ChaoticTabris
First Post
Hello guys. I know i don’t post a lot here, being Brazilian i post mostly in forums from my country, but i lurk a lot in other forums and in this specific question i think you guys can help me a lot. Many times when I GM or even playing I feel like there is something missing, I few uncomfortable with the system. I’m not as much experience as most people in this forums, some of them probably began playing RPGs when I had not even been born yet and even after I began I had lots of problems with finding players and other things and stayed out of the hobby for long periods. Because of that I would not feel comfortable constructing a system myself or making extensive house rules for a already well-established system. So I have to stay with already published systems.
I began with RPG already as a GM in a monstruous amalgamation of AD&D, D&D and Diablo that had no truly defined rules because i did not have any books. After that I played Vampire (It was huge here in Brazil) and had short experiences with GURPS, Daemon (Brazilian system) and other well-established systems of the time. I played very few AD&D before third edition hit, not much more than 10 sessions. Third Edition was probably the system I played the most, as at this time I found a more defined and stable group. Also, at that time I was beginning to face RPGs in a more mature and serious way. In my group nobody took the (monetary) initiative of converting to 3.5 and I already nurtured at the time a desire to change to other systems (at the time I also came to discover The Forge and fell to the indie vibe for a time. I like indie RPGs but at the time I think it was more of an adolescent rebellion than anything.) and so didn’t want to expend more money with D&D books. During those says I rarely had the opportunity to GM as the group had more experienced GMs than me.
Eventually that original group began to separate and new players arrived as it naturally occurs to all groups and I saw the opportunity of GMing more. D&D 4e was released and my group shunned most of the changes, they were not compatible with the vision of the game my group has. I began a Pathfinder campaign (Nobody in the group had played it but in the end they liked) and it lasted for a decente number of sections. At the same time I was gming Mutants & Masterminds with a friend of mine (I GMed an “arc” and them he GMed another one). I was never a huge fan of D&D and for this reason I eventually abandoned the Pathfinder campaign in a failed attempt to convert my group to Savage Worlds, which I loved with all my heart at the time. We played just one session before it failed uterlly.
Now my group rarely can find a time to play and I decided to sort of begin anew. I’m going to create a “new” group (Calling for new players without caring on the availability of the old ones but it’s fine if one of them happens to be available) with the objective of playing/gming more often. It’s not easy in my city but I don’t care to get noobs and if even that fails I will try gming online. The big question is. I don’t know WHAT TO GM. I don’t know a system i can use where i can’t find na inherent problem that “breaks” the game for me.
With base in my own experiences i’ll post here a list of systems i’ve test and why “not them”:
D&D 3.x/Pathfinder – I don’t like to have to look at the book all the time. Even in the group where I played, with players much more experienced than in me on 3.x i noticed we had to stop all the time to check for some rule in the book and even if we did not do that (“We look at it after. But now it’s going to be like that...”) usually somebody fews unjustified. I think we all know that the system also gets heavier as characters rise in levels and everything gets more unbalanced, complex and takes more time. To add insult to the injury I had a player that was veteran in Storyteller but had never played D&D and I even felt bad when seeing how lost she was with those more experienced players. I was left with the impression that it didn’t matter how much she tried, she rarely had fun playing at all because she basically didn’t get what was happening because of the complexity of the rules.
D&D 4e – A famous RPG podcaster here in Brazil says that he plays D&D for the action and combat and that if he wants to roleplay he prefers indie games. To me good action games are like good action movies, they need not just good action scenes but also a good plot, intrigue and deep characters. After saying that I also most point that I don’t share the vision that 4e is a “wargame” or support the ideas of any side of the edition wars at all. What irritates me more about 4e is how everything seems “packaged”, hermetically sealed to ensure game balance. It can be marvelous for some people but I’m not a very methodical and linear person, i’m also not to perfeccionist about balance. I hate a very unbalanced system but in the end there is no truly balanced system. I’m also not a fan with the time the combat takes. I understand that the time it takes is because things are actually happening on the table, not because of overly complex rules or many dice rolls like on 3.x but even so it’s not what I seek in a combat. I have nothing against tactical combat (I’m a wargamer too afterall), I even preffer it over more bland systems, but I just don’t like for one or two combats to take most of the game session.
AD&D and other Old-School systems – It was because of an interview by a brazilian podcaster with the author of the first brazilian modern Old-school RPG that I got the idea of making this topic (Mainly because of the explanation the author gave about what he did not like in 3.5). I’m not very experienced with Old-school games and retro clones. I also don’t have the feeling of nostalgia most people get from those games because I almost didn’t play D&D and AD&D. I do like the simpler mechanics and understand that not all of the keep with mistakes of the past (Argh... level limits based on class/race combination, i’m looking at you) but at the same time I miss the customization and flexibility of newer systems. In general I’m not an old school GM and I don’t identify with what I understand as old school (but that comes more from the blogs I read).
Savage Worlds – I was in love with this system for a long time but now I got to see it as bland in many points. It’s an amazing system but sometimes you lose something with such simplicity (Like the question with boss fights).
True20 – A good system but it trips in many small mistakes that weak the game as a whole. Also, it was basically abandoned by the publisher.
Cortex – A good system, but the creators didn’t invest enough in making it more “sandboxy” than I would like. I don’t like having to reference Firefly and Battlestar Galactica to creat my own sci-fi game or having to make a magic system from scratch because the rulebook has not a well-defined one.
M&M – The supers genre is one of the few where i don’t feel bad with my system choice. I use M&M and don’t even think about it. But unlike many people I don’t think it makes a good game for other genres. As an example I can’t see myself Gming Warhammer 40k with M&M.
GURPS, Hero System, Fusion e others not listed – I don’t know enough to give na opinion.
PS: Those opinions are personal. Please dn't turn this into a flame war thread.
I began with RPG already as a GM in a monstruous amalgamation of AD&D, D&D and Diablo that had no truly defined rules because i did not have any books. After that I played Vampire (It was huge here in Brazil) and had short experiences with GURPS, Daemon (Brazilian system) and other well-established systems of the time. I played very few AD&D before third edition hit, not much more than 10 sessions. Third Edition was probably the system I played the most, as at this time I found a more defined and stable group. Also, at that time I was beginning to face RPGs in a more mature and serious way. In my group nobody took the (monetary) initiative of converting to 3.5 and I already nurtured at the time a desire to change to other systems (at the time I also came to discover The Forge and fell to the indie vibe for a time. I like indie RPGs but at the time I think it was more of an adolescent rebellion than anything.) and so didn’t want to expend more money with D&D books. During those says I rarely had the opportunity to GM as the group had more experienced GMs than me.
Eventually that original group began to separate and new players arrived as it naturally occurs to all groups and I saw the opportunity of GMing more. D&D 4e was released and my group shunned most of the changes, they were not compatible with the vision of the game my group has. I began a Pathfinder campaign (Nobody in the group had played it but in the end they liked) and it lasted for a decente number of sections. At the same time I was gming Mutants & Masterminds with a friend of mine (I GMed an “arc” and them he GMed another one). I was never a huge fan of D&D and for this reason I eventually abandoned the Pathfinder campaign in a failed attempt to convert my group to Savage Worlds, which I loved with all my heart at the time. We played just one session before it failed uterlly.
Now my group rarely can find a time to play and I decided to sort of begin anew. I’m going to create a “new” group (Calling for new players without caring on the availability of the old ones but it’s fine if one of them happens to be available) with the objective of playing/gming more often. It’s not easy in my city but I don’t care to get noobs and if even that fails I will try gming online. The big question is. I don’t know WHAT TO GM. I don’t know a system i can use where i can’t find na inherent problem that “breaks” the game for me.
With base in my own experiences i’ll post here a list of systems i’ve test and why “not them”:
D&D 3.x/Pathfinder – I don’t like to have to look at the book all the time. Even in the group where I played, with players much more experienced than in me on 3.x i noticed we had to stop all the time to check for some rule in the book and even if we did not do that (“We look at it after. But now it’s going to be like that...”) usually somebody fews unjustified. I think we all know that the system also gets heavier as characters rise in levels and everything gets more unbalanced, complex and takes more time. To add insult to the injury I had a player that was veteran in Storyteller but had never played D&D and I even felt bad when seeing how lost she was with those more experienced players. I was left with the impression that it didn’t matter how much she tried, she rarely had fun playing at all because she basically didn’t get what was happening because of the complexity of the rules.
D&D 4e – A famous RPG podcaster here in Brazil says that he plays D&D for the action and combat and that if he wants to roleplay he prefers indie games. To me good action games are like good action movies, they need not just good action scenes but also a good plot, intrigue and deep characters. After saying that I also most point that I don’t share the vision that 4e is a “wargame” or support the ideas of any side of the edition wars at all. What irritates me more about 4e is how everything seems “packaged”, hermetically sealed to ensure game balance. It can be marvelous for some people but I’m not a very methodical and linear person, i’m also not to perfeccionist about balance. I hate a very unbalanced system but in the end there is no truly balanced system. I’m also not a fan with the time the combat takes. I understand that the time it takes is because things are actually happening on the table, not because of overly complex rules or many dice rolls like on 3.x but even so it’s not what I seek in a combat. I have nothing against tactical combat (I’m a wargamer too afterall), I even preffer it over more bland systems, but I just don’t like for one or two combats to take most of the game session.
AD&D and other Old-School systems – It was because of an interview by a brazilian podcaster with the author of the first brazilian modern Old-school RPG that I got the idea of making this topic (Mainly because of the explanation the author gave about what he did not like in 3.5). I’m not very experienced with Old-school games and retro clones. I also don’t have the feeling of nostalgia most people get from those games because I almost didn’t play D&D and AD&D. I do like the simpler mechanics and understand that not all of the keep with mistakes of the past (Argh... level limits based on class/race combination, i’m looking at you) but at the same time I miss the customization and flexibility of newer systems. In general I’m not an old school GM and I don’t identify with what I understand as old school (but that comes more from the blogs I read).
Savage Worlds – I was in love with this system for a long time but now I got to see it as bland in many points. It’s an amazing system but sometimes you lose something with such simplicity (Like the question with boss fights).
True20 – A good system but it trips in many small mistakes that weak the game as a whole. Also, it was basically abandoned by the publisher.
Cortex – A good system, but the creators didn’t invest enough in making it more “sandboxy” than I would like. I don’t like having to reference Firefly and Battlestar Galactica to creat my own sci-fi game or having to make a magic system from scratch because the rulebook has not a well-defined one.
M&M – The supers genre is one of the few where i don’t feel bad with my system choice. I use M&M and don’t even think about it. But unlike many people I don’t think it makes a good game for other genres. As an example I can’t see myself Gming Warhammer 40k with M&M.
GURPS, Hero System, Fusion e others not listed – I don’t know enough to give na opinion.
PS: Those opinions are personal. Please dn't turn this into a flame war thread.
