Why Do You Hate An RPG System?

[CleverNickName]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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.

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.

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]

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]

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]

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.