is so different- some games mentioned here I really like, and some I agree with. HATE is a strong word, but..

Dislikes

1) D20 Star Wars (1st and revised) 3.x in space and doesn't deliver the fast(er) cinematic action of the previous SW game system (D6). 

2) Roll under systems that are not percentile based- IDK why. They just bug me. Black Hack for example. GURPS. I loved Champions (1/2E), Espionage and Justice as a young man   AD&D 2E and it's standardization of roll under for ability and NWP checks. 

3) Modiphius 2D20. They went to Jay Little and said "make us your FFG SW dice system using normal dice" Doesn't work nearly as well/elegantly as having the special dice-is way more fiddly than learning FFG SW dice, and it's a roll under. Blech.

4) Savage Worlds- I love dice step systems (Earthdawn!). I just cannot gel with this game-Superficially the "gambling" terminology/stupid slang like "bennies" and Aces and Wild Cards. Using a deck of cards for initiative. (which is awesomely appropriate for Deadlands, but seems out of place for everything else). Game assumes you'll be using minis and grids. I didn't find it very Fast Furious or Fun.


----------



## ART! (Jan 23, 2020)

Hate is maybe too strong a word, but here's some big turn-offs:

Confusing terminology for the chunks of stuff that define your character. "Skills" is clear. "Distinctions" is not. I will make some allowances for setting/theme-appropriate terminology.

Dice juggling, especially when combined with multiple kinds of dice, especially involving proprietary dice with symbols instead of numbers. You're just asking too much of me there, sorry. 

Poorly laid-out or otherwise confusing or cluttered character sheets. It's often the first thing I look at in a new rpg.


----------



## Delazar (Jan 23, 2020)

I wouldn't say "hate", but there are some RPGs I dislike.

I usually dislike RPGs when:

1) they use dice pools -> even worse when they use dice pools and you have to SUM the results up!
2) they're not supported by a copious amount of pre-written scenarios


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Jan 23, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I hate any game that claims to be an RPG, while simultaneously operating by rules that are inherently antithetical to role-playing.
> 
> FATE is the classic example. In order to play FATE, you need to engage with the meta-currency of fate points, or else you won't be able to sway the narrative when you need to. The rules encourage you to get in trouble early on; not because it's the smart thing to do, or even necessarily because it's what your character would realistically do, but because you want the fate points. You're supposed to make decisions on behalf of your character, by taking into consideration that this is a game which operates on principles that are unknown to the character. It's pure meta-gaming.
> 
> ...




lol.


----------



## Guest 6801328 (Jan 23, 2020)

I dislike RPGs that:


Try to be everything to everybody with endless character options.
Paste setting-specific fluff over generic rules systems.
Use dice with funny symbols all over them (unless it's simple enough that you can easily use "normal" polyhedral dice.)
Intentionally reward mastery of complex character creation rules.
Try too hard to de-emphasize combat.
Zero-to-hero.
Use a dice mechanic in which low rolls are good.  It just bugs me.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jan 23, 2020)

macd21 said:


> I think the problem some people have is that they don’t like being ‘told’ how to role play their character. That the system is, essentially, too crude to reflect how they see their character. They don’t like it when the system tells them ‘you should steal that thing’ when in fact they believe their character would never steal that particular thing.




Yeah, but, beyond that fact that your chosen aspects are supposed to represent the character you wanted to play...you're not forced to, its an offer. Like, "Hey, here's an opportunity to play your character", bonus FP offered up front. Don't like it. You can just buy it off with a Fate point.* You can even have the situation where you have "a wash" where two aspects contradict and you pay nothing in sum. Honestly, its a much gentler way of handling things than "That doesn't seem like an LG act to me, you're character looses all his powers until he repents." (Although much more ubiquitous, in play, to be sure.) Honestly, I have difficulty imagining a system more suited to directly enforce the weight or admixture of advantageous and disadvantageous traits.

Additionally, in the most recent Fate incarnations, that sounds more likely to be a self-compel. So, the player of the _mischievous thieving space raccoon_ suggests to the GM "Hey, so these battery things are probably really shiny and useful, like I, as a mischievous thieving space raccoon would take a couple, yeah?" Boom, consequences generated and paid for with a Fate point. 

*For example: You might be a _implusive thief_ but also _raised to be a good catholic boy. _So the GM compels you to steal the golden cross, then you immediately self-compel/invoke to put it back in a fit of guilt. Heck, if you play it right, you can come away with two FP for roleplaying the conflict between the aspects. e.g. Go to confession to return the cross (and point it out to the GM), then the priest gives you a penance. (Fate examples can get notoriously tricky because it can depend a lot on the narrative.) 

Like I said. It just seems like an odd part of the common complaint about Fate points to me. I'm certainly not saying that they must be universally loved.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

@Ratskinner: Your complaint about my complaint has two parts, and I'll deal with the easier one first.



> Now...the other part of the complaint which is..."I don't want to think about non-sim mechanics" (Fate points are no more "meta" than HP or XP). That, I get.




Yeah, but it also really has nothing to do with my complaint. As a concept, I don't mind Fate points for example. Nor do I mind the much more interesting mechanically similar concept of Force points in Star Wars D6. It's OK to have a resource that effects the story, and it's even more OK when that resource has an in universe explanation and further is limited enough that the player is motivated to only use it at appropriately dramatic moments.

Nor do I mind abstraction for the purpose of achieving certain design goals or speed of play. The problem with Fate points is how they end up influencing how the players play and how the players think about playing, especially as they gain some system mastery.



> I hear this complaint a lot, and I don't quite get it. Its not like in old-school DnD, where you can get stuck with requirements by class with little or no input on how those will be adjudicated (and indeed, I've seen many vastly different interpretations of what counts as "lawful good" over the ....god help me...decades). In Fate, you get to pick/declare up front what your recurrent challenges and defining characteristics will be. So, if you don't want to face compels for stealing things...don't take an aspect that would be compelled that way. Essentially, Fate is asking you to tell me about your character upfront, and then reward you for playing that way...its got Role-playing rewards baked right into the system! You can even "self-compel" by offering one up to the DM, if they overlook the opportunity.




So your comparison to D&D alignment is apt. Essentially you are being asked to construct a mini-set of core beliefs and personality traits that will define your character, and unlike alignment you get to define it. All that is apt, as is you noting that if the DM is heavy handed about how he interprets alignment, and uses it to compel the player with the threat of punishment hanging over there head, that is very much the same sort of problem I'm talking about. Many people have had this bad experience with alignment and so want nothing more to do with it, and I totally get that. But the Aspect system actually sets this up as a core quality of the game, and it's not really the compels that bother me (though those could be heavy handed as well) but the whole system. In other words, it's not even primarily the potential loss of agency here, it's that system encourages bad RPing in my opinion.

I think what the designers wanted was to create a system that rewarded the player for playing his character "in character" and in a dramatic fashion.   But what they actually created was a system that rewards playing a character in a simplistic exaggerated fashion.   A good RPer calls on his character traits (even if he gets no reward for doing so) at dramatically appropriate moments.  A good FATE player calls on his character aspects as often as possible and for as flimsy of reasons as possible.  You are always on the lookout for tagging every action because if you can tag an action, that adjusts the math so much in your favor that if you don't you almost certainly will fail.   As such, what you typically see in a game of FATE is frantically leveraging the Aspect system for straight forward gamist reasons with the result that FATE's primary aesthetic of play ends up not being Nar, but gamist.  People compel, call, tag and so forth primarily for "Step on Up" reasons and aesthetics related to Challenge and Self-Affirmation, and not for reasons pertaining to Story.  By turning the character into a mechanic that directly relates to success all the time, it turns all the considerations about playing your character into weighing not the character but the need for mechanical success.   It's actively undermining its own intentions with the design in the same way that social systems that mimic combat systems in order to make social interaction a pillar of the game are inadvertently undermining the RP that they want to encourage.


----------



## macd21 (Jan 23, 2020)

Ratskinner said:


> Yeah, but, beyond that fact that your chosen aspects are supposed to represent the character you wanted to play...you're not forced to, its an offer. Like, "Hey, here's an opportunity to play your character", bonus FP offered up front. Don't like it. You can just buy it off with a Fate point.* You can even have the situation where you have "a wash" where two aspects contradict and you pay nothing in sum. Honestly, its a much gentler way of handling things than "That doesn't seem like an LG act to me, you're character looses all his powers until he repents." (Although much more ubiquitous, in play, to be sure.) Honestly, I have difficulty imagining a system more suited to directly enforce the weight or admixture of advantageous and disadvantageous traits.
> 
> Additionally, in the most recent Fate incarnations, that sounds more likely to be a self-compel. So, the player of the _mischievous thieving space raccoon_ suggests to the GM "Hey, so these battery things are probably really shiny and useful, like I, as a mischievous thieving space raccoon would take a couple, yeah?" Boom, consequences generated and paid for with a Fate point.
> 
> ...




I’ll not that ‘that wasn’t LG, lose all your powers’ is something DnD has moved away from. Some people feel that attaching mechanics from role playing kills the role playing. There’s a mental disconnect for them - it doesn’t really matter that they’re being rewarded to playing a character appropriately, the fact that they have to think in terms of roleplaying bennies (or whatever) is a distraction.


----------



## Tyler Do'Urden (Jan 23, 2020)

my hat of d02 know no limit

….

just kidding!

Hate is far too strong a word to use, but I have a very strong aversion to games - both RPGs and board games - that use custom non-numerical dice. That's been FFG's thing for the past decade, and it drives me bonkers. I just want numbers, guys. Numbers!


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> It's highly disingenuous of them.




Now, pertaining to what I just posted, I don't think that it is actually "disingenuous". I hate this term, but the FORGE speak description of a system like FATE is "incoherent". It sets itself up to achieve one goal, but the mechanics of the system undermine the goal it has set for itself. I don't think the FATE designers did this deliberately, and so I don't think "disingenuous" is the right word. I think that they were very well meaning, it is just I think they were also very naive. 

There is a trap hidden in the design of games that want to be Nar that most Nar games have failed to avoid, and that has to do with the nature of simulating a task. Let's assume that we want to play some sort of "Theater of the Mind" type game just to limit the sort of task resolution options we have available, and lets assume that the goal of the game is to create interactive literature. That is to say, we want to create a story telling medium which allows the participants to feel like that they are active participants in a great story in the way a reader of a novel or the audience of a movie is a passive participant in (what can be) a great story. I think that's a fairly safe description of most RPGs and certainly most RPGs with at least some degree of Narrative aesthetic of play. 

Every RPG has rules to adjudicate actions within the story, and most players find rules aesthetically pleasing if for a given level of complexity and interruption of the game, those rules help the players concretely imagine the events occurring in the story. In other words, a set of rules is compelling if the results of play encourage the imagination and leave a memory in the player of a story that resembles that created by a reader of a novel (or the audience in the movie, but with much less demand on the imagination). 

Consider the case of 'combat' which occupies the central place in the rules of most RPG systems. For now, I'm not going to give an explanation why combat typically occupies a central place, but instead I'm going to address combat rules need to be detailed to achieve the above result. The answer is that every bit of granularity you add to combat rules makes it just a bit easier to imagine what is happening in the combat and to simulate those combat actions in a satisfying way. This is why some people are unhappy with abstract systems like HP, where the events of the combat aren't really concretely specified compared to a system with active defenses like Parry and Wound locations and Armor as Damage Mitigation. If the rules systems helps you see the combat in your mind, and creates a plausible set of results, then it will - if you can put up with the bookkeeping - be satisfying. And this is in fact the best we can do to simulate combat in Theater of the Mind.

A lot of Nar designers fall into the trap of assuming that every game activity works the same.  So they naively assume that if they want to make a game centered around social interaction and RP, that you'd go about establishing that as a pillar of your game in the same way you'd go about establishing combat as a pillar of the game.   And the problem is that while it's requires a lot of rules to simulate combat in a reified manner in Theater of the Mind and the more rules you add the more like combat the simulation becomes in the mind, conversation is nothing like that.   The most reified manner to have a conversation in Theater of the Mind is to _simply have a conversation_.   Nothing you can do is more like having a conversation or a social interaction in Theater of the Mind than actually having the conversation.   Nothing is more like an actual conversation than a pretend conversation.   So it turns out that setting up a Pillar of social interaction doesn't look anything like setting up a Pillar for combat.   Where more rules make the combat more reified, the more depth you add to your rules, the less the conversation will be reified.


----------



## Undrave (Jan 23, 2020)

Games that use D100 tables. 

Though randomly generating power sets in the ol' Palladium superhero game was funny. 



Ulfgeir said:


> * Shadowrun. Cumbersome systems with multiple separate subsystems.




I tried to play a Rigger once in a game of Shadowrun. The world and concept were cool... but you needed to consult like five different frickin' tables to make your flipping drones it was a huge PAIN! Even a car needed to pick a ton of stuff... It really would have been useful to have a couple of standard drones as basis and exemple. Augh.


----------



## prabe (Jan 23, 2020)

Sorry, I'm kinda new here. What is "Nar," please?


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

Tyler Do'Urden said:


> Hate is far too strong a word to use, but I have a very strong aversion to games - both RPGs and board games - that use custom non-numerical dice. That's been FFG's thing for the past decade, and it drives me bonkers. I just want numbers, guys. Numbers!




I have a strong aversion to this as well. And it's become a weaker but real aversion to any dice pool system.

The absolute basic thing that a game system has to have is math that works. If we didn't have to have math that works, we would never need a system more complex than Celebrim's famous "World's Simplest RPG", which has only one rule - basically, "Flip a coin". The reason that system is not satisfying is the math doesn't work. In the world's simplest RPG, the odds of Superman jumping over a puddle is the same as odds of Lois Lane leaping a tall building in a single bound (and vica versa). And both also have the same odds of leaping the Atlantic ocean. So the very basic thing all systems are trying to achieve is plausible task resolution.

And the problem I have with custom non-numerical dice and dice pools is I almost always find that the designers didn't pay much attention to whether or not the math of their system actually works. They didn't set things according to an idea like, "I want this sort of task to succeed 2/3rds of the time, and this sort 1/5th of the time, and this sort 9/10ths of the time." They set up the system based on an aesthetic ideal and not based on a pragmatic examination of the math. It's very hard in a system with wonky math to know as a player or as a DM what odds you are actually setting on a task succeeding or failing. Games like Storyteller and FUDGE and FATE and Mousegaurd all have in common that they have hideous math in the general case and that they strongly hide from the participants the odds of the outcomes. 

Matters only get worse when you hide the math further by replacing the numbers with symbols.


----------



## Tyler Do'Urden (Jan 23, 2020)

Undrave said:


> Games that use D100 tables.




I'm not a fan of those either, but I don't mind them so much because all you have to do is divide everything by 5 and voila, it's a d20-based system. 

Those silly FFG dice, though... grr....


----------



## Zhaleskra (Jan 23, 2020)

People are abbreviating the Forge GNS theory's three "models" of play.

G - Gamism - focusing on the game as a game
N - Narrative - focusing on the "story", thus "Nar"
S - Simulation - focusing on the simulated reality.

So far I think I've only seen Narrative abbreviated.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

prabe said:


> Sorry, I'm kinda new here. What is "Nar," please?




Short for "Narrativist". Briefly, it means a game that has (or at least intends to have) as it's central aesthetic of play the creation of Story. In theory, if you main aesthetic of play is experiencing a story, then a Narrativist game will better met your goals of play than one that is more focused on say tactical combat and has Challenge as a primary aesthetic of play.

I should note that the term "Narrativist" came out of a theory called GNS that I don't actually subscribe to, and so I'm using the term in a very slightly different way than it's original creator.


----------



## prabe (Jan 23, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Short for "Narrativist". Briefly, it means a game that has (or at least intends to have) as it's central aesthetic of play the creation of Story. In theory, if you main aesthetic of play is experiencing a story, then a Narrativist game will better met your goals of play than one that is more focused on say tactical combat and has Challenge as a primary aesthetic of play.
> 
> I should note that the term "Narrativist" came out of a theory called GNS that I don't actually subscribe to, and so I'm using the term in a very slightly different way than it's original creator.





Thanks. I ... wasn't expanding as a word but attempting to parse it as an initialization. While they're not my preferred type of RPG, I more or less what they're at least trying to be about.


----------



## DEFCON 1 (Jan 23, 2020)

Amusingly to me... the thing that people here are decrying about FATE-- the idea that players don't really "play their characters" and instead go fishing for every opportunity to activate their Aspects (even when they make no sense either for how their character behaves or the story at large)-- is actually my answer to this original question...

...which is that I don't "hate" any game systems... I only "hate" the players who use them.  

If a person who doesn't like FATE and the like find their reason to be that this supposedly Narrative game incentivizes players to ignore the story and just Aspect-fish... I'd contend that's the fault of the players who are playing FATE, not the system itself.  If you are playing FATE because you actually like the story and narrative aspect of gaming that the system is providing... you won't actually DO the things that the people who dislike it think occurs.  You WON'T go Aspect-fishing, because you realize that the story is meant to come first, and you'll only use the mechanics to enhance it, not to override it.  Which of course feeds right into some of my other posts on the D&D forum about players who can't help but try to "win" in RPGs.  Which to me, Aspect-fishing is one of those things-- deliberately going against the game (in spirit if nothing else) because the rules "allow" you to, and thus make you try and "win" the game.  If you care more about "winning" every roll and Aspect-fish in all manner of ridiculous ways to get bonuses to help you "win" every roll... that tells me you don't really want to play FATE in the first place and you probably shouldn't be.  

Thus for me... I find it's almost always the other players not buying in to the game being played that is the cause of my "hate".  The right players who wish to use a system as it is meant to be used to produce the results it is meant to evoke can usually make any system work... but the wrong players will destroy the game from within.


----------



## prabe (Jan 23, 2020)

DEFCON 1 said:


> Amusingly to me... the thing that people here are decrying about FATE-- the idea that players don't really "play their characters" and instead go fishing for every opportunity to activate their Aspects (even when they make no sense either for how their character behaves or the story at large)-- is actually my answer to this original question...
> 
> ...which is that I don't "hate" any game systems... I only "hate" the players who use them.
> 
> ...




My own major problem with FATE (and the other "narrative" games I've played, and probably the ones I haven't) is that as a player you want your character to fail, or accept a Compel, or otherwise be unsuccessful or suboptimal, so that you can power up. No _character_ wants to fail or be suboptimal. There is a misalignment of the player's and the character's priorities and desires.

The way that Compels in FATE seem like the GM stealing character agency is probably different.

That said, I don't *hate* FATE. I wouldn't choose it to run or play, but I'd probably join a game.


----------



## Zardnaar (Jan 23, 2020)

Apathy usually, mild dislike of Vampire. 

 Not really a fan of RPGs in general being honest. Most genres don't interest me just D&D and Star Wars. I own Numenera and have played some others but it's to hard here even if you like them.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

DEFCON 1 said:


> ...which is that I don't "hate" any game systems... I only "hate" the players who use them.




I think that that is actually a pretty solid answer. Many enjoyable games depend on having a functional table contract that serves to set standards for how you think about playing the game, and how you think about playing a game is often much more important to the actual process and results of play than the rules are.

So I get where you are coming from, but at the same time I also think that you are handwaving away a powerful observation about flaws in a game.

Take D&D 3.5, a game system that I mostly like and which many people have as one of if not their favorite game system. But D&D 3.5 implicitly depends on finding a table contract where everyone either agrees to not break the game for a given value of "breaking the game" or at least agrees to create a character that breaks the game to roughly the same degree. And most Supers systems by reputation (full disclosure, I haven't played a Supers system) have the same reputation. For example, an optimized Speedster can often break the game.

However, the fact that you can enjoy the game and play the game as intended does not at the same time mean that the flaw that the table contract is working around doesn't exist. D&D 3.5 being a game system which heavily prioritizes the aesthetic of Challenge, and yet at the same time has absolutely no balance what so ever, is in fact incoherent design that works against its own ambitions as a game and people who point out that D&D 3.5 is an incoherent design are not wrong just because at a particular table you had an enjoyable game because everyone agreed to optimize their PC's to the same level and the GM was able to provide a challenge scaled to the power level that the table had agreed on.



> If a person who doesn't like FATE and the like find their reason to be that this supposedly Narrative game incentivizes players to ignore the story and just Aspect-fish... I'd contend that's the fault of the players who are playing FATE, not the system itself.  If you are playing FATE because you actually like the story and narrative aspect of gaming that the system is providing... you won't actually DO the things that the people who dislike it think occurs.  You WON'T go Aspect-fishing, because you realize that the story is meant to come first, and you'll only use the mechanics to enhance it, not to override it.  Which of course feeds right into some of my other posts on the D&D forum about players who can't help but try to "win" in RPGs.  Which to me, Aspect-fishing is one of those things-- deliberately going against the game (in spirit if nothing else) because the rules "allow" you to, and thus make you try and "win" the game.  If you care more about "winning" every roll and Aspect-fish in all manner of ridiculous ways to get bonuses to help you "win" every roll... that tells me you don't really want to play FATE in the first place and you probably shouldn't be.




Nonetheless, if you go and look at an example of play that involves one of the actual designers of the game running it, for example, the Tabletop game hosted by Wil Wheaton and guest starring Felicia day and Ryan Macklin, and you analyze the play involved I think you'll find that it absolutely is incoherent in the way that I described.   It was watching that video that convinced me that I wasn't doing it wrong, and that in fact all the problems I was seeing and experiencing were inherent in the system.   Is John Rodgers - who absolutely dominates that session - doing it wrong?  I feel bad for Felicia Day because she I think actually tried to play it 'right' but got absolutely no traction from the system.   And Wil Wheaton, saw his desired aesthetic of play get taken from him because he failed to have John Rodger's system mastery (which involves all those aspect fishing things you say people won't do.)  If those aren't the "right players" then who is?


----------



## JeffB (Jan 23, 2020)

prabe said:


> My own major problem with FATE (and the other "narrative" games I've played, and probably the ones I haven't) is that as a player you want your character to fail, or accept a Compel, or otherwise be unsuccessful or suboptimal, so that you can power up. No _character_ wants to fail or be suboptimal. There is a misalignment of the player's and the character's priorities and desires.





I'm only mildly familiar with FATE (the jargon drives me nuts so I haven't been able to get into it), but Dungeon World as another example of narrative game,  does give you an experience point when you completely fail a roll.  However, you are deep doo-doo if that happens. I don't see that as being an issue for DW- players trying to fail in order to get more XP and level up. Not to mention, some traditional skill based games also work off of a failure being an experience builder.

I'm with @DEFCON 1 - this is a player /playstyle issue, not the game's issue- narrative games require a certain amount of "buy in" and if a player goes in with a D&D/PF/CRPG "gaming the system"  attitude- it's probably going to be no fun, and you will "break" and/or ruin the game.

This is also why I have not had issues with systems that people seem to think are "broken" or completely unbalanced (RIFTS/Palladium for example). It's a player/playstyle issue with exploiting the system, or the GM allowing it to be exploited.


----------



## prabe (Jan 23, 2020)

Agreed about speedsters having a tendency to break Supers games. I have a friend ... with a gift fot finding system exploits, and in Supers games he tends to default to speedsters. How much of that is because he likes the comics featuring them, instead of because he can break the game by playing them, is ... impossible for me to discern from outside his head.

Also, I think just about *every* table playing a TTRPG is going to have some sort of agreement about how optimized the characters are going to be, and how optimized the play is going to be.


----------



## Bawylie (Jan 23, 2020)

The few times I’ve hated an RPG system were due to human error.


----------



## macd21 (Jan 23, 2020)

DEFCON 1 said:


> Amusingly to me... the thing that people here are decrying about FATE-- the idea that players don't really "play their characters" and instead go fishing for every opportunity to activate their Aspects (even when they make no sense either for how their character behaves or the story at large)-- is actually my answer to this original question...
> 
> ...which is that I don't "hate" any game systems... I only "hate" the players who use them.
> 
> ...




I don’t think that’s a fair analysis of their problem with FATE. Whether they’re trying to win or not is irrelevant, either way the system inherently disrupts their roleplaying. Whether you’re Aspect-fishing, or just roleplaying your character, there’s a required awareness of how the system interacts with your roleplaying. Which just rubs some people the wrong way.


----------



## macd21 (Jan 23, 2020)

JeffB said:


> I'm only mildly familiar with FATE (the jargon drives me nuts so I haven't been able to get into it), but Dungeon World as another example of narrative game,  does give you an experience point when you completely fail a roll.  However, you are deep doo-doo if that happens. I don't see that as being an issue for DW- players trying to fail in order to get more XP and level up. Not to mention, some traditional skill based games also work off of a failure being an experience builder.




I don’t think that’s really the kind of thing prabe was referring to. That’s really just a bit compensation for a failed test. You didn’t choose to fail, or be suboptimal, or naughty word up - the dice just didn’t roll your way. But in some Nar systems you are rewarding for _choosing_ to fail (to act in a way that is detrimental to your character because doing so would be in-character).


----------



## prabe (Jan 23, 2020)

macd21 said:


> But in some Nar systems you are rewarding for _choosing_ to fail (to act in a way that is detrimental to your character because doing so would be in-character).




I'd say it's more about whether you and/or the GM can justify it than rather it's actually in-character, but that might be a quibble.


----------



## JeffB (Jan 23, 2020)

macd21 said:


> I don’t think that’s really the kind of thing prabe was referring to. That’s really just a bit compensation for a failed test. You didn’t choose to fail, or be suboptimal, or naughty word up - the dice just didn’t roll your way. But in some Nar systems you are rewarding for _choosing_ to fail (to act in a way that is detrimental to your character because doing so would be in-character).




Understood.Thanks for the clarification.

So the game is rewarding you for acting in character-which many systems do- but people abuse that to "power up" ? If so, I guess I'm still seeing it mainly as a player issue. Though the game should definitely have some GM advice about people who would abuse it, and maybe a hard rule to deal with abusers. Player...errrr….Character death.... is always an option for rules abusers


----------



## Derren (Jan 23, 2020)

What I hate are systems that start good but then dumb everything down to please people who are not invested enough to read the rules of the game they are playing.

What I dislike are system with a very narrow focus on what you can play like assuming all characters belong to a specific organization and systems which horribly butcher real world languages (7th Sea)


----------



## DEFCON 1 (Jan 23, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> So I get where you are coming from, but at the same time I also think that you are handwaving away a powerful observation about flaws in a game.




No, you are right, I'm not suggesting there aren't flaws in the game itself.  FATE has rules and mechanics that can compel players to do things that are antithetical to what I think the game is trying to embody.  Just like as you say, 3.5 has rules that run counter to what itself is trying to accomplish, or even "break" it.  That is something that I suspect almost every game is going to suffer from in one manner or another.  Which isn't really surprising, seeing as how you are trying to combine a game and a story together-- two things that often run counter to each other.

That being said... players all have what they think RPGs are "supposed" to be, and what playing a character in one is "supposed" to be.  And if that belief isn't flexible enough to adapt to all the different "types" of RPGs, then certain types will in no way work for you.  And at that point, we would hope that each of us could recognize that in ourselves and in these games, and just politely nod and say "thanks but no thanks" when the offer came to play in one.


----------



## DEFCON 1 (Jan 23, 2020)

macd21 said:


> I don’t think that’s a fair analysis of their problem with FATE. Whether they’re trying to win or not is irrelevant, either way the system inherently disrupts their roleplaying. Whether you’re Aspect-fishing, or just roleplaying your character, there’s a required awareness of how the system interacts with your roleplaying. Which just rubs some people the wrong way.



While they may not be trying to "win" the game as I put it... it sounded as though they were trying to play FATE in their own particular style of what they think roleplaying is supposed to be.  And FATE obviously does not in any way work for them with that style.  Which shouldn't be surprising, and I don't begrudge them for having their own style or beliefs in what roleplaying is.

The idea of trying to "win" is just an example of what I thought the idea of Aspecting-fishing was trying to accomplish.  The game certainly can allow for that to occur, and players could certainly try and do it (and can accomplish it if the GM goes along with it)... but I do think it goes against what the game itself is trying to help the players produce-- a certain type of narrative gaming experience.  And I find that my less than enjoyable RPG experiences almost always result from the players and how they are engaging with the game, rather than the rules of the game itself.  But to each their own.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 23, 2020)

There is a mischaracterization made by Fate detractors that players are choosing to fail, that in fact they have to fail, in order to have enough power to succeed later. This is not at all how the game works. Accepting a fate point is not failing, just letting one of your aspects add a complication to the scene. And you do not need to accept that complication. Fate points flow steadily back and forth. Refusing them occasionally will not destroy your character's power base. 

As for aspect fishing? The GM, and probably the other players are going to just say, "Nice try, not going to work." It's no different from players trying to stretch their abilities to absurd lengths in any other game. 

Players choose their own aspects and are role playing throughout the whole session, not just when they need that point. Game sessions feel like a tv episode or comic book issue. You can just have fun romps or get into deep role playing with painful decisions leading to dire consequences. Fate can encompass a wide variety of tones and genres. The game is very stretchy that way and manages to work as a generic system/toolbox which can be difficult for games to accomplish. 

 I have played a lot of Fate. It's elegant, a ton of fun and intuitive. I especially find it the easiest game to introduce to new players to the hobby, because it allows them to engage in stories that feel like their favourite shows, which is often what draws them to the hobby in the first place. 

Now if you don't like Fate points or like more crunch, or don't like the toolbox nature of the game, these are perfectly valid reasons for disliking Fate. But you can't claim it discourages role play, or is an incoherent mess (the Wil Wheton episode, unfortunately did Fate no favours... ) The bookmark which came with my copy has all the rules you need on it, so definitely not hard to learn. It comes at roleplaying from a very different angle than more traditional games like D&D, although these days Fate is fairly mainstream.


----------



## prabe (Jan 23, 2020)

Arilyn said:


> There is a mischaracterization made by Fate detractors that players are choosing to fail, that in fact they have to fail, in order to have enough power to succeed later. This is not at all how the game works. Accepting a fate point is not failing, just letting one of your aspects add a complication to the scene. And you do not need to accept that complication. Fate points flow steadily back and forth. Refusing them occasionally will not destroy your character's power base.
> 
> As for aspect fishing? The GM, and probably the other players are going to just say, "Nice try, not going to work." It's no different from players trying to stretch their abilities to absurd lengths in any other game.
> 
> ...




Almost none of your description of gameplay matches my experience of the game, and I went into it wanting and expecting to like it (which may make my disappointment more acute). I have no problem with metagame currencies, but at the tables I've played with them they never seemed to move anything like as much as the theorists believe they will or should. "Adding a complication" is not radically different from "My character is penalized," and choosing to be penalized to you can get that precious Fate Point isn't all that different from intentionally failing.

I ran a campaign for ... maybe a year, and we had fun moments, but the system really didn't work for me or the other people at my table.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 23, 2020)

prabe said:


> Almost none of your description of gameplay matches my experience of the game, and I went into it wanting and expecting to like it (which may make my disappointment more acute). I have no problem with metagame currencies, but at the tables I've played with them they never seemed to move anything like as much as the theorists believe they will or should. "Adding a complication" is not radically different from "My character is penalized," and choosing to be penalized to you can get that precious Fate Point isn't all that different from intentionally failing.
> 
> I ran a campaign for ... maybe a year, and we had fun moments, but the system really didn't work for me or the other people at my table.



It just doesn't match your play style then. You tried it for a year and it wasn't working for your table. For my group, it sings, with the Fate points working exactly as the theorists claim.  Different tastes. 

Savage Worlds is a much loved system that our table has tried, leaves us cold, even though we really wanted to like it. There isn't anything majorly wrong with the game, just not for us. Other players? Wouldn't want to play anything else.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

@Arilyn: You are probably not wrong, and it probably does work for your table like you describe, which just makes me want to play for a session or two at your table to learn how you make it work.

But as for why I think it is incoherent, I think you have to go back to a somewhat legitimate complaint made in the early days of GNS theory, which was that often in the course of the game you'd reach a point where the thing that your character would do in this situation ran counter to the idea of winning. In other words, if the goal of the game was to kill the monster and take his stuff, then the best possible play was the play that most ruthlessly accomplished that goal even if that play ran counter to the declared personality and motivations of the character. Thus, in trad games you often see players with the aesthetic of "Challenge" or 'gamist' aesthetic playing their characters in a pure Pawn stance with only the most feeble justification for their actions, or adopting evil characters just so their ruthless actions won't be questioned. I think it was from that sort of observation that they ran with the idea that no game could satisfy more than one aesthetic of play.

The way the FATE designers try to resolve this is remove the motivation to play your character in Pawn stance by rewarding playing the character to the declared type or motivation of the character. So for example, a Compel (a situation where your character behaves in something other than their best interests) is no longer a strict penalty, but something that gives you a potential mechanical reward. In theory this is supposed to remove the need for considering the mechanical rewards or penalties and allow you to focus on just playing your character.

But at least in my observation, that doesn't happen. What actually happens is that it all just becomes another mechanic to leverage toward achieving success and that highly thespian approaches to play are actually deprecated compared to even D&D because they aren't actually approaching the problem from a different angle, but just applying more or less the same levers that the power gamer at the table is pulling. Further, my real standard here is, "If this is supposed to encourage role playing, does this actually encourage in character dialogue?" And so often I see mechanics in the social pillar replacing in character dialogue and any other in character interaction with the fiction with rules jargon and metagame discussions. 

I always say that too often instead of producing the experience of Story, Nar games end up producing the experience of being a creative team assigned to collaborate on a screenplay.  What is created is not the experience of Story, but the process of creating a Transcript or even just an Outline.  Instead of feeling like a participant in the story, you feel like a participant in a business meeting discussing a story.   If I watch a podcast like 'Critical Role', I very much get the feeling that they are creating story (in fits and starts) and feel like they are in a story (although obviously it's impossible for me to perfectly get into their head and know what the experience feels like to them).  I don't get the feeling that something like FATE better creates a story or the experience of being in a story than a game like D&D with no explicit ambitions of creating a story.


----------



## TwoSix (Jan 23, 2020)

macd21 said:


> I don’t think that’s a fair analysis of their problem with FATE. Whether they’re trying to win or not is irrelevant, either way the system inherently disrupts their roleplaying. Whether you’re Aspect-fishing, or just roleplaying your character, there’s a required awareness of how the system interacts with your roleplaying. Which just rubs some people the wrong way.



Well, sure, but that's because of the core of Nar systems is that you aren't playing the game to try to align yourself with the character.  You're using the character to generate conflict and drama.  Much like how in Gygaxian D&D, you're using the character as a tool to try to solve a dungeon.


----------



## Nebulous (Jan 23, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I hate any game that claims to be an RPG, while simultaneously operating by rules that are inherently antithetical to role-playing.
> 
> FATE is the classic example. In order to play FATE, you need to engage with the meta-currency of fate points, or else you won't be able to sway the narrative when you need to. The rules encourage you to get in trouble early on; not because it's the smart thing to do, or even necessarily because it's what your character would realistically do, but because you want the fate points. You're supposed to make decisions on behalf of your character, by taking into consideration that this is a game which operates on principles that are unknown to the character. It's pure meta-gaming.
> 
> ...




Thanks for explaining that.  I have been wondering what the 2d20 system was and it sounds so similar to d20 D&D that I couldn't understand why so many people seemed to dislike it.


----------



## billd91 (Jan 23, 2020)

I don't know that I *hate* games as much as I find some have annoying features or I don't like them.

I don't like the game putting me too much into metagame elements, unless it's just a question of understanding the narrative conventions of the genre and playing along with or to them. So I don't mind dealing with hero points in Mutants and Masterminds. They help encourage the narrative flow of the superhero genre by compensating the players for drawing the story out with a fiat-laden escape (a typical case for major villains early in a story arc) or complicating things by bringing in innocent bystanders or loved ones like Lois Lane. But I actively dislike systems where the players have to have their characters actively pursue a metagame strategy. Torg, for example, has a drama card system that can modify how the game plays, particularly in combat. The game works best in fights against significant opponents if about half the party pursues bashing the enemy down while the other half, the ones less built around combat, work the deck and generate as many beneficial cards as possible. It's too blatant and too annoying.

I'm less and less a fan of bloat these days. Not just in spells/feats/nitpicky options but also in modifiers and numbers in general. I'm not that keen on sorting through tables of hundreds of bits of gear, ammunition types, drones, or spells just to get the requisite bonuses to make a competent character that won't be blasted into meat or be useless in the first encounter. I'm OK with maybe tens of options, perhaps even a few dozens. I'm not that keen on being on a treadmill of numbers just to keep up with the Joneses.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 23, 2020)

Nebulous said:


> Thanks for explaining that.  I have been wondering what the 2d20 system was and it sounds so similar to d20 D&D that I couldn't understand why so many people seemed to dislike it.



That description of 2d20 play -- and FATE for that matter -- are not really accurate. Just FYI.


----------



## Ralif Redhammer (Jan 23, 2020)

This, definitely. I will say that Shadowrun Anarchy is just about everything I actually want in a Shadowrun game, without the mess of rules to wade through. And without people spending an hour planning on how exactly they kick down the door and kill everyone, followed by the hour of people rolling a hundred d6's to resolve it.

For my part, and this ties to Shadowrun definitely, is that I can't stand double-indemnity in resolution. That is to say, if I attack a monster and have to roll against their roll to hit, then roll again against their roll to do damage.

One thing I really do hate is when a game makes you take damage or penalties for using every ability. I've played a couple games where we did more damage to ourselves than any enemy.



Ulfgeir said:


> * Shadowrun. Cumbersome systems with multiple separate subsystems.
> 
> Edit:  I love the setting of Shadowrun, but I hate the system. I thought FASA was bad at making rules-systems, the current makers are worse.




Hahahahah, my brother and I still joke about d02 and the slamming a fistful of change down as a resolution mechanic.



Tyler Do'Urden said:


> my hat of d02 know no limit


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

One of the things I've most enjoyed about this thread is that it has clarified for me some of my pet peeves.  Turns out the systems I don't like have a lot in common. 

1) Dice Pools (Mouse Guard, Storyteller, FATE): I don't dislike every dice pool system, but I seem to have a huge dislike of systems that depend on a dice pool and comparing a number of successes to a target number. The basic FUDGE mechanic of flipping a collection of "coins" and counting the number of heads, and all variations of it annoy me. The math here is just not granular, not transparent, and so often involves unintuitive rates of success or failure.
2) Handles scale badly in a setting that handling it well is necessary (Mouse Guard, RIFTS, MechWarrior): Scale is a very difficult concept to handle well. You need results that are plausible despite the huge differences between the two things you are comparing. In many systems, you can just ignore scale - under the cover of being heroic D&D basically ignores the difficulty a 6' high person would have facing an 80' long dragon. But if scale is a major aspect of the story, you have to have a good mechanic for dealing with it.
3) Mechanics are incoherent for the story that the game intends to tell or the game it intends to be (Mousegaurd, MechWarrior, FATE, RIFTS, almost all Storyteller games): I've picked on FATE enough. Read the 1e Vampire:The Masquerade core rule book with a focus on the asides into the games narrative that establish the story goals of the game and in effect the examples of play. The book describes the game as being about exploration of a person's inner demons and the struggle against their monstrous impulses in a desperate attempt to regain their humanity despite a spiraling decent into madness, horror, and brutal violence. This sounds like a really cool game to play! Unfortunately, the mechanics themselves in no way actually create the story described in the examples of play. The game makes purchasing humanity in Chargen vastly too easy, makes losing humanity too easy to avoid and to little the focus of gameplay, and gives almost no rewards for pursuing ones humanity while giving major rewards for being monstrous. Not surprisingly, basically no one who ever played the game played it like the flavor text of the game described, and almost everyone ended up creating games about grimdark superheroes engaged in political machinations against other teams of grimdark superheroes.
4) Terrible Game Balance (Mouse Guard, RIFTS, Storyteller games)
5) Fiddliness that Doesn't Get You Anything Worthwhile (Mouse Guard, Storyteller) - Examples can be Storyteller both having different difficulties and different numbers of required successes (hugely opaque math), and Mouse Guard having each roll be modified by up to 11 different factors that can alter the math in three different ways, including the dramatically fiddly and undramatic 'spend a limited narrative resource' to get an additional chance at success for each 6 you roll (a process that adds on average 1/12th of an additional success per dice you roll), and has a 5 way Roshambo core mechanic that forms a framework for that, in a game that seems to want to be 'rules light' and focus on story. At least D&D or GURPS has reasons for its fiddliness in that they are trying to comprehensively simulate something. Mouse Guard is trying to be 'story first', so what's all this abstract fiddliness actually doing for me?

Compare with D6 Star Wars that has a dice pool system with largely functional math, handles scale for the most part really well, and has mechanics that are well suited to the story it intends to tell and game it intends to be. Yes, balance between Jedi and non-Jedi is pretty lousy at high level play, but arguably that's pretty true to the simulated setting.  It's not a perfect system but I can think of basically nothing that you could do in FATE that I wouldn't prefer to handle in a slightly modified version of D6. I mean, even if you wanted to do CharGen in FATE because you thought it had really compelling CharGen, I still think I'd prefer using the D6 rules to actually run the game.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> This, definitely. I will say that Shadowrun Anarchy is just about everything I actually want in a Shadowrun game, without the mess of rules to wade through. And without people spending an hour planning on how exactly they kick down the door and kill everyone, followed by the hour of people rolling a hundred d6's to resolve it.




Almost all the games that came out in the late '80s and early '90s had as a design paradigm that no amount of fiddliness was too much, if it brought you closer to the elusive goal of "realism".



> For my part, and this ties to Shadowrun definitely, is that I can't stand double-indemnity in resolution. That is to say, if I attack a monster and have to roll against their roll to hit, then roll again against their roll to do damage.




There are games I enjoy that have both a 'to hit' and a 'soak' roll, and I totally get why they do that, but I agree with you that that can quickly turn into a ton of tedious dice rolling.



> One thing I really do hate is when a game makes you take damage or penalties for using every ability. I've played a couple games where we did more damage to ourselves than any enemy.




I haven't encountered that.  Example?



> Hahahahah, my brother and I still joke about d02 and the slamming a fistful of change down as a resolution mechanic.




You laugh but the entire FUDGE family of games...


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 23, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Role playing doesn't mean "do whatever you would do." it means "do what the character would do." In a game like FATE (and there are lots of other examples) you are supposed to decide what role you want to play, build that character and then play that role.



Sorry, I said I would be out, but there's just one more thing that I should have addressed in my previous response. Thanks for not getting me banned yet.

I was already going to do what the character would do. That's why I'm playing an RPG, and not a board game. I know my character better than anyone else at the table does, and I already know whether stealing _that_ particular thing is what _this_ particular thief would or would not do. 

Adding a mechanical incentive can _only_ possibly get in the way of that. If I wasn't going to do it, then bribing me to do so is encouraging me to act out of character. If I was going to do it anyway, then the bribe is entirely unnecessary, but casts doubts on my true motivation.

The only time where a mechanical incentive for making certain choices would do anything, is if the player _wasn't _planning to role-play in the first place. If they were just trying to win, regardless of who their character was supposed to be, then a mechanical incentive can encourage them to make a sub-optimal choice. But even then, they aren't doing it _because_ it's what the character would actually do; they're doing it because it's the mechanically optimal thing to do.


----------



## Tyler Do'Urden (Jan 23, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> Read the 1e Vampire:The Masquerade core rule book with a focus on the asides into the games narrative that establish the story goals of the game and in effect the examples of play. The book describes the game as being about exploration of a person's inner demons and the struggle against their monstrous impulses in a desperate attempt to regain their humanity despite a spiraling decent into madness, horror, and brutal violence. This sounds like a really cool game to play! Unfortunately, the mechanics themselves in no way actually create the story described in the examples of play. The game makes purchasing humanity in Chargen vastly too easy, makes losing humanity too easy to avoid and to little the focus of gameplay, and gives almost no rewards for pursuing ones humanity while giving major rewards for being monstrous. Not surprisingly, basically no one who ever played the game played it like the flavor text of the game described, and almost everyone ended up creating games about grimdark superheroes engaged in political machinations against other teams of grimdark superheroes.




Yeah, that was why, despite it being a great way to meet and hang out with goth chicks, I burned out on V:TM pretty quickly. I read the manual and thought it seemed incredible, especially compared to the AD&D hackfests I was used to...

...and every storyteller I played with pretty much ran it in an even bloodier, more power-gamey fashion than my AD&D games. ::sigh::

I think the rise of The Forge was really a reaction to both the excessive "simulationist" fiddliness of 90s RPGs (which culminated in d20 supremacy) and the failure of Storyteller games to actually deliver what they promised on the box.



> Compare with D6 Star Wars that has a dice pool system with largely functional math, handles scale for the most part really well, and has mechanics that are well suited to the story it intends to tell and game it intends to be. Yes, balance between Jedi and non-Jedi is pretty lousy at high level play, but arguably that's pretty true to the simulated setting.  It's not a perfect system but I can think of basically nothing that you could do in FATE that I wouldn't prefer to handle in a slightly modified version of D6. I mean, even if you wanted to do CharGen in FATE because you thought it had really compelling CharGen, I still think I'd prefer using the D6 rules to actually run the game.




Yeah, d6 Star Wars is still a paradigm for how to make a game sufficiently fiddly/simulationist to make it interesting to numbers-wonks like me, while remaining highly playable and not detracting from the action.

Though 5E is pretty darn close, too.


----------



## Ralif Redhammer (Jan 23, 2020)

Oh, some of the games we played back then, I look at them now and wonder how we put up with it!



Celebrim said:


> Almost all the games that came out in the late '80s and early '90s had as a design paradigm that no amount of fiddliness was too much, if it brought you closer to the elusive goal of "realism".




Mark Rein-Hagen's I Am Zombie and Evil Hat's Agon both spring to mind. In IAZ, there was a high chance of taking damage from any ability check or attempt to use your special powers. In Agon, the damage done to you took the form of reduced dice size (ie. a d10 in strength would go down to a d8, and so on). I can't recall if similar damage was done on a failed ability check or all ability checks.

That sort of thing means that you just sort of get worse and worse as you play the game - I get what they were going for conceptually, but it just is so unfun to me.



> I haven't encountered that.  Example?


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 23, 2020)

I can't think of any RPG systems I hate.....I feel like if I don't like a system, I don't play it, so it's not around long enough for me to hate. I'd think that to hate a game, you'd have to somehow be forced into playing it over and over.

I recently played a bit of the 2d20 system in a short Star Trek campaign. I found some of the mechanics a bit odd, but others were pretty compelling. I liked the team mechanics of Momentum and Threat, and I liked the mix and match combination of Attributes and Skills. Beyond that, I don't know how much else I really liked. The game seems to be set up to be very linear.....the hierarchy at play in Starfleet and each character being a specialist in a certain area really divided play up in a way I didn't like. It felt railroady and that character niche was too much of a focus. 

Rifts was mentioned, and although I haven't looked at that game in years, I remember the only thing worse than the rules was layout and organization. It took a real long time to make a character, and then you wound up using about 25% of the caracter's stats in play. But it had a lot of cool ideas and concepts as far as setting goes....just poorly designed. 

Beyond those examples, one from recent memory and one from long ago, and neither of which I hated, I can't think of any other systems that got a strong negative reaction from me.


----------



## practicalm (Jan 23, 2020)

I wouldn't call it hate but I don't play modern or future games with leveling mechanics.  I just don't like it.

I also don't like it when games fail to understand the probabilities of the mechanics involved.  Deadlands poker hand mechanic was an issue there.  Love the game setting but the mechanics created probability issues.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jan 23, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> @Ratskinner: Your complaint about my complaint has two parts, and I'll deal with the easier one first.
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, but it also really has nothing to do with my complaint. As a concept, I don't mind Fate points for example. Nor do I mind the much more interesting mechanically similar concept of Force points in Star Wars D6. It's OK to have a resource that effects the story, and it's even more OK when that resource has an in universe explanation and further is limited enough that the player is motivated to only use it at appropriately dramatic moments.




Yeah, I was referencing the more general complaint. Sorry if that sounded too pointed at you.



Celebrim said:


> So your comparison to D&D alignment is apt. Essentially you are being asked to construct a mini-set of core beliefs and personality traits that will define your character, and unlike alignment you get to define it. All that is apt, as is you noting that if the DM is heavy handed about how he interprets alignment, and uses it to compel the player with the threat of punishment hanging over there head, that is very much the same sort of problem I'm talking about. Many people have had this bad experience with alignment and so want nothing more to do with it, and I totally get that. But the Aspect system actually sets this up as a core quality of the game, and it's not really the compels that bother me (though those could be heavy handed as well) but the whole system. In other words, it's not even primarily the potential loss of agency here, it's that system encourages bad RPing in my opinion.




I'm sure you can imagine I find this quite curious, as my experience with Fate is very different.



Celebrim said:


> I think what the designers wanted was to create a system that rewarded the player for playing his character "in character" and in a dramatic fashion.




No argument.



Celebrim said:


> But what they actually created was a system that rewards playing a character in a simplistic exaggerated fashion.




I would say that depends greatly on the player(s). I have never experienced such a thing.



Celebrim said:


> A good RPer calls on his character traits (even if he gets no reward for doing so) at dramatically appropriate moments.  A good FATE player calls on his character aspects as often as possible and for as flimsy of reasons as possible.  You are always on the lookout for tagging every action because if you can tag an action, that adjusts the math so much in your favor that if you don't you almost certainly will fail.




I'm thinking that you got auto-corrected from "aspect" to "action" for part of this. Nonetheless, its up to the GM to determine what is an isn't a valid compel or invocation of an aspect. (if you are still thinking in terms of "tagging", you are an iteration or two of Fate behind the times.) That judgement if fundamental to running a game like Fate. Its not optional. If the GM is shirking his duties, of course the game will fail.

Such a player is actually not a good Fate player. Any more than a D&D player who demands respect for his Paladin while shirking all his responsibilities. Additionally, from a tactical point of view, he will be out of Fate points very quickly, if the GM is on point. In D&D terms, he's going nova on the first room of goblins.



Celebrim said:


> As such, what you typically see in a game of FATE is frantically leveraging the Aspect system for straight forward gamist reasons with the result that FATE's primary aesthetic of play ends up not being Nar, but gamist.  People compel, call, tag and so forth primarily for "Step on Up" reasons and aesthetics related to Challenge and Self-Affirmation, and not for reasons pertaining to Story.




It may be that you typically see this in a game of Fate, but this is a fairly foreign experience for most Fate players. This is often (IME) the result of players who come from D&D and simply don't understand that Fate comes with different play goals.* However, they are also often expecting or playing a "broken" version of Fate (at least its modern incarnation). Some of the common "misses" that fall into this:
1) easy compels - a compel should _hurt, _as in modify the story significantly. If you're compelling for any kind of advantage...you're doin' it wrong.
2) the GM being bad at enforcing the _permission_ part of Fate aspects.
3) easy invocations - invoking an aspect needs to have some narrative justification as to why it applies. Additionally, it should be limited by the expense of a Fate point.
4) trying to do "D&D with Fate". Fate is, IMO, unsuited for a typical dungeoneering game. It looks like it should be, but its not really. Especially true if you're playing with veteran D&D-ers. Even with non-D&D-ers, it gets....weird.
5) too much "free play". We get used to allowing players to "prep" quite a lot, because games like D&D don't have a mechanism for consistently doing so. If you're players are spending a ton of time just rolling "Create Advantage"....you've lost your way. Send in the ninjas. (I mean, that's literally the joke-name of the technique) Personally, if it makes sense in the narrative, I give the players a once-round-the-table "montage". Fate should run like a movie or TV show, not a book.
6) some of the above fall into the broader category of not pushing hard enough...and I don't mean the D&D way of adding more HP/AC whatnot. I mean, pushing deadlines, travel...Fate PCs are fairly competent and the GM can swing at them a lot harder than he's probably used to.

Now, I would note that this is not to say that you shouldn't "stack" a lot of invocations on a single roll. Heavens, no. That is the primary way (mechanically) that a group of PCs tackles a big scene like a boss fight (or similar). If you're doing it right, its very much like the old Claremont era X-men.

I'd also note that its not rare for new Fate GMs to have trouble getting their players to engage in the FP economy at all. (Often they are too used to "taking it easy" on the PCs or "trying to balance an encounter".) This is the exact opposite of what you are describing! 



Celebrim said:


> By turning the character into a mechanic that directly relates to success all the time, it turns all the considerations about playing your character into weighing not the character but the need for mechanical success.   It's actively undermining its own intentions with the design in the same way that social systems that mimic combat systems in order to make social interaction a pillar of the game are inadvertently undermining the RP that they want to encourage.




If you're GMing it right....a player who plays this way (often with positive-only aspects) should find himself out of Fate points right quick. You only start with 5 or less (usually).


----------



## Gradine (Jan 23, 2020)

The only game I really dislike enough to come even _close _to calling it "hate" is Dungeon World. I love D&D and I love PbtA games, so maybe the issue is that I was coming into this with too high of expectations, but I was incredible disappointed with it. I feel like it was trying too hard to be classic D&D with the 2d6 system rather than embracing what makes PbtA special from a narrative perspective, and it ends up feeling more like D&D lite than anything I would actually be interested in playing.

I was also extremely disappointed in FATE Accelerated, which when I played it often devolved into a game of "how do I justify approach X to action Y" rather than organically tying game rules to character action. I've never played FATE proper because my limited experience with it (primarily, watching that aforementioned episode of Tabletop with Wil Wheaton) made it look way, way too fiddly for a game selling itself as primarily narrative-driven. The idea of an in media res character building is pretty genius, though.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 23, 2020)

Gradine said:


> The idea of an in media res character building is pretty genius, though.




There are actually things I really like about FATE.... just not the FUDGE inspired system it's built on.  And while I'm not presently a fan of how it handles narrative currency, I'll reserve judgment on that until I see a GM run it that actually "gets it".


----------



## Beleriphon (Jan 24, 2020)

Tonguez said:


> Fate incentivises players to Roleplay their characters and not just leave the decision to rolling a dice




It would be more accurate to say FATE incentivizes players to actually use the things they say get their character into trouble. And more importantly, it gives them the choice to not do it, unlike GURPS. Maybe, just maybe Sheska the Black Hand has finally learned stealing every pretty thing she sees is bad. During the next upgrade phase of the game, Sheska's player removes I Can't Resist Sparkly Things and replaces it with I'm Loyal to Friends.

FATE also doesn't have a dice pool with counting successes and what not. It has 4d6, or four FATE dice, that you add up the numbers on (some are +1, some are 0, and some are -1) which you then add your appropriate bonuses to. This gives a final number, compare to your target number and determine success.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 24, 2020)

Using Buffy as an example of Fate working properly. 

Willow's character, later in the campaign, has the aspect, "Magic can solve my problems." 
Tara and Willow are fighting over this, and GM slides fate point over to Willow's character, reminding her that she can end these uncomfortable fights with a little hocus pocus, or Willow's character hexes Tara without GM input. Either way, Willow gets a fate point. Or Willow can announce she'd never do this to Tara, and pushes fate point back to GM and play continues. Either option is fine. Player not being bribed or railroaded. What should not be happening is Willow's player using this aspect willy nilly to get bonuses or fate points. But it should come into play. Willow's character chose this aspect as an important part of Willow's personality, at least for a while. Aspects can change over time, as we can see with Willow over the course of the series. 

Fate points along with the dice drive the game forward, but it needs to make sense, be dramatic and flow naturally. It should never be turned into quest for every little advantage I can get.  If your table plays the game this way, yes, it's going to fall flat big time, and you should definitely play a different system. If everyone is on board playing Fate as intended you get a very narrative game, much like a tv show. It works beautifully. But not everyone wants their RPGs to run like this. We all have different tastes, but not liking Fate doesn't make it cludgy, broken or not living up to its description. It just means it's not the game for you.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Arilyn said:


> Player not being bribed or railroaded.




"Player being bribed" is *exactly* what's happening here, with a soupcon of extortion in that it costs a Fate Point to refuse a Compel (and if you don't have a Fate Point, you can't refuse it).


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 24, 2020)

Beleriphon said:


> FATE also doesn't have a dice pool with counting successes and what not. It has 4d6, or four FATE dice, that you add up the numbers on (some are +1, some are 0, and some are -1) which you then add your appropriate bonuses to. This gives a final number, compare to your target number and determine success.




I'm struggling to understand why you don't characterize this mechanic as "counting successes".   Yes, the dice are somewhat more complicated than coins (though right off the top of my head, I'm not sure how radically different the expected number of successes would be if they were coins), and yes you are actually adding up the number of successes that modify your base degree of success based on what you are testing, but it's still very much a dice pool mechanic that involves counting the number of successes and comparing it to a target number.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> I'm struggling to understand why you don't characterize this mechanic as "counting successes".   Yes, the dice are somewhat more complicated than coins (though right off the top of my head, I'm not sure how radically different the expected number of successes would be if they were coins), and yes you are actually adding up the number of successes that modify your base degree of success based on what you are testing, but it's still very much a dice pool mechanic that involves counting the number of successes and comparing it to a target number.




You're not counting successes. The dice are +1, 0, or -1; you're generating a sum, in a range of -4 to +4. Gets added to your score in the relevant ability and compared against the difficulty of the task. I'm not the biggest fan of FATE, but the dice are not any part of my problems with it.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> FATE literally says that you should steal that thing, and invite the accompanying trouble, because you want the fate point.




This shows a complete misunderstanding of what FATE says.  What you have there is "How do I take the mechancis of FATE and game the system".  It is not *AT ALL* what FATE tells you to do.

FATE says you should steal that thing _*because that's what you decided your character should do*_.  Just it's not you deciding just at that momement "what's the best for me to do in this exact second to 'win' this scene", it is instead "what have I decided is how I want this character to _consistently_ act". In other words, you have set up RPable aspects of your character and they have mechanical support, both to your character's benefit and detriment.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> "Player being bribed" is *exactly* what's happening here, with a soupcon of extortion in that it costs a Fate Point to refuse a Compel (and if you don't have a Fate Point, you can't refuse it).



The GM and players are working together to create a fun game. If you have written an aspect down on your character sheet that aspect is a big part of your character. If Willow's player doesn't want to have magic muck up her life then she'd take a different aspect. The compels are there to add drama and make your life interesting. I guess, technically you get paid for this but I have never felt bribed, extorted or manipulated while playing Fate. Not once. Paying to refuse a compel mirrors the willpower you need to resist that very strong part of your life. If it's an enemy showing up, you are paying to let GM know you really don't want to deal with this right now. Once again, the player chooses their aspects, so presumably you want those things in the game. 

If this doesn't appeal to you, then obviously you don't like the Fate system. That's fine, but please don't make claims about extortion and broken rules.


----------



## Beleriphon (Jan 24, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> I'm struggling to understand why you don't characterize this mechanic as "counting successes".   Yes, the dice are somewhat more complicated than coins (though right off the top of my head, I'm not sure how radically different the expected number of successes would be if they were coins), and yes you are actually adding up the number of successes that modify your base degree of success based on what you are testing, but it's still very much a dice pool mechanic that involves counting the number of successes and comparing it to a target number.




FATE works like this: -1,0,+1,+1 is 2+5, its entirely possible to get a four dice as -1 and still have a successful check because of bonuses and whatnot. I don't see as being that different than rolling a 3d6, tallying a result and getting 14 and then adding a bonus. FATE specifically uses all of the dice to calculate results. It's a little weird but the object is very much not counting success, it is totaling the results of four six sided dice with a somewhat unusual numbering scheme. It isn't the same as something Storyteller where you roll Nd10 and count the dice with results over, IIRC, seven and comparing those to a target number.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> This shows a complete misunderstanding of what FATE says.  What you have there is "How do I take the mechancis of FATE and game the system".  It is not *AT ALL* what FATE tells you to do.



I don't mean "literally" in the figurative sense. I mean that it _literally_ says exactly that.


			
				FATE Core page 14 said:
			
		

> If you want, you can pay a fate point to prevent the complication from happening, but we don’t recommend you do that very often— you’ll probably need that fate point later,


----------



## Beleriphon (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I don't mean "literally" in the figurative sense. I mean that it _literally_ says exactly that.




Also know as  if you wanted your Trouble to never be Trouble, why'd you pick it? It's like playing a rogue in D&D and investing in picking locks, and then deciding you'd rather not when presented the option.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Beleriphon said:


> Also know as  if you wanted your Trouble to never be Trouble, why'd you pick it? It's like playing a rogue in D&D and investing in picking locks, and then deciding you'd rather not when presented the option.




Arguably, though, in D&D the DM can't *make you pick the lock*, which is possible in FATE.


----------



## MichaelSomething (Jan 24, 2020)

So people don't want rules that touch role-playing at all? To just ignore it and let people freeform?

But didn't lots of people hate 4E because it was "just a mini skirmish game" that also had rules that ignored role-playing?


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 24, 2020)

MichaelSomething said:


> So people don't want rules that touch role-playing at all? To just ignore it and let people freeform?
> 
> But didn't lots of people hate 4E because it was "just a mini skirmish game" that also had rules that ignored role-playing?




“But my character is mine! MINE!”

Some folks have an oddly specific idea of what role-playing means, and any deviation from that is therefore not role-playing. 

Despite the fact that nearly all games possess some elements that can dictate PC actions....but those ones are okay, for reasons.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> "Player being bribed" is *exactly* what's happening here, with a soupcon of extortion in that it costs a Fate Point to refuse a Compel (and if you don't have a Fate Point, you can't refuse it).




As long as you describe XP and loot in D&D as a player being bribed.  Because it's the same thing.  You're getting rewarded for playing the character _like you intentional said you want to play the character_, instead of because you killed a creature.


----------



## Beleriphon (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> Arguably, though, in D&D the DM can't *make you pick the lock*, which is possible in FATE.




They also can't make you pick the lock in FATE either. They can say failing to pick the lock results in Nazi busting through the door and trying to shoot you. To use an oddly specific example.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

Hate?  There are systems I hate, usually because they are poorly designed at delivering fun.

Mechwarrior is the first one that leaps to mind. The version I played (in the 90s) had a single pool of character creation currency that would determine all of the things about how you could handle yourself inside, and outside a mech. Which were very different sub-games. I remember playing a game and two of use had well rounded characters, and the remaining players all built mech-gods who couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time outside a mech. So everything not on the 30m hex map was boring for 3 of the 5 players, and the challenge appicable to them on the mech battlefield was overwhelming and lethal for the two of us with regular skill levels in smaller mechs so our only hope of survival was to hide from all action because of how high the bar had been raised.

Twilight 2000 in the 80s I could hate. Character creation was so crunchy that it would take multiple hours for the simplest of characters, and the system was just so heavy that it bogged down play. We quickly returned to Star Frontiers and other games.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> As long as you describe XP and loot in D&D as a player being bribed.  Because it's the same thing.  You're getting rewarded for playing the character _like you intentional said you want to play the character_, instead of because you killed a creature.




XP (for those who use it) and treasure are rewards, given after the fact, not part of an explicit transaction, and they're pretty explicit that they expect you to go looking for ways to compel your own aspects and that they expect you to need an arbitrarily large number of fate points later in the adventure and you probably shouldn't refuse a compel (which leaves you with two fewer than accepting the compel).



Beleriphon said:


> They also can't make you pick the lock in FATE either. They can say failing to pick the lock results in Nazi busting through the door and trying to shoot you. To use an oddly specific example.




If you don't have any fate points, and you have an aspect the GM thinks means you should want to pick the lock, the GM can give you a fate point and you pick the lock. No need to be oddly specific or absurd.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I don't mean "literally" in the figurative sense. I mean that it _literally_ says exactly that.




And you _literally_ misunderstand what it is saying. It is giving you a reminder about the Fate point economy. Which not something familiar from many other games.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> XP (for those who use it) and treasure are rewards, given after the fact, not part of an explicit transaction,




You are telling me that in D&D, if you attack a foe you are not expecting to get XP?  Go ahead, pull the other one.  If the DM is using standard XP, the choice to attack a foe or avoid them you explicitly know beforehand that you will get XP for the combat.

This is just sophistry trying to make you point.



prabe said:


> and they're pretty explicit that they expect you to go looking for ways to compel your own aspects and that they expect you to need an arbitrarily large number of fate points later in the adventure and you probably shouldn't refuse a compel (which leaves you with two fewer than accepting the compel).




Compelling your own aspects does not automatically give you a Fate point. That's for the GM to decide. And it's explictily because it's caused trouble/consequences - which may take one or more Fate points to get out of.

So, no, this isn't correct either. It's a misunderstanding of the nature of a compel. Yes, you can act on your flaw, but if it's not a serious case that gets you in trouble and the GM agrees, it's not worth a Fate point.



prabe said:


> If you don't have any fate points, and you have an aspect the GM thinks means you should want to pick the lock, the GM can give you a fate point and you pick the lock. No need to be oddly specific or absurd.




ONLY in the case where you have intentionally created your character that one of the five major aspects of their personality is that they WOULD PICK THAT LOCK. So let's break that down. In the corner case where you are out of Fate points, your GM can, if they wish, require you to act on a character's flaw that you have said is one of their defining characteristics.

Seems good to me.


----------



## Beleriphon (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> If you don't have any fate points, and you have an aspect the GM thinks means you should want to pick the lock, the GM can give you a fate point and you pick the lock. No need to be oddly specific or absurd.




I think I'm maybe missing what you're saying. the GM in FATE cannot force a player to apply skills to a situation. But they can bring character's Trouble into any situation.

For example, Harry Dresden has an aspect in the official DFRPG of "Everything is on Fire". Its a consistent problem in novels, Harry has a bad habit of unintentionally (usually) setting pretty much everything on fire at some point.

So, the Trouble here means the GM says to Harry's player Jim ,"So, that spell totally set the warehouse on fire, if you take a Fate point." Jim can say to the GM, "Not today, Harry has better aim than usual because he's trying to keep a low profile, here's a Fate point back to you." Or, Jim can say , "Yep, sounds like something that would happen to Harry, guess the warehouse is burning down now and those demon monkeys are throwing flaming poop."

There's a reason that aspects are phrased a particular way to be action oriented. In Fate if my rogue had the Troulbe aspect, "Opens Every Damn Lock I See" I'd only get Fate points when that is actively detrimental, and I can point that out, or the GM can find a reason to make it detrimental. But the way the game is structured is that chosen Aspects are supposed to come into play often, otherwise the players wouldn't have picked them. So, not only do I want my compels, but I'm picking things that I think would be fun to have be compelled, they aren't being played as gotchas by the GM, and since I want to play a character that opens every damn lock.

Also, if I'm not mistaken you can trade stress for not taking a compel if there are no Fate points. That might be one of the FATE variants and not core though.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> You are telling me that in D&D, if you attack a foe you are not expecting to get XP?  Go ahead, pull the other one.  If the DM is using standard XP, the choice to attack a foe or avoid them you explicitly know beforehand that you will get XP for the combat.
> 
> This is just sophistry trying to make you point.




If I'm playing D&D, I'm expecting to play a character who solves problems, and who advances in level. If I can solve the problem/s without killing things, that's fine. If the GM uses something other than XP, that's also fine.

Am I pulling the other one hard enough?



Blue said:


> Compelling your own aspects does not automatically give you a Fate point. That's for the GM to decide. And it's explictily because it's caused trouble - which may take one or more Fate points to get out of.
> 
> So, no, this isn't correct either. It's a misunderstanding of the nature of a compel. Yes, you can act on your flaw, but if it's not a serious case that gets you in trouble and the GM agrees, it's not worth a Fate point.




Fair enough. They are, however, pretty clear about recommending that you not decline compels, and that they're expecting you to need those fate points later on.



Blue said:


> ONLY in the case where you have intentionally created your character that one of the five major aspects of their personality is that they WOULD PICK THAT LOCK. So let's break that down. In the corner case where you are out of Fate points, your GM can, if they wish, require you to act on a character's flaw that you have said is one of their defining characteristics.
> 
> Seems good to me.




Or in the case that the GM thinks one of your aspects means you should. Then you have to stop the game and negotiate, or let the GM screw your character because he can't figure out another way to make a decent story. Same-same, I guess.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> And you _literally_ misunderstand what it is saying. It is giving you a reminder about the Fate point economy. Which not something familiar from many other games.



No, that was my entire point. It's telling you to take the fate point economy into consideration, because most games don't have that, and you need to be mindful of it when playing this game. But I don't _want _to take the fate point economy into consideration, because that would be using out-of-character information to make an in-character decision, which goes against the basic tenet of role-playing.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> My own major problem with FATE (and the other "narrative" games I've played, and probably the ones I haven't) is that as a player you want your character to fail, or accept a Compel, or otherwise be unsuccessful or suboptimal, so that you can power up. No _character_ wants to fail or be suboptimal. There is a misalignment of the player's and the character's priorities and desires.
> 
> The way that Compels in FATE seem like the GM stealing character agency is probably different.
> 
> That said, I don't *hate* FATE. I wouldn't choose it to run or play, but I'd probably join a game.




Oh gods, this is a can of worms.

You see, one thing I actively try to educate is people who conflate character and player goals. They are very separate things. The player's goal is to have fun. This could be by the character succeeding, a common mode of play in games like D&D. But if a player goes into a game like Paranoia or Toon with that as their attitude, they _will not have fun,_ and therefore "lose". Fate is a game for people who enjoy a good story. Like a novel or movie, the protagonists have a series of ups and down. Those downs can be a huge amount of fun for the player. Captured and need to escape. A twist where a trusted ally betrays you and suddenly past events fall into place.

I've played RPG like a tactical squad to get the right result. I've played RPGs like a soap opera, with more time spent on RP within the team than on combat. I've played silly games. I've played dead serious drama. The idea that a character and a player need or should have the same goals and priorities is false. It _can_ happen, but it need not.  And in many types of RPGs, it's a detriment to play.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Beleriphon said:


> I think I'm maybe missing what you're saying. the GM in FATE cannot force a player to apply skills to a situation. But they can bring character's Trouble into any situation.




It's my understanding from a quick scan of the rules that they can force you to do ... something. From reading Fate Core, it's not clear what the limitations are, but it's clear that you can end up needing to make a roll as a result and that you can't use the Fate Point to modify that situation or that roll. I have the Dresden rules, Spirit of the Century, and Fate Core, only looked at the last because it was the one most likely to be relevant.



Beleriphon said:


> Also, if I'm not mistaken you can trade stress for not taking a compel if there are no Fate points. That might be one of the FATE variants and not core though.




I did a quick spin then some sort of weird gravity slingshot thing as the ruleset started to give me metaphorical hives. I don't remember seeing that, but it's plausible and seems pretty reasonable.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> No, that was my entire point. It's telling you to take the fate point economy into consideration, because most games don't have that, and you need to be mindful of it when playing this game. But I don't _want _to take the fate point economy into consideration, because that would be using out-of-character information to make an in-character decision, which goes against the basic tenet of role-playing.




No more than the thought that if you adventure you will get XP and level up, instead of doing a soap opera in the tavern all day. You're setting up a false dichotomy - all games ofter rewards of some sort at a meta level that shapes play. D&D's issue with XP for foes is the cause of the whole murderhobo issue - a much worse one than playing your character like you have describe to want to play them. 

It's hypocritical to call out one of them without the other.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> No, that was my entire point. It's telling you to take the fate point economy into consideration, because most games don't have that, and you need to be mindful of it when playing this game. But I don't _want _to take the fate point economy into consideration, because that would be using out-of-character information to make an in-character decision, which goes against the basic tenet of role-playing.



No. That's not the basic tenet of role-playing. The basic tenet of role-playing is playing a role. The key word here is "playing" because a) it's a game, and b) you literally cannot become the character. You absolutely MUST use out of character knowledge in any roleplaying game or situation, because you cannot, by definition, be another person. You cannot know things your character should know and you cannot un-know things your character doesn't. Using a game structure designed to help you play that role, such as Fate's Aspects, makes it easier to roleplay because you define what kind of role you are playing. If you did it perfectly, you would never not accept a compel because you wrote the character to be what role you wanted to play.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> If I'm playing D&D, I'm expecting to play a character who solves problems, and who advances in level. If I can solve the problem/s without killing things, that's fine. If the GM uses something other than XP, that's also fine.
> 
> Am I pulling the other one hard enough?




Yes, you are if you are claiming that the most common mode of play that players do not have their behavior motivated by XP to some degree.

Please see murderhobo, with the whole killing for XP.  When suitibly enlightened to how what you described where you personally have a zen-like disreagrd for XP or advancement that is not generally shared, please return.



prabe said:


> Fair enough. They are, however, pretty clear about recommending that you not decline compels, and that they're expecting you to need those fate points later on.




Yes, they do take an opportunity to remind you of the Fate point economy, something that most gamers new to Fate may not know about.



prabe said:


> Or in the case that the GM thinks one of your aspects means you should. Then you have to stop the game and negotiate, or let the GM screw your character because he can't figure out another way to make a decent story. Same-same, I guess.




It's _Fate_.  Think about the people attracted to that system who will be playing it, that's the audience.  If there's an actual misunderstanding about your aspect, just tell your GM.  Aspects are subjective, you are the master of your character.  Unless you are trying to game the system, in which case you are a bad actor and that's not the system's fault.

The great thing about systems is that we can find ones that fit our own styles.  You can say "Fate is not for me at all" and I'll congratulate you on your self knowledge.  But if you say "Fate is broken because of X, Y and Z", I'll either agree with you or try to clear up your misconceptions.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> No more than the thought that if you adventure you will get XP and level up, instead of doing a soap opera in the tavern all day. You're setting up a false dichotomy - all games ofter rewards of some sort at a meta level that shapes play. D&D's issue with XP for foes is the cause of the whole murderhobo issue - a much worse one than playing your character like you have describe to want to play them.



Unless D&D world actually works that way, and everyone knows it, which is entirely possible (given a minimal level of abstraction).

Likewise, you can stay in character while playing FATE, as long as the world actually works that way and everyone knows it. The difference is, that's not something I could ever do with a straight face. Narrative causality is significantly less believable than learning through experience.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> But if a player goes into a game like Paranoia or Toon with that as their attitude, they _will not have fun,_ and therefore "lose".




But I've played Paranoia, and it's fun. It's silly and it's impossible to take seriously, and the writers were pretty clear that while they figured it was possible for PCs to successfully complete and adventure they had no idea *how.* All of what Paranoia does, it tells you it's going to do, and it works. You know you're screwed going in.



Blue said:


> Fate is a game for people who enjoy a good story. Like a novel or movie, the protagonists have a series of ups and down. Those downs can be a huge amount of fun for the player. Captured and need to escape. A twist where a trusted ally betrays you and suddenly past events fall into place.




I think I remember coming to the conclusion that for all that FATE talks about characters, it's really willing to throw them under the bus for the possibility of a slightly better story. I've found that the best stories I've experienced in TTRPGs have emerged from gameplay, and not been particularly written or scripted or otherwise planned.



Blue said:


> I've played RPG like a tactical squad to get the right result. I've played RPGs like a soap opera, with more time spent on RP within the team than on combat. I've played silly games. I've played dead serious drama. The idea that a character and a player need or should have the same goals and priorities is false. It _can_ happen, but it need not.  And in many types of RPGs, it's a detriment to play.




I find it easier to play a character the more I identify with them. It at least feels from inside my head as though I want what they want (which isn't the same as they want what I want). Compels feel as though they interfere with that. Clearly, others have different experiences.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Likewise, you can stay in character while playing FATE, as long as the world actually works that way and everyone knows it. The difference is, that's not something I could ever do with a straight face. Narrative causality is significantly less believable than learning through experience. _getting better *only* via means of killing foes, including skills and other abilities that were not used_.




Fixed that for you.  And sorry, that's the less realistic one.  No amount of practice in D&D can increase your level.  You only get it via XP, which with the default system is killing.
“Fixing” others’s posts is rude if you‘re not a mod.  Please don’t be rude.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> Yes, you are if you are claiming that the most common mode of play that players do not have their behavior motivated by XP to some degree.




But you weren't talking about most D&D players. You were talking about me.



Blue said:


> The great thing about systems is that we can find ones that fit our own styles.  You can say "Fate is not for me at all" and I'll congratulate you on your self knowledge.  But if you say "Fate is broken because of X, Y and Z", I'll either agree with you or try to clear up your misconceptions.




Indeed. It's an excellent thing there are a variety of games so people can try them on and find what works. I don't *think* I said FATE is broken anywhere, though. It didn't work at my table the way it purports to work in the books, but that doesn't mean other people don't have different experiences, and it doesn't mean the game is broken.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jan 24, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> I'm struggling to understand why you don't characterize this mechanic as "counting successes".   Yes, the dice are somewhat more complicated than coins (though right off the top of my head, I'm not sure how radically different the expected number of successes would be if they were coins), and yes you are actually adding up the number of successes that modify your base degree of success based on what you are testing, but it's still very much a dice pool mechanic that involves counting the number of successes and comparing it to a target number.




Technically you're summing them and adding a base modifier, not counting "successes". Not quite the same. You still only get one success/fail dimension of result. Then again the Cortex+ system doesn't count successes, but you sure do build a pool of dice and take (usually) the best two. So, y'know pool, no pool, tomato tomahto.

Oh, and the mathy difference between coins and Fate dice is just the "curve" part of bell curve. 4 coins is like 4d2, whereas Fate dice are 4d3-8. So, whatever difference you would infer from that...its the same.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> No, that was my entire point. It's telling you to take the fate point economy into consideration, because most games don't have that, and you need to be mindful of it when playing this game. But I don't _want _to take the fate point economy into consideration, because that would be using out-of-character information to make an in-character decision, which goes against the basic tenet of role-playing.



All RPGs have systems that are pure game, and require players to think outside their characters heads. In D&D I'll rush the orc pointing a bow at me because I know I have enough hp to survive. There is no way that an arrow shot by that orc is going to kill me, or hit a vital spot or even make me feel any pain. That's pretty darn meta. If I was really truly role playing as that character, so would never run straight at someone with a bow. That's crazy. But I know as a player that I'll be fine.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> ONLY in the case where you have intentionally created your character that one of the five major aspects of their personality is that they WOULD PICK THAT LOCK. So let's break that down. In the corner case where you are out of Fate points, your GM can, if they wish, require you to act on a character's flaw that you have said is one of their defining characteristics.




Just to chime in here. To be out of Fate points means either: 
a) you've been spamming invokes of aspects too much....unless the GM has been setting difficulties too high or completely ignoring compels, this likely means that you aren't playing to your stated strengths.
b) you've been buying off compels, so not playing to your chosen aspects.
c) your character is totally uninteresting to the GM and other players, and thus "un-compellable" (can you hear the English language groaning?).

Additionally...re: picking the lock.

Why? I mean, a compel isn't there to boss you around, its there to make the story more interesting. A Fate GM who has any sense of what they are supposed to be doing doesn't just say "HA! You're an _inveterate thief_ you pick the lock! Like it or not!" 

If the GM is going to compel such an aspect, it has to move the story forward in an interesting way...that is, it has to complicate the situation. That's why you can use compels to start in media res! So, if the GM is going to compel you to steal something...heck, that can happen totally "offscreen":
GM: So you're leaving the Duke's woodland house after successfully returning his favorite horse.
Player 1: Thank heavens that's over. Never saw a grown man weep over his horse, before.
GM: (Holds up a Fate point) Y'know, Player 2, you've got _Sticky Fingers_ right?
Player 2: umm....yeah (looks skeptically at the GM)
GM: There was a lot of shiny cool stuff in that office, the Duke probably won't miss it if you just took one little thing...
Player 2: Like what?
GM: I'll let you tell me..(wags Fate point in the air)
Player 2: Deal....I got oh....ummm....A little wooden box with gold inlays, haven't opened it yet.
GM: great! (tosses the Fate point over) The alarms start ringing just as you step into the street.

Its kinda like the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, when Rocket takes those battery thingamajigs. That's what a good compel is about.

Naturally, not all compels will be equally exciting, but that's what you're shooting for. Can the GM use compels to beat up on the PCs...yup. But that's not a problem if he's doing it in an interesting way. If he's not, then he's not doing his job.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

@Ratskinner Yeah. I ran a campaign in a homebrew world using Spirit of the Century (because Fate Core wasn't out yet) for maybe a year. I know how compels/invokes are supposed to work. I just felt better being more hands-off-the-characters, and only giving them Fate Points if I was fiating something in the story and using their aspects to do so. The players spammed their aspects pretty hard, but Spirit of the Century gives them more aspects and more Fate Points

I have to admit that the examples in the Fate Core book of compels *feel to me* like the GM is bossing the players and PCs around, in ways I'd resent the hell out of as a player (which is almost certainly why I didn't do that when I was GMing in the system) and which would lead to exceedingly carefully-worded aspects if I were playing. It also really comes across, in every example I've seen in the books and in this thread, as a more antagonistic GMing style than just about anything I've encountered in D&D (and I go back to 1E AD&D). Probably says something about the tables I've played at.


----------



## Anoth (Jan 24, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I can't think of a system that I _hate_. I'm not a big fan of Tunnels & Trolls - too silly, too mechanically bland and too deadly all at the same time. (Admittedly my experience is limited.)
> 
> I love Runequest in principle, but in practice find that it is too brutal when used in the sort of way that it implies it should be used (ie to run heroic bronze-age or S&S-type fantasy). Rolemaster is superficially similar in ethos but has a lot of differences of mechanical minutiae that significantly reduce the brutality, especially once the PCs reach mid-levels.
> 
> Probably my most-disliked RPG is AD&D 2nd ed, because mechanically it is just AD&D reheated and lacks the capacity to actually deliver the play experience - heroic fantasy - that is promised on the tin. This is an instance of the point about _system honesty_ that other posters have mentioned.



Dear god ad&d 2E is my favorite.


----------



## macd21 (Jan 24, 2020)

Beleriphon said:


> Also know as  if you wanted your Trouble to never be Trouble, why'd you pick it? It's like playing a rogue in D&D and investing in picking locks, and then deciding you'd rather not when presented the option.




Because the game forces you to pick a Trouble.

Again, this is missing the point. It’s not that the PC never wants to get in trouble. It’s that he doesn’t want to be rewarded for it, or punished for not doing it. He doesn’t want the system getting involved at all.


----------



## macd21 (Jan 24, 2020)

MichaelSomething said:


> So people don't want rules that touch role-playing at all? To just ignore it and let people freeform?
> 
> But didn't lots of people hate 4E because it was "just a mini skirmish game" that also had rules that ignored role-playing?




People hated 4ed because it was a “just a mini skirmish game,” not because it had rules that ignored roleplaying.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> Fixed that for you.  And sorry, that's the less realistic one.  No amount of practice in D&D can increase your level.  You only get it via XP, which with the default system is killing.



We don't actually know that. The rules in the book are only concerned with how adventurers progress. And within that context, learning through experience - with combat challenges as a guiding metric for how much you experience - is a perfectly reasonable abstraction.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> You absolutely MUST use out of character knowledge in any roleplaying game or situation, because you cannot, by definition, be another person. You cannot know things your character should know and you cannot un-know things your character doesn't.



Role-playing is one of humanity's oldest skills, and a super-majority of people are capable of successfully segregating their own knowledge from what they imagine someone else knows, in order to make a reasonable prediction of how that other person would act. Civilization could not exist otherwise.


----------



## Ulfgeir (Jan 24, 2020)

One mechanic that I really disliked was in Exalted 2e (I have seen it in other games as well, just can't remember which). Namely Stunts... As in describe in a cool way how you do your thing to get a bonus, and the rest of the table had to agree that it was worth a bonus. We tend to call that a "Poodle-show"... It will take a lot of time, and is at the end rather pointless, and actively penalizes players who are not comfortable with doing new descriptions all the time.

--
To continue about the FATE-discussion: in FATE (at least you did in Dresden Files if I recall correctly), you got a fate-point for losing a fight. Either being taken out or conceding. So you could get fate-points for other things than accepting compels. And I really like this part. Personally I think Dresden Files and Atomic Robo had much better implementations of fate than FATE Core or FATE Accelerated did.


----------



## Jacob Lewis (Jan 24, 2020)

I prefer to think that the time and energy I could waste actively disliking and trying to disavow a system I didn't really like or understand is better invested improving the experiences I have with games I do like, or discovering something new and different from others who have a better understanding of a system I haven't tried yet.

Also good to remember that not every system is supposed to give you the exact same type of experience as every other game you've played. If it does, then it may be that either it's not very different or you're doing it wrong.


----------



## Doc_Klueless (Jan 24, 2020)

For me, I dislike FATE because I don't care for how it's _supposed_ to be play. The way it was played when I played it and the way it's played in Actual Play Podcasts is something I dislike. (Aspects, The Compels - Fate Points Relationship). I feel Aspects are too wishy-washy. I feel that Compels are Punishments to Power Up so I can do something Cool.

However, I've seen others play it and have a blast. So, even though I've played it "right," I still don't like it. Not because I don't understand it, but the feeling I got from playing it.

Oh, gosh. Plus _every time_ I see FATE brought up in one of these threads it goes something like this:

A: Let's do a thread about games you hate! Yay!
B: I hate FATE because of XYZ.
C: You're doing it wrong. You're just so wrong to hate this game!
B: Nope, still hate it. You're wrong for liking it and here's why.
C: Ugh. No, you just don't understand the game! You should love it and here's why!
B: Nuh-uh, and here's why.
--- Rinse, Lather, Repeat.

B & C are never going to see eye-to-eye, but both will never stop trying to sway the other.

But both have a great time derailing and monopolizing these sorts of threads until someone gets banned and the thread gets locked.


----------



## doctorbadwolf (Jan 24, 2020)

So, echoing a lot of others...

I don’t hate any system, as such, but the closest I can think of is FFG Star Wars. I was very active in the playtest for Edge Of The Empire, and I enjoy Star Wars RPGs possibly even more than DnD, but it’s just a garbage system, IMO.

“narrative dice” with stupid symbols are garbage.

complex talent trees where you have to consult the actual shape and order of the talent tree on the page in order to level up are garbage.

Not designing the whole system, and instead designing one type of campaign, and prescribing how Star Wars games in the Unknown Regions should be played is...utter and complete garbage.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

doctorbadwolf said:


> So, echoing a lot of others...
> 
> I don’t hate any system, as such, but the closest I can think of is FFG Star Wars. I was very active in the playtest for Edge Of The Empire, and I enjoy Star Wars RPGs possibly even more than DnD, but it’s just a garbage system, IMO.
> 
> ...




At one point, I bought the Genesys book, which I understand is more or less the same system. It is the only gaming book I have ever returned. The custom dice were the biggest sticking point for me, as I remember.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Role-playing is one of humanity's oldest skills, and a super-majority of people are capable of successfully segregating their own knowledge from what they imagine someone else knows, in order to make a reasonable prediction of how that other person would act. Civilization could not exist otherwise.



No we're not. We're terrible at it. It's why we have such catastrophic diplomatic and intelligence failures throughout history.

Anyway, I guess we are getting pretty far afield of the discussion. I'll just say that I disagree with your reasoning behind not liking the system, but I appreciate the discussion. Thank you.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 24, 2020)

@Blue, @prabe, others,

On the nature of how  compels work in FATE vs D&D, I think a salient point is how the game itself structures narrative.  Your typical D&D game structures narrative as either engage in the GM created content, which will usually be fixed fictional points (monsters, lairs, dungeons, this NPC, etc.) while FATE and similar games develop what the objects of play are during play (this player action leads the fiction in a new direction, which, in turn, leads to that new direction, etc.).  These very different structures of how content is generated (before vs during) really go directly to how the behavior reinforcement mechanics work and how closely coupled to the action they need to be.

In D&D, experience and treasure can be somewhat decoupled from the immediate action because there's really only a limited set of immediate actions -- either engage with the DM's material or meander around until you do.  Even in "sandbox" games, where there's no overarching plot being pushed by the DM, play still focuses on what the DM has created, just in a looser order.  And this is fine, and good, and fun (underlined because I love D&D and this isn't a knock on D&D).  Because of this, the reward mechanism (XP, lewt) is more a general reward for overcoming the DM's obstacles and don't need to be tightly coupled to actions because there's no need to drive specific actions when the game is already about engaging the DM's material.  Play will happen with or without the reward mechanism.   Here, the mechanism is to promote return play, not action in the moment.

FATE, on the other hand, plays much more loosely with content.  DM content is usually just some location notes or a scene frame, maybe with a loose outline of anticipated plot to help with framing.  Here, there's much less DM material to engage with, and play is more about following what happens rather than overcoming DM created obstacles.  In other words, there may be a dungeon, like in D&D, but it's not mapped out and populated past the first room because the dungeon needs to follow play.  In this framework, the game really needs to generate complication in play in order to fulfill it's promise.  Hence, the game incentivizes play where the character's flaws cause complications.  The reward mechanic must tightly couple with the action because the action is necessary to continue play.  There's isn't play, or there is lackluster and unfun play, if actions do not generate more problems.  Here, the mechanic is to promote action, not return play.

Both systems use reward mechanics to get players to do the thing the game's about.  D&D can afford less tightly coupled rewards because it has less to no need to drive play as play revolves around DM created content anyway.  FATE does need to drive play, because it doesn't exist without that drive.  So, it tightly couples rewards to the play that's needed.

Now, all that said, I totally get how FATE isn't a system that appeals to people because of how it plays.  That's cool.  I'm not a huge fan of FATE myself, even though I enjoy games that have many similar attributes (Powered by the Apocalypse games, for instance, Blades in the Dark in specific).  But, it's a mistake to assume objectives from a different style of play or game and then judge FATE as incoherent or broken or not doing what it says on the tin because it doesn't meet those objectives.  FATE works awesomely, if you play it as FATE and not partially as a different game it's not.  That doesn't mean it's the game for you.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

@Ovinomancer That's not unreasonable, if not an exact description of how I ran FATE (or how I run D&D). I think what gets my back up a little is when people who like FATE act as though those of us who don't haven't played the game or read the rules. I think I'm a better DM for having run FATE, but I probably wouldn't do the latter again without a gun to my head.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> @Ovinomancer That's not unreasonable, if not an exact description of how I ran FATE (or how I run D&D). I think what gets my back up a little is when people who like FATE act as though those of us who don't haven't played the game or read the rules. I think I'm a better DM for having run FATE, but I probably wouldn't do the latter again without a gun to my head.



For sure.  Defending the other side, though, it's a bit frustrating when FATE is held up to scrutiny by it's rules not as FATE intends them but as read through a different set of assumptions.  I think there are valid frustrations on both sides.


----------



## macd21 (Jan 24, 2020)

System I hate: Scion 1ed. Just an absolute mess. I’m not sure it was playtested at all. Total mess from top to bottom.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 24, 2020)

On topic, the system I love to hate is RIFTS.  I adore the setting, and there are soooo many cool notes, but the Palladium system is awash in varied specificity.  Some task resolutions are very high level, some are meticulously details, but you can't judge which it will be until you read the rules for an action.  Still, adore so much about the game that I suffered with the system for ages.


----------



## Michael Silverbane (Jan 24, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> On topic, the system I love to hate is RIFTS.  I adore the setting, and there are soooo many cool notes, but the Palladium system is awash in varied specificity.  Some task resolutions are very high level, some are meticulously details, but you can't judge which it will be until you read the rules for an action.  Still, adore so much about the game that I suffered with the system for ages.




Likewise. I think playing RIFTS for so many years is what gave me my compulsion to "fix" game systems.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 24, 2020)

Michael Silverbane said:


> Likewise. I think playing RIFTS for so many years is what gave me my compulsion to "fix" game systems.



Heh, I did, too, but then I realized that most of my 'fixes' to other systems to trying to make them play against their goals and according to mine.  So, I swapped from 'fixing' systems to finding systems that work and playing them they way they are designed.  Frex, my 5e houserules from the last few campaigns haven't been to fix rules (which I don't), but instead add things that create the kind of feel I want for that game.  In one, a hexcrawl exploration game, I tightened up rest requirements so that you needed things like water and food to take a short rest, fire for a long rest (which didn't restore hp, but did all the other things long rests do), and added full rests, which must be taken in a safe space.  This made the game stress that long excursions into the wilderness were tiring (because you slowly ran out of hit die for healing) and made establishing basecamps important.  This fit the theme I was going for, the exploration and taming of wilderness, and weren't attempts to 'fix' resting (which has been unchanged in my other games).

In my current game, it's Sigil based, and I wanted Sigil to be a star player, so I expanded downtime activities to add fun new options that tie into Sigil landmarks and factions so that the city becomes a focal point that keeps it's relevance after planar jaunts.  This game is much more episodic that most of mine, so downtime is a big part of play -- what you do in downtime affects many things.  Right now, I have a PC gearing up for a big championship pit fighting match against a long-term rival (established in play) that's also a ruse to help lure in a wanted criminal (associated with the rival) to another PC can capture him, all of which is pulling in favors from three different factions to pull off a grand caper style event.  And, about 75% of this was established using the downtime rules (the faction favor earns, the pit-fighting position, the intel on the criminal, etc.).  So, all in all, seems to be working as hoped.


----------



## Maxperson (Jan 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I can't count the number of times some player has made a decision based on their gut morality or preferences that was completely at odds with the game, the genre or their previously established character. Just because you have the freedom to do whatever doesn't mean that whatever choices you make are "in character."




I'm coming a little late to this thread, so I apologize if this has already been said.

I think what is being argued by @Saelorn is not that the freedom to do whatever makes whatever choices "in character," but rather that the freedom to do whatever allows me the freedom to come up with whatever personality(character) I want for my PCs.

If the game incentivizes only 3 of the 2 billion(arbitrarily large number to show that the number is large) ways to play a character, then the player has essentially 3 choices.  1) pick one of the few character personalities that the game rewards so as to be able to get the incentives and stay in character.  2) pick whatever personality I like and miss out on the incentives, gimping myself in the process.  3) pick whatever personality I like and play out of character in order to get the incentives.  None of those are attractive options.

In my opinion, a game should take one of two paths when it comes to this sort of thing.  The first path is to incentivize playing the character you come up with.  This enables the player to come up with any personality type with quirks and such, inform the DM about it, and then use the system to reward the player for playing in character.  The second path is not to have incentives at all, and let the players come up with and play their characters' personalities themselves.


----------



## Tyler Do'Urden (Jan 24, 2020)

Michael Silverbane said:


> Likewise. I think playing RIFTS for so many years is what gave me my compulsion to "fix" game systems.




For me, that experience was AD&D 2e. Trying to balance and rationalize EVERYTHING in the Complete Books AND Player's Option... was the sort of quixotic undertaking that 16 year old me reveled in.

(And as soon as 3e came out, I promptly and happily tossed it all!)


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> In my opinion, a game should take one of two paths when it comes to this sort of thing.  The first path is to incentivize playing the character you come up with.  This enables the player to come up with any personality type with quirks and such, inform the DM about it, and then use the system to reward the player for playing in character.  The second path is not to have incentives at all, and let the players come up with and play their characters' personalities themselves.




I'm inclined to agree with this, and my own approach is much closer to the second path you mention here. Heck, in the 5E campaigns I'm running I don't use Inspiration at all, and I've told the players in just about this many words: All that personality stuff, the Bonds and Traits and Flaws and whatnot, that's for you, not for me.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 24, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> I'm coming a little late to this thread, so I apologize if this has already been said.
> 
> I think what is being argued by @Saelorn is not that the freedom to do whatever makes whatever choices "in character," but rather that the freedom to do whatever allows me the freedom to come up with whatever personality(character) I want for my PCs.
> 
> ...



This is off base, in that none of 1, 2, or 3 are present.  Instead, it's 4 -- invent a character trait you like, write that down on your sheet, and be rewarded when your invented trait causes problems or helps with the situation at hand.  There's no list of traits you pick from; when asked to pick a trait, that means you come up with it yourself.  The GM's job, then, is to pick up on your trait and make it relevant to the play by framing situations where it can come into play -- both positive and negative.  The DM has the option to offer you a opportunity to make your trait cause a problem, and incentivize you if you do so, but it's still the trait you invented to describe what you wanted your character to be, so it's hard to see how that's forcing you to play out of character or make you play a character trait you didn't want.  And, you can opt to do it yourself.  Not every invocation of your Trouble, or Flaw, or whatever the specific flavor of FATE calls it, will do so -- you can still play your character however you want to -- but, if it does make a big difference, there's a reward for that.  You're literally rewarded for playing the character you choose in ways that impact the game.  That's the play FATE actually is trying to encourage.  If you're not going to engage that -- and, again, it's absolutely fine if that's not your bag -- then there's a mismatch of expectation to mechanics, and that almost never results in fun (hilarity excepted).


----------



## Maxperson (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> I'm inclined to agree with this, and my own approach is much closer to the second path you mention here. Heck, in the 5E campaigns I'm running I don't use Inspiration at all, and I've told the players in just about this many words: All that personality stuff, the Bonds and Traits and Flaws and whatnot, that's for you, not for me.



On the other hand, for those groups that do use it, Inspiration is an example of a mechanic that rewards players for playing whatever type of personality they choose.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 24, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> In my opinion, a game should take one of two paths when it comes to this sort of thing.  The first path is to incentivize playing the character you come up with.  This enables the player to come up with any personality type with quirks and such, inform the DM about it, and then use the system to reward the player for playing in character.




This is literally exactly how FATE works.


----------



## Maxperson (Jan 24, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> This is off base, in that none of 1, 2, or 3 are present.  Instead, it's 4 -- invent a character trait you like, write that down on your sheet, and be rewarded when your invented trait causes problems or helps with the situation at hand.  There's no list of traits you pick from; when asked to pick a trait, that means you come up with it yourself.  The GM's job, then, is to pick up on your trait and make it relevant to the play by framing situations where it can come into play -- both positive and negative.  The DM has the option to offer you a opportunity to make your trait cause a problem, and incentivize you if you do so, but it's still the trait you invented to describe what you wanted your character to be, so it's hard to see how that's forcing you to play out of character or make you play a character trait you didn't want.  And, you can opt to do it yourself.  Not every invocation of your Trouble, or Flaw, or whatever the specific flavor of FATE calls it, will do so -- you can still play your character however you want to -- but, if it does make a big difference, there's a reward for that.  You're literally rewarded for playing the character you choose in ways that impact the game.  That's the play FATE actually is trying to encourage.  If you're not going to engage that -- and, again, it's absolutely fine if that's not your bag -- then there's a mismatch of expectation to mechanics, and that almost never results in fun (hilarity excepted).



Like I said, I came in late so I think you may be confused about I was responding about.  This was from very early in the thread, 

"There are equivalent examples in other media. For example, while I consider the original Mass Effect one of the greatest cRPGs in history (possibly even the greatest), one valid complaint you can make against it is the Alignment system only rewards always taking either the Noble choice or the Rebel choice, and tells you ahead of time how your choice is characterized. If you want to get the best result, you have to strictly adhere to making 95% of your choices one way or the other, or else you can't maximize your social skills. This creates disincentive to play your character in the way you would like or according to how you think your character would behave in this situation and instead rewards you for playing an simplistic character whose every impulse in every situation is predictable."

I probably should have included @Celebrim in my post as well to make it clearer.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 24, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> Like I said, I came in late so I think you may be confused about I was responding about.  This was from very early in the thread,
> 
> "There are equivalent examples in other media. For example, while I consider the original Mass Effect one of the greatest cRPGs in history (possibly even the greatest), one valid complaint you can make against it is the Alignment system only rewards always taking either the Noble choice or the Rebel choice, and tells you ahead of time how your choice is characterized. If you want to get the best result, you have to strictly adhere to making 95% of your choices one way or the other, or else you can't maximize your social skills. This creates disincentive to play your character in the way you would like or according to how you think your character would behave in this situation and instead rewards you for playing an simplistic character whose every impulse in every situation is predictable."
> 
> I probably should have included @Celebrim in my post as well to make it clearer.



Probably.   That context from the @Raynard quote certainly wasn't clear.


----------



## Maxperson (Jan 24, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Probably.   That context from the @Raynard quote certainly wasn't clear.



LOL Yeah.  I blame it on early morning tired.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 24, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> Like I said, I came in late so I think you may be confused about I was responding about.  This was from very early in the thread,
> 
> "There are equivalent examples in other media. For example, while I consider the original Mass Effect one of the greatest cRPGs in history (possibly even the greatest), one valid complaint you can make against it is the Alignment system only rewards always taking either the Noble choice or the Rebel choice, and tells you ahead of time how your choice is characterized. If you want to get the best result, you have to strictly adhere to making 95% of your choices one way or the other, or else you can't maximize your social skills. This creates disincentive to play your character in the way you would like or according to how you think your character would behave in this situation and instead rewards you for playing an simplistic character whose every impulse in every situation is predictable."
> 
> I probably should have included @Celebrim in my post as well to make it clearer.




I find this kind of play can be very prevalent in D&D. At least just as much as in more narrative based games, if not more so. I mean, that's the whole murderhobo phenomenon in a nutshell, right? 

"I have no ties to the world so that the DM cannot influence me with fictional elements, and I have no moral qualms about killing things and taking their stuff." Very predictable. And the purpose of the game....to overcome obstacles in order to win loot and XP....promotes optimal choices in play. That combo can really lead to predictable play.

Sure, players are free to create a more fully realized character. But there's nothing that makes them do it, and nothing that incentivizes those choices or enforces them in any way. Which may or may not be an issue.....some players will happily make a flawed character, and then play up those flaws. How often those flaws will have meaningful impact on the game is another question. 

5E Made a pretty good move in putting the Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws onto the character sheet. But they tied it to a pretty weak mechanic in Inspiration. Without tweaking, the Inspiration mechanic is pretty bland. From what people say on these boards, many groups don't even use it, or forget to use it. 

I wish they had gone a little further with it and made these things more meaningful mechanically.


----------



## Maxperson (Jan 24, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I find this kind of play can be very prevalent in D&D. At least just as much as in more narrative based games, if not more so. I mean, that's the whole murderhobo phenomenon in a nutshell, right?
> 
> "I have no ties to the world so that the DM cannot influence me with fictional elements, and I have no moral qualms about killing things and taking their stuff." Very predictable. And the purpose of the game....to overcome obstacles in order to win loot and XP....promotes optimal choices in play. That combo can really lead to predictable play.
> 
> Sure, players are free to create a more fully realized character. But there's nothing that makes them do it, and nothing that incentivizes those choices or enforces them in any way. Which may or may not be an issue.....some players will happily make a flawed character, and then play up those flaws. How often those flaws will have meaningful impact on the game is another question.




No, there isn't.  That's why I pick people who like to enjoy the same kind of game that I like.  None of my players would fail to pick a personality and roleplay it.  That's just the kind of players that they are.  They don't all achieve it to the same degree, but as long as a player is trying, that's all I ask.



> 5E Made a pretty good move in putting the Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws onto the character sheet. But they tied it to a pretty weak mechanic in Inspiration. Without tweaking, the Inspiration mechanic is pretty bland. From what people say on these boards, many groups don't even use it, or forget to use it.
> 
> I wish they had gone a little further with it and made these things more meaningful mechanically.



I agree.  It is pretty weak and we forget about it most of the time.  I was actually shocked last week when a player used his Inspiration for something.  It was the first time in about 10 sessions that it came up.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> No, there isn't.  That's why I pick people who like to enjoy the same kind of game that I like.  None of my players would fail to pick a personality and roleplay it.  That's just the kind of players that they are.  They don't all achieve it to the same degree, but as long as a player is trying, that's all I ask.




As someone whose campaigns are both in gaming stores (and I didn't have complete control of who joined, and I was specifically looking to game with new people anyway), I believe the DM also has some minor influence, here. If you run a campaign to reward murderhobos, you'll get murderhobos; if run it to reward a different playstyle, you'll probably get something closer to that.


----------



## Maxperson (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> As someone whose campaigns are both in gaming stores (and I didn't have complete control of who joined, and I was specifically looking to game with new people anyway), I believe the DM also has some minor influence, here. If you run a campaign to reward murderhobos, you'll get murderhobos; if run it to reward a different playstyle, you'll probably get something closer to that.



I agree.  I've found that if I play the NPCs as people and engage new players in dialogue that wanders a bit, includes the likes and dislikes of the NPCs and such, the new players will pick up on that and start getting into character.  Over time it becomes habit for them and it branches out into them coming up with personality ideas for their PCs.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> As someone whose campaigns are both in gaming stores (and I didn't have complete control of who joined, and I was specifically looking to game with new people anyway), I believe the DM also has some minor influence, here. If you run a campaign to reward murderhobos, you'll get murderhobos; if run it to reward a different playstyle, you'll probably get something closer to that.




Yeah, like Max I benefit from playing with a steady group of players who I know well. But I know that’s not the case for everyone.

And I agree it’s a combo of player and DM. But there’s another element that plays a part and that’s the rules system. Specifically, what the game incentivizes through XP or other rewards.

At its most basic, a game is about what it rewards. That’s what it is pushing you to do. So D&D is about killing things. 

Now, players and DM can change the focus a bit, or create situations where there’s other concerns at play....but XP for kills is a huge part of the situation.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> Now, players and DM can change the focus a bit, or create situations where there’s other concerns at play....but XP for kills is a huge part of the situation.




Which is why I don't give XP for kills. I don't use XP at all. The characters advance in level when they do what I feel is enough to advance the stories they're pursuing. (I keep intending to make this more ... methodical, or objective, but that keeps not happening, and I don't share that with the players anyway ...) Because so many class abilities are combat-oriented, I prefer to give them a chance to play with the shiny new before giving them more shinier newer, but that's the closest I come to XP for kills.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> Which is why I don't give XP for kills. I don't use XP at all. The characters advance in level when they do what I feel is enough to advance the stories they're pursuing. (I keep intending to make this more ... methodical, or objective, but that keeps not happening, and I don't share that with the players anyway ...) Because so many class abilities are combat-oriented, I prefer to give them a chance to play with the shiny new before giving them more shinier newer, but that's the closest I come to XP for kills.




Yeah, I do the same thing....we use a sort of milestone leveling which is kind of based on the pace of play. As the goals they're pursuing takes shape, I kind of decide a good goal that I'll use to trigger the level up. I haven't come up with a more objective method without feeling like I'd be railroading them, so I keep it fluid and go with my gut.

Like I said, it can be tweaked. Changing the reward system can be a big part of that. Having players who won't simply pursue the most "optimal" means of achieving success in the game, is another. And having a DM who actively works to mitigate that kind of play and promote something different is another.


----------



## Maxperson (Jan 24, 2020)

I give XP for kills, and for defeats, and for negotiations, and for roleplaying in general.  The PCs can get as much XP from a night of pure roleplaying as they do for a night of fighting.  By incentivizing all types of play, the focus comes off of monster kills, so the players don't feel the need to kill everything even though killing also gives XP.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Maxperson said:


> I give XP for kills, and for defeats, and for negotiations, and for roleplaying in general.  The PCs can get as much XP from a night of pure roleplaying as they do for a night of fighting.  By incentivizing all types of play, the focus comes off of monster kills, so the players don't feel the need to kill everything even though killing also gives XP.




That's doesn't seem radically different, though in principle it sounds as though your characters can advance without fighting anything (which I don't do, because reasons). Story beats (for lack of a better term) are just a smaller number.


----------



## Maxperson (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> That's doesn't seem radically different, though in principle it sounds as though your characters can advance without fighting anything (which I don't do, because reasons). Story beats (for lack of a better term) are just a smaller number.



They can advance that way, but in practice it doesn't happen.  Fights are fun, so I provide them and the players engage.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 24, 2020)

A game we found incredibly frustrating was the Marvel Supers game that Marvel themselves put out. It relied heavily on the characters using energy for everything they did, but it was pretty easy to run out of energy fast. I accidentally made my character OP because one of his main powers was draining energy. He actually looked a little weak on paper but in play he could just keep going while sucking out that valuable energy from the villians. We had a really interesting group of players and the GM kept the game going for a while but it just got so frustrating, even with the rule changes the GM implemented. 

Comercially, the game didn't last long. Not surprising, as it really did have broken rules.


----------



## Anoth (Jan 24, 2020)

Sometime you can destroy a system by trying to make rules so that it can’t be abused. The easier solution is to just not abuse the systems because the mechanics you put in place to stop the abuse may ruin other aspects of the system.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 24, 2020)

Arilyn said:


> A game we found incredibly frustrating was the Marvel Supers game that Marvel themselves put out. It relied heavily on the characters using energy for everything they did, but it was pretty easy to run out of energy fast. I accidentally made my character OP because one of his main powers was draining energy. He actually looked a little weak on paper but in play he could just keep going while sucking out that valuable energy from the villians. We had a really interesting group of players and the GM kept the game going for a while but it just got so frustrating, even with the rule changes the GM implemented.
> 
> Comercially, the game didn't last long. Not surprising, as it really did have broken rules.




I don't even know if I'm familiar with this version of the game.....when did this come out? 

I played the TSR one a ton as a kid, and the Margaret Weis one a bit a few years ago.


----------



## billd91 (Jan 24, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I don't even know if I'm familiar with this version of the game.....when did this come out?
> 
> I played the TSR one a ton as a kid, and the Margaret Weis one a bit a few years ago.




It came out between the two - early 2000s, I believe.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 24, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I don't even know if I'm familiar with this version of the game.....when did this come out?
> 
> I played the TSR one a ton as a kid, and the Margaret Weis one a bit a few years ago.



It came out in 2003. Actually sold well at first because it sounded good and system seemed innovative. Marvel dropped it because they claimed they were looking for similar sales figures to D&D, which was pretty laughable. Anyway the initial positive response to game turned to heavy criticism, I believe. 

Yeah, I had a lot of fun with that old TSR version too. Have the Weis one but haven't played it yet... Too many games.


----------



## Undrave (Jan 24, 2020)

Arilyn said:


> A game we found incredibly frustrating was the Marvel Supers game that Marvel themselves put out. It relied heavily on the characters using energy for everything they did, but it was pretty easy to run out of energy fast. I accidentally made my character OP because one of his main powers was draining energy. He actually looked a little weak on paper but in play he could just keep going while sucking out that valuable energy from the villians. We had a really interesting group of players and the GM kept the game going for a while but it just got so frustrating, even with the rule changes the GM implemented.
> 
> Comercially, the game didn't last long. Not surprising, as it really did have broken rules.




Was it the one with like stones and no dice? 

The one where one of the power you could take was basically "Be Spider-man"?


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 24, 2020)

Now I recall it....I think we picked it up and didn't stick with it.....just didn't stack up to the old one.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 24, 2020)

Undrave said:


> Was it the one with like stones and no dice?
> 
> The one where one of the power you could take was basically "Be Spider-man"?



Yep, dice less and energy stones. You regained energy if you could grab a quiet moment to rest. I remember our practice session. I tried out Gambit and I was throwing cards, resting, throwing cards, resting. Yeah that emulated the genre.


----------



## Undrave (Jan 24, 2020)

Arilyn said:


> Yep, dice less and energy stones. You regained energy if you could grab a quiet moment to rest. I remember our practice session. I tried out Gambit and I was throwing cards, resting, throwing cards, resting. Yeah that emulated the genre.




This reminds me of certain Boardgames that have 'Play to play more' mechanics (as I call 'em). Basically where you HAVE to waste a turn not advancing your victory condition, but just so you have ressources to keep playing. It's really annoying because it basically means you have to skip a turn every so often. 

Not a fan of those type of mechanics. I prefer just having a resource generation phase.


----------



## innerdude (Jan 24, 2020)

I tend to agree with those who have said previously that it's pretty hard to "hate" a system. I forget who said it, but there would have to be an element of "forced engagement" with a system I didn't enjoy over an extended period of time for the emotion to go from simply not caring for a particular system to outright hatred. 

Even as ridiculously tedious and uninspiring I find GURPS most of the time, I've still managed to find snippets of fun here and there as a player in our current campaign. 

As to the reasons anyone would "hate" an RPG system, to me it always comes down to mismatched expectations, which is certainly the case between me and GURPS. 

That mismatch can operate at a number of levels, and in multiple combinations:


Mechanical realism/verisimilitude: the mechanics may be intuitive and easy to grasp, but don't output plausible outcomes relative to the in-fiction reality.
Mechanical over-complexity: the mechanics may output plausible in-fiction outcomes, but the inputs required to reach the output is too mentally taxing or time-consuming to maintain an effective pace of play.
Mechanical under-complexity: Conversely, if the mechanics are not complex enough, the produced results may feel too generic or overly broad to the situation.
Genre adherence: Even if the mechanics produce plausible outcomes at a desired level of complexity, the outputs may not create the right "feel" for the assumed fiction. 
Tone: This is somewhat related to genre, but not always. It's more about how the rules influence what is seen as relevant to the central tenets if play--Grim/gritty vs. heroic, magic as an unstable, malevolent force vs. whimsical fairy magic, etc. If you're wanting to play a game of "big damn heroes fighting evil", do you really need detailed rules about pestilence and disease that force the players to constantly make health checks to avoid getting the plague?
Fictional stance (actor / author (pawn) / director): The rules either encourage or discourage certain player inputs relative to the fiction, or allow or disallow player control over areas of the fiction outside the GM's authority. 

There might be other ways a system might mismatch a player's expectations, but these were the ones I came up with off the top of my head. 

For me personally, GURPS is an overwhelming mismatch for #2. For the particular campaign I'm in right now (supers), it's also a very strong mismatch for #4 and #5.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 24, 2020)

Had fun with GURPS back in the day, but even then there were things about the system that drove us nuts. It cost a huge amount of points to buy "unusual background," even though those investment of points got you nothing, but the privilege of buying something that might not fit the genre. And to add salt to the silliness of this, the example was a character who was raised by travelling merchants and knows several languages, which are bought separately. Huh? This is unusual? Then they kept the unusual background for the first GURPS supers. What counts as an unusual background in a super game??!!  Related to this is the long lived or immortal background. Gets you absolutely nothing mechanical, except being able to say, you've been around for a thousand years. Put in place, apparently to stop every player from being immortal. 

Also disliked the cost of skill points being based on how easy the skill is supposed to be to learn in real world. That's nuts, as the adventuring skills tend to be fairly easy, but watch out for the maths and sciences. One player wanted to make his super hero also be a doctor and all those medical skills ate up a big chunk of his points. Also, you can't split up skills by how hard they are. For some people, math is a breeze, but maybe riding a bike is hard. 

Having made these complaints we did play GURPS a lot. Had fun. Don't hate the system, but even the newest version doesn't go far enough in fixing the flaws we found in the game. Love GURPS source books. They ate cool.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 24, 2020)

Source books are cool, didn't eat cool.


----------



## GrahamWills (Jan 24, 2020)

Celebrim said:


> A good FATE player calls on his character aspects as often as possible and for as flimsy of reasons as possible.  You are always on the lookout for tagging every action because if you can tag an action, that adjusts the math so much in your favor that if you don't you almost certainly will fail.   As such, what you typically see in a game of FATE is frantically leveraging the Aspect system for straight forward gamist reasons with the result that FATE's primary aesthetic of play ends up not being Nar, but gamist.  People compel, call, tag and so forth primarily for "Step on Up" reasons and aesthetics related to Challenge and Self-Affirmation, and not for reasons pertaining to Story.  By turning the character into a mechanic that directly relates to success all the time, it turns all the considerations about playing your character into weighing not the character but the need for mechanical success.   It's actively undermining its own intentions with the design in the same way that social systems that mimic combat systems in order to make social interaction a pillar of the game are inadvertently undermining the RP that they want to encourage.




Certainly in combat, people look to use their aspects and abilities as much as possible to gain victory, and if they don't try to do so, they are unlikely to. But that's just a standard of play, isn't it? I mean, if I'm playing a rogue in D&D, I'm always looking for flank. My spell-casters are always looking for the right spell, or an opponent vulnerability. 

I suppose you were hoping that Fate would be different, that you wouldn't think about trying to gain an advantage in combat, and that every turn you'd just roll dice, add your skill and hope you exceed the target? And that your other character qualities would only be useful for roleplaying? Or is it that you want a clear distinction between gamist and narrative? I'm uncertain about what you are looking for I guess.

For me, the big reason to play Fate is that the gamist and narrative elements work together. In other systems, in combat, I have to choose -- does my pirate swing on the chandeliers and attack (a narrative choice which in most systems is less effective than using my best power) or does he just do his usual thing and make a called-shot rapier thrust to the eye, using feats X and Y to reduce the penalty to -4 and using his class power to get a re-roll? If you have a generous GM they can arbitrarily add bonuses to make the narrative thing actually effective, but ... that's exactly what Fate does!

Fate allows you to do both, and makes it not only OK, but effective. As you point out, if you do the boring thing you simply don't succeed -- you must do a narrative thing to get gamist success; this contrasts to other systems where you must do gamist things to get gamist results.

I've played and run an awful lot of Fate, and for me, the fun part is that there ISN'T a purely gamist way to succeed at challenges, as you seem to want. I'm running a deadlands game, and people are pretty consistent now in how they approach combat (after 20+ sessions). I don't see much variation. I play a 22nd level D&D4E character and I will absolutely try and use the same power every time if I can. That doesn't happen with Fate because to get a gamist advantage, you must use a narrative feature. So sure, I can tag my generic "I hate not to be the best" to get a +2 to my swordsmanship -- but I could equally well tag the chandeliers aspect for the same bonus, so even with a pretty limited GM I can blend gamist and narrative.

A good GM will incentivize the players, of course. Add a free invoke the chandeliers, and immediately you have a situation where it is better to the narratively fun thing than do the boring thing.

The same is true outside of combat. If we want to persuade the king to lend me a ship, then in most systems you go through the party's skill lists and guess what the king's opposition level will be and then decide if the gamistly optimized bard will use diplomacy, or the gamistly optimized thug will use intimidate. In Fate you are way more likely to choose options that are both effective and narrative. You take the fact that you are a "survivor of the wars against the Gree" and, wanting the gamist bonus, spin a narrative story. For me, this is a good thing -- THAT is the core of Fate's challenge mechanics; not allowing players simply to be boring to get the bonus, but making them inject narrative to do so.

Now there are lots of reasons not to like Fate -- plenty of people hate the meta-currency thing, sure. The fact that big combats often consist of piling on advantages and one big hit. The need to make stuff up as you go. But I think that saying you think Fate would be better if it didn't tie together mechanics to succeed in challenges with narrative elements is all off the mark.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like you would prefer a game that has completely separate systems for challenge resolution and story? If so, I enjoy D&D4E for being 100% challenge mechanics and 100% freeform roleplaying; and also DramaSystem for being 90% about the story (I'm counting drama resolution mechanics as story here) and in practice I've never even used the challenge mechanics -- last time I tried, the table just said "can we just a assume we win?" and so they did.


----------



## dragoner (Jan 24, 2020)

Basically there are four criteria that will turn me off a game:

 The person or people involved, if I don't like them or what they stand for, I won't support them.
The publisher, this bleeds over into number one, so maybe my list should be three or 3.5, except here we are.
Mechanics, if these aren't to my taste, I won't probably play the game, or if I try, I won't continue. In the past, I was much more ok with rules intense games, now I have shifted towards rules light. Also in some ways I sort of orbit the OSR, except not that HoL that calls the OSR only old school D&D.
Setting, last but not least, setting things can really turn me off; nevertheless, sometimes I can use parts in my own game, then that is always cool.


----------



## Beleriphon (Jan 24, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> On topic, the system I love to hate is RIFTS.  I adore the setting, and there are soooo many cool notes, but the Palladium system is awash in varied specificity.  Some task resolutions are very high level, some are meticulously details, but you can't judge which it will be until you read the rules for an action.  Still, adore so much about the game that I suffered with the system for ages.




I'm the same boath, RIFTS a boat load of really, really cool idea, wrapping a stupid, stupid, stupid system. The main book doesn't even have chapters. How does it not have chapters? Why? Who thought that was a good idea? I tried actually make a character once using the rules as presented. The rules how to build attributes are at the back of the book, the "classes" somewhere in the middle, and equipment is everywhere!


----------



## jasper (Jan 24, 2020)

Why do I hate an RPG system? Because the only people who play it make want to react like my cat to you all. Climb the freaking wall. Sit on the ceiling fan and pee all over you!"
Ok, got than out my system.
1. Too many books to gain working knowledge of the system. 
2. Dice pools.
3. The system is a ripoff of another system and they just changed charts and the dice you need.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> .... but Spirit of the Century gives them more aspects and more Fate Points




Yeah, the overload of aspects and Fate points in the earlier incarnations was a bigger problem than it looked like.



prabe said:


> I have to admit that the examples in the Fate Core book of compels *feel to me* like the GM is bossing the players and PCs around, in ways I'd resent the hell out of as a player (which is almost certainly why I didn't do that when I was GMing in the system) and which would lead to exceedingly carefully-worded aspects if I were playing. It also really comes across, in every example I've seen in the books and in this thread, as a more antagonistic GMing style than just about anything I've encountered in D&D (and I go back to 1E AD&D). Probably says something about the tables I've played at.




In some ways, I'd agree that its a more antagonistic style of GMing. Or at least, it plays better that way. Which is a bit odd when you consider the language in the Fate Core rules. I think its because, in Fate, a decent chunk of stuff that a D&D DM typically does during prep, is moved to during play. So you can get a much more visceral feel of "the GM is _doing this to us"._


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> We don't actually know that. The rules in the book are only concerned with how adventurers progress. And within that context, learning through experience - with combat challenges as a guiding metric for how much you experience - is a perfectly reasonable abstraction.



But that's not of interrest, since my point was about how players act progressing their PC.  And we do know how PCs progress.  We're not talking about NPCs - they, by definition of that "Non-", do not have players behind them who have motivations of meta issues like if they will become a better baker, balor, or butcher.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 24, 2020)

Beleriphon said:


> I'm the same boath, RIFTS a boat load of really, really cool idea, wrapping a stupid, stupid, stupid system. The main book doesn't even have chapters. How does it not have chapters? Why? Who thought that was a good idea? I tried actually make a character once using the rules as presented. The rules how to build attributes are at the back of the book, the "classes" somewhere in the middle, and equipment is everywhere!




My group was never really able to determine with certainty how many times a character could shoot in a turn. It seemed to be connected to their Hand To Hand Combat skill (for some reason) but there was always some doubt. 

Just ridiculous layout and design.


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Ratskinner said:


> In some ways, I'd agree that its a more antagonistic style of GMing. Or at least, it plays better that way. Which is a bit odd when you consider the language in the Fate Core rules. I think its because, in Fate, a decent chunk of stuff that a D&D DM typically does during prep, is moved to during play. So you can get a much more visceral feel of "the GM is _doing this to us"._




And I don't want the players (or their characters) to feel as though *the GM is doing it.* I want it to feel as though *the world is doing it.* If I want to use DM's fiat to put something in, I put something in; I don't need any of the PCs to have anything on their sheet allowing me to put it in. In something like Mutants & Masterminds, I can give them a Hero Point (or at least, that's about how the mechanic worked in 2E; I was never able to get into 3E). I think what it comes down to is that it started feeling as though there was too much dissonance between the language of the rules talking about the game being character-focused, and the actual rules turning out to be story-focused. Also, since I consider the characters to belong to the players, not the GM, I don't really like the GM yanking them around so overtly.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> But that's not of interrest, since my point was about how players act progressing their PC.  And we do know how PCs progress.  We're not talking about NPCs - they, by definition of that "Non-", do not have players behind them who have motivations of meta issues like if they will become a better baker, balor, or butcher.



There's nothing meta- about wanting to be the very best, like no one ever was. That is entirely an in-character motivation, for certain characters. And there's nothing stopping an NPC from sharing that motivation, either.

At best, we might infer that training is less efficient of a teacher than on-the-job experience, or else we'd expect improvement-motivated individuals to spend time training instead of going on adventures. That's still an unproven assumption, though, since the rules don't concern themselves with non-adventurers.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 24, 2020)

Never played Rifts or even read it, but remember when it was a hot game. My brother in law who owns a comic/game store couldn't keep it on the shelves. He personally hated the system, but loved the revenue he was collection from the fans.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> There's nothing meta- about wanting to be the very best, like no one ever was. That is entirely an in-character motivation, for certain characters. And there's nothing stopping an NPC from sharing that motivation, either.
> 
> At best, we might infer that training is less efficient of a teacher than on-the-job experience, or else we'd expect improvement-motivated individuals to spend time training instead of going on adventures. That's still an unproven assumption, though, since the rules don't concern themselves with non-adventurers.




Let me know when you want to get back to addressing the point we're talking about, which has to do with mechanical rewards for specific types of play.  Something that you were very against in FATE, but seem not to be able to address in D&D.

FATE: Act like you said your character acts and we're reward you mechanically.
D&D: Kill monsters and we'll reward you mechanically.

Again, the prevelance of the murderhobo concept shows that rewards really do change how many play their characters.


----------



## Beleriphon (Jan 24, 2020)

Arilyn said:


> Never played Rifts or even read it, but remember when it was a hot game. My brother in law who owns a comic/game store couldn't keep it on the shelves. He personally hated the system, but loved the revenue he was collection from the fans.




I played it extensively in highschool. I think my favourite character was a Mega Juicer who could deal and receive megadamage without hightech weapons or power armour. I have fond memories of the games and playing RIFTS on our lunch but the system is stupid as hell.


----------



## Dannyalcatraz (Jan 24, 2020)

RIFTS is a glorious hot mess.  Chock full of great ideas, generally poorly implemented.  Can be a blast with the right group, though.

One of the guys I played with had ADHD, and delivered a killer, in character line as his Juicer interrupted another player who was droning on:

”Tick-tock, m**-*f*, you still here?”


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> FATE: Act like you said your character acts _other people think your character would act_, and we'll reward you mechanically.
> D&D: _If you actually use your fighting skills, you'll get better at fighting._



There, I fixed it for you.
“Fixing” others’ posts isn‘t exactly polite.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> There, I fixed it for you.



You are saying my aspects were written by others?

That isn't true _and you know it_.

If a GM doesn't understand your aspect, you talk to them. Just like any other issue. It only comes up as a problem if the DM is a jerk (a problem in any game) or the player is a bad actor and trying to game the system.

And you *still* dodged the question about mechanical rewards affecting many roleplayers.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jan 24, 2020)

prabe said:


> And I don't want the players (or their characters) to feel as though *the GM is doing it.* I want it to feel as though *the world is doing it.*




Feeling that way is totally legit, this is a leisure activity so do what you want. But keep in mind. Even if it feels like the world is doing it....its still the DM. He's just doing it when you aren't looking. So its not some inherent property of the Fate rules that the DM can set you up or put you in a situation, he does it in D&D (or any rpg for that matter), too. Plenty of D&D adventures begin with the DM basically "setting up" the PCs outside their control.



prabe said:


> If I want to use DM's fiat to put something in, I put something in; I don't need any of the PCs to have anything on their sheet allowing me to put it in.




Fate doesn't change that. In this respect, aspects are just a way of signalling what it is they want to see. You can still put it snake cultists, even if nobody has an aspect about snakes/snake cultists. You just won't be compelling anybody's aspects to do it. You also face the risk, which I see plenty of in D&D play, of "missing the mark" and putting out a hook with the wrong bait on it. This usually takes the form of the players groaning when they uncover the central plot or theme of the adventure/dungeon. Although I've even seen it happen when players are asking questions like "That's it? No [insert monster/challenge preference here]? Are there any other places we can check out rumors?"



prabe said:


> ... I think what it comes down to is that it started feeling as though there was too much dissonance between the language of the rules talking about the game being character-focused, and the actual rules turning out to be story-focused. Also, since I consider the characters to belong to the players, not the GM, I don't really like the GM yanking them around so overtly.




Both of those are totally legit as well, AFAICT. I don't see characters as very differentiated from the story, so it doesn't bother me much.

Cheers


----------



## prabe (Jan 24, 2020)

Ratskinner said:


> Feeling that way is totally legit, this is a leisure activity so do what you want. But keep in mind. Even if it feels like the world is doing it....its still the DM. He's just doing it when you aren't looking. So its not some inherent property of the Fate rules that the DM can set you up or put you in a situation, he does it in D&D (or any rpg for that matter), too. Plenty of D&D adventures begin with the DM basically "setting up" the PCs outside their control.




FATE is pretty explicit about it being a transaction, though. Also, in my campaigns, the parties go looking for things to do, and they find them. I don't believe I have ever "set up the PCs." Everything that happens to/around the PCs, I try to make as at least a reasonable consequence of something that has happened (often something the PCs have done). As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I'm a less antagonistic GM than it's clear FATE expects/requires.




Ratskinner said:


> Fate doesn't change that. In this respect, aspects are just a way of signalling what it is they want to see. You can still put it snake cultists, even if nobody has an aspect about snakes/snake cultists. You just won't be compelling anybody's aspects to do it. You also face the risk, which I see plenty of in D&D play, of "missing the mark" and putting out a hook with the wrong bait on it. This usually takes the form of the players groaning when they uncover the central plot or theme of the adventure/dungeon. Although I've even seen it happen when players are asking questions like "That's it? No [insert monster/challenge preference here]? Are there any other places we can check out rumors?"




There are other (better, I'd argue) ways for the players to signal what they want to see. My players give me backstories. After at least skimming them, I put things in front of them that tie to their backstories. There has not to date been any disappointed groaning at the tables I run. Later, I can tie things back to previous story arcs and do the same thing.




Ratskinner said:


> Both of those are totally legit as well, AFAICT. I don't see characters as very differentiated from the story, so it doesn't bother me much.




The characters belong to the players; the world belongs to the GM; the story belongs to the table.

Cheers!


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> You are saying my aspects were written by others?



I'm saying that the player knows how their own character would act, to a much greater degree than anyone else at the table does; and that a player doesn't need a mechanical reward to act in-character. The incentive is either unnecessary (because you were going to do that thing anyway), or it's actively harmful (if it actually does convince you to do something that they wouldn't otherwise do). There is no theoretical good that can possibly come from it.


Blue said:


> And you *still* dodged the question about mechanical rewards affecting many roleplayers.



You're the one claiming XP is some sort of meta-game reward in D&D, rather than a logical representation of in-game causality. Some players play combat-enthusiasts because that's who they want to play, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.


----------



## Blue (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> You're the one claiming XP is some sort of meta-game reward in D&D, rather than a logical representation of in-game causality. Some players play combat-enthusiasts because that's who they want to play, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.



This started because you claimed that Fate points were a reward or bribe.  Which is it, but to no more degree than _every other game out there_ that grants rewards for particular activity.

Either mechanical rewards for specific actions ("meta-game rewards" in the terminology you have been using) are bad, in which case FATE and D&D are the same, or they are not, in which case FATE & D&D are the same. I don't really care which you pick for yourself, as long as you are consistent.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Blue said:


> This started because you claimed that Fate points were a reward or bribe.  Which is it, but to no more degree than _every other game out there_ that grants rewards for particular activity.
> 
> Either mechanical rewards for specific actions ("meta-game rewards" in the terminology you have been using) are bad, in which case FATE and D&D are the same, or they are not, in which case FATE & D&D are the same. I don't really care which you pick for yourself, as long as you are consistent.



Here's a consistent perspective:

Meta-game rewards are bad in every RPG where they show up, such as in FATE. _If_ experience points in D&D were some sort of meta-game reward for the player, _then_ they would fall into the same category. 

They aren't, though. There's absolutely nothing meta- about the concept of experience. It's a rule which represents an internal reality of the game world, which every character in that world can observe and understand.


----------



## CleverNickName (Jan 24, 2020)

I'm a fickle beast.  I hate games that make me work too hard, or don't make me work hard enough.  I hate games that are too complicated, and I hate games that are too simple.  I hate games that are too flexible, or too inflexible.  I have been known to love or hate a game for its artwork.  I've returned books after discovering they were produced with the help of a particular writer/artist that I do not wish to support.

I'm impossible to please.  I love playing D&D and Dread and Mouseguard; I hate FATE and Savage Worlds and BESM.   Why?  No idea.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 24, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Here's a consistent perspective:
> 
> Meta-game rewards are bad in every RPG where they show up, such as in FATE. _If_ experience points in D&D were some sort of meta-game reward for the player, _then_ they would fall into the same category.
> 
> They aren't, though. There's absolutely nothing meta- about the concept of experience. It's a rule which represents an internal reality of the game world, which every character in that world can observe and understand.



Not in any game world I have ever seen. Do you really play in games where when someone stabs a goblin it explodes into XP that floods into the character? Or, more subtly, a world where classes and levels are literal things in the world and only classed and leveled people (PCs primarily plus some NPCs) actually get better at anything, ever? Because XP does not act in any way like real world experiences.

 Do you really mean that XP is not a metagame concept, or do you mean it is a metagame concept you happen to be comfortable with?


----------



## dragoner (Jan 24, 2020)

Rifts was great, like one adventure, we were a juicer, crazy, and cyborg, traveling in a Triax dimensional crossing bathysphere to worm wood to find a pan pipe that would lead the gargoyles out of europe.

If you could put boundaries in, it worked for the most part. AD&D was also sort of a mess if one tried to use every rule in the book.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 24, 2020)

Reynard said:


> Not in any game world I have ever seen. Do you really play in games where when someone stabs a goblin it explodes into XP that floods into the character? Or, more subtly, a world where classes and levels are literal things in the world and only classed and leveled people (PCs primarily plus some NPCs) actually get better at anything, ever? Because XP does not act in any way like real world experiences.



Any serious concept can be played for laughs. Even boring things, like food and water, can be interpreted in such a way as to make them seem ridiculous.

You don't have to go full-on Highlander with the way that experience works. You can simply observe that, as individuals go out on adventures and overcome obstacles, they get better at doing the things that they do. There's nothing silly about that. If you're willing to buy into the assumption that adventurers use their skills and other abilities at a fairly consistent rate, then you can even use the power of the enemies that they overcome in combat, as the metric for how much they use those skills. (That assumption doesn't always hold for every campaign; and the further you deviate from that premise, the less the system makes sense; but it's perfectly reasonable for a wide variety of D&D games.)

Likewise, there's nothing in the book that tells us how non-adventurers improve at anything. You could take that to a ridiculous extreme, and assume that it's impossible for anyone to ever get better at anything unless they fight for it, but that's not a reasonable position to take. Just because they don't give us the rules for it, that doesn't mean it's impossible; it just means we don't have the rules for it.


Reynard said:


> Do you really mean that XP is not a metagame concept, or do you mean it is a metagame concept you happen to be comfortable with?



I really mean that XP is not a meta-game concept, in D&D. It's just a mathematical simplification of the real-world concept of learning by experience, which is something that we should all understand. That's why it's called "Experience".

There are other games which borrow the XP terminology from D&D, but which treat it as a meta-game resource for the players, rather than having it represent the actual experience of the character. Such games tend to award XP for player participation, and for staying in character.


----------



## lordabdul (Jan 25, 2020)

I don't hate any system. There's no system I would never play with. There are systems I'd _rather_ not play with but depending on _who_ I'd play it with, it might be quite irrelevant in comparison.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 25, 2020)

prabe said:


> FATE is pretty explicit about it being a transaction, though. Also, in my campaigns, the parties go looking for things to do, and they find them. I don't believe I have ever "set up the PCs." Everything that happens to/around the PCs, I try to make as at least a reasonable consequence of something that has happened (often something the PCs have done). As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I'm a less antagonistic GM than it's clear FATE expects/requires.



Not that I'm trying to change your mind, here, but this is a very good observation.  FATE and similarly structured games do require the GM be more, for lack of a better general word, antagonistic.  But, this makes sense in the frame that the GM's job is to play the antagonists to the players' protagonists, right?  Still, it does require bringing a level of pain more directly that some may be comfortable with.  To that end, PbtA has some great advice on the matter.

First, telegraph threats -- if you establish a threat before you drop it, players won't feel like you're gunning for them.  

Second, if the players don't deal with the threat, hit them with it.  They've earned it now.

Finally, and this is the key, be a fan of the characters.  Punish them, hit them hard in soft places, but always cheer when they succeed.  This both removes any competitive feels on both sides of the screen and lets the players know that you're not being mean because you don't like them.




> The characters belong to the players; the world belongs to the GM; the story belongs to the table.
> 
> Cheers!



That's a very D&D centric point of view!  I fully adhere to it when I run or play D&D, so it's not a bad thing, but it's not the only way RPGs can work.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 25, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Any serious concept can be played for laughs. Even boring things, like food and water, can be interpreted in such a way as to make them seem ridiculous.
> 
> You don't have to go full-on Highlander with the way that experience works. You can simply observe that, as individuals go out on adventures and overcome obstacles, they get better at doing the things that they do. There's nothing silly about that. If you're willing to buy into the assumption that adventurers use their skills and other abilities at a fairly consistent rate, then you can even use the power of the enemies that they overcome in combat, as the metric for how much they use those skills. (That assumption doesn't always hold for every campaign; and the further you deviate from that premise, the less the system makes sense; but it's perfectly reasonable for a wide variety of D&D games.)
> 
> ...



Okay, so NPCs better themselves somehow, or not at all, or maybe only on Tuesdays -- we don't know and can't assume because the rules don't say.  This means that there's no way to observe NPCs improving, yet it's impossible to say that they do not improve.  Yet, in this environment of quantum people, PCs stand out as being clearly observed getting better only when they go out and kill monsters.  In a sea of quantum uncertainty, this minuscule fraction of the population is clearly observable as different and modelling some form of bedrock reality of the setting.

Okay, please pull the other one, with the bells on.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 25, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> Not that I'm trying to change your mind, here, but this is a very good observation.  FATE and similarly structured games do require the GM be more, for lack of a better general word, antagonistic.  But, this makes sense in the frame that the GM's job is to play the antagonists to the players' protagonists, right?




Perhaps “provocative” is a better word in this context? It’s not so much about opposing the PCs as it is about challenging them or making them react.

That’s how it seems to me, although I admit that I’ve never played FATE nor even read the rules.


----------



## Tonguez (Jan 25, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Any serious concept can be played for laughs. Even boring things, like food and water, can be interpreted in such a way as to make them seem ridiculous.
> 
> You don't have to go full-on Highlander with the way that experience works. You can simply observe that, as individuals go out on adventures and overcome obstacles, they get better at doing the things that they do. There's nothing silly about that. If you're willing to buy into the assumption that adventurers use their skills and other abilities at a fairly consistent rate, then you can even use the power of the enemies that they overcome in combat, as the metric for how much they use those skills. (That assumption doesn't always hold for every campaign; and the further you deviate from that premise, the less the system makes sense; but it's perfectly reasonable for a wide variety of D&D games.)




Like that fighter who has been going along being all fightery and killing things and suddenly he has experience in spellcasting and can magically bond with his weapon?

SO what skills and abilities has our fighter been using to develop these spell slots?


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 25, 2020)

Tonguez said:


> SO what skills and abilities has our fighter been using to develop these spell slots?



As I said, any serious concept can be made to seem ridiculous, if that's your goal. If you were even slightly serious about actually understanding what's going on within the world, then you wouldn't have to ask that question.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 25, 2020)

D&D, like other RPGs is meta. How come the poor halflings in earlier editions could work and work on being a fighter and keep killing those monsters, but not get past 4th level? 

How come arrows never hit vital organs causing massive bleed damage? How come my armour doesn't actually reduce hp loss? How come in 5e every character has the same proficiency bonus? How come I learn new things in chunks when my level watch dings? 

These are all meta mechanics created purely for game mechanics.


----------



## Anoth (Jan 25, 2020)

Tonguez said:


> Like that fighter who has been going along being all fightery and killing things and suddenly he has experience in spellcasting and can magically bond with his weapon?
> 
> SO what skills and abilities has our fighter been using to develop these spell slots?



I much preferred the old way when starting age for a wizard was in mid 30s and it would take decades to become a first level wizard from the time u decided to start


----------



## Anoth (Jan 25, 2020)

Arilyn said:


> D&D, like other RPGs is meta. How come the poor halflings in earlier editions could work and work on being a fighter and keep killing those monsters, but not get past 4th level?
> 
> How come arrows never hit vital organs causing massive bleed damage? How come my armour doesn't actually reduce hp loss? How come in 5e every character has the same proficiency bonus? How come I learn new things in chunks when my level watch dings?
> 
> These are all meta mechanics created purely for game mechanics.



A.) armor does negate damage. If you have a +8 armor bonus then there are 8 numbers in the 20 sided die that if the enemy rolls those numbers then the attack roll does not get through. Real good attackers will do even better.

B.) arrows do cause vital strikes to the heart or head. That happens when they reduce you to zero hit points. If you have hit points they didn’t hit you in a vital area.

and the others well I’m not even going to try to put much thought in the 5E skill system.


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 25, 2020)

Anoth said:


> A.) armor does negate damage. If you have a +8 armor bonus then there are 8 numbers in the 20 sided die that if the enemy rolls those numbers then the attack roll does not get through. Real good attackers will do even better.
> 
> B.) arrows do cause vital strikes to the heart or head. That happens when they reduce you to zero hit points. If you have hit points they didn’t hit you in a vital area.
> 
> and the others well I’m not even going to try to put much thought in the 5E skill system.



Armour is still abstracted, making it pretty meta. Players can't even agree on what hp are, as can be seen in all the heated debates on this site.  This is not a complaint. The meta, abstract nature of hp are needed in a game like D&D, otherwise, the game would be pretty horrific, considering the amount of fighting characters do on a daily basis. I mean, nobody ever actually suffers from getting slashed and hacked until unconsciousness takes over. Getting hit by a fireball should be absolutely horrible and excruciating.  

Games all have meta type mechanics that are used to catch a certain flavour or genre. They don't usually bother me.


----------



## Tonguez (Jan 25, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> As I said, any serious concept can be made to seem ridiculous, if that's your goal. If you were even slightly serious about actually understanding what's going on within the world, then you wouldn't have to ask that question.




No its legitimately why I dont like class and level system and think spellcasting should be a skill.
I cant think of any good rationale as to why someone gets a whole chunk of new powers because they were out killing stuff, Experience is entirely a meta-concept. If you can provide a logical explanation for it then I'd really love to hear it.

At least Aspects in Fate are declared parts of the narrative and my character develops and gains aspects as part of the ongoing narrative


----------



## Anoth (Jan 25, 2020)

Arilyn said:


> Armour is still abstracted, making it pretty meta. Players can't even agree on what hp are, as can be seen in all the heated debates on this site.  This is not a complaint. The meta, abstract nature of hp are needed in a game like D&D, otherwise, the game would be pretty horrific, considering the amount of fighting characters do on a daily basis. I mean, nobody ever actually suffers from getting slashed and hacked until unconsciousness takes over. Getting hit by a fireball should be absolutely horrible and excruciating.
> 
> Games all have meta type mechanics that are used to catch a certain flavour or genre. They don't usually bother me.




the reason players can’t agree on what hit points are is because they won’t read the definition in the PHB for some reason. It is pretty clear.

for what you are saying you might as well be saying games are meta.  All I can say to that is that if someone doesn’t like meta then they shouldn’t play games.

what is an example of a game that is Not meta


----------



## Arilyn (Jan 25, 2020)

Anoth said:


> the reason players can’t agree on what hit points are is because they won’t read the definition in the PHB for some reason. It is pretty clear.
> 
> for what you are saying you might as well be saying games are meta.  All I can say to that is that if someone doesn’t like meta then they shouldn’t play games.
> 
> what is an example of a game that is Not meta



Yes, games are meta. That's what I'm saying. Can't be escaped and not a problem.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Jan 25, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> As I said, any serious concept can be made to seem ridiculous, if that's your goal. If you were even slightly serious about actually understanding what's going on within the world, then you wouldn't have to ask that question.



If the rules create a self-evident system, and you can level up in a spell-casting class without prior training by those same rules, then this is part of the self-evident system -- killing monsters as a fighter can learn you magics.

What you do is called special pleading.  It's where you except those things that cut against your argument and keep only the parts that you like.  If you're going to argue that XP and levels are a coherent, non-meta system that is part of the fictional world, then you have to explain all the things those rules are capable of in that same system.  Declaring some outcomes of the rules to be too silly to contemplate while saying others are obviously non-meta parts of the world is a deeply flawed argument.  I get that you have your playstyle, and that's cool and all, go for it, advocate for it, even!  But you really need to stop trying to argue that your preferences are actually foundational tenets of roleplaying.  They're just, like, your opinion, man.


----------



## Anoth (Jan 25, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> If the rules create a self-evident system, and you can level up in a spell-casting class without prior training by those same rules, then this is part of the self-evident system -- killing monsters as a fighter can learn you magics.
> 
> What you do is called special pleading.  It's where you except those things that cut against your argument and keep only the parts that you like.  If you're going to argue that XP and levels are a coherent, non-meta system that is part of the fictional world, then you have to explain all the things those rules are capable of in that same system.  Declaring some outcomes of the rules to be too silly to contemplate while saying others are obviously non-meta parts of the world is a deeply flawed argument.  I get that you have your playstyle, and that's cool and all, go for it, advocate for it, even!  But you really need to stop trying to argue that your preferences are actually foundational tenets of roleplaying.  They're just, like, your opinion, man.




i think the game is assuming that you are doing things between adventures to justify learning spells.  Maybe even things you are not declaring.  Not that I like multiclassing, but that is how I would do it.


----------



## dragoner (Jan 25, 2020)

Arilyn said:


> Yes, games are meta. That's what I'm saying. Can't be escaped and not a problem.




Yes, I agree. Classes, leveling, hit points, all very meta; I still play games with them, just don't focus in on those parts that bug me. Games are like cookies, I love oatmeal, with raisins too, I know some that can't stand the raisins, same as I don't care much for lemon, I'll eat the lemon ones, except not buy them. Sort of like if someone is running a game, I'm way more apt to play something that isn't my favorite, rather than if running the game I want to run, it will be a system I prefer. All of the popular games, are good for the most part, because then if they weren't we wouldn't be having such a big discussion about them.


----------



## Anoth (Jan 25, 2020)

dragoner said:


> Yes, I agree. Classes, leveling, hit points, all very meta; I still play games with them, just don't focus in on those parts that bug me. Games are like cookies, I love oatmeal, with raisins too, I know some that can't stand the raisins, same as I don't care much for lemon, I'll eat the lemon ones, except not buy them. Sort of like if someone is running a game, I'm way more apt to play something that isn't my favorite, rather than if running the game I want to run, it will be a system I prefer. All of the popular games, are good for the most part, because then if they weren't we wouldn't be having such a big discussion about them.



If you like raisins in cookies you are having badwrongfun


----------



## aramis erak (Jan 25, 2020)

Reynard said:


> I don't want to gum up the Dishonored thread with this tangent, but the fact that so many people expressed a revulsion for the 2d20 system got me thinking how I don't hate any system I can think of off the top of my head. There are some i prefer not to play, but no game makes me feel like the developers shot my dog (or favorite sci-fi franchise, as the case may be).
> 
> So if you HATE a system, why? Explain it to me.




Game is designed to specifically support utterly vile behavior by characters as the intended actions. FATAL rises to this, having rules for adjudicating PC commission of forcible rape.
Game neither does what it claims on the cover nor provides a good experience played as written.
Game is about subject matter that would be interesting if not sorely mishandled by the rules.
Many a heartbreaker is neither fun nor what the designer claims, and yet... most still don't rise to hate. Many rise to simple disdain.

I disdain 2d20 as written, not hate. It's built to provide a strong dose of  player's success desire fulfillment.¹

I don't dislike metacurrency in games, and I really do dislike the rabid kneejerk hate for metacurrency systems. They imply immersion is the only form of valid roleplay... the metacurrencies are just as much a valid method of encouraging players to play the character as written as understanding the character motives in some insane level of detail.

-=-=-=-=-
¹:When I wrote this, I was thinking of Conan and MC3. Dune, however, has fixed several issues I had with the system, and I am enjoying Dune.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jan 25, 2020)

Tonguez said:


> No its legitimately why I dont like class and level system and think spellcasting should be a skill.
> I cant think of any good rationale as to why someone gets a whole chunk of new powers because they were out killing stuff, Experience is entirely a meta-concept. If you can provide a logical explanation for it then I'd really love to hear it.



What you're saying doesn't support the idea of XP as a meta-concept. What you're saying supports the idea that XP is a poor attempt to model the in-game reality that it's trying to reflect. (Which is totally fair.)

But it is _trying _to represent the concept of learning by doing. That you get better at fighting by actually fighting, and you get better at other things by doing those things (which they assume you do in proportion to how much you fight).


----------



## Zhaleskra (Jan 25, 2020)

Because it's F.A.T.A.L.

Other than that, I can't think of systems I actively hate. There are some that I've experienced that I will never play again. Others that I will play again, but only if there's nothing better on offer and I really need a gaming fix.

Some things have changed over the years. I started with AD&D2e and had fun, but looking back at it, the warts are too obvious. I like to understand why the mechanics are designed the way they are. When there's a logical reason for having a laundry list of spells (e.g., each spell being a "fruit" grafted to the branches of your magic organ, say), that makes more sense than "that's the way the game has always done it". I don't like it when you can learn the advanced version of a spell without learning the previous versions, which leads to my love of HARP's scaling system for magic and psionics.

When the mechanics don't hold up what the authors want the game to accomplish it stretches my suspension of disbelief. Then again, I can accept that infinity worlds have a CP/SP/GP/PP economy, but my suspension of disbelief snaps when they all have the same exchange rate. Though I suppose multiverse and spelljamming could explain that, as long as you establish it was put in place by a spelljammer crew or a planewalker. So, unless it's classic Paranoia, I don't like "just because" rules.


----------



## Umbran (Jan 27, 2020)

Hr.  Upthread, I saw some things that saddened me.  I mean, I guess they go hand in hand with talking about "hate".  IMHO, hate should be reserved for things that do actual harm, not hobby games.  

But, when folks start casting aspersions on others for playing a game that they "hate"... well, yeah, clearly there's some hate going on there.  

The question shouldn't be, "Why do you hate an RPG system?"  It should be... why do you apply the emotion of hate to a thing that harms nobody and is only used as an entertainment?


----------



## aramis erak (Jan 27, 2020)

Umbran said:


> Hr.  Upthread, I saw some things that saddened me.  I mean, I guess they go hand in hand with talking about "hate".  IMHO, hate should be reserved for things that do actual harm, not hobby games.
> 
> But, when folks start casting aspersions on others for playing a game that they "hate"... well, yeah, clearly there's some hate going on there.
> 
> The question shouldn't be, "Why do you hate an RPG system?"  It should be... why do you apply the emotion of hate to a thing that harms nobody and is only used as an entertainment?



I see a couple trends, and they're sociopolitical in nature... 

Hatred being equated to all forms of intolerance.
the propensity of RPGers to hyperbole as a subcultural element. (see also, "No Sh**, there I was…")
The social limits on expressing hatred 
The "cork-popping" effect when social permission is given to hate something. (The first several pages show this)
The thread itself gives permission for the mild hyperbole, and the cork-pop effect, seems to trigger what should properly be disain or dislike to be expressed as hatred. 

And, in a few cases, it appears the poster believes alternate approaches mechanically or in playstyle are causing a net detriment to the gaming populace. I strongly disagree with most.

I've only read one game that rises to being truly hate-worthy (FATAL), because so much of it is focused upon subjects that are socially unacceptable by or to protagonists...

... but if they aren't in hyperbole mode, and/or don't have an undervalue on the term hate, then there are some downright discomfort-inducing members of this forum.


----------



## Aldarc (Jan 27, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> FATE is the classic example. In order to play FATE, you need to engage with the meta-currency of fate points, or else you won't be able to sway the narrative when you need to.



Fate is your classic example, but the idea that it is somehow antithetical to roleplaying is not supported by the sheer number of groups and players who successfully roleplay using the Fate system. It's fine to say that you find its rules a hindrance to your roleplaying and that it is not to your taste. But to say that it is inherently antithetical to roleplaying? That's just false. 



Saelorn said:


> FATE literally says that you should steal that thing, and invite the accompanying trouble, because you want the fate point.



In Fate, the player says that they want to be presented with opportunities to be a kleptomaniac and then GM provides them with such opportunities in a way that creates story complications, drama, and/or gives the narrative momentum. 



Celebrim said:


> 4) FATE - Wants to be rules light Nar game based on character growth and development. Hasn't a clue how to support that and actively thwarts its own ambitions. In practice, it's a system best enjoyed by ruthless power gamers.



In my years of "in practice" with Fate, I can safely say that power gamers are not the people who most enjoy Fate. It's usually the contrary, namely those who enjoy character-driven narrative, with most of my power gamers preferring games that rewards their system mastery and tactical play better, such as in D&D/Pathfinder. 



Celebrim said:


> Nor do I mind abstraction for the purpose of achieving certain design goals or speed of play. The problem with Fate points is how they end up influencing how the players play and how the players think about playing, especially as they gain some system mastery.



IME running Fate for a number of years, Fate points provide a feedback loop where the game play reinforces the character concept in a manner that makes most players feel that their character concept is being acknowledged and engaged with by the narrative. A player's character concept or backstory can be orthogonal to the play experience of games like D&D, where a player backstory or things they imagine their character doing can be safely ignored by an adventure path, module, or DM with their own homebrew adventure. However, Fate requires the GM to actively engage the character and the player's concept of that character. 



> Many people have had this bad experience with alignment and so want nothing more to do with it, and I totally get that. But the Aspect system actually sets this up as a core quality of the game, and it's not really the compels that bother me (though those could be heavy handed as well) but the whole system. In other words, it's not even primarily the potential loss of agency here, it's that system encourages bad RPing in my opinion.



In my actual practice with game play, both running and playing, I am at a loss about your assessment here as I have never experienced how Fate encourages "bad RPing." 

Alignment is a meta concept or morality and ethics imposed on the character. A Trouble is a meta-narrative concept that the player selects for their character to face. When we read Spider-Man or watch a Spider-Man movie we expect to see Peter Parker grapple with their decisions balancing the role of Peter Parker and Spider-Man in the narrative because Stan Lee picked "With great power comes great responsibility" as the character's Trouble that complicates their life. The Trouble is the player's self-inflicted lightning rod for story complications. 



> A good RPer calls on his character traits (even if he gets no reward for doing so) at dramatically appropriate moments.  A good FATE player calls on his character aspects as often as possible and for as flimsy of reasons as possible.



A good Fate player calls on their character traits as often as possible too, but they may decide to only invoke their aspects when they need a mechanical boost at a dramatically appropriate time to warrant it. You are still roleplaying your character and their traits in Fate even if you are not invoking. 



> As such, what you typically see in a game of FATE is frantically leveraging the Aspect system for straight forward gamist reasons with the result that FATE's primary aesthetic of play ends up not being Nar, but gamist.



IME, Fate's primary aesthetic tends to be fiction-first as these "gamist mechanics" require that the players/GM engage the fiction of the narrative and character concept. 



prabe said:


> "Adding a complication" is not radically different from "My character is penalized," and choosing to be penalized to you can get that precious Fate Point isn't all that different from intentionally failing.



That may be the case if you approach the game in a "play to win" manner that is often prevalent in tactical skirmish games like D&D, but IME with Fate, it is far more often a source of drama in the narrative. 

For example, one character that I was GMing in a fantastical pseudo-Renaissance Venetian setting had the High Concept (not Trouble) of "Black Sheep Scion of House Marzini". He was leading his party to find a bronze bell from a destroyed abbey for a ritual. This led him to another abbey on the edge of the city that had it. When the party arrived to the abbey asking to use the bell, I introduced a complication based on the PC's high concept, namely that one of the abbey's monks came from one of the rival houses of House Marzini. I gave the player a list of names for noble houses that I had prepared, though not for this purpose, and I asked him which of the houses was a rival to House Marzini. This complication led to a stand-off in which the PC refused to grovel at the feet of this monk from a rival family, so the PCs had to find another way into the abbey and steal the bell. What this also did was expand the narrative and world of the setting. As a GM, I now had the name of a rival house to the PCs that I could use in the future, and the PCs now had a rival house that expanded their sense of the world and their PCs place in it. 

Likewise in another game of Fate, a player told me that their character was a veteran of a war, who was left nearly dead on the battlefield. During play, I introduced a complication by having his commanding officer now being a hired-sword for the warehouse thugs they were facing. Instead of immediately escaping the burning building, the PC now wanted to fight the man who left him for dead. 

I commonly used Troubles in this way to build upon a PC and their backstory. IMHO, a Trouble is not about penalizing a character. I actually see it as the opposite: it's rewarding the player by having the narrative actively engage their desired character concept. 



prabe said:


> Also, since I consider the characters to belong to the players, not the GM, I don't really like the GM yanking them around so overtly.



IME, and I acknowledge your own experiences will vary, but I have never felt yanked around so overtly by the GM in Fate as I do in D&D. It's difficult for me to feel yanked by the GM when my self-written troubles is fundamentally me telling the GM how I want to be "yanked." So when it happens, it feels incredibly natural and consensual for my character. 



Saelorn said:


> I'm saying that the player knows how their own character would act, to a much greater degree than anyone else at the table does; and that a player doesn't need a mechanical reward to act in-character.



Players also have the greatest incentive to "bend" how their player would or should act for the sake of "winning" the game, often with a certain degree of self-deception. The psychology of roleplayers is not one-hundred percent devoted to roleplay as some sort of high art or ideal. Even those noble souls who aim towards such lofty goals are not immune to their existence as human players of a game. While players may know best how their character would play, that does not mean that most games necessarily provide incentives to act in-character and that players will roleplay how their character would play. The spirit is willing but the flesh is so weak. 

IMHO, Fate's mechanics are not about telling you how you should play your character - in fact, it's quite the opposite, as the rules suggest that if there is an issue of confusion about what an Aspect means in play that the players and GM should clarify or rewrite it so that the GM and player are on the same page - instead, Fate's mechanics serve as lightning rods for the narrative created to reinforce the player's ability to play the sort of character they want to play. Does a player "need" mechanical reinforcement for this? No. Have I found it helpful in the context of Fate? Yes. Does it make me or my players bad roleplayers? No, not unless you are advocating that this constitutes "badwrongfun" and we know that you wouldn't dare do anything as egregiously rude as that, would you?


----------



## slipshot762 (Jan 28, 2020)

Hit points is a dealbreaker for me, using such for characters is anyway, I seem to not mind if they are used for vehicle or building superstructure or for non-corporeal creatures. Despite having played a little of everything I'm strictly D6 system now largely for that reason.


----------



## Celebrim (Jan 28, 2020)

slipshot762 said:


> Hit points is a dealbreaker for me, using such for characters is anyway, I seem to not mind if they are used for vehicle or building superstructure or for non-corporeal creatures. Despite having played a little of everything I'm strictly D6 system now largely for that reason.




I tend to prefer hit point based systems, but I can totally understand why they would annoy some people. While you can usually do some plausible mapping between hit point loss and in fiction wound creation, there are always edge cases where that isn't easy and in particular, the lack of a strong mechanical connection between the fortune and the fictional wound creation means that this mapping is only flavor. You lose the potential of cinematic creation of fiction through the system, and you lose a tight coupling between the fictional wound and in the in game fiction. That is to say, in an hit point system, I can narrate the production of wounds however I want, but if we finish a session and come back a week later, and a player sees that he's lost 35 hit points, because that represents no concrete wounding, all the player really knows is that he's 35 hit points down and his fictional positioning (what wounds he's supposedly received) is lost and never really mattered anyway.

So I get it.  I really do.  It's just that hit points seems like the dumbest system of all time until you actually use all the other systems out there.


----------



## Zhaleskra (Jan 29, 2020)

Hit points kind of depend. Are they actually "aliveness" points? If so, cool. Do they pretend to be abstract luck/endurance points but are really meat points when you get down to it? Those can go away.

If the positive energy plane can heal you to death then HP are meat points.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 29, 2020)

I'm growing increasingly weary of hit points. I do think they are an easy and functional way to track character damage for game purposes, and they mesh nicely with the other elements of the game as needed (spells, class abilities, and the like)...but I feel like they don't carry any kind of meaning to them other than the binary "you're still on your feet/you're down" state. You can add some other mechanic to them, such as wounds or vitality or what have you, and that may help, but that's not always easy to blend into the related mechanics. 

I also find that ultimately, what HP do is simply allow combat to continue.....so most fights last longer than what might actually be dramatically and/or mechanically exciting. Hit points add to the slog aspect of combat. 

The question is, what other systems may work better? I can think of two game systems for tracking PC harm that are superior (in my opinion, of course) to HP, and that's Blades in the Dark and Apocalypse World. Both work well in their systems. The Blades system is particularly good, in my opinion.

Are there any other systems for this that folks would recommend?


----------



## Undrave (Jan 29, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I'm growing increasingly weary of hit points. I do think they are an easy and functional way to track character damage for game purposes, and they mesh nicely with the other elements of the game as needed (spells, class abilities, and the like)...but I feel like they don't carry any kind of meaning to them other than the binary "you're still on your feet/you're down" state. You can add some other mechanic to them, such as wounds or vitality or what have you, and that may help, but that's not always easy to blend into the related mechanics.
> 
> I also find that ultimately, what HP do is simply allow combat to continue.....so most fights last longer than what might actually be dramatically and/or mechanically exciting. Hit points add to the slog aspect of combat.
> 
> ...




I recall that _Star Wars SAGA_ had a different system where damage would hinder you after a point... the problem is you get into 'spiral of death' situation where injured PCs become easier and easier to harm... 

Then _Mutant & Mastermind_ doesn't have HP (at least in the version I played)...but you get tired of 'Bruised, injured, stunned' every other round...

And in _Cartoon Action Hour_ no one ever dies, characters gather 'Setback tokens' up to their 'Star Power' and if you get more you are automatically 'Defeated' until the end of the Scene. A very bad roll against a very good roll can see you auto-defeated as well. You pick what 'Defeated' means. Its possible to have lingering setback tokens though... but they don't do anything on their own.


----------



## billd91 (Jan 29, 2020)

Undrave said:


> I recall that _Star Wars SAGA_ had a different system where damage would hinder you after a point... the problem is you get into 'spiral of death' situation where injured PCs become easier and easier to harm...




It's not total damage than hinders, it's major, significant instances of taking damage that send you shuffling down the Condition track or attacks from stun settings and certain Force powers. You can be whittled down from full hit points to 0 without slipping down the Condition track at all. The damage just has to come in smaller chunks than a big blow that exceeds your damage threshold.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Jan 29, 2020)

billd91 said:


> It's not total damage than hinders, it's major, significant instances of taking damage that send you shuffling down the Condition track or attacks from stun settings and certain Force powers. You can be whittled down from full hit points to 0 without slipping down the Condition track at all. The damage just has to come in smaller chunks than a big blow that exceeds your damage threshold.




I played that version of Star Wars a few times, and I remember that I liked how it added more to character damage....that it helped give the sense that there is danger and at any point something bad can happen, something worse than "you lose 22 of your 134 hit points!"

But if I recall, it felt like there was a lot to track? I don't recall how damage threshold was calculated....was it just your CON score, or something else? Did it scale with level?


----------



## billd91 (Jan 29, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> But if I recall, it felt like there was a lot to track? I don't recall how damage threshold was calculated....was it just your CON score, or something else? Did it scale with level?




It was based on your Fortitude defense so Con contributed to it as did any levels you had in a heroic class (which was pretty much all of the classes for PCs). Armor could add to it as could feats/talents/racial abilities.


----------



## Michael Silverbane (Jan 29, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> But if I recall, it felt like there was a lot to track? I don't recall how damage threshold was calculated....was it just your CON score, or something else? Did it scale with level?




Damage Threshold was the same as your Fortitude Defense (equivalent to a passive Fort Save, basically) plus a few modifiers.

The Damage Threshold and Condition Track from Star Wars Saga edition has a few flaws, but definitely was an interesting addition to straight hit point attrition.


----------



## dragoner (Jan 29, 2020)

Here is an interesting damage system: Hitting Them Where It Hurts


----------



## Retreater (Jan 29, 2020)

Here are some things I dislike about certain systems:
1) Charts. You can't memorize them. There is no sensible formula. You have to constantly refer to the book to see the effect of your die roll.
2) Ineffective characters. Your characters are only slightly better than an average person. You have like a 10%-20% chance to succeed. Otherwise, your turn is wasted. And your character will die in one hit. 
3) Multiple resolution mechanics. Sometimes you roll over. Sometimes you run under. Sometimes you roll a d20. Sometimes you have to stack 5 playing cards. 
Funny how all of these apply to OSR games.


----------



## Undrave (Jan 29, 2020)

billd91 said:


> It's not total damage than hinders, it's major, significant instances of taking damage that send you shuffling down the Condition track or attacks from stun settings and certain Force powers. You can be whittled down from full hit points to 0 without slipping down the Condition track at all. The damage just has to come in smaller chunks than a big blow that exceeds your damage threshold.




Oh right. I haven't checked the SAGA books in a while. I recall you could be knocked out by Condition Track and not just HP depletion.



Michael Silverbane said:


> Damage Threshold was the same as your Fortitude Defense (equivalent to a passive Fort Save, basically) plus a few modifiers.
> 
> The Damage Threshold and Condition Track from Star Wars Saga edition has a few flaws, but definitely was an interesting addition to straight hit point attrition.




Seems like it would have been cool to see it perfected in a future system.


----------



## Greg K (Jan 29, 2020)

Undrave said:


> Then _Mutant & Mastermind_ doesn't have HP (at least in the version I played)...but you get tired of 'Bruised, injured, stunned' every other round...



Undrave, I am unclear by what you wrote. Are you saying that players get tired of it?  If so, my own experience was different . My regular players didn't get tired of it after several years of playing. Furthermore, the other half-dozen visiting gamer friends that sat in for sessions really enjoyed the damage save system for M&M (which has been the system for all editions. However I have not run it since just prior to the 3e  so I don't recall if there were tweaks to the base save numbers over the editions).


----------



## Undrave (Jan 29, 2020)

Greg K said:


> Undrave, I am unclear by what you wrote. Are you saying that players get tired of it?  If so, my own experience was different . My regular players didn't get tired of it after several years of playing. Furthermore, the other half-dozen visiting gamer friends that sat in for sessions really enjoyed the damage save system for M&M (which has been the system for all editions. However I have not run it since just prior to the 3e  so I don't recall if there were tweaks to the base save numbers over the editions).




I think it was mostly because my party had me with my super strong natural armour power and then normal people in leather jacket so the DM would constantly send guys that would be able to go over my resistance, but anytime they hit one of my ally it was ALWAYS "Bruised, injured, stun", never just 'Bruised' or 'Bruised, Injured'. Basically we didn't really get to experience the full effect of the damage system, just the extreme. Felt like the DM didn't want to let me just be TOUGH. Like, ever.

We had fun with the rest of the system. Like that time I broke through the concrete floor of a building thanks to my digging speed, grabbed a Mastermind and used her to bash her own computer with


----------



## Tony Vargas (Jan 29, 2020)

Reynard said:


> So if you HATE a system, why? Explain it to me.



 Sorry, this just made me think, "it'd be cute if there were a system called 'HATE'  maybe a FUDGE/FATE parody?"


----------



## Retreater (Jan 29, 2020)

Tony Vargas said:


> Sorry, this just made me think, "it'd be cute if there were a system called 'HATE'  maybe a FUDGE/FATE parody?"



As I actually hate FATE, maybe I should be the writer? Haha


----------



## slipshot762 (Jan 30, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> The question is, what other systems may work better?




For me, the damage/wound mechanic of D6 system is the best I've come across.


----------



## Zhaleskra (Jan 30, 2020)

I like how in HARP the Endurance skill is actually endurance. You aren't wounded unless a critical result specifically mentions it. "Hits" just means your endurance went down X amount. While HARP is a death spiral system, like most such systems, it has mitigating factors.


----------



## Ratskinner (Jan 31, 2020)

hawkeyefan said:


> I'm growing increasingly weary of hit points. I do think they are an easy and functional way to track character damage for game purposes, and they mesh nicely with the other elements of the game as needed (spells, class abilities, and the like)...but I feel like they don't carry any kind of meaning to them other than the binary "you're still on your feet/you're down" state. You can add some other mechanic to them, such as wounds or vitality or what have you, and that may help, but that's not always easy to blend into the related mechanics.
> 
> I also find that ultimately, what HP do is simply allow combat to continue.....so most fights last longer than what might actually be dramatically and/or mechanically exciting. Hit points add to the slog aspect of combat.
> 
> ...




I second the Blades system as pretty well awesome. 

The Fate system is somewhere in-between, at least to my eyes. Its especially flexible if you consider the various implementations of Conditions that are in the Fate toolkit. That is, flexible from a systematic standpoint. The core Consequences system is obviously narratively more flexible. I like it because it gives narrative meaning to injuries and the like. The HP system generates what I call "Disney Combat" and I think I'm done with that as the default.


----------



## Stormonu (Jan 31, 2020)

Only one system I can apply the word HATE to, and that would be Palladium - moreso for what the company has done than their terrible game system.

Other systems I DISLIKE are the SAGA Dragonlance rules and D20 Modern.  The former was simply unnessary and the latter was a poor fit for modern game design - I can't fanthom anything short of superheroes as characters above 10th level in that system and trying to make the game fit for Star Wars was just ...bad.  I'll take SAGA Star Wars over D20 Star Wars, and I feel SAGA Star Wars murdered a good RPG pretty much as well.


----------



## Crusadius (Feb 2, 2020)

I can dislike systems for various reasons.

I like systems to be able to produce reasonably balanced characters so systems/games that don't do this I dislike e.g. RIFTs.

Some systems can be overly complicated. I'm sure some games released in the nineties would fit into this category. Also having charts for everything would certainly discourage me (now) e.g Rolemaster.

I like clear guidelines so any system that leaves me to guess something isn't my favorite system. Systems like this would not be on my list of games to run, but might be OK for me to play.


----------



## steenan (Feb 3, 2020)

I rarely "hate" games, because if I strongly dislike one, I just don't play it, so I don't let the feeling bloom into hatred.
But there are things that make me say a hard "NO" to a game:

Games that lie to me. This typically takes a form of the game being advertised or presenting itself in the book with "You can do X in this game" while the rules do not help do X or, in some cases, even get in the way of doing X. I "can" do anything, running a freeform. A game needs to offer significantly more to be worth my money and time.
Games that want me to lie (me as a GM, not my NPCs). If a game advises me to bait and switch or to railroad players while giving them an illusion of choice, I won't even try running it.
Games that offer a lot of options and expect me to balance them somehow. I don't want to review each character and make sure it's not too strong or too weak. If it is rules legal and fits the themes of the game, I expect it to work in play. Balancing things is the designer's job, not mine. And if someone does not want to put the effort into balancing their game, they should make is simple enough that balance is not a problem.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Feb 3, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> I'm not familiar with how Champions does its Disadvantages, but in GURPS, it's covered by a random roll to see whether you succumb (with the value of the Disadvantage scaling with the difficulty of the roll). So if you're playing a typical fantasy thief, you might have a compulsion to steal valuable objects, and overcoming that compulsion requires rolling 6 or under on 3d6. Both the player and the character are entirely in the same headspace, that stealing this valuable object right now would be a bad thing, because of the inevitable trouble which it will bring. But they may not be able to help themself, which is what the roll represents.




On the contrary. "May not be able to help themself" here just means that the orbital mind control lasers hit, and the character actions were taken entirely out of the player's hands. This I find inimical to roleplaying except under the rare circumstance where there is actually compulsion magic at play that actively overrides player and character agency alike.



> FATE literally says that you should steal that thing, and invite the accompanying trouble, because you want the fate point.




This means that the player and the character have their motivation aligned. They might want it for a different purpose (the character wants to steal because that's how their character was set up, while the player wants the fate point). In both cases they know it's a bad idea that will lead to messy complications - but they are also tempted to do it anyway because it gives them something they want. On the other hand they and I alike can, at cost, choose to resist the temptation.

Fate points put me in my character's headspace even if I personally don't give a damn about a magical faberge egg (or whatever) and am only stealing because I think that's what my character might do. Whether they do it or not is contextual depending on how tempting that thing is.

Further, having a mechanic like Fate points enables me to play certain self-sabotaging characters without being a dick. If I'm playing D&D and play a character that risks bringing trouble down on the party because they can't keep their hands to themselves I'm dicking over the rest of the party when I risk the party's success. If I get a fate point for it I am in a meaningful way helping the entire group be more prepared (to the tune of one fate point) for what we actually care about. I also know in a game of Fate that everyone else is going to be having their own drama of this sort and it's not me personally showboating and taking up entire scenes to make them all about my character.


As for games I actively hate there's FATAL and RaHoWa of course.  But in general life's too short for hatred. There are plenty of systems I dislike, but I'd rather scavenge the good parts and leave things like the Vampire: The Masquerade or GURPS system on one side while keeping the setting or sourcebooks.


----------



## Manbearcat (Feb 3, 2020)

steenan said:


> I rarely "hate" games, because if I strongly dislike one, I just don't play it, so I don't let the feeling bloom into hatred.
> But there are things that make me say a hard "NO" to a game:
> 
> Games that lie to me. This typically takes a form of the game being advertised or presenting itself in the book with "You can do X in this game" while the rules do not help do X or, in some cases, even get in the way of doing X. I "can" do anything, running a freeform. A game needs to offer significantly more to be worth my money and time.
> ...




I'll just copy this brilliant post by @steenan and agree with it in full.

The only thing I could add to it is probably:

* Games that require a not-insignificant amount of "specific beats general" corner case mental overhead to run while the designers simultaneously overwhelmingly punt both the "specifics" to me to infer through multiple rules interactions (that may or may not be intentional) AND don't provide a robust set of GMing principles attached to a focused play premise, the substrate of which I can use to guide my inference.

That is sort of a combination of steenan's 1 and 3 though, so it may not be an altogether discrete category.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Feb 3, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> Fate points put me in my character's headspace even if I personally don't give a damn about a magical faberge egg (or whatever) and am only stealing because I think that's what my character might do. Whether they do it or not is contextual depending on how tempting that thing is.



If you were actually doing it _because_ it's what you think the character would do, then it wouldn't matter whether or not you got a fate point for it. If you were actually role-playing, then you would care about the item _because_ the character wants it.


----------



## chaochou (Feb 3, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> If you were actually doing it _because_ it's what you think the character would do, then it wouldn't matter whether or not you got a fate point for it. If you were actually role-playing, then you would care about the item _because_ the character wants it.




And if you were actually roll-playing in GURPS you wouldn't need a dice roll to tell you to roleplay.


----------



## John Dallman (Feb 3, 2020)

Like many others, I don't usually hate games, because I don't play them if they seem defective. There was one game that I hated, and which my character hated for entirely different reasons: 

I hated it because the action sequencing method (for fights, and any other fast-moving actions) was explicitly based on action movie conventions for cutting between characters. This was a homebrew system, and this point had not been clear in the GM's material about it. I have very poor sight, don't watch movies or TV and thus have no understanding of their conventions. The effect of this was that the sequencing seemed utterly arbitrary, tending to perverse, and I could not think about what I wanted to do (in a complex and unfamiliar game system) while other players were having their turns. 

My character hated it because we'd been moved a few years (about ten) forward in time, by our chief opponent, but this had to remain utterly secret, so we could not contact our previous friends or families. From the character's point of view, they'd all been killed. The chief opponent also seemed utterly invincible, especially once he threw us back in time about 2,500 years, to a place where we seemed to have no significance and be utterly at the mercy of the (Greek) gods. The DM had not done any game mastering for about thirty years, and it rather showed: he was trying to run his game in a manner appropriate for rowdy teenagers, rather than adults in their late forties or early fifties. 

All of the players protested about the latter aspect, although some of them could cope with the action-movie part. The GM finally accepted we were not enjoying it when I pointed out he'd given us a way to create a gigantic time paradox, and I was intending to use it. The whole impression the game was giving us was that human life had no importance or significance. Given that, why pander to cruel gods? Destroying the timestream at least denies them their fun.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Feb 3, 2020)

chaochou said:


> And if you were actually roll-playing in GURPS you wouldn't need a dice roll to tell you to roleplay.



Making a Willpower check (or whatever) is not a voluntary choice. You can no more resist doing this thing, than you can resist bleeding out when you've been shot. You don't want to do it, but you do it anyway, because you have no choice.

Role-playing is _only_ concerned with the process of making choices.


----------



## Manbearcat (Feb 3, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> If you were actually doing it _because_ it's what you think the character would do, then it wouldn't matter whether or not you got a fate point for it. If you were actually role-playing, then you would care about the item _because_ the character wants it.




This is fundamentally misunderstanding how the brain works Saelorn.

Positive reinforcement (even "altruism") releases dopamine.  The brain receives it and then associates the keying behavior with the good feeling. 

Feedback loop complete.

This works with behavior that is (everything from a "fix", to how it engages with your life-system holistically, and from a base utility perspective) good for you and bad for you and behavior that is both simultaneously.

You feel your character's want while you simultaneously want-by-proxy (Fate Point), and even though you know it may cause you a downstream (or even immediate) problem, the agency-hijacking-machinery is potent.  Maybe you exert your will over the machinery...maybe the machinery exerts its will over you.  Fate (and games that use similar machinery) just works to simulate this agency-hijacking process and does it pretty damn well.


----------



## Umbran (Feb 3, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Role-playing is _only_ concerned with the process of making choices.




That seems to be either a poorly qualified or overly-restrictive statement, depending.

Whose choices are you talking about?  Player or character?


----------



## Manbearcat (Feb 3, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Making a Willpower check (or whatever) is not a voluntary choice. You can no more resist doing this thing, than you can resist bleeding out when you've been shot. You don't want to do it, but you do it anyway, because you have no choice.
> 
> Role-playing is _only_ concerned with the process of making choices.




What about the process of having your agency hijacked by your biology?..which is pretty much fundamental to the human experience!


----------



## Umbran (Feb 3, 2020)

Manbearcat said:


> What about the process of having your agency hijacked by your biology?..which is pretty much fundamental to the human experience!




There are cases where agency is hijacked.  There are also cases... where you are fundamentally unaware of how much agency you actually have.  If by "agency" we mean "knowing ability to make decisions and choices".

A whole lot of our positions and opinions, and thus our choices, are the result of brain action over which we have little or no control, as it is not conscious.  We attach rationalizatiosn to many of our thoughts after the fact, and think of them as conscous chocies, when they really aren't.  

The limbic system is a harsh master.


----------



## Manbearcat (Feb 3, 2020)

@Umbran 

Yup, neuroscience is revealing this to us more and more.  That is pretty much the consensus position in the field at this point.

However, I figured that Saelorn was arguing from a position of agency:roleplaying so I didn't want to disagree with the premise and introduce a tangent.  In order to make the conversation focused, I'll just allow for the premise he seems to be working under.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Feb 3, 2020)

Umbran said:


> That seems to be either a poorly qualified or overly-restrictive statement, depending.
> 
> Whose choices are you talking about?  Player or character?



Role-playing is the process by which a player makes decisions from the perspective of their character. Is that under dispute? Is someone using some other definition of role-playing, which is at odds with that? Or is there some other, commonly-accepted term for the process by which a player makes in-character decisions?


----------



## lowkey13 (Feb 3, 2020)

*Deleted by user*


----------



## Aldarc (Feb 3, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Role-playing is the process by which a player makes decisions from the perspective of their character. Is that under dispute? Is someone using some other definition of role-playing, which is at odds with that? Or is there some other, commonly-accepted term for the process by which a player makes in-character decisions?



Part of the problem is that you are assuming that the character's decisions and player's decisions will always be aligned, but that is not always the case even if one assumes that a player knows best how their character would act. It does not mean that they do so perfectly, all the time, or without the impulses of outside knowledge about the fact that they are playing a game and that the player may have play goals that are at odds with the character's in-game goals. 



Saelorn said:


> If you were actually doing it _because_ it's what you think the character would do, then it wouldn't matter whether or not you got a fate point for it. If you were actually role-playing, then you would care about the item _because_ the character wants it.



This is a false dichotomy, Saelorn.


----------



## Umbran (Feb 3, 2020)

lowkey13 said:


> It doesn't mean that you have to get all violent. Or mean.




If you aren't getting mean... is the word "hate" appropriate?

I mean, I know we are in a world in which we have to accept literally everyone's usage of words, even when that usage is literally the opposite of the nominal meaning of the word.  But still, I'll be a stick in the mud, and suggest that just maybe we should push back on it.  "Dislike such that I will not play it," is not the same as "dislike such that I denigrate people who do play it", and maybe we shouldn't use the same word for both.

And, I think it reasonable to say that the former is fine, and the latter is toxic behavior we should not, collectively, be tolerating.

But, if you wanna use the same word for behavior that's okay, and behavior that isn't... well, have fun keeping your discussion cogent.


----------



## lowkey13 (Feb 3, 2020)

*Deleted by user*


----------



## atanakar (Feb 3, 2020)

I don't HATE any system per se.

1) I shy away from systems that offer *too many* options. I don't want to read a thesis on how a RPG can emulate reality. I'm sure GURPS is awesome but when no one has exprience with the system it is daunting to create a character. It took us two hours to create a half-troll detective with minor arcane abilities... I never had the courage to help build the four other characters. The same character took 30 minutes with Modern AGE by Green Ronin.

2) Illusion of choice is also one of my pet peeves. By that I mean that if there is only one optimal build for each archetype why offer options that will never be selected. This leads to discontent by players who are not good at optimizing. I'm looking at you D&D 3e, 4e, D20 Modern, etc. 5e paths are fine for me.

3) Systems that have a very elaborate character background creation systems are not my cup of tea. I prefer the background to remain a bit vague so the player and I can integrate things on-the-go. The INFINITY 2d20 rpg by Modiphius suffers from this. The Coriolis rpg by Free League, has some background choices but only for the larger questions. It is a bit more than I am used to but it works very well with the setting so we had fun using it.

4) Systems that use dice with symbols as with FFG's Genesys. I'm don't want to pay for them. We played a Star Wars FFG game and we didn't enjoy all the dice interpretation we had to do.


----------



## Nagol (Feb 3, 2020)

Umbran said:


> If you aren't getting mean... is the word "hate" appropriate?
> 
> I mean, I know we are in a world in which we have to accept literally everyone's usage of words, even when that usage is literally the opposite of the nominal meaning of the word.  But still, I'll be a stick in the mud, and suggest that just maybe we should push back on it.  "Dislike such that I will not play it," is not the same as "dislike such that I denigrate people who do play it", and maybe we shouldn't use the same word for both.
> 
> ...




Yes, it is a visceral feeling.  One that need not be acted upon, but is there nonetheless.  I hate lots of things: "wet" foods like soups and stews, certain singers like Kate Bush that literally cause me pain on high notes, and yes, some books full of words that are the antithesis of my perspective of my hobby.

Here"s Oxford's definition:  HATE: [transitive, intransitive] to dislike somebody/something very much

Yep, looks right.  I hate those things.


----------



## lordabdul (Feb 4, 2020)

steenan said:


> But there are things that make me say a hard "NO" to a game



While I think a lot of people (including me) tend to agree with your list, I have a suspicion that if we were to specifically name some games and accuse them of such things, a lot of differences of opinions might suddenly surface  (especially since I can't really come up with any game that does any of the things you say... I can come up with some _adventures_ that do a few of those things, though)


----------



## Nagol (Feb 4, 2020)

lordabdul said:


> While I think a lot of people (including me) tend to agree with your list, I have a suspicion that if we were to specifically name some games and accuse them of such things, a lot of differences of opinions might suddenly surface  (especially since I can't really come up with any game that does any of the things you say... I can come up with some _adventures_ that do a few of those things, though)




Kult first edition has the tag line "Death is only the beginning" on the cover.  That intrigued me so I picked it up to see how the game handled the transition through death and how they balanced/changed things for those who died and those who hadn't.  I read the book through and then went back and checked it again.  There were rules for getting killed..  That's it.  There was no after-life in the game for PCs.  I was put out.


----------



## lordabdul (Feb 4, 2020)

Nagol said:


> Death is only the beginning



Haha yes, I can see how that's totally misleading


----------



## miyabhai101 (Feb 4, 2020)

There are some systems that I dislike and don't want to play or GM, but I don't have an all-abiding hate for them. They just aren't ones I enjoy.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Feb 4, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> If you were actually doing it _because_ it's what you think the character would do, then it wouldn't matter whether or not you got a fate point for it. If you were actually role-playing, then you would care about the item _because_ the character wants it.




All of which assumes that I have a perfect knowledge of everything my character would want to do and a perfect knowledge of the backstory of every item that would come up. And that I weight things exactly the same way as they do.

In reality I'm never going to be able to see the shine of the gold and feel it warm up under my fingertips - I simply do not get the same visceral. If it belongs in a museum it would be lucky to have a backstory of the index card's worth of text you normally see by a museum exhibit.

If on the other hand I get a bennie like a Fate point a significant part of that visceral, tactile mismatch vanishes. I might not touch it - but I still get the same dopamine hit of getting something shiny.  And the Fate Point gives a clue visible to everyone _how much_ my character wants it.

To use an analogy, too many movies these days are acted in front of a green screen. Your position is that if you're truly acting a green screen and no props at all shouldn't make a difference. Mine is that I want props of about the right shape and weight even if we're going to CGI an overlay to them because it is much much easier to act when more of it is real.



Saelorn said:


> Making a Willpower check (or whatever) is not a voluntary choice. You can no more resist doing this thing, than you can resist bleeding out when you've been shot. You don't want to do it, but you do it anyway, because you have no choice.
> 
> Role-playing is _only_ concerned with the process of making choices.




And this is why Fate is far superior to GURPS for roleplaying. In Fate I get to make choices about whether I do something, and am given temptations and the dopamine hit my character would get for giving in to the temptation. In GURPS, as you say, "Making a Willpower check is not a voluntary choice" - I am not roleplaying because I am not making choices. Instead I am being mind controlled by the dice and then filling in why I did what I did. In Fate I am roleplaying, in GURPS I am not.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Feb 4, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> <Snip>
> 
> In Fate I am roleplaying, in GURPS I am not.



While I agree with many of your points, let's not rush into the same badwrongfun accusations you're defending against.  While not my preference, GURPS is a fine role playing game.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Feb 4, 2020)

Ovinomancer said:


> While I agree with many of your points, let's not rush into the same badwrongfun accusations you're defending against.  While not my preference, GURPS is a fine role playing game.



You're right and I overstated that. I'm not roleplaying at the specific instant that the dice decide whether I am going to give in to temptation. I do roleplay the rest of the time and knowing the game will take my control away causes me to be even more wary.


----------



## Nagol (Feb 4, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> You're right and I overstated that. I'm not roleplaying at the specific instant that the dice decide whether I am going to give in to temptation. I do roleplay the rest of the time and knowing the game will take my control away causes me to be even more wary.




In FATE, the player and the character motivations can end up at odds ("I'd never steal! But my player thinks taking the chip is a better choice and is willing to insert a narrative complication here and now so I guess I will".  The player has complete control over the character actions, but the character can never exceed or fail to meet expectations.

GURPS, Hero, Pendragon, and other games with mechanical impulse-control systems mechanically model aspirational view versus in-the-face-of-temptation effects.  The character and player motivations stay aligned, but the character may have either hidden depths or insufficient strength to succeed where the player would like.  "I would never steal.  I'm a good person.  I really shouldn't take that wallet.  Taking that wallet really wasn't stealing!  OK, it was, but it was in a good cause!".  It is not mind control so much as either exceeding or failing to live up to player expectations.

In GURPs and Hero, the dice will only remove control in those situations the player specifically arranges as part of character creation -- for which the player is duly compensated.  You don't want to have an impulse control problem?  Avoid the character attributes that inflict them.

Some campaigns specifically insist on a variety to better emulate the expected genre -- "Unwilling to kill" is a fairly common default expectation in the superhero genre games, for example.


----------



## lordabdul (Feb 4, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> You're right and I overstated that. I'm not roleplaying at the specific instant that the dice decide whether I am going to give in to temptation. I do roleplay the rest of the time and knowing the game will take my control away causes me to be even more wary.



With my previous group (who really liked GURPS), they didn't do it that way. First, at character creation, they felt incentivized to make complex personalities (as opposed to being "forced to take 3 flaws" or something like that) in the form of point credits to spend on other stuff. During play, most of the time, they didn't roll for their disadvantages, they just played the character that way because _that's the character they created and wanted to play anyway_. They basically saw their advantages as a "roleplaying promise" that rewards you in the form of being better at firing guns or performing surgery. The only times they would roll would either be when they weren't sure how to play it (so it effectively acted as a guide, rather than as something forcing you to act a given way), or when it's  a disadvantage that's basically not any different from any other "_let's see if you're affected by this_" mechanic (like CON rolls for poison or SAN rolls for monsters). They liked it because they felt more of the character's behaviour was under their control, as opposed to something the GM throws onto you like compels or intrusions and such.

Personally I like both GURPS and FATE, and I know several people active on the SJGames forums are the same, where FATE is perceived like a lightweight/narrative alternative to GURPS, and people end up playing both depending on the group and adventure at hand.


----------



## prabe (Feb 4, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> You're right and I overstated that. I'm not roleplaying at the specific instant that the dice decide whether I am going to give in to temptation. I do roleplay the rest of the time and knowing the game will take my control away causes me to be even more wary.



I think I'd rather have the dice make that determination than have the GM make it because he couldn't think of anything "cooler" than taking control of my character.


----------



## Aldarc (Feb 4, 2020)

Nagol said:


> In FATE, the player and the character motivations can end up at odds (*"I'd never steal! *But my player thinks taking the chip is a better choice and is willing to insert a narrative complication here and now so I guess I will".  The player has complete control over the character actions, but the character can never exceed or fail to meet expectations.



GM: "Then why did you select 'Insatiable Kleptomaniac' as the Trouble for your character?"



prabe said:


> I think I'd rather have the dice make that determination than have the GM make it because he couldn't think of anything "cooler" than taking control of my character.



How is the GM taking control of your character? If you have Fate points, you can spend a Fate point to reject the complication. If you want the Fate point, you are accepting the complication presented to you, and you get the Fate point. If you want to steal, then you are accepting the complication presented to you, and you still get the Fate point. D&D has far more readily available ways for the GM to remove player agency than anything that Fate offers.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Feb 4, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> In reality I'm never going to be able to see the shine of the gold and feel it warm up under my fingertips - I simply do not get the same visceral. If it belongs in a museum it would be lucky to have a backstory of the index card's worth of text you normally see by a museum exhibit.
> 
> If on the other hand I get a bennie like a Fate point a significant part of that visceral, tactile mismatch vanishes. I might not touch it - but I still get the same dopamine hit of getting something shiny.  And the Fate Point gives a clue visible to everyone _how much_ my character wants it.



What you're saying is that you have a poor imagination, and therefor need to meta-game if you want to generate a result that would approximate the outcome of successfully role-playing.

I guess that makes sense. In the same way that people who have never bowled before might use the bumpers, because it wouldn't be fun for them to roll nothing but gutter balls.


----------



## Aldarc (Feb 4, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> What you're saying is that you have a poor imagination, and therefor need to meta-game if you want to generate a result that would approximate the outcome of successfully role-playing.
> 
> I guess that makes sense. In the same way that people who have never bowled before might use the bumpers, because it wouldn't be fun for them to roll nothing but gutter balls.



This sort of rude condescension is utterly uncalled for, Saelorn.


----------



## Ovinomancer (Feb 4, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> This sort of rude condescension is utterly uncalled for, Saelorn.



It always seems to end up here, though.


----------



## Nagol (Feb 4, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> GM: "Then why did you select 'Insatiable Kleptomaniac' as the Trouble for your character?"
> 
> How is the GM taking control of your character? If you have Fate points, you can spend a Fate point to reject the complication. If you want the Fate point, you are accepting the complication presented to you, and you get the Fate point. If you want to steal, then you are accepting the complication presented to you, and you still get the Fate point. D&D has far more readily available ways for the GM to remove player agency than anything that Fate offers.




The aspect could be something like "Likes glittery things", too.  Or the character is a hypocrite.


----------



## Umbran (Feb 4, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> What you're saying is that you have a poor imagination...




*Mod Note:*

Insulting people is a great way to get yourself dis-invited from the thread.  Please find a topic you can discuss while also treating your fellow posters with respect, as you won't be part of this conversation going forward.


----------



## Aldarc (Feb 4, 2020)

Nagol said:


> The aspect could be something like "Likes glittery things", too.  Or the character is a hypocrite.



IMHO, that's the fun thing about Fate. You can write your character Aspects in a wide variety of ways, and the language of these Aspects impacts the interpretation of the character and their subsequent story complications.


----------



## Nagol (Feb 4, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> IMHO, that's the fun thing about Fate. You can write your character Aspects in a wide variety of ways, and the language of these Aspects impacts the interpretation of the character and their subsequent story complications.




I agree!  The free-form attributes are a wonderful thing.  I like FATE games though truth be told I've used and will likely to continue to use older variations more frequently than newer.  I own _Dresden Files_, but the only games I've run and played in are based on _Strands of FATE_.

I prefer _Pendragon _and especially the Hero system_._ and run them much more frequently.


----------



## Aldarc (Feb 4, 2020)

Nagol said:


> I like FATE games though truth be told I've used and will likely to continue to use older variations more frequently than newer.  I own _Dresden Files_, but the only games I've run and played in are based on _Strands of FATE_.



I have looked briefly into Strands of Fate and heard good things about it. However, I find that the more elaborate Fate becomes, the more difficult it becomes for me to grok. But blessed be those who enjoy it, for gaming should be fun.


----------



## Neonchameleon (Feb 4, 2020)

prabe said:


> I think I'd rather have the dice make that determination than have the GM make it because he couldn't think of anything "cooler" than taking control of my character.




You do realise that in Fate you can refuse a compel? It's not the GM making the determination - it's the player who is deciding whether it's worth accepting.


----------



## Aldarc (Feb 5, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> You do realise that in Fate you can refuse a compel? It's not the GM making the determination - it's the player who is deciding whether it's worth accepting.



You can also negotiate a compel with the GM, especially if you believe that the nature of the compel is out-of-character or is incongruent with the wording/intent of the Aspect. This is even discussed in the Fate-SRD:


> In order to compel an aspect, explain why the aspect is relevant, and then make an offer as to what the complication is. You can negotiate the terms of the complication a bit, until you reach a reasonable consensus.



And also later:


> GMs, remember that *a player is ultimately responsible for everything that the character says and does.* you can offer decision-based compels, but if the player doesn’t feel like the decision is one that the character would make, don’t force the issue by charging a fate point. instead, negotiate the terms of the compel until you find a decision the player is comfortable making, and a complication that chains from that decision instead. if you can’t agree on something, drop it.



Consent as part of the social contract of gaming is kinda a HUGE part of Fate.


----------



## Arilyn (Feb 5, 2020)

I like Fate aspects because of self balancing. If my trouble comes up in game, I get rewarded with a chip. If it doesn't, then I don't. I like how the aspects can be used, not just for complications, but as a way to get a boost too. They are game mechanics and describe your character's personality.  The Fate points can also be used to help your buddy as well, which is classic TV drama. I caused trouble, but now my "flaws" are of great help to story, (Okay, now it sounds like Curious George.) 

And if a player prefers the more unflawed hero type, aspects like honourable, or never refuse aid to those in need, can be easily leveraged against the character. 

It's not bribery, or GM controlling your character, or meta-gaming. It's just a cool mechanic.  All RPGs have out of game mechanics. I mean we are sitting around a table, usually munching on snacks or drinking beer. There's only so much immersion that can be achieved.


----------



## prabe (Feb 5, 2020)

Neonchameleon said:


> You do realise that in Fate you can refuse a compel? It's not the GM making the determination - it's the player who is deciding whether it's worth accepting.



You do realize that it's usually the GM who decides to compel, yes? And that if the player wants to refuse the compel, he pays a cost to do so? It contains elements of bribery, extortion, and the GM hijacking the player's character.

I've played FATE, and I've *run* FATE; while I'm a better DM for the experience, I'll never do the latter again (and I don't know that I trust anyone enough to do the former, but I suppose it's possible). *In my experience*, there's literally nothing I want to do in a TRPG that FATE does better than anything else. In the ideal world this would go without saying, but--obviously--your experience may be different.


----------



## pemerton (Feb 5, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Making a Willpower check (or whatever) is not a voluntary choice. You can no more resist doing this thing, than you can resist bleeding out when you've been shot. You don't want to do it, but you do it anyway, because you have no choice.
> 
> Role-playing is _only_ concerned with the process of making choices.



This doesn't make sense. If it's not voluntary then it's not a choice. I don't _choose _to sneeze, or to bleed when shot.

But the typical compulsion to steal that might be resolved in GURPS by rolling dice is not involuntary kleptomania. It is succumbing to temptation, which _is _a choice and hence, as @chaochou said, is not well-modelled as a saving throw.


----------



## pemerton (Feb 5, 2020)

steenan said:


> there are things that make me say a hard "NO" to a game:
> 
> Games that lie to me. This typically takes a form of the game being advertised or presenting itself in the book with "You can do X in this game" while the rules do not help do X or, in some cases, even get in the way of doing X. I "can" do anything, running a freeform. A game needs to offer significantly more to be worth my money and time.
> Games that want me to lie (me as a GM, not my NPCs). If a game advises me to bait and switch or to railroad players while giving them an illusion of choice, I won't even try running it.
> Games that offer a lot of options and expect me to balance them somehow. I don't want to review each character and make sure it's not too strong or too weak. If it is rules legal and fits the themes of the game, I expect it to work in play. Balancing things is the designer's job, not mine. And if someone does not want to put the effort into balancing their game, they should make is simple enough that balance is not a problem.





lordabdul said:


> While I think a lot of people (including me) tend to agree with your list, I have a suspicion that if we were to specifically name some games and accuse them of such things, a lot of differences of opinions might suddenly surface  (especially since I can't really come up with any game that does any of the things you say... I can come up with some _adventures_ that do a few of those things, though)



My experience is that AD&D 2nd ed tends to tick all three boxes - the third depending a bit on what options are in use. Rolemaster has GMing advice that ticks the second box, although it can be ignored; and can incline towards the third box if the GM is not prepared to do the sort of work in curating options that @steenan wishes to avoid. By all accounts 3E D&D ticks the third box pretty strongly.

The above might be controversial. Even more controversially, I think Runequest somewhat ticks the first box, in that its actual mechanics, while elegant and simple, can struggle to deliver a game of bronze-age fantasy adventure.


----------



## Aldarc (Feb 5, 2020)

pemerton said:


> The above might be controversial. Even more controversially, I think Runequest somewhat ticks the first box, in that its actual mechanics, while elegant and simple, can struggle to deliver a game of bronze-age fantasy adventure.



In your opinion, what sort of system would be more conducive for "[delivering] a game of bronze-age fantasy"?


----------



## pemerton (Feb 5, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> In your opinion, what sort of system would be more conducive for "[delivering] a game of bronze-age fantasy"?



It's a good question. I'm not sure what the answer is. My main issue with RQ - what creates the "gap" between the abstract perfection of the rules (which I say with all sincerity) and my issue with play is that the rules encourage caution and avoidance of danger, whereas I feel that bronze-age fantasy adventure should encourage facing danger rather than running from it.

I've never played Agon. But it's John Harper and so I imagine pretty good.

I've played one session of In a Wicked Age. It's very evocative, and I think could be fun over time, although its resolution system is a little abstract. (Vincent Baker talked a lot about this issue with the system on his blog, in the clouds/boxes/arrows series.)

I'm not a Fate person myself, but I imagine it could do it, though being Fate it wouldn't be _distinctively _bronze age.


----------



## Nagol (Feb 5, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> In your opinion, what sort of system would be more conducive for "[delivering] a game of bronze-age fantasy"?




RQ II and III were early iron age fantasy.

It strongly depends on what you mean by bronze age fantasy.  

GURPS and Hero (both properly limited) do a great job.  I suspect a Dungeonworld variant would be fantastic at it.  The One Ring would also be a system I'd consider.


----------



## Manbearcat (Feb 5, 2020)

Regarding Bronze Age fantasy:

Whether we're talking Fantasy Ancient Greece or Conan's Hyborian Age, I think it really depends on what kind of feel you're looking for.

I think subbing in AW/Blades Harm for DW HPs would be a good idea.  Then you would just have to rewire how Armor works (which can be done trivially).  Then you would just have to figure out what kind of individual behavior and what kind of macro premise you're promoting and integrate your Basic Moves and Playbooks into that.  

But honestly, you can get away with Conan's Hyborian Age in Dungeon World.  The Barbarian class playbook is cribbed directly from Conan.  You would just need to curate playbooks playable, alter the Alignments a bit to reflect the premise, and change the End of Session move (and a few others) to promote the play premise.

I think any new game of this variety though needs to also use Blades' Position and Effect tech.  In my opinion, its simply better than orthodox AW/DW.  In the course of that though, you would have to slightly update GM move structure.


----------



## chaochou (Feb 5, 2020)

Nagol said:


> RQ II and III were early iron age fantasy.




You might think so. But my copy of RQ2, which I've had since about 1982, says on page 5: "Glorantha is a bronze age world." Clear as day.

If I think 'Bronze Age fantasy', I'd immediately think of Glorantha and then go for the most modern of the Gloranthan rpg systems - which would be something in the HeroWars-HeroQuest line.


----------



## Nagol (Feb 5, 2020)

chaochou said:


> You might think so. But my copy of RQ2, which I've had since about 1982, says on page 5: "Glorantha is a bronze age world." Clear as day.
> 
> If I think 'Bronze Age fantasy', I'd immediately think of Glorantha and then go for the most modern of the Gloranthan rpg systems - which would be something in the HeroWars-HeroQuest line.




Which is weird because the metal armours and weapons were definitely early iron -- especially the two-handed swords.  Luckily, I believe you because otherwise I'd have to dig through boxes of unsorted RPGs to locate my copy.


----------



## chaochou (Feb 5, 2020)

Nagol said:


> Which is weird because the metal armours and weapons were definitely early iron -- especially the two-handed swords.  Luckily, I believe you because otherwise I'd have to dig through boxes of unsorted RPGs to locate my copy.




I'm not being argumentative - I was simply a huge fan of RQ2 and a long-time player of all things Glorantha. In RQ2, iron was a rune metal for cults that could work it, rare and very dangerous. But no more rare and dangerous than lead weapons, or gold weapons, or wooden weapons. 

Bronze was the default. The properties of other weapons and armour weren't envisaged as a function of metallurgy, but of religious and cultural blessing.


----------



## pemerton (Feb 5, 2020)

Aldarc said:


> In your opinion, what sort of system would be more conducive for "[delivering] a game of bronze-age fantasy"?



A further response: of course @chaochou is right to point to HeroWars/Quest for modern Gloranthan RPGing.

I also think that a properly-curated D&D 4e could do bronze age fantasy - keep the fighter, rouge, ranger, warlord and warlock from the PHB, add in the primal classes (maybe not wardens), and _perhaps _the invoker but with blast-y options taken out. Ignore the good-evil aspects of alignment even more than it's already easy to do, and play up the civilisation vs chaos element. Converting across Gloranthan creatures if one wanted to would be pretty straightforward (eg broos are, in stat terms, built on a gnoll chassis). Use the "alternative rewards" framework in the DMG, plus treasure parcels more generally, to represent rune/cult magtic, gifts etc - and just ignore, as is very easy to do in 4e, all the inherited D&D tropes of dungeons with monsters that drop loot etc.

I also should reiterate that I think RQ is a beautiful system. I just find it very punishing in actual play, moreso than Rolemaster (which is less elegant but somewhat comparable in its basic design ethos) which generates pressure towards GM steering of outcomes with a degree of disregard for the action resolution mechanics. Which is what @steenan had commented on in relation to a system that "lies" and that encourages the GM to "lie" to the players.


----------



## Nagol (Feb 5, 2020)

chaochou said:


> I'm not being argumentative - I was simply a huge fan of RQ2 and a long-time player of all things Glorantha. In RQ2, iron was a rune metal for cults that could work it, rare and very dangerous. But no more rare and dangerous than lead weapons, or gold weapons, or wooden weapons.
> 
> Bronze was the default. The properties of other weapons and armour weren't envisaged as a function of metallurgy, but of religious and cultural blessing.




Nor am I! It caught me a bit off guard is all.  I'm trying to imagine a bronze 2-handed sword being used for a 3rd strike.  Either we glossed over the whole "it was made of bronze" or I let that detail go in the last 30+ years.  I remember rune metal (vaguely).


----------



## lordabdul (Feb 5, 2020)

pemerton said:


> I also should reiterate that I think RQ is a beautiful system. I just find it very punishing in actual play



I think RQ is mostly trying to model the brutal aspect of combat which you can find in many Bronze-Age treatments like Conan, 300, and so on. The side-effect is that it does indeed make some players avoid combat more than they should, but I'm not sure it can be helped. It's the same thing with, say, Call of Cthulhu's SAN mechanics which can make some players so overly cautious that they go out of their way to _not _read any books and _not _go into any basement or cave, therefore avoiding the very core activity that the game is trying to make you play. In some way, even though it's a perfectly understandable reaction, you could consider it a mild case of "premise rejection" on the side of the players.  Thankfully, some other players are happy to read the books and go in the basement and gleefully go mad while saving the world (or not), and, similarly, other players are happy to get bloody in RQ, dancing around flying severed limbs. Also of note: the new recently released RQ edition is much friendlier with characters, giving them way better stats and access to magic, so combat is still dangerous but healing aftewards seems much better to me. But that's a whole other discussion.

For those who want the more "mythic hero" aspect of Bronze Age tales, yes, as people pointed out, HeroWars/Quest is a good choice because it was explicitly designed to play these kinds of narrative tropes. Most other narrative-driven systems would probably work well too.



pemerton said:


> Rolemaster has GMing advice that ticks the second box, although it can be ignored



Can you point me to the appropriate book for this? I'm curious.


----------



## pemerton (Feb 6, 2020)

lordabdul said:


> I think RQ is mostly trying to model the brutal aspect of combat which you can find in many Bronze-Age treatments like Conan, 300, and so on.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the new recently released RQ edition is much friendlier with characters, giving them way better stats and access to magic, so combat is still dangerous but healing aftewards seems much better to me. But that's a whole other discussion.



Conan inflicts violence on others fairly frequently and effectively. But he himself is rarely hurt too badly. And even when he is - eg the crucifixion in A Witch Shall Be Born - he recovers.

There is an asymmetry in the effectiveness of "PCs" and "NPCs" that a strictly simulationist system like RQ struggles with.



lordabdul said:


> Can you point me to the appropriate book for this? I'm curious.



I think I'm thinking of RMSS GM Law. It's been a while, though.


----------



## Aldarc (Feb 6, 2020)

Not that there are too many more haters hating on the things they hate in this thread, but should I make a new thread to discuss Bronze Age Fantasy in TTRPG?


----------



## hawkeyefan (Feb 6, 2020)

Yeah, I say go ahead.....make it clearer for anyone who wants to discuss.


----------



## ErisIndomina (Feb 7, 2020)

Not a specific system per se, but I'm not overly fond of games where you _need _a grid and map for combat to work. Especially if it happens to be a niche game that's difficult to find suitable minis for.


----------



## JeffB (Feb 7, 2020)

FWIW- if RQ is too Sim and the narrative of HEROQUEST is not your bag, please don't overlook 13th Age in Glorantha, it's absolutely fantastic and likely more appealing to typical D20 game fans

.P.S. Bronze is mined from the bones of the dead gods as per RQ2. So while it's bronze, it's mythical bronze and pretty strong


----------



## JeffB (Feb 7, 2020)

pemerton said:


> A further response: of course @chaochou is right to point to HeroWars/Quest for modern Gloranthan RPGing.
> 
> I also think that a properly-curated D&D 4e could do bronze age fantasy -





FWIW- I ran a handful of sessions of a 4E Glorantha game and used Slayers , Rogues and Warpriests for PC's. Probably the only version of D&D that ever will work good for Glorantha.


----------



## Myth Master (Feb 29, 2020)

Saelorn said:


> Role-playing is _only_ concerned with the process of making choices.




That is a very truncated view of role-play. 

According to *Merriam Webster* (my favorite on-line dictionary), “role-play” is an intransitive verb meaning* … *to play a role.
It can also have connotations of physically enacting a role, like an actor performing in a play in a theater or those who play in Live Action Role-Play (LARP), but both of those are a great deal more involved than what goes on in tabletop role-playing games. 

Roleplaying for tabletop RPGs is much simpler.

The bottom line is: as long as the players are getting inside the heads of their characters to examine how their characters’ personalities affect their decisions, AND using that as a guide for stating their actions in play, they are role-playing. 

When the point of role-playing is to address/confront some obstacle, this results in action-oriented decisions. 
When it is to explore a PC’s emotions, backstory, or psyche, it is most likely represented through conversation with other PC’s or NPC’s. Some dismiss the latter as “acting” or simply “speaking in character”, *not* role-play, but such a nuanced distinction isn’t productive. 
It's attempting to create a distinction where there is none.
If the role-play required to even engage in improvisational “acting” (projecting oneself into the character’s shoes to _decide_ not only what to say but how to say it) isn't the very heart and soul of impromptu role-play (the very medium through which the game is played), then role-play doesn’t exist. 

So, *BOTH* are _clearly_ role-playing. 

The only difference between these two applications of role-play is that action-oriented decisions arrived at through role-play require a player to step OUT of the role in order to follow the GM’s directions for resolving that action by rolling the dice. 
Once the dice are in your hand, you are no longer role-playing. On the other hand, interaction between characters can be used to resolve some in-game matters without ever touching the dice.

If you are saying _anything_ “in-character" — *and staying there* for the duration of the conversation — then you are projecting yourself into your character’s shoes by definition (or at least coming close), i.e., you are role-playing.
Affecting a (silly) accent is window dressing that has nothing to do with whether a player is role-playing or not. The players may do so, OR NOT, for their own amusement and/or perhaps that of their fellow players, but it is by no means required. Either way, its presence or absence doesn’t affect the quality of role-play at the table one whit.

WHY the players engage in role-playing in the context of game-play, their aim or purpose in doing so, is simply irrelevant as long as the result is germane to the plot line _or the characters themselves or their relationships to the game world or any of its denizens_.


----------



## Zoomer (Oct 23, 2021)

Reynard said:


> I don't want to gum up the Dishonored thread with this tangent, but the fact that so many people expressed a revulsion for the 2d20 system got me thinking how I don't hate any system I can think of off the top of my head. There are some i prefer not to play, but no game makes me feel like the developers shot my dog (or favorite sci-fi franchise, as the case may be).
> 
> So if you HATE a system, why? Explain it to me.



I hate Fate.  While other systems may not reward you enough for clever roleplaying, Fate, IMO is just a bunch of mental gymnastics.  It is cleverness for cleverness's sake and undermines real emotion.  In other games I've felt fear, anger, sorrow, confusion, joy, etc.  In Fate all I ever feel is numb as we pile up Aspects and Fate Points so we can exploit them.  Fate, to me, breaks the emotional continuity with a bunch of mechanics that monetize story arc and character development.  Instead of freeing me I feel encumbered.


----------



## John Dallman (Oct 23, 2021)

lordabdul said:


> I think RQ is mostly trying to model the brutal aspect of combat which you can find in many Bronze-Age treatments like Conan, 300, and so on. The side-effect is that it does indeed make some players avoid combat more than they should, but I'm not sure it can be helped.



"Should" is an interesting word here. There are plenty of cults and associated character types in Glorantha who are not about fighting, and who would be wise to stay clear of it. Yet they have considerable story potential.


----------



## aramis erak (Oct 23, 2021)

Reynard said:


> So if you HATE a system, why? Explain it to me.



There are two reasons I hate a system:
1) it mechanically focuses on hateful/toxic behaviors - non-consensual sex, non-consensual religious conversion.
2) the theme of the game is hateful or damaging behaviors from a standpoint of condoning and training said behaviors. 

RaHoWa and FATAL hit #1 and #2.

DragonRaid hits severe disdain because it's intended to be used to encourage certain fundamentalist christian practices which I think are problematic. (Prooftexting/out-of-context quoting.) That said, the game engine's not horrible. Just the magic system.


----------



## Silvercat Moonpaw (Oct 23, 2021)

While I don't necessarily hate D&D 5e, the fact that A) I don't enjoy how it does things, B) it's very popular, and a little bit of C) it's currently the favorite game of one of my online friends who does most of the GMing, means that I can at least _see_ hating it from where I'm typing.


----------



## AtomicPope (Oct 23, 2021)

I can think of a couple of reasons for hating a game system:
*1) Needlessly Complicated* - Morrow Project immediately comes to mind where every little detail was tracked and accounted for yet rarely came into play.  Do you want to know how many hit points your left pinky finger has?  Well that's the game for you!  Do you want to know the odds of getting your left pinky finger shot off?  Assuming they're firing wild, about 1 in 200.  BTW, it's one hit point.  It's almost always one hit point.
*2) Rewards Don't Incentive Play or Style* - Champions comes to mind here where you have a 250 point character and you get 3 experience points after a session of play.  That means you move the meter about 1% improvement (less if you took lots of disadvantages).  Barely noticeable.    Early editions of Shadowrun had this problem with Deckers where it split the party and forced everyone to wait while your decker went on a side quest in the Matrix.  Then, outside of the Matrix the Decker is a schlub with mediocre skills and has to half-ass their way around.  There was little incentive to play a Decker back in the day.  The rules should reward behavior that reinforces a style of play.   A bad playstyle reward system is Marvel Super Heroes where you lose karma for accidentally breaking things.  It causes super heroes to walk on egg shells.
*3) Unbalanced PCs/Trap Choices* - As a player it makes it seem like you got cheated, or you made a dumb choice.  In reality, you were sold a false bill of goods.  Palladium games have this problem where in the same setting, same core book, same choices, one character has literally a thousand more hit points than another character and does ten times as much damage.  Usually game systems are not that bad but apparently Kevin Siembieda doesn't GAF.  There are absolutely "trap" choices for players in Palladium. If you take that spell, class, race, whatever, you lost out big time.    The trap usually comes later.  Sometimes in the beginning everyone is on a level field but later one you haven't improved with them.
*4) Mechanics Don't Match the Fluff* - Typically this isn't a system wide problem but appears in small sections where in actual gameplay success is very difficult when it's described as easy, or a power that's described as devastating is merely an inconvenience.  This could overlap with any of the others really but I think it suits it's own section.  I remember deadly weapons like the Harlequin's Kiss, which required exotic proficiencies and in game play it's less effective than your standard issue side arm.  The description is a weapon that liquidates anything it touches.  The reality is an unwieldy melee weapon whose damage dice are so swingy either it causes a little scratch or lots of damage but more than likely it survives.  Also, don't have a critical fumble.  It will kill you.
*5) Updated/Revised* - As someone who's been playing D&D since I was a kid, I've been through half-a-dozen editions of D&D and Gamma World, not to mention several other RPG systems, and not all of them are improvements.  For some reason Gamma World kept getting worse.  I actually think that latest "Wacky" edition is my favorite since the somewhat serious, deadly, and poorly edited 3e Gamma World.  Ole #5 is best described as "Edition Wars" and every system has them.  My own group refused to fully integrate our AD&D to 2e because it didn't include everything we were using from the PHB and UA (no Assassins, Barbarians, Cavaliers, or Monks).


----------



## pming (Oct 23, 2021)

Hiya!

I think I narrowed it down for me:

I hate when a system presents an "option" that, if anyone in the group opts to take it, forces EVERYONE else to take said "option" as well.

Other than that, I don't think I really "hate" any RPG or RPG mechanic. Some I don't like, sure, but 'hate' is a pretty strong word.

EDIT: If I had to choose on RPG I "hate"... it would be "Amber" (the 'first diceless RPG system'). Why? It's unplayable if anyone in the group is smart and knowledgeable. Basically, if a player has an IQ of 135 and the GM has and IQ of 102...the GM is going to "loose constantly"; meaning his/her NPC's will just not succeed because the PLAYER out smarts the GM and knows more about how stuff in the situation would work. It'd be like a chemist Player trying to tell the non-chemist GM how their PC is going to "use a base substance of X, add in an amount of Y and Z, and then slowly apply heat"...and the GM saying "Ok, it smokes a bit but doesn't explode"...and the Player being annoyed because they KNOW that it would explode. Now the Player has to explain WHY it would explode, in laymen's terms, to the GM who then has to just say "Oh, ok, guess it works then". But at that point... nobody is playing an RPG; they are just taking a chemistry lesson from a chemist. 

^_^

Paul L. Ming


----------



## Thomas Shey (Oct 23, 2021)

Hate is a strong word, I think, but there are games I don't want much of anything to do with.  This usually comes down, in broad, to one of two things:

1. Mechanics that I dislike engaging with, and as a GM, are too core to the system to be easily houserules.  A subset of this is games that are not mechanically interesting to engage with; I'm too gamist in my enjoyment to find "Its fast!" is any kind of counterweight for a game that's mechanically dull.

2. Tone or setting things I find actively unpleasant.  I don't mind a certain degree of darkness in a setting, but if its too pervasive and unavoidable, I just don't need to inflict that on myself.


----------



## billd91 (Oct 23, 2021)

pming said:


> EDIT: If I had to choose on RPG I "hate"... it would be "Amber" (the 'first diceless RPG system'). Why? It's unplayable if anyone in the group is smart and knowledgeable. Basically, if a player has an IQ of 135 and the GM has and IQ of 102...the GM is going to "loose constantly"; meaning his/her NPC's will just not succeed because the PLAYER out smarts the GM and knows more about how stuff in the situation would work. It'd be like a chemist Player trying to tell the non-chemist GM how their PC is going to "use a base substance of X, add in an amount of Y and Z, and then slowly apply heat"...and the GM saying "Ok, it smokes a bit but doesn't explode"...and the Player being annoyed because they KNOW that it would explode. Now the Player has to explain WHY it would explode, in laymen's terms, to the GM who then has to just say "Oh, ok, guess it works then". But at that point... nobody is playing an RPG; they are just taking a chemistry lesson from a chemist.
> 
> ^_^
> 
> Paul L. Ming



Sounds less like an RPG problem and more like a player problem to me.


----------



## pming (Oct 23, 2021)

Hiya.


billd91 said:


> Sounds less like an RPG problem and more like a player problem to me.



Have you ever read the rules or played it? But we attempted to even make characters once. During character creation, the rules SPECIFICALLY tell you, the GM, to _try_ and cause Player strife so that they try and "compete against each other" to try and get the "best/highest stat". There are no dice in the game...stats are done via "Bidding" on them. "I bit 10 points", "I'll bit 20", "Fine, 25", etc....and the GM is supposed to try and get the players to out bit the others by goading them into it "You're gonna let him have it for 25? That's it? Really?...huh...I thought you had more moxie that than, Phil..." ... "FINE! 40 points!" ... "Ooooo... Dana, looks like you are out bid...again. Guess the MAN wins again...unless you wanna go for 50?" ...etc.

My players immediately ignored me and talked amongst themselves to assign roles and "stats" themselves, so that the group was covered by the Strong Guy, the Smart Guy, the Fast Guy, etc.. Then they all just told me what they bid for what and nobody did any 'outbidding the other'. This...well...sorta "wrecked" the game from the get go. It assumes the Players won't really work together like that. It's a very "adversarial in the extreme....but not really at all" game. Passive-Aggressive I guess I might term it. This allowed them to always have someone who was "the best" at something; so if a situation came up where they were fighting a super strong dude...well, the Strong Guy would take it and the rest would support. In D&D terms, it seemed like you would always have a completely min/maxed glass canon in the party, but for ANY situation. And if that glass canon went down...everyone dies.

As for the IQ/Knowledge... that's just human nature and limitations. If you were to try and have a debate with your cousin who has never played an RPG in his life about if a PC is considered Hidden or not for purposes of Sneak Attack Damage...he'd be at a sever disadvantage. Now imagine HE was the DM and you were playing a Thief. ...see what I was trying to get at?

^_^

Paul L. Ming


----------



## billd91 (Oct 23, 2021)

pming said:


> Hiya.
> 
> Have you ever read the rules or played it? But we attempted to even make characters once. During character creation, the rules SPECIFICALLY tell you, the GM, to _try_ and cause Player strife so that they try and "compete against each other" to try and get the "best/highest stat". There are no dice in the game...stats are done via "Bidding" on them. "I bit 10 points", "I'll bit 20", "Fine, 25", etc....and the GM is supposed to try and get the players to out bit the others by goading them into it "You're gonna let him have it for 25? That's it? Really?...huh...I thought you had more moxie that than, Phil..." ... "FINE! 40 points!" ... "Ooooo... Dana, looks like you are out bid...again. Guess the MAN wins again...unless you wanna go for 50?" ...etc.
> 
> ...



Yeah, I’ve played it and you’re describing the classic player problem of “not playing the genre”. They’re not really playing in good faith for that particular game. It doesn‘t mean they’re bad players in general, they’re just not sticking to the genre. It’s like playing a 4-color, silver age superhero game and showing up with characters designed for a wetworks campaign. You can do it with the rules, but it’s not the genre you expected when you chose the rule set. And it’s when you send the players back to the drawing board to start again or pitch a different game.


----------



## pming (Oct 23, 2021)

Hiya!


billd91 said:


> Yeah, I’ve played it and you’re describing the classic player problem of “not playing the genre”. They’re not really playing in good faith for that particular game. It doesn‘t mean they’re bad players in general, they’re just not sticking to the genre. It’s like playing a 4-color, silver age superhero game and showing up with characters designed for a wetworks campaign. You can do it with the rules, but it’s not the genre you expected when you chose the rule set. And it’s when you send the players back to the drawing board to start again or pitch a different game.



I can see how someone could come to that conclusion, and I'm not disagreeing with you on it. Definitely have seen my fair share of "genre/immersion breaking antics" from Players... usually not on purpose.

But when all is said and done...this IS a thread about "hating" some RPG system or aspect. By definition such strong emotions aren't typically rational. Hence... my post about my dislike of Amber as a whole, but the whole mechanical system built around Player/GM dynamic in that game just rubs me the wrong way. A game where if the Players talk and work together, they are actually "breaking the rules", so to say, is just...well...not my thing. 

^_^

Paul L. Ming


----------



## Arilyn (Oct 23, 2021)

pming said:


> Hiya!
> 
> I can see how someone could come to that conclusion, and I'm not disagreeing with you on it. Definitely have seen my fair share of "genre/immersion breaking antics" from Players... usually not on purpose.
> 
> ...



I've never played Amber, but it's been these aspects of the game that kept me away from trying trying it. I think I'd be turning it more cooperative!


----------



## Maxperson (Oct 24, 2021)

Arilyn said:


> I've never played Amber, but it's been these aspects of the game that kept me away from trying trying it. I think I'd be turning it more cooperative!



That dynamic comes from the book series.  The princes of Amber and Chaos weren't exactly trusting of one another, and they all had plots and more plots.


----------



## Arilyn (Oct 24, 2021)

Maxperson said:


> That dynamic comes from the book series.  The princes of Amber and Chaos weren't exactly trusting of one another, and they all had plots and more plots.



Oh, I know. I read and enjoyed the series, and I understand why the game is the way it is, and it's probably well designed. Just doesn't appeal to me as an RPG.


----------



## MGibster (Oct 24, 2021)

Arilyn said:


> I've never played Amber, but it's been these aspects of the game that kept me away from trying trying it. I think I'd be turning it more cooperative!



I was in a group that attempted to play _Amber _and the 4 other players all decided they wanted to be #1 in Psyche.  My character ended up #1 in Warfare, Strength, and Endurance.  For whatever reason that campaign never made it past character generation.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Oct 24, 2021)

Arilyn said:


> I've never played Amber, but it's been these aspects of the game that kept me away from trying trying it. I think I'd be turning it more cooperative!




The game somewhat encourages (to say quite a bit) inter-player rivalry.

And its the usual strength and weakness of almost pure narrative systems; if everyone is on the same page, and the GM is comfortable making constant judgment calls, many likely out of his areas of knowledge, it can be excellent.

I'm super-unconvinced that describes more than a pretty small subset of groups.


----------



## AtomicPope (Oct 24, 2021)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> I will say that Shadowrun Anarchy is just about everything I actually want in a Shadowrun game, without the mess of rules to wade through. And without people spending an hour planning on how exactly they kick down the door and kill everyone, followed by the hour of people rolling a hundred d6's to resolve it.
> 
> For my part, and this ties to Shadowrun definitely, is that I can't stand double-indemnity in resolution. That is to say, if I attack a monster and have to roll against their roll to hit, then roll again against their roll to do damage.



I didn't like any iteration of Shadowrun until I got to playtest Anarchy.  We were playing Shadowrun and when our DM was editing and writing for the Anarchy playtest he converted us over and we never looked back.  Our characters just improved.  They weren't "better" just more consistent in their design.  Long gone were the days of rolling 40d6 and we were all happy to see them go.


----------



## John Dallman (Oct 24, 2021)

pming said:


> Have you ever read the rules or played [Amber diceless]? But we attempted to even make characters once. During character creation, the rules SPECIFICALLY tell you, the GM, to _try_ and cause Player strife so that they try and "compete against each other" to try and get the "best/highest stat". There are no dice in the game...stats are done via "Bidding" on them.



The rules also tell you that it's a game that requires deviousness and pre-planning, but the examples are . . . like children trying to be cunning before they've learned to tell lies. The campaign I played in was pretty light on overt PvP rivalry, but almost everyone had a hidden agenda. That's far more like the source material than the introductory material of the game is.


----------



## pming (Oct 24, 2021)

Hiya!


John Dallman said:


> The rules also tell you that it's a game that requires deviousness and pre-planning, but the examples are . . . like children trying to be cunning before they've learned to tell lies. The campaign I played in was pretty light on overt PvP rivalry, but almost everyone had a hidden agenda. That's far more like the source material than the introductory material of the game is.



Now that I'm older, looking at it, I think I could probably play it for at least a session. I'm much less "sure of my self" in terms of what is "good" or "right" or whatever....more "grey", less "black and white". 

I think if we all took the game as a sort of "RPG version" of playing one of those older "How to Host a Murder" dinner party games from the early 2000's, or as a sort of table top version of the video game "Among Us"...where the players are highly suspicious of others and at the same time trying to "win over" everyone else....that sort of a mindset might make for a very interesting game! 

I'm normally not at all interested in PvP (in any sense), but if this was the 'groundwork' and everyone at the table knew what we were going to play and was all in for it...yeah, I can totally see your approach being kinda fun. 

^_^

Paul L. Ming


----------



## Umbran (Oct 24, 2021)

AtomicPope said:


> I didn't like any iteration of Shadowrun until I got to playtest Anarchy.  We were playing Shadowrun and when our DM was editing and writing for the Anarchy playtest he converted us over and we never looked back.  Our characters just improved.  They weren't "better" just more consistent in their design.  Long gone were the days of rolling 40d6 and we were all happy to see them go.




What I have read about Anarchy says that the book has lots of editing problems, though, which makes me hesitant to pick it up.


----------



## AtomicPope (Oct 25, 2021)

Umbran said:


> What I have read about Anarchy says that the book has lots of editing problems, though, which makes me hesitant to pick it up.



The editing is awful.  Our DM was working freelance as an editor and he said they weren't updating or compiling the edits.  He would have to resend his work over and over again.  They were (are) completely disorganized.  If it's any consolation, Anarchy is better edited than Gamma World 3e.  It's been a while since we played it so I don't know if they've ever updated their latest edition with the errata.


----------



## Ralif Redhammer (Oct 25, 2021)

I played Shadowrun back when it first came out, and have long felt that it was a great setting with a mediocre system. It's been so long since I looked at 1e, I don't recall if the problems it currently has were always there and I just wasn't critical enough at that age.

I do wish Anarchy had more support in Shadowrun's organized play.



AtomicPope said:


> I didn't like any iteration of Shadowrun until I got to playtest Anarchy.  We were playing Shadowrun and when our DM was editing and writing for the Anarchy playtest he converted us over and we never looked back.  Our characters just improved.  They weren't "better" just more consistent in their design.  Long gone were the days of rolling 40d6 and we were all happy to see them go.




The organization of it is what stood out to me. Making a character took way more work than it should have - there just wasn't a good path to follow to get the reader to the rules they need to know. Though once that's done, it runs pretty smoothly in play.



Umbran said:


> What I have read about Anarchy says that the book has lots of editing problems, though, which makes me hesitant to pick it up.


----------



## innerdude (Oct 25, 2021)

The only thing that would cause me to "hate" an RPG is if the system wholly fails to accomplish what the mechanics plus the descriptive text say it should accomplish.

The only two systems I've tried that would fall into that camp would be GURPS and Fate Core, and even then I think my experiences (and group participants) color my opinions more than games themselves. 

My biggest problem with GURPS is that every group I've played it with has gone completely against the system's strengths. Rather than trying to play grounded, semi-realistic games/settings, they instead want to amp up the action into mini-superhero territory---including with generic fantasy.

They don't want to play grounded fantasy. They want to play 350-point starting characters, who can completely counter-act GURPS' baseline lethality.

This impulse of the groups I've played it with further exacerbates my biggest problem with GURPS, which is the complexity of combat resolution. There's just so many things that I dislike about how combat resolves that add absolutely nothing to the "fun" factor of why I play RPGs. Playing with 350-point demi-god fantasy heroes only makes the overwhelming number of combat options worse.


With Fate, it's more a question of, I don't really know where it "fits" in terms of my game style. I've discovered through experience that I'm very comfortable with PbtA / FitD style games, and totally "grok" what they're trying to do. With Ironsworn, I found that I could completely divest myself from the "trad" mindset and really go where the mechanics were trying to take me.

But I can't really find that spot with Fate. It's clearly not supposed to be a "trad" game . . . though devoid of Aspects / Compels, the system itself looks a lot like a pretty "trad" style of game. I get the feeling that Fate is supposed to produce "high drama" / "high stakes" kinds of action, but in play it never really reached that for me.

Plus, in terms of "narrative" style systems, it's still a bit more mechanically complex than I would expect it to be, especially since the gameplay it produced was always a bit bland. In spite of the complexity, it lacked the narrative "heft" of PbtA / FitD, while also lacking the enjoyable tactical gamism of PF/3.x or Savage Worlds.


----------



## Umbran (Oct 25, 2021)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> I played Shadowrun back when it first came out, and have long felt that it was a great setting with a mediocre system. It's been so long since I looked at 1e, I don't recall if the problems it currently has were always there and I just wasn't critical enough at that age.




The system had some great ideas, but in some cases the rules got too baroque with fiddly bits (firearms) or it had dials and levers the players could use that were awesome in theory, but less useful in practice (variable force spells and drain-based spellcasting).

Decking was also cool in theory, but enforced splitting the party in ways that dragged on play something fierce.

The setting, however, was great.  Most of the concepts and plots of the published adventures were alao a lot of fun.


----------



## Ralif Redhammer (Oct 25, 2021)

We just never played Deckers back then! 

The ideas behind Shadowrun were cool as heck. I suspect that if it hadn't been for the inspired Tolkien + Gibson part, the game itself may have never gotten the traction it did.



Umbran said:


> Decking was also cool in theory, but enforced splitting the party in ways that dragged on play something fierce.
> 
> The setting, however, was great.  Most of the concepts and plots of the published adventures were alao a lot of fun.


----------



## Umbran (Oct 25, 2021)

Ralif Redhammer said:


> We just never played Deckers back then!




We recognized it might be a problem, tried the experiment, found we were correct, and from that point on just made sure there were NPC deckers the PCs could call on for services.

The... 5th edition, I think, moved into the space of wireless decking, and how _lots_ of items would be hackable.  This made it so PC deckers could actually have a direct role in combat ("Oh, you think you have a Smartgun?  Let me turn that into a brick for you!") and reframed security so that being physically present was the way to go, fixing some of the issues. 

The base mechanic, unfortunately, was still kind of cumbersome. 

It reminds me of Classic Deadlands, in a way.  Awesome setting, baroque mechanics.  My players put up with the baroque aspect for years, because at least it was baroque in ways that were thematically appropriate, and they loved the setting.  Eventually, revamping that core led to Savage Words, which is more tractable.  My group might want to play Deadlands again in the future, and I'd probably use the Savage Worlds version.

Shadowrun needs that kind of transformation - someone streamline the heck out of it, please!


----------



## Marc_C (Oct 25, 2021)

Umbran said:


> We recognized it might be a problem, tried the experiment, found we were correct, and from that point on just made sure there were NPC deckers the PCs could call on for services.
> 
> The... 5th edition, I think, moved into the space of wireless decking, and how _lots_ of items would be hackable.  This made it so PC deckers could actually hae a direct role in combat ("Oh, you think you have a Smartgun?  Let me turn that into a brick for you!") and reframed security so that being physically present was the way to go, fixing some of the issues.
> 
> ...



Was never able to play Shadow Run. Instead, I used Savage Worlds with the Interface Zero setting book. We had lots of fun.


----------



## Ralif Redhammer (Oct 25, 2021)

I also thought that the idea of expanding the matrix to the entire world was a great way to incorporate deckers into the game without making their parts separate from what everyone else is doing. With the Internet of Things and the world of Shadowrun, it's a logical conclusion.

How it played out in the rules, though, just managed to slow the game down anyway, while the decker went and resolved the multiple checks needed to even do anything remotely cool.



Umbran said:


> We recognized it might be a problem, tried the experiment, found we were correct, and from that point on just made sure there were NPC deckers the PCs could call on for services.
> 
> The... 5th edition, I think, moved into the space of wireless decking, and how _lots_ of items would be hackable.  This made it so PC deckers could actually have a direct role in combat ("Oh, you think you have a Smartgun?  Let me turn that into a brick for you!") and reframed security so that being physically present was the way to go, fixing some of the issues.
> 
> ...


----------



## AtomicPope (Oct 26, 2021)

Umbran said:


> We recognized it might be a problem, tried the experiment, found we were correct, and from that point on just made sure there were NPC deckers the PCs could call on for services.
> 
> The... 5th edition, I think, moved into the space of wireless decking, and how _lots_ of items would be hackable.  This made it so PC deckers could actually have a direct role in combat ("Oh, you think you have a Smartgun?  Let me turn that into a brick for you!") and reframed security so that being physically present was the way to go, fixing some of the issues.
> 
> Shadowrun needs that kind of transformation - someone streamline the heck out of it, please!



Because we were playtesting Anarchy we had both a Decker and a Rigger in our group.  Our Decker would go into the Matrix at least once a session, unheard of in previous editions.  There were no problems.  Furthermore, the mechanics and fluff matched up very well here.  You could hack remotely but there were penalties, firewalls, and defenses.  Plugging in directly would bypass the distance penalty and firewall.  In game terms that meant when we were planning missions it made sense to break in to a facility and find a safe room so our Decker could plug in.

The mechanics between a Decker entering the Matrix and a Mage Astral Projecting are seamless.  Both render the character unconscious.  Both allow them to interact directly with a quasi-realm.  Neither are allowed to affect the other: Matrix doesn't affect Magic and visa versa.  As someone who suffered under previous editions, this was a welcome change.

Edit:  If this is a little unclear, it's been a while since we played so my memory is a little fuzzy on other people's characters.


----------



## Umbran (Oct 26, 2021)

AtomicPope said:


> Because we were playtesting Anarchy we had both a Decker and a Rigger in our group.  Our Decker would go into the Matrix at least once a session, unheard of in previous editions.  There were no problems.




So, I'm sorry, but this does not suggest to me that what I fund was a problem was dealt with - in early editions, Deckers required the GM to, in essence, run a separate little matrix adventure for them.  The spotlight sharing issues were severe.  You telling me that happened every session does not suggest "no problem" to me.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Oct 26, 2021)

Umbran said:


> Shadowrun needs that kind of transformation - someone streamline the heck out of it, please!




The problem is that a fair amount of the extent fandom would do some pretty heavy pushback if it was stripped down much in the process, and there's always a dynamic as to whether someone wants to potentially lose significant amounts of extent market to potentially get a different market (which may or may not be larger) all needing significant work.

Basically, it almost never seems worth the effort.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Oct 26, 2021)

Umbran said:


> So, I'm sorry, but this does not suggest to me that what I fund was a problem was dealt with - in early editions, Deckers required the GM to, in essence, run a separate little matrix adventure for them.  The spotlight sharing issues were severe.  You telling me that happened every session does not suggest "no problem" to me.




Over and above any question about mechanical overhead, at least the 5e thing of making the Decker work in conjunction with other actions instead of entirely separate subgames seemed to help in the one session of it I ran.


----------



## AtomicPope (Oct 26, 2021)

Umbran said:


> So, I'm sorry, but this does not suggest to me that what I fund was a problem was dealt with - in early editions, Deckers required the GM to, in essence, run a separate little matrix adventure for them.  The spotlight sharing issues were severe.  You telling me that happened every session does not suggest "no problem" to me.



OK, I get what you're saying.  Those days of mini-adventures and sidequests are pretty much over.  The reason I brought up Mages and Astral Projection is the mechanics are the same, they just affect different realms.  No one ever complained that Astral Projection was ruining the game, slowing it down, or forcing the entire group to wait while the Mage was on a sidequest.  Now magic and tech are on par with one another because they use the same mechanics.  A fireball has the same mechanics as a rocket launcher.  Rather than choose to fight, stealth, or defend in the real world, you do it in the Matrix.  A Decker can make a disarm attack against a cybernetic weapon like a Street Samurai except their methods are different.  Since everyone is on the same initiative everyone gets a turn.  There's no need to stop what you're doing to play a separate game with the Decker.

Thomas Shey calling the previous iterations of Shadowrun's Decker rules "system overhead" is a great description of what was happening in past editions.


----------



## aramis erak (Oct 26, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> The problem is that a fair amount of the extent fandom would do some pretty heavy pushback if it was stripped down much in the process, and there's always a dynamic as to whether someone wants to potentially lose significant amounts of extent market to potentially get a different market (which may or may not be larger) all needing significant work.
> 
> Basically, it almost never seems worth the effort.



_Shadowrun: Anarchy_ was supposed to be just such an attempt...
It seems to have found a following, tho' I'm not in it.

What amazes me is that it's maintained its audience for so long. And that no other serious Cyberpunk/Fantasy hybrids have arisen as serious contenders for the marketspace.


----------



## Umbran (Oct 26, 2021)

AtomicPope said:


> OK, I get what you're saying.  Those days of mini-adventures and sidequests are pretty much over.  The reason I brought up Mages and Astral Projection is the mechanics are the same, they just affect different realms.  No one ever complained that Astral Projection was ruining the game, slowing it down, or forcing the entire group to wait while the Mage was on a sidequest.




There is a difference - when a mage astrally projects, they are in a different realm, but it is generally  _analogous to the physical space_, and the usual point of going astral so was to deal with something that would impact the physical space.

In early editions, matrix runs were into spaces not generally analogous, and often the work there did not impact the rest of the party in real time.  A lot of them were effectively matrix dungeon crawls to get information, done while the rest of the party just sat around waiting.



AtomicPope said:


> Now magic and tech are on par with one another because they use the same mechanics.




I find that less appealing, actually.  

But, it is all neither here nor there, as I'm unlikely to pick up Anarchy, or otherwise play the game in the near to medium future.  By the time I'd be considering it, there might be yet another ruleset out there.


----------



## Campbell (Oct 26, 2021)

Things I am not a fan of include:


Games that reward playing to a fairly static character concept. Fate/D&D 5e Inspiration are big offenders here.
Games that expect you to preplan character narrative arcs. Scion Second Edition and 7th Sea Second Edition are the biggest offenders here.
Games where you have to spend currency to take advantage of fictional positioning you already have.
Games with substantial win buttons and/or post roll modification. Gumshoe, Exalted Second Edition and Fate are pretty big offenders here.
Diceless games. Narrative tension is really important to me.
I would not say I hate any games, but there are some games that I'm glad exist for other people. Fate, Gumshoe and 7th Sea 2nd Edition top that list.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Oct 26, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> _Shadowrun: Anarchy_ was supposed to be just such an attempt...
> It seems to have found a following, tho' I'm not in it.




Notice it is, in practice, in addition to the main line, not as a replacement.

(Of course I haven't heard the greatest things about SR6e, either).



aramis erak said:


> What amazes me is that it's maintained its audience for so long. And that no other serious Cyberpunk/Fantasy hybrids have arisen as serious contenders for the marketspace.




Its actually surprisingly hard for an established game to be unseated, per se.


----------



## aramis erak (Oct 26, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Notice it is, in practice, in addition to the main line, not as a replacement.
> 
> (Of course I haven't heard the greatest things about SR6e, either).
> 
> ...



It can be reasonably hypothesized that Shadowrun Fans simply like to gripe about the game to levels far exceeding their actual real issues.
As for unseating? Yeah, I can kinda see that point. But SR doesn't have any in-genre competition; all the other "established fanbases" generally have two or more games in the genres.


----------



## Herne'sSon (Oct 26, 2021)

If I don't like a game for some system-related reason, I just move on to something else.

The only games I'd say I "hate" are more games I won't play because I have issues with the designers/publishers. One game line specifically I just won't touch, because of the awful way the current publishers treated good friends of mine. Sad, too, because the games they now publish used to be some of my favorite RPGs. But the actions of the current owners have infected the way I think about the games and ruined any good will I once had.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Oct 27, 2021)

aramis erak said:


> It can be reasonably hypothesized that Shadowrun Fans simply like to gripe about the game to levels far exceeding their actual real issues.
> As for unseating? Yeah, I can kinda see that point. But SR doesn't have any in-genre competition; all the other "established fanbases" generally have two or more games in the genres.




Its a little specialized when you get down to it; that sort of cyberpunk/urban fantasy fusion doesn't have much fictional precedent, after all.

The closest it gets is other kitchen-sink-ish games like TORG.


----------



## AtomicPope (Oct 27, 2021)

Umbran said:


> There is a difference - when a mage astrally projects, they are in a different realm, but it is generally  _analogous to the physical space_, and the usual point of going astral so was to deal with something that would impact the physical space.
> 
> In early editions, matrix runs were into spaces not generally analogous, and often the work there did not impact the rest of the party in real time.  A lot of them were effectively matrix dungeon crawls to get information, done while the rest of the party just sat around waiting.



Our phones have GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, not to mention a web connection.  Anyone who knows how can scan the internet for public printers.  None of that is science fiction.  Augmented reality is cutting edge technology today.  It's the norm in Shadowrun.


----------



## Umbran (Oct 27, 2021)

AtomicPope said:


> Augmented reality is cutting edge technology today.




And, repeatedly, I have noted that in early editions this was not the case.
I also myself noted that this was changed somewhere about 5th edition of Shadowrun.

So, I'm not sure why you're making this point.


----------



## Emirikol (Nov 13, 2021)

When I hate a system:
* Not intuitive. I dont need a friggin rube goldberg.
When the writers think youre going to use their system for anything other then an occasional one-shot. I NEVER need levels 1-20 for your system Sorry.


----------



## Bill Zebub (Nov 14, 2021)

Thread necro!

The funny part is, I read the headline and my first thought was, "If I have to roll 2d20 for every action, and it's not because I have Advantage."  

Then I clicked and realized that 2d20 was the inspiration for the thread.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Nov 14, 2021)

Ironically, the way Advantage/Disadvantage is handled in 5e and derived games is one of the biggest things I hate about it...


----------



## Lycurgon (Dec 4, 2021)

There is only one game I hated. 
M.E.R.P - Middle Earth Role Playing. Spend a couple of hours looking at options and making a character. Then 5 minute of playing the game we see some Orcs at a distance in a forest. They get to go first before we could do anything. First attack of the game the Orc throws a spear, it crits and goes through my characters neck, permanently paralysed. Game over for me. The other characters followed pretty quickly.Game over for everyone. 
We tried again and with new characters lasted a bit longer but didn't make it past the first session.


----------



## Bill Zebub (Dec 4, 2021)

Lycurgon said:


> There is only one game I hated.
> M.E.R.P - Middle Earth Role Playing. Spend a couple of hours looking at options and making a character. Then 5 minute of playing the game we see some Orcs at a distance in a forest. They get to go first before we could do anything. First attack of the game the Orc throws a spear, it crits and goes through my characters neck, permanently paralysed. Game over for me. The other characters followed pretty quickly.Game over for everyone.
> We tried again and with new characters lasted a bit longer but didn't make it past the first session.




M.E.R.P. might be the game everybody is thinking of, in the thread about RPGs having too much prose, when they say that some games are acquired for reading, not playing.


----------



## MGibster (Dec 4, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Games that expect you to preplan character narrative arcs. Scion Second Edition and 7th Sea Second Edition are the biggest offenders here.



This was one of my biggest annoyances with D&D 3rd edition.  Prestige classes seemed like a great concept to me when they were introduced.  But for many prestige classes, I had to essentially map my characters progression from level 1 in order to qualify for the class later leaving no room for spontaneity and being able to perhaps move into a prestige class based on what happened during the game.  Sorry, but you didn't take the Endurance Feat when you could have so you can't go into this class.


----------



## Lycurgon (Dec 4, 2021)

Bill Zebub said:


> M.E.R.P. might be the game everybody is thinking of, in the thread about RPGs having too much prose, when they say that some games are acquired for reading, not playing.



In University I met someone that loved M.E.R.P. and had played heaps of it as a kid. I asked how their group coped with the lethality of the game. He admitted that they just didn't roll anything under 75%, if they rolled low they just rerolled. I had to laugh.


----------



## Crusadius (Dec 4, 2021)

Lycurgon said:


> There is only one game I hated.
> M.E.R.P - Middle Earth Role Playing. Spend a couple of hours looking at options and making a character. Then 5 minute of playing the game we see some Orcs at a distance in a forest. They get to go first before we could do anything. First attack of the game the Orc throws a spear, it crits and goes through my characters neck, permanently paralysed. Game over for me. The other characters followed pretty quickly.Game over for everyone.
> We tried again and with new characters lasted a bit longer but didn't make it past the first session.



MERP was a simpler version of Rolemaster. I've had similar happen to me with Rolemaster - spent an entire session creating characters, and next session everyone dies. This did not make me hate Rolemaster (nor MERP), just that these games should not be played as if the characters are high-level D&D characters.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 4, 2021)

Lycurgon said:


> There is only one game I hated.
> M.E.R.P - Middle Earth Role Playing. Spend a couple of hours looking at options and making a character. Then 5 minute of playing the game we see some Orcs at a distance in a forest. They get to go first before we could do anything. First attack of the game the Orc throws a spear, it crits and goes through my characters neck, permanently paralysed. Game over for me. The other characters followed pretty quickly.Game over for everyone.
> We tried again and with new characters lasted a bit longer but didn't make it past the first session.



Yeah, Orcs are pretty tough in MERP, a lot more than in D&D; later, I converted our MERP game to AD&D. I had  similar thing happen in Morrow Project, we all made our characters, and then got in a radiation area, and just died.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 4, 2021)

Crusadius said:


> MERP was a simpler version of Rolemaster. I've had similar happen to me with Rolemaster - spent an entire session creating characters, and next session everyone dies. This did not make me hate Rolemaster (nor MERP), just that these games should not be played as if the characters are high-level D&D characters.





dragoner said:


> Yeah, Orcs are pretty tough in MERP, a lot more than in D&D; later, I converted our MERP game to AD&D. I had  similar thing happen in Morrow Project, we all made our characters, and then got in a radiation area, and just died.



I think that's mostly a misalignment of expectations. Like D&D players jumping into Call of Cthulhu. It's going to end badly without the Keeper making it clear that CoC is not D&D.

One of the things I hate about games is when combat is incredibly lethal and it takes a long time to make a character. It generally bugs me when character creation takes a long time generally, anything more than 5-10 minutes max is too much. Combat being cartoonishly non-lethal unless it's superheroes or Toon really bugs me as well. If people are trying to kill each other, it should be fairly easy to do. Knives, spears, swords, guns, fire, mass drivers...all really, really deadly.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 4, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> I think that's mostly a misalignment of expectations. Like D&D players jumping into Call of Cthulhu. It's going to end badly without the Keeper making it clear that CoC is not D&D.
> 
> One of the things I hate about games is when combat is incredibly lethal and it takes a long time to make a character. It generally bugs me when character creation takes a long time generally, anything more than 5-10 minutes max is too much. Combat being cartoonishly non-lethal unless it's superheroes or Toon really bugs me as well. If people are trying to kill each other, it should be fairly easy to do. Knives, spears, swords, guns, fire, mass drivers...all really, really deadly.



Yes, I agree, though it is also up to the GM to curate the game and just not let the players stumble blindly into a TPK. I have seen it happen more than once, and imo, it is a waste of time if it happens too early. Most BRP games such as CoC or M-Space, which I like, have fairly long character creation, and deadly combat, so it's important that players know when to run away and not think to battle it out, GM's always don't communicate that enough. Plus characters would probably have some sort of idea of things to avoid, maybe not perfect knowledge, though.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 4, 2021)

dragoner said:


> Yes, I agree, though it is also up to the GM to curate the game and just not let the players stumble blindly into a TPK. I have seen it happen more than once, and imo, it is a waste of time if it happens too early. Most BRP games such as CoC or M-Space, which I like, have fairly long character creation, and deadly combat, so it's important that players know when to run away and not think to battle it out, GM's always don't communicate that enough. Plus characters would probably have some sort of idea of things to avoid, maybe not perfect knowledge, though.



If you mean the Referee should explain that combat is deadly, that running is a viable option, but still let the players and PCs face the consequences of their actions, then I agree. If you mean the Referee should protect the players and PCs from themselves, i.e. remove consequences and therefore agency, then hard disagree.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 4, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> If you mean the Referee should explain that combat is deadly, that running is a viable option, but still let the players and PCs face the consequences of their actions, then I agree. If you mean the Referee should protect the players and PCs from themselves, i.e. remove consequences and therefore agency, then hard disagree.



I mean not sending people in enemies that are overwhelmingly powerful, it is important to give the players a fighting chance. This sort of bleeds into the random TPK right out the gate, is being to tied to random encounters, or rolls. It was a sort of old school play fostered by the DMG, which in its own way wasn't that bad, as long as one accepted it made no real sense at all: wandering through the endless random dungeon, fighting monsters from the random room tables.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 4, 2021)

dragoner said:


> I mean not sending people in enemies that are overwhelmingly powerful, it is important to give the players a fighting chance. This sort of bleeds into the random TPK right out the gate, is being to tied to random encounters, or rolls. It was a sort of old school play fostered by the DMG, which in its own way wasn't that bad, as long as one accepted it made no real sense at all: wandering through the endless random dungeon, fighting monsters from the random room tables.



Huh. The way I run things is: the world exists independently of the PCs. If there’s an adult dragon’s lair nearby and the party insists on venturing in at 1st level without any precautions or even a plan...they’re dead. It’s not my job to save them from their choices or the dangers of the world. It’s not my job to “child proof” the setting, for lack of a better phrase. “Level proof” perhaps or “idiot proof”. I don’t change the CR of monsters to make things “fair”. An adult dragon is still an adult dragon no matter the PCs’ level. That village of 100 orcs still has 100 orcs no matter how rested the PCs are. I generally telegraph what’s ahead and how deadly it is...I have zero interest in gotchas...but if the players insist on pushing on...any consequences are 100% on them.

Wandering monsters also came with reaction tables, so there’s no guarantee an encounter will be a fight. Back then it was also XP for gold, low or no XP for monster killing. So the game was about smartly navigating the environment and avoiding fights if at all possible. Negotiating. Playing smart. Dealing with the risk vs reward of food, light, noise, treasure carried, and how far you have to get back out again. That was infinitely more fun than the modern kick in the door, and hey, look, another perfectly balanced encounter we’re assumed to fight and we’re practically guaranteed to win...lather rinse repeat. Snore.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 4, 2021)

MGibster said:


> This was one of my biggest annoyances with D&D 3rd edition.  Prestige classes seemed like a great concept to me when they were introduced.  But for many prestige classes, I had to essentially map my characters progression from level 1 in order to qualify for the class later leaving no room for spontaneity and being able to perhaps move into a prestige class based on what happened during the game.  Sorry, but you didn't take the Endurance Feat when you could have so you can't go into this class.




There's a reason more modern games that do anything even vaguely like that (prereqs with other prereqs, say) like PF2e or Fragged Empire also have retrofitting rules in them, too.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 4, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> I think that's mostly a misalignment of expectations. Like D&D players jumping into Call of Cthulhu. It's going to end badly without the Keeper making it clear that CoC is not D&D.




We saw this with a D&D player joining a Runequest game some years ago.  His experience was--not good.  Not helped by him not listening to other people.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 4, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> The way I run things is: the world exists independently of the PCs. If there’s an adult dragon’s lair nearby and the party insists on venturing in at 1st level without any precautions or even a plan...they’re dead.



Then it is game over, right? One and done. That was the way it was with the Morrow Project game.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 4, 2021)

dragoner said:


> Then it is game over, right? One and done. That was the way it was with the Morrow Project game.



Like one shots? Sometimes. Or the players make new characters and keep playing.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 4, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Like one shots? Sometimes. Or the players make new characters and keep playing.



One shots maybe, though I can't remember a time of players making new characters and playing after a tpk, usually that's the game. If it happens right out the gate, I would sign off there too I think.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 5, 2021)

dragoner said:


> One shots maybe, though I can't remember a time of players making new characters and playing after a tpk, usually that's the game. If it happens right out the gate, I would sign off there too I think.



Huh. To each their own, of course. I’d wonder what happened and ask the Referee if there was a mismatch of expectations (like playing Call of Cthulhu like D&D). Then I’d want to do what I could to beat whatever challenge the Referee put in my way. Learn from my mistakes and try again. Play smarter and all that. But then I like challenges in games. I don’t see challenges as an excuse to give up and quit. If we have a four-hour slot of gaming planned, by the Great Old Ones we’ve got four hours of gaming to play.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 5, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Huh. To each their own, of course. I’d wonder what happened and ask the Referee if there was a mismatch of expectations (like playing Call of Cthulhu like D&D). Then I’d want to do what I could to beat whatever challenge the Referee put in my way. Learn from my mistakes and try again. Play smarter and all that. But then I like challenges in games. I don’t see challenges as an excuse to give up and quit. If we have a four-hour slot of gaming planned, by the Great Old Ones we’ve got four hours of gaming to play.




I'd go as far to suggest that the percentage of people who go into RPGs wanting challenges drops off progressively the more hardcore it is.    There's plenty of people who consider losing a character by itself a major game failure state.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Huh. To each their own, of course. I’d wonder what happened and ask the Referee if there was a mismatch of expectations (like playing Call of Cthulhu like D&D). Then I’d want to do what I could to beat whatever challenge the Referee put in my way. Learn from my mistakes and try again. Play smarter and all that. But then I like challenges in games. I don’t see challenges as an excuse to give up and quit. If we have a four-hour slot of gaming planned, by the Great Old Ones we’ve got four hours of gaming to play.



Or it could be a waste of time, the GM can just throw the unbeatable thing against you again. I mean, survive until you die is space invaders, that's a challenge. I want more though, esp if I am making a CoC character, or even 5e.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I'd go as far to suggest that the percentage of people who go into RPGs wanting challenges drops off progressively the more hardcore it is.    There's plenty of people who consider losing a character by itself a major game failure state.



It definitely drops off in proportion to how long it takes to make a character, and expected survival rate.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I'd go as far to suggest that the percentage of people who go into RPGs wanting challenges drops off progressively the more hardcore it is.    There's plenty of people who consider losing a character by itself a major game failure state.



I'd suggest those people find a game that doesn't include violence and the implied risk of character death, then. D&D and Call of Cthulhu are clearly not games they'd enjoy.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 5, 2021)

dragoner said:


> Or it could be a waste of time, the GM can just throw the unbeatable thing against you again.



I'd say there's your problem. You assume that because you didn't easily beat it the first time it is therefore "unbeatable". That's obviously not an assumption you should make. Or there's the real possibility you're trying to punch Cthulhu and win...which is a clear mismatch of expectations. If your character does dumb stuff and your character dies, it's no one's fault but yours.


dragoner said:


> I mean, survive until you die is space invaders, that's a challenge. I want more though, esp if I am making a CoC character, or even 5e.



If you don't want to risk a character death, don't play a game where character death is a possibility. I mean, we are talking about the premiere horror RPG and the premiere fantasy action-adventure RPG. Character death is quite possible in both, but especially in Call of Cthulhu. If you play a horror game expecting easy wins and no character death...well, that's a clear mismatch of expectations. You're clearly playing the wrong game.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> I'd say there's your problem. You assume that because you didn't easily beat it the first time it is therefore "unbeatable". That's obviously not an assumption you should make. Or there's the real possibility you're trying to punch Cthulhu and win...which is a clear mismatch of expectations. If your character does dumb stuff and your character dies, it's no one's fault but yours.
> 
> If you don't want to risk a character death, don't play a game where character death is a possibility. I mean, we are talking about the premiere horror RPG and the premiere fantasy action-adventure RPG. Character death is quite possible in both, but especially in Call of Cthulhu. If you play a horror game expecting easy wins and no character death...well, that's a clear mismatch of expectations. You're clearly playing the wrong game.



I know what is unbeatable, and if a DM throws an adult Red Dragon at my 1st level character, that's on them, not me, and is exactly why I wouldn't try again. There's no challenge there, nothing.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 5, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> You're clearly playing the wrong game.




Yikes.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 5, 2021)

dragoner said:


> I know what is unbeatable, and if a DM throws an adult Red Dragon at my 1st level character, that's on them, not me, and is exactly why I wouldn't try again. There's no challenge there, nothing.



Not every encounter has to be a fight. There's no rule that say that. Why would you assume every single creature you see must be a valid target to kill? And a level-appropriate target at that. That's a bizarre assumption to make. Yes, I'm aware it's a fairly common assumption amongst D&D players, but that doesn't make it any less bizarre. Just because you see a "monster" doesn't mean you have to fight it.

If you're standing in the starting-village square and an adult red dragon shows up in front of your 1st-level character...what you do is up to you. Do you fight? Do you talk? Do you run? If you choose to fight, that's 100% your fault. If the DM forces a fight, that's 100% their fault. The options are not "fight and win" or "give up and quit". There's a literal world of options between those two. Negotiation. Talking. Seeing if the dragon wants to offer a quest. See if it makes a demand. Have a conversation. Most DM's aren't going to throw an adult red dragon at a 1st-level party expecting a fight. They'd likely assume the players were smart enough to not charge in guns blazing. If they players are dumb enough to charge...that's 100% on them. If there's a rumor of an adult red dragon lair a few miles away and your 1st-level party decides that sounds like a smashing idea for a first adventure...sorry, that's 100% your fault.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Not every encounter has to be a fight. There's no rule that say that. Why would you assume every single creature you see must be a valid target to kill? And a level-appropriate target at that. That's a bizarre assumption to make. Yes, I'm aware it's a fairly common assumption amongst D&D players, but that doesn't make it any less bizarre. Just because you see a "monster" doesn't mean you have to fight it.
> 
> If you're standing in the starting-village square and an adult red dragon shows up in front of your 1st-level character...what you do is up to you. Do you fight? Do you talk? Do you run? If you choose to fight, that's 100% your fault. If the DM forces a fight, that's 100% their fault. The options are not "fight and win" or "give up and quit". There's a literal world of options between those two. Negotiation. Talking. Seeing if the dragon wants to offer a quest. See if it makes a demand. Have a conversation. Most DM's aren't going to throw an adult red dragon at a 1st-level party expecting a fight. They'd likely assume the players were smart enough to not charge in guns blazing. If they players are dumb enough to charge...that's 100% on them. If there's a rumor of an adult red dragon lair a few miles away and your 1st-level party decides that sounds like a smashing idea for a first adventure...sorry, that's 100% your fault.



Or the DM just sends it in to kill everyone, because that's what it does, otherwise they are pulling punches ... curating the encounter. I have had it happen, and not just Morrow Project, lost mine 5e game I was killed by arrows at a wagon because I failed a perception check, and couldn't react except get hit. I totally bailed on that game after that.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 5, 2021)

dragoner said:


> Or the DM just sends it in to kill everyone, because that's what it does...



Like I said, that's 100% on the DM, then. They're forcing the fight. That's bad DMing. If the dragon shows up and the PCs charge it...that bad playing.


dragoner said:


> I have had it happen, and not just Morrow Project, lost mine 5e game I was killed by arrows at a wagon because I failed a perception check, and couldn't react except get hit. I totally bailed on that game after that.



Probably for the best. If you can't handle a character dying, you shouldn't play games where there's combat. For someone with "Dying in Chargen" in your profile, you seem incredibly adverse to character death.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Like I said, that's 100% on the DM, then. They're forcing the fight. That's bad DMing. If the dragon shows up and the PCs charge it...that bad playing.
> 
> Probably for the best. If you can't handle a character dying, you shouldn't play games where there's combat. For someone with "Dying in Chargen" in your profile, you seem incredibly adverse to character death.



Who isn't? And pointless wastes of time, like going through chargen, and dying right away. CT chargen is less than 15 minutes, even then I have only seen people want to kill their character when they didn't like it, and that as well seems a pointless waste of time. Just roll another, sheesh.


----------



## pemerton (Dec 5, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> I mean, we are talking about the premiere horror RPG and the premiere fantasy action-adventure RPG. Character death is quite possible in both, but especially in Call of Cthulhu. If you play a horror game expecting easy wins and no character death...well, that's a clear mismatch of expectations. You're clearly playing the wrong game.



I haven't read the whole of HPL's corpus, but have read multiple hundreds of pages. Is there a story where the protagonist dies? Not in Call of Cthulhu itself, not in The Shadow out of Time, not in At the Mountains of Madness, I think not in The Dunwich Horror. Maybe in Shadow Over Innsmouth, depending how you look at it.

So why would I expect character death to be a serious prospect in a CoC game?



overgeeked said:


> If you're standing in the starting-village square and an adult red dragon shows up in front of your 1st-level character...what you do is up to you. Do you fight? Do you talk? Do you run? If you choose to fight, that's 100% your fault. If the DM forces a fight, that's 100% their fault. The options are not "fight and win" or "give up and quit". There's a literal world of options between those two. Negotiation. Talking. Seeing if the dragon wants to offer a quest. See if it makes a demand. Have a conversation. Most DM's aren't going to throw an adult red dragon at a 1st-level party expecting a fight.



Why do the players not have the information they need to know what the GM is expecting them to do? Either the GM could just tell them. Or the GM could provide sufficient context in the form of in-fiction information (eg rumours about the dragon) to enable the players to know what is expected.

Leaving this to be worked out by trial and error seems like poor GMing to me.

EDIT: Doubly so in a context where red dragons are, by default, Chaotic Evil, and where many GMs have a "no evil PCs" policy, and many players might reasonably feel that bargaining with an evil being risks violating that policy.


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 5, 2021)

I came to hate AD&D because I found the classes to be too restrictive; I couldn't see a logic in the fact that knowing how to pick locks meant to you weren't really good at fighting, or knowing how to use magic meant you couldn't grasp swordsmanship or lock-picking.

GURPs should have been right up my alley, but every time I've examined their rules it has turned me away. I can't say exactly what I don't like about it, but I won't touch the game.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 5, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> I'd suggest those people find a game that doesn't include violence and the implied risk of character death, then. D&D and Call of Cthulhu are clearly not games they'd enjoy.




Its not that simple, at least with D&D, and never has been.  "Implied risk" they _do_ want; they just don't want it to actually _happen_.  That's because they are looking at it through the lens of fiction where there's death around the main characters with some regularity, but the main characters pull through.  They're trying for the same effect.  And I'd argue as D&D has evolved over the decades, it and its kin have, on the whole, leaned into that: death is still on the table (because a lot if not most people can't have that sense of risk unless it actually is) but the actual chance of it occurring has decreased markedly (as someone who got his start in OD&D this is very visible to me).

CoC is a bit of a different beast.  Its based on a type of fiction where the survival of protagonists is not necessarily the default case, where the characters are chronically dealing with problems above their heads.  Its not even a routine monster hunting genre (which by itself tend to be risky being at least horror adjacent), and people playing in it who don't expect there's a pretty good chance of loss have not engaged with the proper genre (which may be partly the GM's fault, since its a genre that in its purer forms really is out on the fringe of what RPGs usually address; horror games in general are, and true Lovecraftian horror is probably on the fringe of those).


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 5, 2021)

dragoner said:


> It definitely drops off in proportion to how long it takes to make a character, and expected survival rate.




To a point.  But, you know, back in the early days of Runequest, it wasn't exactly an OD&D level "roll a bunch of stats, pick a class, buy your equipment and go" character gen, and you can look a long time before you find a game as capable of killing off a character from bad luck early and often (most of the GMs I knew at the time had literally a sheaf of dead character sheets, since we were playing a lot of it with a lot of people), and people were kind of okay with it.

Its an issue of expectation and what you're used to.  While it was more lethal at more advanced levels than what usually happened in OD&D, people were still used to losing OD&D characters at the bottom levels all the time because of how ridiculously brittle they were in practice.  These days, fairly few games take that kind of approach, so people don't expect it even with simple character gen (though obviously games with a lot of decision making in character gen will make it even more unattractive).


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 5, 2021)

dragoner said:


> Who isn't? And pointless wastes of time, like going through chargen, and dying right away. CT chargen is less than 15 minutes, even then I have only seen people want to kill their character when they didn't like it, and that as well seems a pointless waste of time. Just roll another, sheesh.




That's the intrinsic problem with overly random character gen; people can tout it all the want, but there enough people who want to play what they want to play, and if you force random generation on them, they'll either completely subvert the process in the first place, or just swordbush the characters they don't like so they have a "legitimate" reason to generate another one.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> To a point.  But, you know, back in the early days of Runequest, it wasn't exactly an OD&D level "roll a bunch of stats, pick a class, buy your equipment and go" character gen, and you can look a long time before you find a game as capable of killing off a character from bad luck early and often (most of the GMs I knew at the time had literally a sheaf of dead character sheets, since we were playing a lot of it with a lot of people), and people were kind of okay with it.
> 
> Its an issue of expectation and what you're used to.  While it was more lethal at more advanced levels than what usually happened in OD&D, people were still used to losing OD&D characters at the bottom levels all the time because of how ridiculously brittle they were in practice.  These days, fairly few games take that kind of approach, so people don't expect it even with simple character gen (though obviously games with a lot of decision making in character gen will make it even more unattractive).



The ultimate challenge: The Keeper tells you your character died before you roll them up.  

I play a decent amount of BRP with M-Space and CoC; I mean, I don't just randomly kill off characters, its too long of a process to generate them. Even with 5e, granted I don't play it all that much, it is longer than old D&D which was about as long as it took to roll the stats because we knew the spells and gear.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> That's the intrinsic problem with overly random character gen; people can tout it all the want, but there enough people who want to play what they want to play, and if you force random generation on them, they'll either completely subvert the process in the first place, or just swordbush the characters they don't like so they have a "legitimate" reason to generate another one.



It is also about being invested in the character, the whole role-playing thing. Random has the benefit of someone not playing the exact same character every single time, except yes, if they don't like that character, it circles back on their not being invested. Usually I have given out re-rolls, out points to build on, so it's more guided random. Though in games like 5e, with the ASI's and everything else, it is only a matter of leveling up.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 5, 2021)

dragoner said:


> It is also about being invested in the character, the whole role-playing thing. Random has the benefit of someone not playing the exact same character every single time, except yes, if they don't like that character, it circles back on their not being invested. Usually I have given out re-rolls, out points to build on, so it's more guided random. Though in games like 5e, with the ASI's and everything else, it is only a matter of leveling up.




You can have some random elements without producing this result (whether that's desirable is in the eyes of the observer); I don't think people would probably run into too many rocks with the character gen in Cepheus Deluxe for example.

But a lot of games in the first few years (maybe as much as a decade) of the hobby left you entirely at the mercy of the dice.  And not all of them had as little relevance as OD&D attributes started out being.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 5, 2021)

dragoner said:


> The ultimate challenge: The Keeper tells you your character died before you roll them up.
> 
> I play a decent amount of BRP with M-Space and CoC; I mean, I don't just randomly kill off characters, its too long of a process to generate them. Even with 5e, granted I don't play it all that much, it is longer than old D&D which was about as long as it took to roll the stats because we knew the spells and gear.




Unless you actively intervene though, its not like its hard for combat in BRP derivatives to kill people because, well, you're in combat.  M-Space might be a little better (being a Mythras derivative) though I've always been dubious of gun combat in Mythras because so many of the damage mitigation strategies in normal Mythras don't apply.

But traditionally in most versions of BRP unless you just ignored crits, it could be "one crit and you're done".


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Unless you actively intervene though, its not like its hard for combat in BRP derivatives to kill people because, well, you're in combat.  M-Space might be a little better (being a Mythras derivative) though I've always been dubious of gun combat in Mythras because so many of the damage mitigation strategies in normal Mythras don't apply.
> 
> But traditionally in most versions of BRP unless you just ignored crits, it could be "one crit and you're done".



I ran Caverns of Thracia and Mythic Constantinople with Mythras; Thanatos and the Wights really wiped the party, it was a TPK or so. It happens, though we were multiple sessions in the game, and that was an ending, we played (with I as a player) Paranoia after that.

M-Space/Mythras indeed can be deadly with the RQ6 Firearms supplement. There have been discussions that weapons such as the Gauss Rifle are too powerful, then again those discussions go back to Classic Traveller, where the Gauss Rifle is like a death ray.

Intervention can take all forms, a friend talked about a TPK with a ship in mongoose Traveller, because a crit fail in taking off, and I would not have been faithful to that roll, nope. It seems a big waste of time to go through starting the game, then to let in collapse right out the gate.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> You can have some random elements without producing this result (whether that's desirable is in the eyes of the observer); I don't think people would probably run into too many rocks with the character gen in Cepheus Deluxe for example.
> 
> But a lot of games in the first few years (maybe as much as a decade) of the hobby left you entirely at the mercy of the dice.  And not all of them had as little relevance as OD&D attributes started out being.



Omer and Josh are friends and we talk other places, they do great work and Cepheus Deluxe is worthy of all the accolades it has been given. I bought it and gave a quick read, it is good, I haven't gone too much in depth yet, however.

I mean I have friends who always play the same character, they will take out an old character sheet and try to use it if you let them. Even random, they try the same. I envy their finding that one character that makes them happy; except I also like breaking up the monotony a bit, random helps there. To me that is mainly what the dice are, a way to randomize things; helps with world building too. 

It has been a long time since playing or running any OD&D games, nothing against them, it is just nothing much for them either. I have thought about it, a while back I took out my Holmes Blue and gave it a read through. Personally I'd rather run Mythras, or play 5e, and I have a DM for that in my group.


----------



## Campbell (Dec 5, 2021)

It's not all that uncommon to play games where violence is on the table, but where losing in a fight is more about narrative consequences than losing your PC. This is how Apocalypse World, Tenra Bansho Zero, Dune 2d20, and Blades in the Dark work by default. Exalted Third Edition, Vampire Fifth Edition, and L5R Fifth Edition provide the GM with discretion to decide a character is dying rather than dead.

In our group we almost always treat character death as a negotiated thing, mostly because we would rather focus on the narrative consequences of that loss. Death is generally the easy way out when you have a bunch of real character oriented things at stake.

There's definitely room for a more challenge oriented take where loss means loss of character, but that hugely incentivizes a different sort of play then we tend to prefer in my more character oriented group. We're certainly not going to spend the 2 sessions we did for our Exalted game setting up character and situation details if that work can just get tossed away the first time they get into a fight.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> It's not all that uncommon to play games where violence is on the table, but where losing in a fight is more about narrative consequences than losing your PC. This is how Apocalypse World, Tenra Bansho Zero, Dune 2d20, and Blades in the Dark work by default. Exalted Third Edition, Vampire Fifth Edition, and L5R Fifth Edition provide the GM with discretion to decide a character is dying rather than dead.



Basically any game with a Referee, DM, GM, Keeper, etc can be played that way. The Referee can say that at zero hit points you're captured instead of dead. In my experience, most gamers would rather have their characters die than be captured.


Campbell said:


> In our group we almost always treat character death as a negotiated thing, mostly because we would rather focus on the narrative consequences of that loss. Death is generally the easy way out when you have a bunch of real character oriented things at stake.



In my experience that would lead immediately and inevitably to abuse of the fiction. Players would simply do whatever stupid thing they thought was funny or cool in the moment, fiction be damned. "Well, I refuse to let you kill my character DM, so I guess they just survive taking this lava bath." Sorry, but no. Actions have consequences. The fiction should be upheld and make sense regardless of whatever plot immunity the player wants for their character. If you attack and adult red dragon at 1st-level, your character is at their mercy. If they want you dead, you're dead. Simple as. If the player objects, well, they shouldn't have been stupid enough to attack an adult red dragon at 1st level.


Campbell said:


> There's definitely room for a more challenge oriented take where loss means loss of character, but that hugely incentivizes a different sort of play then we tend to prefer in my more character oriented group. We're certainly not going to spend the 2 sessions we did for our Exalted game setting up character and situation details if that work can just get tossed away the first time they get into a fight.



Weird. That would just make me play smarter. The more invested I am in a character the smarter I try to play the game. Knowing that death is a possible outcome of a fight means I'll try to avoid fights if at all possible, and if a fight is unavoidable, I'll do my best to stack the deck as much in my favor as I can. The idea of not investing in a character because they might be killed or simply not playing a game unless my character is guaranteed to survive no matter what terrible choices I make sounds like bizarro world to me. At that level of plot immunity, why bother with dice or a GM? Just sit around and tell each other how cool your characters are.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 5, 2021)

Campbell said:


> It's not all that uncommon to play games where violence is on the table, but where losing in a fight is more about narrative consequences than losing your PC. This is how Apocalypse World, Tenra Bansho Zero, Dune 2d20, and Blades in the Dark work by default. Exalted Third Edition, Vampire Fifth Edition, and L5R Fifth Edition provide the GM with discretion to decide a character is dying rather than dead.
> 
> In our group we almost always treat character death as a negotiated thing, mostly because we would rather focus on the narrative consequences of that loss. Death is generally the easy way out when you have a bunch of real character oriented things at stake.
> 
> There's definitely room for a more challenge oriented take where loss means loss of character, but that hugely incentivizes a different sort of play then we tend to prefer in my more character oriented group. We're certainly not going to spend the 2 sessions we did for our Exalted game setting up character and situation details if that work can just get tossed away the first time they get into a fight.



If you are having fun, you are doing it right in my book. I mean negotiated death is fine even in OD&D because one thing it is doing is handing over some narrative control to the player as insurance they don't get railroaded. I do see though that the discussion orbits around group dynamics as much as mechanics, and the death as a mechanic acts as a whip. Which yeah, not too hot on that idea.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 6, 2021)

dragoner said:


> I mean I have friends who always play the same character, they will take out an old character sheet and try to use it if you let them. Even random, they try the same. I envy their finding that one character that makes them happy; except I also like breaking up the monotony a bit, random helps there. To me that is mainly what the dice are, a way to randomize things; helps with world building too.




Please don't take this the wrong way, because I sometimes feel the same way but--at the end of the day, that's not our business.  The one thing a player usually gets control over is what character they're playing and how they play them.  Barring campaign incompatibility, if a player wants to play a minor variation on the guy they've done the last ten times, I can't help but see that as their right.



dragoner said:


> It has been a long time since playing or running any OD&D games, nothing against them, it is just nothing much for them either. I have thought about it, a while back I took out my Holmes Blue and gave it a read through. Personally I'd rather run Mythras, or play 5e, and I have a DM for that in my group.




That was just noting that random rolls in OD&D often only made a marginal difference.  It was a big contrast with, say, Gamma World where there were random elements that could very easily make dramatic differences in look and feel, let alone capability.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 6, 2021)

Campbell said:


> Death is generally the easy way out when you have a bunch of real character oriented things at stake.




Yeah, character death is often the least interesting result for many games. I mean, if I’m running Mothership or Alien, sure, kill a PC. They’re not exactly the focus of the game in the way PCs are in other games. They’re kind of meant to be disposable and replaceable in those games.

But for other games, that’s not really the case. In my Spire campaign, we had one player whose character took Severe Blood Fallout, which can be lethal. In this case, he was shot point blank by a powerful pistol.

There are a few options to choose from, one of which is “Dying- You’re dying. Choose: do some- thing useful before you die (and roll with mastery, because this is the last thing you’ll ever do) or desperately try to cling onto life (and lose something vital in the bargain).”

This basically gives the player the option to go out with one last herculean effort, or else cling to life but lose something as a result. I put this to the player and he opted to keep the PC alive, but lose something. So I narrated a blood-witch arriving on the scene and making an offer to other PCs to save their friend. So she cut open her palm and fed him her blood, and his wound was healed. But she now has a hold over him, and that’ll definitely come into play. I’ll make that hurt. 

Seems more interesting than just having the PC die only to be replaced by a new one.



overgeeked said:


> Basically any game with a Referee, DM, GM, Keeper, etc can be played that way. The Referee can say that at zero hit points you're captured instead of dead. In my experience, most gamers would rather have their characters die than be captured.




I mean, if the GM is free to do anything, then yeah, I guess that can happen. Some games actually offer alternatives that are interesting. They have rules for this stuff.

And some players are actually interested in alternatives not because they want to be free to do “stupid stuff” and have “no consequences.” Quite the opposite, very often.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 6, 2021)

dragoner said:


> I ran Caverns of Thracia and Mythic Constantinople with Mythras; Thanatos and the Wights really wiped the party, it was a TPK or so. It happens, though we were multiple sessions in the game, and that was an ending, we played (with I as a player) Paranoia after that.
> 
> M-Space/Mythras indeed can be deadly with the RQ6 Firearms supplement. There have been discussions that weapons such as the Gauss Rifle are too powerful, then again those discussions go back to Classic Traveller, where the Gauss Rifle is like a death ray.
> 
> Intervention can take all forms, a friend talked about a TPK with a ship in mongoose Traveller, because a crit fail in taking off, and I would not have been faithful to that roll, nope. It seems a big waste of time to go through starting the game, then to let in collapse right out the gate.




The usual issue with that is, once you start going "Nope, we're not going to have that happen," it can turn into a situation where people feel like you're being selective about it if you don't do it every time.

Which doesn't mean I don't understand your point about the latter; it'd be pointless to let that happen there.  But then you have to ask, what point does that roll ever serve if its that severe?


----------



## dragoner (Dec 6, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Please don't take this the wrong way, because I sometimes feel the same way but--at the end of the day, that's not our business.  The one thing a player usually gets control over is what character they're playing and how they play them.  Barring campaign incompatibility, if a player wants to play a minor variation on the guy they've done the last ten times, I can't help but see that as their right.
> 
> 
> 
> That was just noting that random rolls in OD&D often only made a marginal difference.  It was a big contrast with, say, Gamma World where there were random elements that could very easily make dramatic differences in look and feel, let alone capability.



Don't worry, I don't try to force them out of their comfort zone, I mean a long time ago, yes.


Thomas Shey said:


> The usual issue with that is, once you start going "Nope, we're not going to have that happen," it can turn into a situation where people feel like you're being selective about it if you don't do it every time.
> 
> Which doesn't mean I don't understand your point about the latter; it'd be pointless to let that happen there.  But then you have to ask, what point does that roll ever serve if its that severe?



Exactly, why roll? That's my philosophy now. It's kind of an odd one too, as I don't remember it in Classic either. I like rolls to actually have interesting consequences, now; where there was a time of count every bullet, role-play every distance traveled, which I don't do, not anymore, now it is cut to the action.


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, character death is often the least interesting result for many games.



It is the only interesting result. Risking a PC you have invested time and effort into is what makes RPGs come alive. Otherwise, all you have is what overgeeked noted: a bunch of people telling each other how cool their imaginary friends are.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> It is the only interesting result. Risking a PC you have invested time and effort into is what makes RPGs come alive. Otherwise, all you have is what overgeeked noted: a bunch of people telling each other how cool their imaginary friends are.




I would say there are a lot of things that make RPGs come alive. One of which is indeed risk. But there are lots of different things to risk.

Look at Call of Cthulhu and its risk of characters’ sanity and how that changes the feel if a game versus one where the only risk is PC death. The game feels different. Look at Delta Green, where you watch as an agent’s connections to their loved ones bear the brunt of their struggles against the mythos. Look at any number of other games where concepts of identity or belief are at risk during play. Where the PCs take actual consequences from their choices along the way and need to press on anyway. 

Death is far from the only interesting consequence in an RPG. At times, I’d say it’s the end of consequence.


----------



## Aldarc (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> It is the only interesting result. Risking a PC you have invested time and effort into is what makes RPGs come alive. Otherwise, all you have is what overgeeked noted: a bunch of people telling each other how cool their imaginary friends are.



There is more to risk-taking than simply life or death.


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 6, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> There is more to risk-taking than simply life or death.



Sure: there's maiming, attribute loss, and the like.


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I would say there are a lot of things that make RPGs come alive. One of which is indeed risk. But there are lots of different things to risk.
> 
> Look at Call of Cthulhu and its risk of characters’ sanity and how that changes the feel if a game versus one where the only risk is PC death. The game feels different. Look at Delta Green, where you watch as an agent’s connections to their loved ones bear the brunt of their struggles against the mythos. Look at any number of other games where concepts of identity or belief are at risk during play. Where the PCs take actual consequences from their choices along the way and need to press on anyway.
> 
> Death is far from the only interesting consequence in an RPG. At times, I’d say it’s the end of consequence.



The ending of a PC's playability, be it insanity, death, or maiming, amounts to the same thing. Wounds or sanity, the loss of the PC is the stake in the game.


----------



## Aldarc (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> Sure: there's maiming, attribute loss, and the like.



There are so many significant risks that characters take in the grand history of fiction, often with incredibly dramatic stakes on the line, and yet the only ones that you seem to imagine that matter or regard as interesting for TTRPGs are ones that physically harm the character?


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> The ending of a PC's playability, be it insanity, death, or maiming, amounts to the same thing. Wounds or sanity, the loss of the PC is the stake in the game.




It need not be.

For example, I’ve played in a Tales From the Loop game. Character death is off the books in that game….it does not happen.

Yet there was risk. The characters had goals and achieving them was uncertain. We had to play to find out if they could succeed.

And that game was not anything like players “telling each other how cool their imaginary friends are.”


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 6, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> There are so many significant risks that characters take in the grand history of fiction, often with incredibly dramatic stakes on the line, and yet the only ones that you seem to imagine that matter or regard as interesting for TTRPGs are ones that physically harm the character?



RPGs are a game, not fiction.

But to go back to the fiction that was the core of TTRPGs, Frodo's core goal was to destroy the One Ring and _survive_.


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> And that game was not anything like players “telling each other how cool their imaginary friends are.”



Sounds like it was, actually. If my PC can't die/go insane/etc, just text me the outcome. If the stakes are that low, why bother? Hamlet could have just waited for his inheritance, but it wouldn't have made an interesting play.


----------



## Aldarc (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> RPGs are a game, not fiction.



RPGs are games of creative fiction. 



Jd Smith1 said:


> But to go back to the fiction that was the core of TTRPGs, Frodo's core goal was to destroy the One Ring and _survive_.



Most characters in fiction want to survive. Survival is basic. It's just as interesting as reading "I'm good at MS Word" on CVs. But I would say that Frodo's core goal was not to survive. The framing of Frodo's goal was simply "destroy the One Ring." He hoped that he would return to the Shire, but his goal was destruction of the Ring of Power.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> Sounds like it was, actually. If my PC can't die/go insane/etc, just text me the outcome. If the stakes are that low, why bother? Hamlet could have just waited for his inheritance, but it wouldn't have made an interesting play.




There were stakes. I wouldn’t say they were low.

If a GM can’t take that game and give it stakes that don’t rely on threat of PC death, then I’d say it’s a failing of the GM and not the game.


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> There were stakes. I wouldn’t say they were low.
> 
> If a GM can’t take that game and give it stakes that don’t rely on threat of PC death, then I’d say it’s a failing of the GM and not the game.



I would say that a GM who changes the traditional venue of TTRPGs is simply forcing his players to listen to a dull story of his own devising. Another example of the failed story-teller seeking affirmation through other venues.

Because, you see, GMs don't set the stakes of an RPG: they create and operate the world. It is the players who set the stakes and write the tale. They decide what is worth risking their PCs for, and what is not. Their actions promote consequences, which they must live and operate with (provide they survive them). 

A campaign where the GM sets the stakes is simply a railroad: go hence, solve thus, proceed on to the preordained conclusion.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> I would say that a GM who changes the traditional venue of TTRPGs is simply forcing his players to listen to a dull story of his own devising. Another example of the failed story-teller seeking affirmation through other venues.
> 
> Because, you see, GMs don't set the stakes of an RPG: they create and operate the world. It is the players who set the stakes and write the tale. They decide what is worth risking their PCs for, and what is not. Their actions promote consequences, which they must live and operate with (provide they survive them).
> 
> A campaign where the GM sets the stakes is simply a railroad: go hence, solve thus, proceed on to the preordained conclusion.




I don’t think that the GM sets the stakes alone, but they are involved for sure. The only point I’m making, which you actually at times seem to agree with, is that the stakes can be something other than just survival.


----------



## pemerton (Dec 6, 2021)

This thread seems to have jumped the shark.

The assertion (eg from @overgeeked) that a RPG in which PC death is not on the line is just one in which participants "Just sit around and tell each other how cool your characters are" and/or involves PCs taking baths in lava is just bizarre.

In most fiction, the stakes confronting the protagonist are not _will I die?_

Even in most adventure fiction, the stakes confronting the protagonist are not _will I die? _REH's Conan survives crucifixion! So does Wolverine - and when we read the Wolverine limited edition we know that it's not his life that is on the line.

What are high stakes for Wolverine? His relationship with Mariko. His very different relationship with Kitty. Can he make it into the Hellfire club without having to go berserk and kill?

What are high stakes for Conan? Will he have to choose between doing the right thing and getting the treasure? (Most of the time, yes. But not always.) Can he maintain his relationship with Belit? What loss will the usurper inflict on the land of Aquilonia?

The rules of Prince Valiant state outright that PC death is not normally a part of the game - it's always the GM's discretion, informed by the fiction and any salient mechanical results, whether or not a PC dies. That has not stopped my group's play of Prince Valiant being reasonably intense from time-to-time.


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t think that the GM sets the stakes alone, but they are involved for sure. The only point I’m making, which you actually at times seem to agree with, is that the stakes can be something other than just survival.



I disagree: the players set the stakes. Otherwise, its a railroad at best.

The core of a TTRPG is the survival of the PC. Sure, there are secondary goals (clouds of them in most of my campaigns), but all are contingent upon the PC remaining alive, physically viable and sane. Remove the core, and we're back to imaginary friends.


----------



## Willie the Duck (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> I disagree: the players set the stakes. Otherwise, its a railroad at best.
> 
> The core of a TTRPG is the survival of the PC. Sure, there are secondary goals (clouds of them in most of my campaigns), but all are contingent upon the PC remaining alive, physically viable and sane. Remove the core, and we're back to imaginary friends.



You keep saying this, but providing little support other than repeated assertion. 

Ghostbusters RPG is a TTRPG where survival is assumed that is about as far away from new school narrative game as can be. A character can fall off a building and it won't kill them. It will, however, keep them out of the action for an extended period (those skyscrapers have a lot of stairs, man) while the success or failure of the games general goals and stakes (capturing ghosts, saving the city/world, etc.) are decided without them. 

Obviously continued survival is necessary for the game to proceed, but removing threat-of-nonsurvival as a gameplay element does not reduce the game to 'imaginary friends.' Instead, all it does is focus the success or failure of the endeavor for which the PCs strive onto the endeavor itself, instead of endeavor+survival. That could mean that the game is imaginary friends, but doesn't require it to be so, nor really incentivize it in any great way.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> I disagree: the players set the stakes. Otherwise, its a railroad at best.




I don’t think that’s true at all. I think you’d have to do some work to explain that.



Jd Smith1 said:


> The core of a TTRPG is the survival of the PC. Sure, there are secondary goals (clouds of them in most of my campaigns), but all are contingent upon the PC remaining alive, physically viable and sane. Remove the core, and we're back to imaginary friends.




I don’t think that’s the core of RPGing. And I think the bit about imaginary friends and how cool they are applies to any game.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 6, 2021)

The players decide what their characters do. So the player decides what their characters care about. Even if the player writes a War and Peace length backstory about their deep connection to their family, the player is rightfully free to decide at any moment they don’t want to be inconvenienced by that strong family connection. So despite making a character for whom “family is everything” if that family ever becomes an inconvenience, the player can (and almost certainly will) decide the character simply doesn’t care enough to bother. Which is why the orphan edgelord backstory is so popular. No hooks for drama. Most players don’t want any. I’ve watched this, and things like it, play out hundreds of times over the nearly 40 years of playing and running RPGs. When it comes down to it, the only reliable stakes a DM has that the player is likely to care about is their character’s survival. If that’s the only point of leverage that consistently works, that’s where DMs go.

If we’re comparing RPGs to fiction, which they’re not, by the way, then the vast majority of players would sit out the story as they fairly consistently refuse the call to adventure. Or would simply get sidetracked and wander off on some side quest, care more about getting paid or finding gold than most characters in fiction, or lose sight of the goal and wander off. Or find the quickest, easiest, most self-aggrandizing, most self-enriching, and most boring way possible to end the story. “No thanks Gandalf, I’m not walking through Mordor to Mount Doom to drop the ring into the fire. There’s a hole in the top of the mountain and we have giant eagles. Psh. ‘Walk’. Ha. ‘Risk’. Ha. No thanks. Oh yeah, how much will you pay me for this? You’ve had too much pipeweed if you think I’m doing this for free.” The typical gamer mindset is diametrically opposed to the fiction writer’s mindset. Fiction goes for the most drama possible, whereas most gamers go for the least drama possible. That’s why most game write ups make for boring stories. Typical D&D characters are far, far closer to Spanish conquistadors slaughtering their way across the New World in search of gold than anyone you’d find in Tolkien...well, except the villains, of course.


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t think that’s true at all. I think you’d have to do some work to explain that.



Not at all. It's self-evident to anyone with any imagination.


hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t think that’s the core of RPGing. And I think the bit about imaginary friends and how cool they are applies to any game.



Really? How many imaginary friends were on your football team in high school and college?


----------



## Campbell (Dec 6, 2021)

My experiences have been quite different, but it really does not matter. I don't play in most GM's games and I do not run games for most players. What anyone else does who does not share a table with me is immaterial for the type of games I want to play in and run.

I have not been doing this thing for 40 years, but I have for more than 20. I have had to be somewhat selective, but I view that as part of any sort of adult socialization. You have to find people that you are compatible with, who like the same sort of stuff you do. 

While I do enjoy OSR and challenge oriented play from time to time the vast majority of my roleplaying experience has been in more character focused games. I know the process I use can work because I have seen them work. They are not the only processes that work and they might not work for any given group. I don't know what else to say there.

It's been our experience that the specter of death gets players to focus too much on being prudent when we are looking for the sort of characters who don't always do the most prudent things. Our games are not adventure games. It's not about overcoming the challenge or what silly stuff we can get away with. It's about playing a game where our characters are deeply embedded into the situation and the stakes are more personal. Having to live with failing to achieve personal objectives, losing NPCs my character cares for, having relationships redefined, losing status all feel harder for me to deal with than any character I have lost in any other game group I have been part of in the past.


----------



## CleverNickName (Dec 6, 2021)

I probably wouldn't play an RPG where character death was frequent.
And I probably wouldn't play an RPG where character death wasn't possible, either.

Like others have posted, it is frustrating to have to continually roll up new characters, especially when I'm personally vested in the backstory and the current events within the game.  But also like others have posted, no matter how vested I am in the character, I will get very bored very quickly if the risk of character death is absent (or worse, engineered and predetermined by the DM/player.)

The two have to be balanced around everyone's expectations (players and DM).  And that balance is going to vary from table to table.  For me?  I like the probability of character death to be roughly equivalent to [0 + (character level x 0.05)]:  very unlikely at 1st level, but very likely indeed around 15th level.  Others will prefer a different formula.


----------



## Gradine (Dec 6, 2021)

My approach to character death is to figure out what the players would prefer and go with that.

That said, stories can have stakes, considerable ones even, without character death. In some ways, death is a _deflation _of stakes.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> Not at all. It's self-evident to anyone with any imagination.




Ah I see. So your one way to play displays more imagination than more than one way.

I think your standing on some shaky ground



Jd Smith1 said:


> Really? How many imaginary friends were on your football team in high school and college?




The answer is fourteen. Obviously.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred (Dec 6, 2021)

Reynard said:


> I don't want to gum up the Dishonored thread with this tangent, but the fact that so many people expressed a revulsion for the 2d20 system got me thinking how I don't hate any system I can think of off the top of my head. There are some i prefer not to play, but no game makes me feel like the developers shot my dog (or favorite sci-fi franchise, as the case may be).
> 
> So if you HATE a system, why? Explain it to me.



Hate is too strong a word, but there are systems I have a very low opinion of, like BRP. Badly organized, hard to use, doesn't accomplish its purpose very well.


----------



## Umbran (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> Not at all. It's self-evident to anyone with any imagination.




*Mod Note:*
Assertions of the form, "You must be mentally deficient to not agree with me or understand my point," are pretty darned rude.  Leave room for folks with well-functioning minds to not agree or see what you mean, or you will find the discussion goes poorly for you.


----------



## Jd Smith1 (Dec 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> Ah I see. So your one way to play displays more imagination than more than one way.
> 
> I think your standing on some shaky ground



Than more than one way?

It's 'you're', too.


hawkeyefan said:


> The answer is fourteen. Obviously.



So that makes my point.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 6, 2021)

dragoner said:


> Don't worry, I don't try to force them out of their comfort zone, I mean a long time ago, yes.




I just tend to emphasize it because there are absolutely people (many of them wearing GM hats) who think repetitious character choices are such a great evil it needs to be addressed no matter what the players involved think.



dragoner said:


> Exactly, why roll? That's my philosophy now. It's kind of an odd one too, as I don't remember it in Classic either. I like rolls to actually have interesting consequences, now; where there was a time of count every bullet, role-play every distance traveled, which I don't do, not anymore, now it is cut to the action.




There are far-tail-end failure states I'm still okay being terminal, even potentially for a group, but there ought to be multiple opportunities to avoid that if its going to be a full group takeout.

I'm conflicted these days on one-shot individual takeouts; I think there should be a buffer there, but I think a lot of campaign types can benefit from at least some uncertainty.  I kind of find Savage Worlds tends to be the sweet spot for me, with the open ended damage but the Bennies to buffer the hard hits.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> I would say there are a lot of things that make RPGs come alive. One of which is indeed risk. But there are lots of different things to risk.




Sure.



hawkeyefan said:


> Look at Call of Cthulhu and its risk of characters’ sanity and how that changes the feel if a game versus one where the only risk is PC death. The game feels different. Look at Delta Green, where you watch as an agent’s connections to their loved ones bear the brunt of their struggles against the mythos. Look at any number of other games where concepts of identity or belief are at risk during play. Where the PCs take actual consequences from their choices along the way and need to press on anyway.
> 
> Death is far from the only interesting consequence in an RPG. At times, I’d say it’s the end of consequence.




I'm not sure for most purpose, insanity of the scale CoC might as well be death.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 6, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> I just tend to emphasize it because there are absolutely people (many of them wearing GM hats) who think repetitious character choices are such a great evil it needs to be addressed no matter what the players involved think.
> 
> There are far-tail-end failure states I'm still okay being terminal, even potentially for a group, but there ought to be multiple opportunities to avoid that if its going to be a full group takeout.
> 
> I'm conflicted these days on one-shot individual takeouts; I think there should be a buffer there, but I think a lot of campaign types can benefit from at least some uncertainty.  I kind of find Savage Worlds tends to be the sweet spot for me, with the open ended damage but the Bennies to buffer the hard hits.



I agree at one point I was of the belief that "hey let's try this different character" was better, now, not so much. People should play with what they feel comfortable with. 

I said in the other thread that PC death should have logic behind it, not just be random, and last time a PC was killed, the player thanked me for it too. We worked it out that was what was going to happen. Other tables will play it differently I know, and I have no real judgement against them, they are cool too.


----------



## mserabian (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> I would say that a GM who changes the traditional venue of TTRPGs is simply forcing his players to listen to a dull story of his own devising. Another example of the failed story-teller seeking affirmation through other venues.
> 
> Because, you see, GMs don't set the stakes of an RPG: they create and operate the world. It is the players who set the stakes and write the tale. They decide what is worth risking their PCs for, and what is not. Their actions promote consequences, which they must live and operate with (provide they survive them).
> 
> A campaign where the GM sets the stakes is simply a railroad: go hence, solve thus, proceed on to the preordained conclusion.



Well in my case. My players do not like or want their characters to die. So guess what as the DM I make sure they dont. I guess we've been having BAD WRONG FUN for 40 years.


----------



## Blue (Dec 6, 2021)

dragoner said:


> I know what is unbeatable, and if a DM throws an adult Red Dragon at my 1st level character, that's on them, not me, and is exactly why I wouldn't try again. There's no challenge there, nothing.



If the DM throws an adult red dragon _without foreshadowing you don't want to go that way,_ _forces it to be a combat encounter, and provides no course to retreat,_ then it's on them.

You ignore the information that there's a red dragon up in the mountain, enter it's lair, attack it, and expect that it will be combat balanced so that you have a reasonable chance to defeat it - nothing wrong with what the DM is doing there.  And even then the DM could still save you from yourself by providing escape - perhaps passages too small for it to follow, or a goal that it would want you to do for it in exchange for not dying.


----------



## Blue (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> I came to hate AD&D because I found the classes to be too restrictive; I couldn't see a logic in the fact that knowing how to pick locks meant to you weren't really good at fighting, or knowing how to use magic meant you couldn't grasp swordsmanship or lock-picking.
> 
> GURPs should have been right up my alley, but every time I've examined their rules it has turned me away. I can't say exactly what I don't like about it, but I won't touch the game.



Literally the last two characters I created were a shadow sorcerer who knew how to pick locks, and a conquest paladin who knew how to pick locks.  I could use magic and pick locks.  I could be a swordsman (well, glaive-woman) and pick locks.  Neither was created to show you up, just how I naturally created them.  One was a fairy criminal shadow sorcerer who used to be part of the unseelie court but broke off, and the other was an urban bounty hunter who would bring in those who did wrong before taking her vow.

Now, if you want to say "I don't understand how I can be a caster as powerful as just-casters and a swordsman as powerful as just-swordsmen" I'd agree that fits D&D.  But less absolute than that and we find a lot of ground can be covered, even with something as restrictive as a class/level setup.


----------



## Aldarc (Dec 6, 2021)

NVM.


----------



## pemerton (Dec 6, 2021)

Blue said:


> You ignore the information that there's a red dragon up in the mountain, enter it's lair, attack it, and expect that it will be combat balanced so that you have a reasonable chance to defeat it - nothing wrong with what the DM is doing there.



I think the number of cases in the history of RPGing where the players understood themselves to be playing a B/X or AD&D-type hexcrawl, _and_ were playing low-level PCs, _and_ had any familiarity with the game system, _and_ deliberately decided that they would climb the mountain to try and defeat the red dragon, is so close to zero that for practical purposes we can treat it as zero.

So if I hear reports of a game that resembles what you've described, I would be curious: Where did that information about the dragon in the mountains come from - at the table, I mean, not in the fiction - and how was it made salient? Why did the players act on it in the way you describe? I would be pretty confident that at least one of the four variables I mentioned didn't obtain in that game - most likely the first.


----------



## pemerton (Dec 6, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> The players decide what their characters do. So the player decides what their characters care about. Even if the player writes a War and Peace length backstory about their deep connection to their family, the player is rightfully free to decide at any moment they don’t want to be inconvenienced by that strong family connection. So despite making a character for whom “family is everything” if that family ever becomes an inconvenience, the player can (and almost certainly will) decide the character simply doesn’t care enough to bother.



Whose RPGing are you setting out to describe in this post? Yours? Mine? @Campbell's? Everyone's?


----------



## Aldarc (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> I disagree: the players set the stakes. Otherwise, its a railroad at best.
> 
> The core of a TTRPG is the survival of the PC. Sure, there are secondary goals (clouds of them in most of my campaigns), but all are contingent upon the PC remaining alive, physically viable and sane. Remove the core, and we're back to imaginary friends.



Well you see, if PCs set the stakes, then there should be more stakes than simply life or death, as they can determine their own stakes, including those beyond such boring stakes. Otherwise all situations in a TTRPG will only amount to risking death. Therefore everything becomes window-dressing to a railroad that tries to make everything in a TTRPG about life or death.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> Than more than one way?




Yes. With more than character death as the consequence. You said those who don’t agree with you lack an imagination. Yet, you can’t seem to imagine a game without threat of PC death having a point or amounting to more than people impressing each other with their imaginary friends. 



Jd Smith1 said:


> It's 'you're', too.




The fact that you’re an internet grammar guy tracks so well with everything else you’ve posted.



Jd Smith1 said:


> So that makes my point.




Of course!


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 6, 2021)

Thomas Shey said:


> Sure.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure for most purpose, insanity of the scale CoC might as well be death.




Ultimately, yeah it absolutely is. But it tends to happen incrementally. And there are consequences for it. Many games, with D&D being a big example, tend to not have mechanical consequences other than loss of HP, which can lead to PC death. There are some minor exceptions to this across editions that allow for some kind of consequence that lingers, but they’re pretty few and far between. I think this is a big part of why many GMs lean so heavily on PC death. 

Of course there can always be narrative consequences…failing to clear the Caves of Chaos or failing to learn what happened to the Carlyle Expedition or what have you. But every game can have those. 

So with PC death, what’s the consequence for the player? They lose that PC, yes….but they just replace it with another. Perhaps the lost PC was particularly enjoyable to them or what have you, but the game goes on, and the player continues to play.

This is why I said that death isn’t always the most meaningful consequence. There could be (and in many games are) ways forward from that point that allow the player to continue with that PC but which result in a more meaningful change in the game than simply swapping out a PC.


----------



## Blue (Dec 6, 2021)

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, character death is often the least interesting result for many games.



But the _threat_ of character death can be a very interesting, recurring point in games like D&D that feature lethal combat as a common challenge resolution.

Both in and of itself, in the tension that risk creates is a spice for combat - which is a length mechanical aspect of the game when it occurs.  Add in the simple fact that many/most combats, especially in the published modules, aren't about anything except overcoming in order to move forward in the plot.  Leaving either it's foreordained you'll win, or having a DM willing and experienced enough to think of suitable alternatives every time.

Plus in D&D death isn't particularly non-interesting because it's so easy to undo.  It's not like we're talking perma-death in most cases once you are beyond early levels.  Heck, if there's a character who can cast revivify it's about the same amount of non-interesting as being knocked out for the length of the combat, which can happen even if death is not on the table.

Again, this is in the context of a game where lethal combat is an expected and common challenge resolution.

It's why games like CoC or BitD have alternate mechanisms such as sanity or trauma - in order to be able to provide that risk and the tension in a meaningful non-fleeting way without having it be the boolean alive/dead of D&D.  That's a great place to be from a system.

But even there - I know players who'd rather kill a character and get an unwounded new one than have a permanent disadvantage.  That's not me at all, but I'm not going to say their fun is wrong.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 6, 2021)

Blue said:


> If the DM throws an adult red dragon _without foreshadowing you don't want to go that way,_ _forces it to be a combat encounter, and provides no course to retreat,_ then it's on them.
> 
> You ignore the information that there's a red dragon up in the mountain, enter it's lair, attack it, and expect that it will be combat balanced so that you have a reasonable chance to defeat it - nothing wrong with what the DM is doing there.  And even then the DM could still save you from yourself by providing escape - perhaps passages too small for it to follow, or a goal that it would want you to do for it in exchange for not dying.



That is curating the encounter, though from the player side as well, I know my 1st level character can't beat a dragon, and forced into a fight, to "learn me a lesson about GM power" or something. That's it, I die, game over.


----------



## Blue (Dec 6, 2021)

Jd Smith1 said:


> I disagree: the players set the stakes. Otherwise, its a railroad at best.
> 
> The core of a TTRPG is the survival of the PC. Sure, there are secondary goals (clouds of them in most of my campaigns), but all are contingent upon the PC remaining alive, physically viable and sane. Remove the core, and we're back to imaginary friends.



This is trivially shown to be false.  Many types of RPGs do not feature character death as a prominent possibility.  Think superheroes.

I am for character death being on the table in games like D&D where lethal combat is a common method of challenge resolution.  I enjoy that risk.  But saying that no stakes have meaning outside the core "did you survive" is shown false by the number of games with real stakes where your character dying isn't on the table the majority of the time, if at all.

In other words, that's one set of stakes for the assumptions of one type of game.  I want those stakes in that type of game, but we can't pretend that other games must feature the same stakes to be interesting.


----------



## Blue (Dec 6, 2021)

dragoner said:


> That is curating the encounter, though from the player side as well, I know my 1st level character can't beat a dragon, and forced into a fight, to "learn me a lesson about GM power" or something. That's it, I die, game over.



Replace Red Dragon with King's Retinue.  Can they beat you as bad as the Red Dragon at 1st level?  Sure.  Does it best serve their goals to do so when they come across you randomly in all cases?  No.

Same for the dragon.  You are assuming it's goals are always best served to kill the PCs.  That's a two dimensional caraciture of a dragon, treating it no better than a mindless beast.


----------



## Blue (Dec 6, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> The players decide what their characters do. So the player decides what their characters care about. Even if the player writes a War and Peace length backstory about their deep connection to their family, the player is rightfully free to decide at any moment they don’t want to be inconvenienced by that strong family connection. So despite making a character for whom “family is everything” if that family ever becomes an inconvenience, the player can (and almost certainly will) decide the character simply doesn’t care enough to bother.




Wow, not a single player I game with, in multiple groups, matches the RP style that you are projecting with "and almost certainly will".  Back in the 80s I knew a player like that.  Didn't continue to game with him.

That isn't nearly as universal as you are making it out to be.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 6, 2021)

Blue said:


> Replace Red Dragon with King's Retinue.  Can they beat you as bad as the Red Dragon at 1st level?  Sure.  Does it best serve their goals to do so when they come across you randomly in all cases?  No.
> 
> Same for the dragon.  You are assuming it's goals are always best served to kill the PCs.  That's a two dimensional caraciture of a dragon, treating it no better than a mindless beast.



You are right in that ultimately it isn't how my PC dies (the dragon thing is not mine) it's about if my PC dies out of the gate for some random, or bizarre purpose, I am unlikely to continue, not roll up another character.


----------



## Blue (Dec 6, 2021)

dragoner said:


> You are right in that ultimately it isn't how my PC dies (the dragon thing is not mine) it's about if my PC dies out of the gate for some random, or bizarre purpose, I am unlikely to continue, not roll up another character.



You do realize that many on-level threats in D&D can drop any 1st level character with a crit, and that's the first step towards death.  For multiple editions, 1st level is one where random death can come with just a little bit of bad luck.

Do you still play D&D?


----------



## Campbell (Dec 6, 2021)

In a lot of the games my main group plays we aren't wandering vagabonds or just getting started on our journeys. In Infinity the character I created through the lifepath system was a 36 year old Mercenary who had 2 career phases in special forces and 2 more as a bounty hunter. There was all sorts of life events involved that we then provided additional detail to. By the time we started play we had an experienced person who had already lived a whole life, had all sorts of complicated relationships, and had a real sense of history. We then spent some real time building layered connections between the characters who were equally as complex.

Going through that sort of process is deeply rewarding, but involves a lot of effort we don't want to necessarily repeat if we do not have to. That's why we negotiate what happens when characters are defeated. It's also an active negotiation that must make sense in the fiction. If the only reasonable thing is they die then they die, but if there's some other interesting narrative loss that makes sense we usually go with that. It's an actual conversation and negotiation. Not player just decides.

We have just gone through a similar process for Exalted over the course of two sessions. We're dealing with characters who are deeply connected to the setting, represent the height of human achievement, and have complex personal lives from the word jump. They have history with the world and with each other.

It works for us because we are good at negotiating those moments in fair ways. I feel we're pretty fair brokers of what seems reasonable or at least genre appropriate. I know some people are suspicious about negotiation as a feature of play, but we find for character death in particular it works better than hard and fast rules.


----------



## Blue (Dec 6, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I think the number of cases in the history of RPGing where the players understood themselves to be playing a B/X or AD&D-type hexcrawl, _and_ were playing low-level PCs, _and_ had any familiarity with the game system, _and_ deliberately decided that they would climb the mountain to try and defeat the red dragon, is so close to zero that for practical purposes we can treat it as zero.
> 
> So if I hear reports of a game that resembles what you've described, I would be curious: Where did that information about the dragon in the mountains come from - at the table, I mean, not in the fiction - and how was it made salient? Why did the players act on it in the way you describe? I would be pretty confident that at least one of the four variables I mentioned didn't obtain in that game - most likely the first.



Nah, I have and will again run non-level specific worlds in D&D.  Hexcrawls are not the only type of game where players have multiple hooks and decide which they deem are important.  Even when running more traditional level-focused D&D, foreshadowing "there's a dragon sleeping in the volcano, don't go there yet" is perfectly fine.  Sets up future badness, as well as removes the "huh, if there was a dragon in the area why did we never hear of it" immersion break when it does show up.

When running a non-level specific world I've had options where they encounter things that are likely beyond them - but have reasons not to pursue (protect nest, etc.) and/or reasonable ways to escape (something D&D does poorly out of the box) in order that if some/all of the players need a reminder that it _really is_ non-level specific, I can bring home in a visceral lesson that it is, but also do so in such a way that as long as give up the "it's here to fight, we can obviously beat it" and are willing to retreat that they can.

It's one of the reasons that I like 13th Age as a D&D-like game.  A successful retreat - with everyone including the unconcious and the dead - is always on the table in exchange for a campaign loss.


----------



## dragoner (Dec 7, 2021)

Blue said:


> You do realize that many on-level threats in D&D can drop any 1st level character with a crit, and that's the first step towards death.  For multiple editions, 1st level is one where random death can come with just a little bit of bad luck.
> 
> Do you still play D&D?



Sure, and a lot of systems the effect doesn't go away because there are not levels. Still not going to just kill a character out of hand.


----------



## pemerton (Dec 7, 2021)

Blue said:


> Nah, I have and will again run non-level specific worlds in D&D.  Hexcrawls are not the only type of game where players have multiple hooks and decide which they deem are important.  Even when running more traditional level-focused D&D, foreshadowing "there's a dragon sleeping in the volcano, don't go there yet" is perfectly fine.  Sets up future badness, as well as removes the "huh, if there was a dragon in the area why did we never hear of it" immersion break when it does show up.
> 
> When running a non-level specific world I've had options where they encounter things that are likely beyond them - but have reasons not to pursue (protect nest, etc.) and/or reasonable ways to escape (something D&D does poorly out of the box) in order that if some/all of the players need a reminder that it _really is_ non-level specific, I can bring home in a visceral lesson that it is, but also do so in such a way that as long as give up the "it's here to fight, we can obviously beat it" and are willing to retreat that they can.



You don't seem to be describing a case where the players were playing low-level PCs, _and_ had any familiarity with the game system, _and_ deliberately decided that they would climb the mountain to try and defeat the red dragon. (And your "non-level specific world" is in the neighbourhood of a B/X or AD&D hexcrawl.)

I still assert that the number of cases where the players do the things I've flagged is so close to zero that for practical purposes we can treat it as zero, unless there is a very different approach to determining where the PCs go on the map and what they confront (ie something GM led).


----------



## Argyle King (Dec 7, 2021)

Is this thread about rpgs in general or D&D?


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 7, 2021)

Argyle King said:


> Is this thread about rpgs in general or D&D?



D&D is about the only game we can assume the majority of people have played so it's the easiest and closest to a universal example to use for discussion.


----------



## pemerton (Dec 7, 2021)

Blue said:


> But the _threat_ of character death can be a very interesting, recurring point in games like D&D that feature lethal combat as a common challenge resolution.
> 
> Both in and of itself, in the tension that risk creates is a spice for combat - which is a length mechanical aspect of the game when it occurs.  Add in the simple fact that many/most combats, especially in the published modules, aren't about anything except overcoming in order to move forward in the plot.  Leaving either it's foreordained you'll win, or having a DM willing and experienced enough to think of suitable alternatives every time.



One way of reading this is _D&D is often played essentially as a railroad through a plot_, with the action in play consisting in _combats where the stakes are 'do we beat it or do we suffer some sort of loss in the form of PC death?'_

I think that's probably true, but maybe a bit candid for the taste of some!



hawkeyefan said:


> Many games, with D&D being a big example, tend to not have mechanical consequences other than loss of HP, which can lead to PC death. There are some minor exceptions to this across editions that allow for some kind of consequence that lingers, but they’re pretty few and far between. I think this is a big part of why many GMs lean so heavily on PC death.
> 
> Of course there can always be narrative consequences…failing to clear the Caves of Chaos or failing to learn what happened to the Carlyle Expedition or what have you. But every game can have those.
> 
> ...



I think that _mechanical consequences _does not contrast with _narrative consequences _very strongly in the context of PC death, at least without adding more: after all, _that the PC died_ is an event in the fiction just as much as it is a (potential) mechanical change to the player's game position.

An example of "adding more" is Epic Tier 4e, where often the dead PC comes back to life via a special ability, and so the PC death is primarily a mechanical event that drains a resource, much like spending a healing surge, with its contribution to narrative being tension and pacing and that's it, _unless the table does the work of feeding the death into the narrative in some fashion_. (At my table, sometimes we did and sometimes we didn't.)

If the consequence of PC death, for the player, is that they have to play a new PC, is that a mechanical hit or a narrative hit? That will depend on the details of the game and (often) table practices. To be perfectly honest, I don't think D&D really has a coherent conception of what the game effect of a PC dying is supposed to be. It leaves it entirely up to the players at a given table to decide. Different approaches here will have different effects on the mechanic-narrative correlation: if the player gets to bring in a new PC who joins the current party on "the quest" but they are down a level or an item or something, then that is no narrative consequence but the player's position takes an immediate mechanical hit.

On the other hand, in a Classic Traveller game it might be possible to bring in a new PC who is _better_ than the dead one (due to random rolls) and who is just as narratively integrated (depending on how the game is being approached at the table). This is less likely in D&D but not impossible if PCs are low level and being generated via random stat and starting money rolls.

The whole thing is weird and badly underexplained in mainstream PCs.


----------



## pemerton (Dec 7, 2021)

Argyle King said:


> Is this thread about rpgs in general or D&D?



Yes.


----------



## Argyle King (Dec 7, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> D&D is about the only game we can assume the majority of people have played so it's the easiest and closest to a universal example to use for discussion.





Fair points.

Though, I think it's also fair to say that a lot of highlighted issues and "problems" only exist because of rules-structures which are unique to D&D. So, while it may be a "universal" example in the context that many people play D&D; I do not believe that it serves as a good universal example in the context of rules-structure, narrative-structure, or how roleplaying games function in general.

Don't get me wrong. Despite the fact that I admittedly make (and have made) posts which are negative toward D&D, I enjoy playing it.

However, I often find it strange that so many complaints about how the game works also coincide with refusals to try different games.

To clarify, I'm not suggesting that behavior fits you as an individual. It's more of anecdotal observation of subsections within the D&D community.

•"I hate the d20, levels, and class-based systems."
-"Have you tried playing [different game] instead of D&D?"
•"How dare you imply that I'm playing the game wrong!?"


----------



## Neonchameleon (Dec 7, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I haven't read the whole of HPL's corpus, but have read multiple hundreds of pages. Is there a story where the protagonist dies? Not in Call of Cthulhu itself, not in The Shadow out of Time, not in At the Mountains of Madness, I think not in The Dunwich Horror. Maybe in Shadow Over Innsmouth, depending how you look at it.
> 
> So why would I expect character death to be a serious prospect in a CoC game?



Because pop-Cthulhu owes more to CoC than it does to Lovecraft himself. In the writings of HPL Cthulhu was defeated by ramming him with a fishing boat. In pop-Cthulhu Cthulhu is on an unimaginable power scale and the fishing boat would just bounce.


----------



## Blue (Dec 7, 2021)

pemerton said:


> One way of reading this is _D&D is often played essentially as a railroad through a plot_, with the action in play consisting in _combats where the stakes are 'do we beat it or do we suffer some sort of loss in the form of PC death?'_



Drop the "railroad through a plot" and I'm with you.  Combat-unto-death-as-challenge-resolution is a common theme in D&D regardless if it's a railroad, a sandbox, a hexcrawl, or something else.

I say if you take any random group of D&D DMs of reasonable size, 80%+ have expectations that defeat-in-combat to advance is on the table with some regularly.  It's not the only goal for combat, as a matter of fact combats are usually more interesting when there are different goals.  And it's not the only resolution - a side could retreat, be captured, surrender, etc.  But "kill the undead to get the macguffin" or something similar can show up even in the portfolios of DMs who try those, and much more often for DMs who don't.  With the notable exception of Witchlight, all of the official adventures expect this a good chunk of the time.  And that Witchlight can be run without combat is rare enough to be notable.

On the other hand I'm running the teen superhero game Masks: A New Generation and there isn't any mechanical support for character death, with the exception of The Doomed playbook, which is around a character like Raven from Teen Titans who has a lingering doom coming for them in the future.  Even the conditions which one could think of as "HP" if you squint hard enough are things like "Angry" and "Insecure" and are RP guides as well as adjusting down the chance of success of some Moves in order to make the mechanical choices that are in line with the character more appealing without dictating anything.

Each game has real stakes for the characters.  For ones like D&D where lethal combat is common, I like those stakes preserved as opposed to the DM taking them away by protecting the characters with plot armor, so that I can have a sense of accomplishment for succeeding as opposed to being handed it.  As a player in D&D games I have asked multiple DMs to increase the challenge of combat because it wasn't challenging and that made it boring, while still taking up a good chunk of session time.  As a DM of D&D games I've had plenty of characters go unconcious and death was close.  But in my current campaign (1.5 years) and my last completed campaign (4.5 years), there were no deaths in combat.  Not that there couldn't be, if the players were foolish or if luck was particularly against them, but because they were successful in preventing them.  Which makes me cheer - that's the line I enjoy DMing D&D at: fear of death, but because of how played no actual death.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 7, 2021)

Neonchameleon said:


> Because pop-Cthulhu owes more to CoC than it does to Lovecraft himself. In the writings of HPL Cthulhu was defeated by ramming him with a fishing boat. In pop-Cthulhu Cthulhu is on an unimaginable power scale and the fishing boat would just bounce.



In the H. P. Lovecraft story the Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu was rammed in the head by a steam-ship...and he instantly started regenerating. Like hitting a troll with a rock. So temporarily “defeated” by taking a steam-ship to the face. We should note that at the time the story was written, the steam-ship was the most powerful bit of water-borne technology invented by humans. The effect is different on modern readers from the original intent. Then it was meant to convey the horror that even our most powerful water-borne invention was only a split second reprieve, now it reads like “LOL, Cthulhu was taken out by a boat.” The ignored context matters.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 7, 2021)

Argyle King said:


> Fair points.
> 
> Though, I think it's also fair to say that a lot of highlighted issues and "problems" only exist because of rules-structures which are unique to D&D. So, while it may be a "universal" example in the context that many people play D&D; I do not believe that it serves as a good universal example in the context of rules-structure, narrative-structure, or how roleplaying games function in general.




Eh.  There are few problems I've seen in D&D and adjacent system campaigns I haven't seen in others.  I'm willing to accept that you're going to have different problems in trad games and some non-trad, but I don't think the random body of players is not going to have some of the same sociodynamic issues that I've seen time and again over the years in different group.



Argyle King said:


> Don't get me wrong. Despite the fact that I admittedly make (and have made) posts which are negative toward D&D, I enjoy playing it.
> 
> However, I often find it strange that so many complaints about how the game works also coincide with refusals to try different games.
> 
> ...




Well, there's always the issue of hating on only one or two of those sorts of things (say, big linear die rolls of the D20/D100 stripe) while liking the rest of the feel.  You can probably find games out there that avoid the one while still having the others, but there's always the "finding players/GMs" problem then.  That sort of D&D heartbreaker can sometimes be harder to find others to play with than systems radically different like the Hero System or Runequest.


----------



## hawkeyefan (Dec 7, 2021)

pemerton said:


> I think that _mechanical consequences _does not contrast with _narrative consequences _very strongly in the context of PC death, at least without adding more: after all, _that the PC died_ is an event in the fiction just as much as it is a (potential) mechanical change to the player's game position.




Sure, I mention the two as types of consequences, but didn’t really mean to set them in opposition. My point was more that consequences of a narrative sort can be present in just about any RPG. So D&D can indeed have these.

But once you move beyond that, there’s very little other than PC death. Some editions have incorporated alignment change, and that could certainly be meaningful for certain classes. Level drain or loss, but that’s temporary, akin to HP loss but more severe. A sword of sharpness might result in a lost PC limb or two is used by an enemy NPC. Then certainly there were the kind of arbitrary consequences of things like the Deck of Many Things and similar items. “You’re now a dwarf” and all that.

D&D relies almost entirely on HP loss for any/all danger, and no matter how many HP you may lose, there’s nothing that happens as a result. As long as you have 1 HP you’ll function the same as if you had 100, and the missing 99 will always come back given a bit of time and or healing magic.

I think this is largely why you see folks claim that of you remove this consequence from the game then you’re taking away all of the challenge. It’s because in D&D and similar games, that’s largely true….you’d be taking away the consequence of losing your HP, and almost everything revolves around that.

But that’s simply not the case for games that don't rely on HP/character death as the sole (or even primary) consequence for PCs.


----------



## Beleriphon (Dec 7, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> In the H. P. Lovecraft story the Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu was rammed in the head by a steam-ship...and he instantly started regenerating. Like hitting a troll with a rock. So temporarily “defeated” by taking a steam-ship to the face. We should note that at the time the story was written, the steam-ship was the most powerful bit of water-borne technology invented by humans. The effect is different on modern readers from the original intent. Then it was meant to convey the horror that even our most powerful water-borne invention was only a split second reprieve, now it reads like “LOL, Cthulhu was taken out by a boat.” The ignored context matters.




Context now would be ramming Cthulu with the USS Nimitz and then having all of its reactors go super critical and explode on impact.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 7, 2021)

Beleriphon said:


> Context now would be ramming Cthulu with the USS Nimitz and then having all of its reactors go super critical and explode on impact.



I forget who wrote it but there was a story written after WW2 where someone dropped a nuke on Cthulhu and he was given a mild headache as a result.


----------



## billd91 (Dec 7, 2021)

Beleriphon said:


> Context now would be ramming Cthulu with the USS Nimitz and then having all of its reactors go super critical and explode on impact.



I believe something to a similar effect was brought up in Cthulhu Now back in the day. Nuking Cthulhu may wreck him for a bit, but he will just reform and now be radioactive...


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 7, 2021)

There's different takes on that.  At least one of them says it'd have some serious effect because you've applied the power of Azathoth against him...


----------



## pemerton (Dec 7, 2021)

Neonchameleon said:


> In the writings of HPL Cthulhu was defeated by ramming him with a fishing boat. In pop-Cthulhu Cthulhu is on an unimaginable power scale and the fishing boat would just bounce.





overgeeked said:


> In the H. P. Lovecraft story the Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu was rammed in the head by a steam-ship...and he instantly started regenerating. Like hitting a troll with a rock. So temporarily “defeated” by taking a steam-ship to the face. We should note that at the time the story was written, the steam-ship was the most powerful bit of water-borne technology invented by humans. The effect is different on modern readers from the original intent. Then it was meant to convey the horror that even our most powerful water-borne invention was only a split second reprieve, now it reads like “LOL, Cthulhu was taken out by a boat.” The ignored context matters.





Beleriphon said:


> Context now would be ramming Cthulu with the USS Nimitz and then having all of its reactors go super critical and explode on impact.



HPL wrote the story in the mid-1920s. The story "quotes" from the Sydney Bulletin for April 18, 1925. When "great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency" it was in pursuit of the _Alert_, a "heavily armed steam yacht Alert of Dunedin, N. Z."

Here is a web page about an Australasian steam yacht of the same general era: Ship specifications - Australian National Maritime Museum. Here is its Wikipedia page: SY Ena - Wikipedia. Given that the 11-man crew of "the two-masted schooner _Emma_" were able to take the Alert in a boarding action, I'm guessing the latter was comparable to the vessel on that web page.

The Ena displaces 76 tons; it's maximum speed is 12 knots. HMS Dreadnought, the famous battleship built in 1906, displaced 18,000 tons with a maximum speed of 21 knots. HMS Orion, built in 1910, displaced around 22,000 tons and also had a maximum speed of 21 knots. Another 5 years later the HMS Revenge displaced close to 30,000 tons with a maximum speed of 23 knots. And for purposes of comparison, the USS Nimitz displaces about 100,000 tons and has a speed of about 31 knots.

So no, to HPL and readers of his day Cthulhu being rammed by the _Alert_ was nothing liked being rammed by a giant warship. If we think of it in terms of contemporary fiction, it's in the same general ballpark as being hit by a semi-trailer or a tank travelling at full speed.


----------



## pemerton (Dec 7, 2021)

Blue said:


> I say if you take any random group of D&D DMs of reasonable size, 80%+ have expectations that defeat-in-combat to advance is on the table with some regularly.  It's not the only goal for combat, as a matter of fact combats are usually more interesting when there are different goals.  And it's not the only resolution - a side could retreat, be captured, surrender, etc.  But "kill the undead to get the macguffin" or something similar can show up even in the portfolios of DMs who try those, and much more often for DMs who don't.eath, but because of how played no actual death.





hawkeyefan said:


> My point was more that consequences of a narrative sort can be present in just about any RPG. So D&D can indeed have these.
> 
> But once you move beyond that, there’s very little other than PC death.
> 
> ...



Reflecting further in response to these posts . . .

Superhero comics are a genre in which fighting - "combat" - is a normal method for the protagonists to achieve their goals. The genre also includes scouting and infiltration, travel through dangerous places, weird traps, monstrous foes, etc.

But death is rarely what is at stake.

I think what makes D&D distinctive is not just it's use of combat as a site of resolution, but it's lack of a clear basis for establishing any consequence of combat, or of threats more generally, than the slide to death at zero hp. There's no injury, capture, being the victim of Arcade or Dr Doom getting the drop on you, etc.  It's a very distinctive and peculiar approach to determining the outcome of physical threats and violent confrontation.


----------



## Cadence (Dec 7, 2021)

pemerton said:


> Superhero comics are a genre in which fighting - "combat" - is a normal method for the protagonists to achieve their goals. The genre also includes scouting and infiltration, travel through dangerous places, weird traps, monstrous foes, etc.




Tying into Cthulhu and tonnage... super hero comics also seem to have no fixed conception of how much things weight and/or how strong the heroes are!


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 7, 2021)

Cadence said:


> Tying into Cthulhu and tonnage... super hero comics also seem to have no fixed conception of how much things weight and/or how strong the heroes are!



Fixed, no; but comparative, yes. Cam Banks, the designer of Marvel Heroic, said a few times that he basically used the 5-step ladder Marvel used to determine who was stronger than who in their comics. I forget what the original Marvel labels were, but in Marvel Heroic they became Weak d4, Human d6, Enhanced d8, Superhuman d10, and Godlike d12.


----------



## Cadence (Dec 7, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Fixed, no; but comparative, yes. Cam Banks, the designer of Marvel Heroic, said a few times that he basically used the 5-step ladder Marvel used to determine who was stronger than who in their comics. I forget what the original Marvel labels were, but in Marvel Heroic they became Weak d4, Human d6, Enhanced d8, Superhuman d10, and Godlike d12.



In the comics they seem to usually be ok with who is stronger, but it feels like the weights of cars, semis, locomotives, battleships, etc*... and effect of momentum, often don't come close to the weight lifting ranges the characters are usually ascribed in things like the OHOTMU and the like.

*Or landmasses that are gravitationally compressed as in Avengers 159?  Or maybe Tony Stark and Simon Williams expertise as engineers/scientists doesn't include large size objects?


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 7, 2021)

Cadence said:


> In the comics they seem to usually be ok with who is stronger, but it feels like the weights of cars, semis, locomotives, battleships, etc*... and effect of momentum, often don't come close to the weight lifting ranges the characters are usually ascribed in things like the OHOTMU and the like.
> 
> *Or landmasses that are gravitationally compressed as in Avengers 159?  Or maybe Tony Stark and Simon Williams expertise as engineers/scientists doesn't include large size objects?
> 
> ...



Gotta love superhero physics. Flying fast enough to reverse time. Carrying a plane by the nose and it not breaking off. Pushing  planets out of the way. So goofy and weird. I love it.


----------



## Darth Solo (Dec 7, 2021)

I hate games that create a certain culture which demonizes the rest of the hobby. White Wolf did this with Vampire: they were _so special_. They actually thought they were different in a way that made them the civilized folk of the hobby while the rest of us were tree-living monkeys. I get the same feel from D&D 5. It's like if you don't accept that 5e is the center of the rpg universe you're a f***ing OSR idiot. And while I get the marketing that drives the entire hobby by pushing D&D I HATE the D&D Nazis in the trenches shooting the knees out of other rpgs. 

GURPS killed D&D a very long time ago in terms of character creation and genre verisimilitude. The Powered By the Apocalypse games redefined "classes" in a way D&D's designers missed the boat. D&D's STILL Vancian magic system is tired beyond reason - tired enough to allow Pathfinder's Spheres of Magic to present a better system. 

This and how running Call of Cthulhu in the 20's and ignoring the rampant racism and sexism of the 20's is okay. As Forrest Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does". It's just dumb how gaming groups establish a culture that says "This is okay because we're better". How?


----------



## Umbran (Dec 8, 2021)

Darth Solo said:


> I HATE the D&D Nazis ...



*Mod Note:*
And I hate when people make an analogy between the deaths of millions of innocent people and petty squabbles over how to pretend to be elves.

There is no call for that comparison.  Don't make it ever again, please and thank you. 

And, by the way, don't use f-bombs, if you don't want a finger waggled at you about language use.


----------



## Umbran (Dec 8, 2021)

overgeeked said:


> Fixed, no; but comparative, yes. Cam Banks, the designer of Marvel Heroic, said a few times that he basically used the 5-step ladder Marvel used to determine who was stronger than who in their comics. I forget what the original Marvel labels were, but in Marvel Heroic they became Weak d4, Human d6, Enhanced d8, Superhuman d10, and Godlike d12.




The original FASERIP labels were Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, Excellent, Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, Monstrous, Unearthly.  The OHotMU and this system were largely in synch.

The charts had Shift X, Y, and Z for when you had one of the named ranks, and the mechanics had you shifting above them. 

There was also Class 1000, Class 3000, Class 5000 for cosmic things, and Beyond for the Beyonder.


----------



## overgeeked (Dec 8, 2021)

Umbran said:


> The original FASERIP labels were Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, Excellent, Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, Monstrous, Unearthly.  The OHotMU and this system were largely in synch.
> 
> The charts had Shift X, Y, and Z for when you had one of the named ranks, and the mechanics had you shifting above them.
> 
> There was also Class 1000, Class 3000, Class 5000 for cosmic things, and Beyond for the Beyonder.



That was a cool game. Apparently I should have been more specific. Cam was working with Marvel Comics editors and writers and used the 5-step ladder that Marvel Comics editors and writers use to delineate their characters in house.


----------



## TreChriron (Dec 8, 2021)

I tried to read the thread, but there was so much bickering (and side-treks from the original post) that I got lost.

IMHO this thread started with a terrible premise. Why do you care? I think we all have enough experience to know;

If you tell someone you hate "their" system - they are going to rise to the challenge and refute you. With much vitriol.
Telling people you hate a system is mean. It hurts people's feelings. This is a clear violation of Wil Wheaton's Rule. You don't want to be a violator of Wil Wheaton's Rule do you?!?!
If someone hates "your" system, that does not mean;
It will immediately or eventually lose all market share and be lost to time.
Fans will immediately or eventually stop playing it.
Players of the game will immediately or eventually be impossible to find.

If crapping on systems you don't like brings you any joy - you should reassess your priorities.
If you believe that everyone should be playing "your" game to the exclusion of all the other "bad-wrong-fun" games, you might consider turning the megalomania dial down a few notches. I also recommend turning up the personal-joy dial a few to compensate.
If you find yourself wandering the forum-lands of the wild InterTubes, and you see people crapping on "your" system - might I a make a suggestion? Ignore them. If you really want to espouse the glory of "your" system I would suggest talking about why you like it (not comparing it to others) and what brings you joy when you're playing it. This is what hobbies are for. Fun and Joy.

There are almost as many RPGs as there are players. Almost. So you can find whatever game you like. Your enthusiasm will bring others to your table. Fun and Joy are key to recruiting people and "selling" games. I recommend we stop talking about what we hate and instead spread a little fun and joy around.

Just my two cents...


----------



## Reynard (Dec 13, 2021)

TreChriron said:


> I tried to read the thread, but there was so much bickering (and side-treks from the original post) that I got lost.
> 
> *IMHO this thread started with a terrible premise. *Why do you care? I think we all have enough experience to know;
> 
> ...



Emphasis mine.

I think you misinterpreted the premise, then. I wasn't asking "Why do you hate MY favorite system?" I was asking why someone would bring the level of dislike up to HATE when discussing systems at all. And, by and large, this thread was quite instructive on the matter. Not in spite of all the angry tangents, by the way, but exactly because of them.


----------



## jdrakeh (Dec 13, 2021)

I don't HATE any systems these days. It takes up too much energy. Many years ago I could do that. These days, I'm old and slow. I prefer to focus my energy on the things I like. I do still have games/systems that I prefer not to play for various reasons. For example, I feel that all Savage Worlds games are very same-y, perhaps even more so than things like GURPS and Hero, because there are considerably fewer mechanical options. But I don't HATE it.

That said, one of the big things that got me going back in the day were _huge_ mechanical shifts between editions of a game that I'd played for years (so _reeeeeeeeally_ not fond of the AD&D 2e to D&D 3e shift). Feeling like I had to learn an entirely new system to play a game that I already loved was... well, it wasn't ideal for me. I eventually came around, but this was due more to 3rd party products rather than the 3e core game (Green Ronin in particular published some outstanding OGL stuff).


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 13, 2021)

Reynard said:


> Emphasis mine.
> 
> I think you misinterpreted the premise, then. I wasn't asking "Why do you hate MY favorite system?" I was asking why someone would bring the level of dislike up to HATE when discussing systems at all. And, by and large, this thread was quite instructive on the matter. Not in spite of all the angry tangents, by the way, but exactly because of them.




I'm not actually sure I'd say I outright _hate_ any game system, though some of them I certainly disdain, and there are others that are absolutely not what I'm looking for (the distinction is because I'm entirely capable of recognizing a system serves its intended audience well, but that audience is absolutely not me. As distinguished with game systems that seem to just be be or have signficant pieces that are generally bad ideas, or misdesigned for their apparent intended purpose).


----------



## TreChriron (Dec 14, 2021)

Reynard said:


> Emphasis mine.
> 
> I think you misinterpreted the premise, then. I wasn't asking "Why do you hate MY favorite system?" I was asking why someone would bring the level of dislike up to HATE when discussing systems at all. And, by and large, this thread was quite instructive on the matter. Not in spite of all the angry tangents, by the way, but exactly because of them.



I get that. What I'm saying is that person A comes along and says "here's why I hate system A." (Answering your question) Person B reads that and it happens that system A is person's B favorite system. It's inevitable that person B is going to rise to defend system A. 

My premise is that asking why someone would rise to that occasion is only going to show why it's a pointless question. People have opinions. Love and hate of something is largely subjective. It's just a roundabout way of igniting a conflict about who hates vs. who doesn't any particular system.

Did we learn WHY people hate systems in this thread? If so, could you summarize what we learned? I just saw a lot of "I hate FATE" and a bunch of "here's why you're wrong hating FATE" posts. Were we supposed to be learning a lesson from the conflict?


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 14, 2021)

I think there's some legitimacy to the question he's actually asking, which is "Why do you respond strongly enough to a game system for it to reach the level of hate?"

I think there can be reasons that happens (usually really bad experiences which have as much to do with the dynamics of the group involved as the system per se), but some of it also comes down to questions of why people react as strongly as they do to, well, a lot of things.


----------



## Reynard (Dec 14, 2021)

TreChriron said:


> I get that. What I'm saying is that person A comes along and says "here's why I hate system A." (Answering your question) Person B reads that and it happens that system A is person's B favorite system. It's inevitable that person B is going to rise to defend system A.
> 
> My premise is that asking why someone would rise to that occasion is only going to show why it's a pointless question. People have opinions. Love and hate of something is largely subjective. It's just a roundabout way of igniting a conflict about who hates vs. who doesn't any particular system.
> 
> Did we learn WHY people hate systems in this thread? If so, could you summarize what we learned? I just saw a lot of "I hate FATE" and a bunch of "here's why you're wrong hating FATE" posts. Were we supposed to be learning a lesson from the conflict?



I am not going to accept responsibility for people that can't engage in a reasonable discussion -- and that has been more and more common here for a while now. The responses to this very thread inspired me to give myself a few months long break from here, in fact, just because it felt like it was harder and harder to enjoy vigorous but reasonable debate (along with just fun discussions about gaming and D&D). What I have realized recently is that it isn't just ENWorld, it is every space online. People are very quick to go on the attack, or get defensive, or just plain be rude.

I want to be able to talk about gaming and life as it relates to gaming, and so I will continue to try and engage my fellow community members in discussion. I will do my best not to be a jerk about it, too (I know I can sometimes get heated or feel put upon, just like everyone else). But I am not going to feel guilty for proposing a topic that someone else decides to use as a cudgel.


----------



## AdmundfortGeographer (Dec 14, 2021)

Reasons I have hated an RPG.


terrible organization of the basic rules itself
frequently mention _very_ important caveats, virtually as an aside, in hard to find paragraphs.
doesn’t explain basic terms that will pop up in use through the books.


----------



## Reynard (Dec 15, 2021)

AdmundfortGeographer said:


> Reasons I have hated an RPG.
> 
> 
> terrible organization of the basic rules itself



This here is the number one sin of the RPG book and is all too common. A core rulebook in particular is a game manual first and foremost, and it should be written, designed and organized as such.


----------



## Jaeger (Dec 16, 2021)

Reynard said:


> I am not going to accept responsibility for people that can't engage in a reasonable discussion




100%

Especially the inability to recognize that the very premise of "hating" an RPG means that those opinions will be inherently irrational to the people that don't share them. People like what they like, and don't what they don't.


Life is too short to _actually hate_ an RPG elf game. It's just a game.

That being said...

My Hat of the following RPG's know no limit!!!!!

1: Die-step rpg mechanics.  Savage Worlds I'm looking at you! They explode when you roll high - and the higher your die the less likely they'll explode. This makes my RPG brain say BADWRONGFUN!  Yes I know the math is relatively solid and there is only a few percentage points of variance around the d4 d6 d8 dice. I don't care. It's wrong I tell you!

2: Fate. A rules-light RPG using special dice that can do anything! Of course it can; at that level of rules lite I'd be shocked if it couldn't. But that doesn't make it good. They had the rights to the Dresden Files IP and they used this milquetoast hot trash for the game mechanics. Sold a lot of copy based on the IP alone. Who plays in the Dresden-verse now? No one. Because it is powered by fate, and nobody cares.

3: Runequest. Call of Culthulu is the money maker RPG that allows Chaosium to delude themselves into thinking that people actually want to roleplay in Gorlantha. That's right, I said it! The only reason Gorlantha is still a thing is because it has benefitted _enormously_ from its early entry into the RPG hobby as one of the _first-mover_ D&D alternatives that integrated system and setting. Gorlantha as a setting/RPG would _go_ _nowhere_ if it was introduced today because we now have tons of settings that are far more relatable, and actually good.

4: Shadowrun 4-6e. There was nothing about the SR 3e rules that couldn't have been fixed. 4-6e changed the way the die pools worked for no reason because Catalyst never addressed the underlying system complexity that made the game unwieldly in play. As one of the _first mover_ cyberpunk games it does gets attention when a new edition comes out, because people really liked the setting premise.  But then people see that it is still a hot mess, and stop playing it just like the previous editions. This is the main reason Shadowrun has faded. People will come for the IP, but you can drive them away with the system!

5: The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Conan, RPG's. For the love of all that is good, beautiful, and true; will someone please do a version of these evergreen RPG IP without special symbol dice? Being actually good would really help a lot too...

6: WFRP Systems. WHFRP has always been a great setting perpetually held back by mediocre systems. WHFRP system has been rather mediocre because of its determination to not be a BRP clone. And possessing some strange need between editions to do a clean sheet redesign each time - which just keeps them from putting out an edition that actually fixes the issues of the past one. i.e. WFRP 4e: What does C7 do when they get the license?  Release a cleaned up version of WHFRP 2e with known issues addressed and some new features to enhance the WHFRP experience? Noooooooo...  Such obvious ways to update the game are for losers! Complexity must be added! With all new issues to fix!

I shall end here before I say something actually controversial. 

Like the fact that without exception every single RPG IP property from the 80's to mid 90's that would contend for the #2 spot behind D&D have all been mismanaged straight into total also-ran status.


----------



## Aldarc (Dec 16, 2021)

Jaeger said:


> I shall end here before I say something actually controversial.



You already have made a fair number of unreasonable controversial opinions.


----------



## Jaeger (Dec 17, 2021)

Aldarc said:


> You already have made a fair number of unreasonable controversial opinions.




I apologize for nothing!

Yet I also fully accept that the views and opinions expressed in my post are mine alone, and are therefore highly unlikely to reflect the views or positions of anyone else.


----------



## JohnTaber (Dec 30, 2021)

Re: Mouseguard.  Gosh I agree.  I am such a huge fan of the source material and of Jared but this game is full of fiddly bits. I think Mausritter is closer to what I was expecting but gosh somewhere in between would be the best.  

The only systems that I have "hated" are ones where the attacker rolls a bunch of dice then the defender has to roll a bunch of dice in response.  I can't remember if it was Save The Day or Wicked Pacts that had this issue really badly.  

Stay healthy!
John


----------



## Weiley31 (Dec 30, 2021)

I always wanted to _like/love_ Palladium Rifts RPG because it was the one of the few things out there that legit had a Macross RPG for it. And I am a huge Macross hussy. The problem?

_I really dislike percentages in games: ESPECIALLY in RPGs. And Palladium and their RPGs were percentages incarnate._
Yeah the idea of Rifts factions or random PC fighting alongside the TMNT with Michangelo flipping riding a Macross Valkyrie, out of control probably, sounds like one hell of a mental image/scenario that would sound gravy right up my soul. But I just could never...._get_ Palladium's system/math.

Fate is another one that I don't dislike but I want to try to play/like and so far, no luck. I got the Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game version because from a number of sources I've read online, Atomic Robo's take on the Fate engine is the most/a pretty good, streamlined take on the Fate/ the mechanics themselves. So, I figured that by using that as the base/guide to learning Fate, it should be cool, and I could do my prequel Hell Boy 5E campaign using Atomic Robo(Fate) to be used for the WW II section of the past.

I _get_ some parts of it like the Bennies and taking a complication to gain a Benny. How to actually level up/play it/the Aspects/or how combat works in it......_uh._

In regard to dice system/mechanics, Rolling Under isn't _exactly_ my first choice of use if making a game: I'm too used/ingrained to rolling for high numbers in RPGs due to DND.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Dec 30, 2021)

JohnTaber said:


> Re: Mouseguard.  Gosh I agree.  I am such a huge fan of the source material and of Jared but this game is full of fiddly bits. I think Mausritter is closer to what I was expecting but gosh somewhere in between would be the best.
> 
> The only systems that I have "hated" are ones where the attacker rolls a bunch of dice then the defender has to roll a bunch of dice in response.  I can't remember if it was Save The Day or Wicked Pacts that had this issue really badly.
> 
> ...



Depending on where you draw the line at "a bunch" that could describe either.


----------



## Aldarc (Dec 31, 2021)

Weiley31 said:


> I _get_ some parts of it like the Bennies and taking a complication to gain a Benny. How to actually level up/play it/the Aspects/or how combat works in it......_uh._



I recommend finding and reading the free pdf _The_ _Book of Hanz_, which is a collection of mini-essay postings about Fate by Hanz that were gathered from their Google+ community postings. That's a pretty good start for understanding Fate's framework.


----------



## Weiley31 (Jan 6, 2022)

So far, _Giantlands_ seems like another thing I'd don't like. _despite the fact TSR sucks to begin with._

I never realized how much I'd dislike a system that is D100 until I started reading this poor guy's experience with it. That or they just simply suck at making a system like that.


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jan 7, 2022)

Weiley31 said:


> So far, _Giantlands_ seems like another thing I'd don't like. _despite the fact TSR sucks to begin with._
> 
> I never realized how much I'd dislike a system that is D100 until I started reading this poor guy's experience with it. That or they just simply suck at making a system like that.




While there are things that can be disliked about percentile systems (though most of them are things to dislike about D20 based ones, too), the advanced reviews I've been seeing about Giantlands says in this case its just that the game at hand is a dog's breakfast.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 7, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> While there are things that can be disliked about percentile systems (though most of them are things to dislike about D20 based ones, too), the advanced reviews I've been seeing about Giantlands says in this case its just that the game at hand is a dog's breakfast.



Wait, is that good or bad?


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jan 8, 2022)

Reynard said:


> Wait, is that good or bad?




Uhm, I didn't think about that being an expression everyone wasn't familiar with, and I don't think I can explain it without being rather grosser than I'd expect Morrus would prefer.


----------



## Reynard (Jan 8, 2022)

Thomas Shey said:


> Uhm, I didn't think about that being an expression everyone wasn't familiar with, and I don't think I can explain it without being rather grosser than I'd expect Morrus would prefer.



So bad, then?


----------



## Thomas Shey (Jan 8, 2022)

Reynard said:


> So bad, then?




Eh, yes.


----------



## Drake2000 (Jan 9, 2022)

Weiley31 said:


> Fate is another one that I don't dislike but I want to try to play/like and so far, no luck. I got the Atomic Robo: The Roleplaying Game version because from a number of sources I've read online, Atomic Robo's take on the Fate engine is the most/a pretty good, streamlined take on the Fate/ the mechanics themselves. So, I figured that by using that as the base/guide to learning Fate, it should be cool, and I could do my prequel Hell Boy 5E campaign using Atomic Robo(Fate) to be used for the WW II section of the past.
> 
> I _get_ some parts of it like the Bennies and taking a complication to gain a Benny. How to actually level up/play it/the Aspects/or how combat works in it......_uh._



A lot of people really hype _Atomic Robo _as a great introduction to Fate. I am not one of those people. 

AR is a great rendition of Fate, but it also introduces some ideas & complexities that I find distract from the core simplicity of the game itself. If you're still interested in Fate the newer _Fate Condensed_ is pretty nifty, and presents the basics of the game without any excess detail.


----------

