Why Do You Hate An RPG System?

[Gorgon Zee]

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]

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

1. The person or people involved, if I don't like them or what they stand for, I won't support them.
2. The publisher, this bleeds over into number one, so maybe my list should be three or 3.5, except here we are.
3. 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.
4. 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]

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]

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]

.... 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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.