What criticisms do you have for current or previously used systems?

[payn]

• PF2: I don’t like skill actions. Even after running the system for over a year, I didn’t like that I couldn’t keep them all in my head and needed a reference to know what they did. I also didn’t like the guildelines for building monsters and traps. There’s too much granularity, and having to worry about trap DCs is annoying. I also found there wasn’t much of a PF2 community if you weren’t doing stuff like APs.

One of the reasons I was so into PF1 era, was becasue of the community focus on APs. There was a common reference point, experimental sub-systems, and lots of homebrewing between them. Though, if you want whole cloth homebrewing that was pretty sparse to find, so I understand what you are saying.

 

[Lanefan]

This might be best for a different poll (probabl too late to add to this one) but one variable not mentioned iin the poll would come as two options:

--- characters advance and-or gain power too fast
--- characters advance and-or gain power too slowly

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm trying to decide if there's a point in criticizing a system that's gone through (I believe its at least five) different evolutionary iterations since I played it.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I'm trying to decide if there's a point in criticizing a system that's gone through (I believe its at least five) different evolutionary iterations since I played it.

Allow me to offer a point for your consideration — ahem — Drag it! Put it in a body bag, Johnny! woooooo

 

[GrimCo]

I voted for 3 things, system is 5ed D&D

Insufficient risk to PCs- while levels 1-4 can be potentialy deadly, after that you have to go out of your way to design adventure that is deadly but fair ( in game time constrains, antimagic zone, enemy casters with dispells etc). Past level 10, you play superheroes game more or less.

Lack of horizontal growth - it's shared problem with all level based games. Only way to get new abilities is gaining levels, but level gains always gives you vertical power boost.

Overly reliant on GM - feature, not a bug with 5e rules over rulings. While i do like it, i feel it requires competent and at least moderatley experienced GM to run it decently. It's not very friendly to noob dm's, double so if the don't have decent system mastery

 

[Wolfpack48]

I'm trying to decide if there's a point in criticizing a system that's gone through (I believe it’s at least five) different evolutionary iterations since I played it.

Think of it this way: if you were able to fix these things in any system you play, which ones would you pick?

Another way to approach it: if your favorite system were to address these criticisms in a new edition, which items would like them to focus most on?

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

The system in question is D&D 5E. The core issue is bad class balance.

It's funny because this is kinda how it went for me: I started my RPG career in Dragonbane (very old edition from the 90s), then I tried D&D.

People who start in D&D don't understand how weird it is compared to other fantasy system. Bards who cast magic? Kung fu monks? Armour that increases miss chance?

We quickly moved from 3.5 to PF1 when that came out and played for a long time. We tried 4E and at first I hated it, but once we started actually playing it it was actually quite cool.

We moved to play some Adventure Paths in PF1 again. Later on we moved to 5E and I liked it initially and then I played a fighter in a group with an AC optimised Bladesinger. This is when things started to click. I had dismissed earlier balance discussions because I didn't see the issue. When I finally retired my fighter I had for a time already understood that 4E was actually a good edition, and the things that at first seemed like a good idea in 5E are actually bad.

Last year I spent too many hours reading everything I could on balance discussions on this forum, on reddit, and on giant-in-the-playground's forums. It baffles me that some people don't see the balance issues. Reading the discussions is sometimes like reading a debate about whether or not the earth is flat.

My nickname here was picked as a mockery of a commonly seen argument used by people who disagree with balance and argue that bad balance is required for "verisimilitude".

Edit: Balance problems were even worse in 3.5 and PF1, but 5E is still bad on this front.

 

[Theory of Games]

The survey is system-agnostic but records complaints people have with certain systems? Makes no sense. It's collecting complaints for the sake of collecting complaints. You definitely cannot design or critique rpgs with the information because there's no clear designation of anything. Other than "the dice made their hand feel funny" (which is a complaint).

"... the objective is to gain a broad overview of the activities of systems that are failing to meet the expectations of individuals."

What systems?

 

[Wolfpack48]

The survey is system-agnostic but records complaints people have with certain systems? Makes no sense. It's collecting complaints for the sake of collecting complaints. You definitely cannot design or critique rpgs with the information because there's no clear designation of anything. Other than "the dice made their hand feel funny" (which is a complaint).

"... the objective is to gain a broad overview of the activities of systems that are failing to meet the expectations of individuals."

What systems?

From the OP:

Clarification 1: If you have critiques about multiple systems that are fairly alike, you can list them together here. However, if you find the criticisms of each system to be substantially different, prioritize the one where you have the most complaints or the one you would like most to improve, whichever best suits your situation.

 

[Theory of Games]

From the OP:

Which leads to my next question:

How does one know outside of subjective "feelings" that an aspect of an rpg deserves criticism? Like, if I don't like that Apocalypse World doesn't have rules for underwater knife fights, I can be critical of that but does the game really need rules for underwater knife fights? Or like the art. If I don't like an rpg because the art is "bad" is that valid criticism of the system? What about the tone the game's written in? I mean people can complain all day but what if it's just misplaced?

And what if someone complains about like AD&D's weapon speed rules but that person doesn't truly understand the function of those rules? So now someone's complaining about that which they do not comprehend. So it's just aimless complaints, right?

I'm just trying to get a handle on this survey is all. I guess if I had a valid complaint it would be Apocalypse World's SEX MOVES. WTF people. When I first read it I thought Baker was attempting a rules-lite version of FATAL.