TTRPG Genres You Just Can't Get Into -and- Tell Me Why I'm Wrong About X Genre I Don't Like

I hate super hero games. I cannot find any reason that I would want to play them. I tried M&M, once, and I liked the DM and the character but I am kind of exhausted with supers as a genre.

I would not play in a romance game.

For me, any game set in a popular universe or setting will turn me off. I cannot play in FR, for instance, because I have read too much of the fiction. I used to be unable to run or play Star Wars. I love it now but I had to make sure that the setting was set in a period where there was zero fiction and the players could not run into anyone from games or movies. I need a wider canvas for my games and I do not want to account for what may be happening as current events.
 

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I've played Supers before in short games... one-shots or several-session runs. But I've never run or played in a long-term campaign about Supers, and I'm pretty sure its because the Supers genre is really focused on one primary thing-- combat.

We make all kinds of talk here about how D&D is a "monster-fighting game"... most of the stat on a character sheet is geared towards fighting monsters, most of a monster statblock is used in fighting against PCs... but the actual genre of "fantasy" is not one about fighting. Fighting happens of course... but fantasy was never designed with fighting being the end-all-be-all of what the genre is for. Whereas superhero comics have always have. The fight of the superhero versus the supervillain is always the climax. 9 out of 10 issues of any comic book will involve Supers combat. It's entirely a genre focused about this premise and promise... Supers characters using their super-powers to fight against other people with different super-powers. Yes, there will of course be other things that happen in any Supers book-- romance, communication, mystery, espionage, science, etc... but Supers books aren't about those things, those things merely are the ways that build towards that final fight.

Which of course is also why I think people sometimes see D&D as a game to be superhero-like... because D&D's "monster-fighting game" premise matches the Supers genre in that the climax of any session or any campaign ends up being a big fight against the bad guy.

And I believe this is why I've never really trucked much with the Supers genre in TTRPGs... because I just don't have the interest in combat when it comes to roleplaying games, I'm in it for the interactive story. How and where things progress. It's why every CRPG I play is always set at the easiest level... because once I reach a point in the story that turns into a fight... it's the fight's and story's resolution and where things go after that which interest me-- not spending countless times playing and replaying a fight over and over and over trying to "win" it at more and more difficult levels. To me that's entirely missing the point of an RPG. In an RPG of any type or genre, combat should be no more difficult or take any more time or be no more important than anything else one can do in the game. A fight and negotiation and an exploration of a location should all be of equal time, energy and import. And if it's not? And one thing holds way too much import (like combat is to the Supers genre)... I just don't have a desire or need to play it for extended lengths of time.
It's interesting you frame things in the manner of combat. One of the main reasons ive drifted from Fantasy is after combat im not sure what is left? While its true that the climax of Supers stories is often an all out combat, the journey to that combat is usually an interesting story. Particularly the dynamic between hero and villain. One of the reasons ive sworn off Supers all these years is the attempt has always been to port fantasy combat dungeon crawler systems over to Supers making them largely about combat. Its been a misfit, ime, so Ive never enjoyed it.
 

I see people mentioning romance as a TTRPG genre. Are there games/systems where romance is the main focus; or is that just something that gets folded in as part of the narrative?
I know it's a big thing in literary circles but I am unfamiliar with it as an RPG genre.
Monster Hearts (paranormal high school), Blue Rose RPG (romantic fantasy), Thirsty Sword Lesbians (basically Revolutionary Girl Utena), Good Society (Jane Austen TTRPG), La Pasión de las Pasiones (Telanovela soaps)
 

I absolutely love supers and supers games, but the genre I feel really needs mechanical support (and strong player buy-in) to play like any kind of comics story even resembling four-color.
Since I don't enjoy four-colour superhero comics, I can't really buy into the genre.
Otherwise players IME inevitably use their powers in logical and realistic ways that have little to do with how most supers settings operate.
Yeah, I can't help doing that.
 

I ran a Powered by the Apocalypse Dungeon World mini-campaign (9 sessions) and I had a really hard time wrapping my head around the flow of the game. I didn't particularly enjoy it, and didn't have a desire to run it again.
 

I did think of another genre that I won't play: spies. Pretty sure I'd be hopeless at running one too.

Super heroes keeps coming up in this thread. I enjoy playing supers games but I'm terrible at running them. Every time I've tried, I have no ideas. My villains just want to sit around drinking coffee, I guess?
 

Monster Hearts (paranormal high school), Blue Rose RPG (romantic fantasy), Thirsty Sword Lesbians (basically Revolutionary Girl Utena), Good Society (Jane Austen TTRPG), La Pasión de las Pasiones (Telanovela soaps)
Interesting. I've heard of most of these but had no idea that they were romance focused.
Thanks for sharing.
 


Interesting. I've heard of most of these but had no idea that they were romance focused.
Thanks for sharing.
Romantic fantasy, like Blue Rose, is not romance. It tends to be idealized settings like Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series or Elizabeth Haydon's Rhapsody books. In fact, Blue Rose pulled a lot from Valdemar when building it.

I am not sure I would even call those settings romantic fantasy any longer with the advent of the new romantasy books, which are just pure romance with a fantasy skin. :sick:
 

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