What are the primary reasons your players reject other systems/settings/games?

What are the primary reasons your players reject other systems/settings/games?

  • Limited time/schedules to learn new rules/systems

    Votes: 41 51.3%
  • Maximizing play time and minimizing systems

    Votes: 11 13.8%
  • Disinterested in other genres/settings

    Votes: 27 33.8%
  • Group/social dynamics

    Votes: 8 10.0%
  • Large investment in time/money to the current game

    Votes: 20 25.0%
  • Large investment in the current campaign/characters

    Votes: 13 16.3%
  • "System wars" (other systems are threatening in some way, active system "fighting")

    Votes: 5 6.3%
  • Current system fulfills a character power dynamic

    Votes: 16 20.0%
  • "Simulationsist" vs "Narrativist" reasons

    Votes: 5 6.3%
  • "Crunchy" vs "Rules Lite" reasons

    Votes: 17 21.3%
  • Current system has been settled for a long period historically

    Votes: 12 15.0%
  • General resistance to change ("if it ain't broke...")

    Votes: 31 38.8%
  • Other (describe below)

    Votes: 12 15.0%
  • Open to new systems, but enjoying current system

    Votes: 8 10.0%
  • Lack of VTT support

    Votes: 4 5.0%

This doesn't really answer the question of the thread but I never get pushback from my players. I am (mostly) the only one who buys the rulebooks and am the primary GM so they are generally willing to play whatever I want. When I abandoned Pathfinder 1E we had been playing D&D 3.x since it's release (D&D 3.0) and I was burned out so the options were simple - move onto something else or stop playing (I was the only GM in my group at the time). Once we have played a game I will abandon it if they don't like it but that has never come up. My biggest issue is that I own more games than I will ever play.
 

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This doesn't really answer the question of the thread but I never get pushback from my players. I am (mostly) the only one who buys the rulebooks and am the primary GM so they are generally willing to play whatever I want. When I abandoned Pathfinder 1E we had been playing D&D 3.x since it's release (D&D 3.0) and I was burned out so the options were simple - move onto something else or stop playing (I was the only GM in my group at the time). Once we have played a game I will abandon it if they don't like it but that has never come up. My biggest issue is that I own more games than I will ever play.
I know what you mean. I have to resist the urge to buy another game as I will just have it collecting dust in my library. However, I don't want to get rid of any games because I keep thinking, probably incorrectly, that I will play it one day.
 

I had to ween my players off D&D Beyond early.
I never went near it. I want my character information under my own control, not that of a large company's marketing department.

My groups are pretty willing to try new systems, and also to give up on them if we aren't enjoying them.

One system that didn't get played was Heroes of the Soviet Union, a lightweight superhero game where some of the players had ethical issues with portraying the USSR in a positive way. The chap who wanted to run it took up Honor & Intrigue instead, which is going well.

Lost Fleet didn't work well for the Sunday group. When the GM described it, she did so mostly in terms of Battlestar Galactica, and I don't watch TV. I asked if it was necessary to understand BG, and was told no, and that there was no need to get the rules, only the playbooks (it's a PbtA variant). The personality description system is astrological, which I found confusing, and nobody told me that the inter-character bonds are even more important than in basic PbtA. I missed the character generation session because I was sick, and it all got more and more confusing. We aborted the campaign after a few sessions.

There were different problems with Blades in the Dark. The system looks simple, convincingly enough to fool the GM, who struggled to find the right rules a lot of the time. It also moves complexity to different places from a traditional TTRPG, which caused delays in handling things that didn't seem as though they should take up much time. However, the fatal problem was the built-in plot model of the game, which is very Hollywood, with many things not mattering unless there's a crisis going on. When we planned and executed a job so efficiently that there were no fights and nobody knew they were being robbed until too late, but our combatants got no experience or advancement from it, we ended the campaign.
 


Other: It doesn't offer anything over the old systems we are playing. We try new stuff from time to time, though usually those wind up as one shots.

Yeah, even as someone who changes systems fairly often, there's nothing more pointless than changing just to change; I change because I want a particular effect and/or am running a genre the prior system doesn't do, or at least do a good job with.
 

Yeah, even as someone who changes systems fairly often, there's nothing more pointless than changing just to change; I change because I want a particular effect and/or am running a genre the prior system doesn't do, or at least do a good job with.
Those are good reasons, I think that is largely why we do it too; such as a mechanic to do something differently, then finding that in the balance the change wasn't as crucial to our enjoyment of the game.
 

Those are good reasons, I think that is largely why we do it too; such as a mechanic to do something differently, then finding that in the balance the change wasn't as crucial to our enjoyment of the game.

The issue with that I usually find is while few mechanics are individually crucial to our enjoyment of the game, being overly casual about them leads to a game that as a gestalt, really isn't doing it for us.
 

The issue with that I usually find is while few mechanics are individually crucial to our enjoyment of the game, being overly casual about them leads to a game that as a gestalt, really isn't doing it for us.
Gestalt: The Game. Sounds intense. Compared to the table that plays next to us, with crates of pathfinder books, we are pretty casual. I made a GM screen, though it's crib notes at best. Usually the core, whatever books we are playing, my folder, and some dice.

1738023062409.jpeg


This is how we play
 

Gestalt: The Game. Sounds intense. Compared to the table that plays next to us, with crates of pathfinder books, we are pretty casual. I made a GM screen, though it's crib notes at best. Usually the core, whatever books we are playing, my folder, and some dice.

View attachment 394506

This is how we play

Yeah, rules-light and us would mostly translate into "I'm sure we have something better to do."
 

Yeah, rules-light and us would mostly translate into "I'm sure we have something better to do."
Horses for courses. I have moved more towards a lighter style of play as I have aged. Though someone looking at my Solis People of the Sun book said: "It's full of math!" Which isn't exactly true, except kind of; you don't have to interact with it.
 

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