Unpopular opinions go here

[nevin]

RPG books are too long and too big and too verbose. Slim concise materials make for better gaming. As it is,books are made for reading because everyone knows but won't admit people aren't actually going to use the thing at the table.

oh, oh, oh......Mr. Kotter......Books make bad movies and even worse games, the only thing worse than a game trying to be a book is a writer's blocked DM trying to write a story based on what his player's did........

 

[nevin]

Gamers are terrible at analyzing and designing role playing games, they're only good at loudly expressing terrible opinions.

OMG.... I think you won the internet for the next 5 minutes.

 

[nevin]

The two do different things.



Your very next assertion defeats this claim. In any game with monsters, not all hits may be assumed to be equal. You can really only get away with hit points equals number of hits you can take in a world of non-magical combat between peers.



If you are fine with World of Warcraft where you never get relatively more powerful than wolves or bears because they just get more powerful at the same rate, then your claim is true. But I've always thought that if that is what you wanted, then you could achieve the same results with PC's that never level up and skip a bunch of extra steps.



Lol. Alright. You enjoy what you enjoy.



I would be OK with B/X if it dropped race = class and had just a bit more variety in chargen. I particularly like that rounds had phases as an elegant solution to some problems of turn based combat.



I don't know. In a thread that is all about stating opinions as facts, this seems to be particularly far on the spectrum of opinion as fact.



Dedicated storygames are generally worse at generating story than systems that focus on coherent settings with rules as physics. Storygames would be more accurately called scenegames.



As a player, I'd rather ride the rails than be bored. The worst sin of GMing is not running a fun game. Railroading can get you there, but ironically it's one of many options for getting to dysfunctionland.

these things all came about because millenials entered the world........

 

[nevin]

I totally disagree, and by totally disagree I literally mean I believe the opposite is true. For as long as we've had an RPG community, probably THE primary focus of the community has been on trying to figure out how to have a fun non-combat based game. No single one thing has been the focus of more effort by the RPG community than that. Even in D&D itself it has been a significant thrust of design at all levels from rules and supplements to examples of play.

What ought to be really intriguing to someone paying attention to the history of RPG design is just how badly almost all of those attempts have failed given the highly evident desire that the community has had to make non-combat as fun or more fun than combat.

And at this point, the focus of your investigation should not be on why the community doesn't want to have fun outside of combat, but quite the contrary on what is so special about combat that makes it almost impossible to replace as the core focus of the game or the story of the game.

I think your both wrong. Both extremes are the issue......

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh, and The Empire Strikes Back is the worst of the first three Star Wars movies.

That’s just a fact. I oscillate between ANH and ROTJ, but always in third place is the middle child.

I’ll double down, and say that Revenge of The Sith is somewhere in midst of the OT.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

To be fair, Dracula being royalty-free is why pretty much every RPG had vampires long before the Mythos stuff ever started to spread...

Actual content with Dracula in it is pretty thin on the ground. I can only think of Night's Black Agents (playing it finally at GenCon Online this year, SQUEE!) that really did so in a major RPG.

I think investigating Mythos stuff probably has more legs -- or tentacles -- as RPG content than hunting Dracula does.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Alignments are a cool idea that requires a philosophy class to explain, and a non emotional person to understand. Since 80 percent of the world according to psychologist's process emotionally, trying to explain to someone that they way they feel about something has nothing to do with it's goodness or evilness was always, guaranteed to be a failure.

you're probably not wrong, but i wonder it it would've helped any if law and chaos had been named structure and liberty or something instead.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

RPG books are too long and too big and too verbose. Slim concise materials make for better gaming. As it is,books are made for reading because everyone knows but won't admit people aren't actually going to use the thing at the table.

There are rare exceptions to this -- Ptolus is 100% usable at the table, I can say after more than a decade of doing so -- but yeah, most RPG companies are quietly publishing books to read, rather than to play, which is why some of us freak out so badly about games that are actually intended for use at the table.

 

[payn]

Popular shows such as Rick and Morty and Vox Machina are unwatchable.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Skills and ability scores are redundant.

Castles & Crusades and Shadowdark say you can sit with them at lunchtime.