Systems You'd Never Play after Reading Them

The Crimson Binome · Jun 13, 2019

Ovinomancer said:
Absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Maybe one of the sorcery knacks? Those are powered by drama die, which usually are used as floating extra dice for rolls, or for a heroic effort to ignore the nasty death spiral penalties for a round. Unless it's something I haven't heard, drama dice can't be spent for any narrative control outsude of a few sorcery knacks (which are magic).

I mean, you can not like it (you soulless monster!), but this shouldn't be a reason.

That's good to hear, then. Perhaps I was misinformed. I should look further into it.

Edit: It may have been an example of spending a Raise in order to create an Opportunity.

Ovinomancer · Jun 13, 2019

Saelorn said:
That's good to hear, then. Perhaps I was misinformed. I should look further into it.

Given what I know of your preferences, you probably still won't like it. Damage is very abstract, in the form of dramatic wounds that aren't necessarily wounds and PCs can't die unless they've expressly risked death themselves. Those two alone make me think you'd be disinclined.

Greg K · Jun 13, 2019

Celebrim said:
We've gotten a little better informed so that we are a little bit better at matching mechanics to their intention, but as far as clearing the hurdle and actually designing something that is elegant and playable, I don't think we are much better. Pendragon, for example? Basic RPG and WEG D6 are still some of the better designed systems of all time.

Agreed. There are several older games that are still examples of elegant and playable games including Bond 007, DC Heroes (Mayfair Games), Elric/Stormbringer (Chaosium), Ghostbusters (WEG), Pendragon, and Toon are all great games that still hold up well, (imho). I also still consider Hero and GURPS to be great games despite preferring Savage Worlds over both Hero or GURPS. In fact, I am debating as to whether I want to keep tailoring 5e with house rules for my next fantasy campaign or use Hero System (4e or 5e).

DrunkonDuty · Jun 14, 2019

Greg K said:
Agreed. There are several older games that are still examples of elegant and playable games including Bond 007, DC Heroes (Mayfair Games), Elric/Stormbringer (Chaosium), Ghostbusters (WEG), Pendragon, and Toon are all great games that still hold up well, (imho). I also still consider Hero and GURPS to be great games despite preferring Savage Worlds over both Hero or GURPS. In fact, I am debating as to whether I want to keep tailoring 5e with house rules for my next fantasy campaign or use Hero System (4e or 5e).

<emerges out of shadows; whispers> "Use HERO system." <smiles, creepily; fades back into the shadows.>

Sorry. I think I may be a tad too invested in HERO System. This is because I have been stuck running 3 Pathfinder games for years. (Well, I only started running the 3rd one 6 months ago.) And as a result I am looking longingly at other systems. Any other system but mostly HERO.

pickin_grinnin · Jun 14, 2019

Celebrim said:
We've gotten a little better informed so that we are a little bit better at matching mechanics to their intention, but as far as clearing the hurdle and actually designing something that is elegant and playable, I don't think we are much better. Pendragon, for example? Basic RPG and WEG D6 are still some of the better designed systems of all time, and for all the problems D&D had, many of its choices - hit points, classes, spell slots, etc. - are still defensible and have not been improved on.

I agree. These days I find myself using WEG D6 (or OpenD6) and BRP anytime I don't need to use a specific system. I default to Savage Worlds with the Super Powers supplement for superhero games, and right now I'm running a 5e campaign (because that's what the players wanted), but the types of games I run work well in D6 and BRP. D6 in particular is built to be a toolkit that is easy to modify, so I do a lot of that.

I spent the last couple of days cataloging all of my rpg books. I have 579 of them, not counting PDFs or photocopies, and only 20 or so are adventures. The rest are primary system books and supplements going back into the late 1970s. I flipped through them and paid close attention to which ones I am interested in running these days. There were only a handful of ones that wouldn't fit well into D6, BRP, or one of the OSR systems (again, given the types of campaigns I run). The rest are things that I enjoy reading, but don't really offer any mechanics that I am interested in using. In the past I used a wide variety of systems for my games, but today it would be difficult to find players for most of them, at least enough for an ongoing campaign (ex. I have been trying to pull together a Call of Cthulhu group for a decade now).

Eltab · Jun 17, 2019

The Truenaming rules from 3e. The concept of Truenaming is aweome, but putting several additional layers of die rolls in between you and the desired result, meant it was not going to work very often.

ssvegeta555 · Jun 18, 2019

Numenera: Character creation felt flat and spending your very limited hp to be competent left a bad taste in my mouth. Just not my style.

Mummy the Curse: you're at your most powerful at the start of the campaign, and as the campaign progresses you get weaker... That is deeply unsatisfying for me as a player.

Agone: uhh.... that's some clunky complicated rules you got there.

Eclipse Phase: love the setting, but not enough to dredge through the rules. EP saw the mess with polymorph spells and wildshape in 3.5 and said "hold my beer"

Eoris Essence: That character sheet is a thing of nightmares! Nope!

Ralif Redhammer · Jun 18, 2019

Read the D&D 4e books, swore I wouldn’t play it. Ended up playing it, then DMing a campaign that lasted years. I still stand by my original assessment, but hey, it’s what my friends wanted to play.

Satyrn said:
4e

Just kidding!

Somewhere I have HoL. I couldn't even read the scrawled text!

TarionzCousin said:
Human Occupied Landfill, aka HoL.

Gradine · Jun 18, 2019

Eltab said:
The Truenaming rules from 3e. The concept of Truenaming is aweome, but putting several additional layers of die rolls in between you and the desired result, meant it was not going to work very often.

I played a Truenamer in 3.5 once. The system is utterly broken (in a bad way) but it was still really awesome in concept.