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

[Ruin Explorer]

"Pasion de las Pasiones" rpg succeeds at everything paranoia fails at, and is bonkers fun. Just reframe it in the paranoia setting and away you go!

This is pretty much how I feel too. And yes that's a cool game, whereas for whatever reasons, Paranoia just makes me cringe, like cringe so hard I can't even engage with it.

The biggest "nope" for me, though, ignoring games which are obviously problematic (of which there are more than a few) has to have been Castle Falkenstein. Going from Cyberpunk 2020, which at least superficially, was aggressive anti-capitalist, anti-elite, pro-"just living your life" and so on, to Castle Falkenstein is like, impossible whiplash for me - it's truly shocking both were designed by Mike Pondsmith.

Castle Falkenstein basically worships most of what Cyberpunk 2020 holds in contempt. Like, maybe it's 15 degrees off because oligarchs and aristocrats aren't quite the same as corpos, but they're bloody similar! And there's no way the massively capitalist and elitist system they describe could operate without being incredibly oppressive to and exploitative of the working classes and indeed the majority of humanity. And we're supposed to be friends with these people? To engage in their bogus and twisted societal rituals designed to reinforce the system oppression that they call "etiquette"? To bloody kiss the ring?

I've rarely wanted to burn a setting down that much!

I get that a lot of people could just look past all that and see "harmless fun", but frankly, that's exactly how those echelons of hateful Victorian society operated, so that just didn't work for me! I honestly felt like an all-corpos pro-corpo campaign in 2020 would at least be more honest.

Any game where the PCs are reporting to/working for an evil or dubious-seeming authority and the setting doesn't get it, like it thinks "actually these are the good guys!", is pretty much a nope for me. That's surprisingly few games though - there are a lot of games where you work for the bad guys or dubious people, but the vast majority acknowledge and understand that.

The interesting thing about "spies" is that it is two genres but often conflated to one. There is LeCarre espionage, and then Hollywood high action. I prefer the former but admit that the latter is easier to pull off with your typical TTRPG group.

I'd love to play an extremely well-executed campaign of the former, but it's close to impossible, because LeCarre-style stuff is full of reveals and the like that may well just read as cheesy adversarial DM nonsense, which works in fiction, but much less so when you have players with PCs who have free will and so on. I think you could construct a game so it worked (like the players kind of wanted that to happen), but it would need very specialized rules like MASKS. Whereas I think if you played it really straight down the line, unless you were so good you should basically be writing that kind of novel, there's be a lot of anti-climaxes where the PCs worked out the evil plan 13 seconds into the adventure and dealt with it 5 minutes later by shooting the right person in alleyway, and also lot of "Well there was literally nothing we could possibly have done about that and now we're screwed".

You just had bad DMs back in the day. Interesting environments and meaningful choices aren't new.

I think it's fair to say the level of dungeon design in newer OSR dungeon-crawlers is vastly higher than it was in say, the 1980s. Good DMs or bad DMs, we've had over 30 years of practice and learning at this.

 

[thullgrim]

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?

I thought that too and then I ran some Nights Black Agents. Totally changed my view. I run it in Savage Worlds for system comfort reasons but it’s native Gunshoe system works well enough.

 

[Reynard]

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?

Your villains WANT something. And they are willing to do ANYTHING to get it. That's what makes them villains. Lean into that. Really interrogate their motivations.

For example, Luthor was a pretty boring villain until writers started to ask why he hated Superman so much, and when they did that and came up with good reasons, Luthor became one of the best villains in DC.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

Sometimes games are just supposed to be fun.

I am not sure I follow your statement there... ?

if it means....
Paranoia always fun... well, that is 100% invalid to claim "this game is fun for everyone!" = no such thing exists.
Claiming there is some magic "I know how to beer and pretzel fun game, why don't you?" = seems arrogant in the worst way...

if it means...
Paranoia isn't actually fun for some people, and there is an empathy for "yeah, I hear you, sometimes games don't click and that's not the person's fault" = indeed I agree.
I love taco bell, some folks don't. that's just fine, I fully understand why others may not like taco bell and that's fair too.

if it means something else, then cool. I am just not sure.
...

Random side note not aimed at anyone = I heard the other day, someone say "I like game X, someone dislikes game X, they are invalidating me as a person because they are invalidating my fun."

I have a deep concern when folks take such differences in opinion personally in regards to a product (especially a product neither of them created).
But I am unsure how to handle or address such people/discussions when it comes up...

just a thought...

 

[Tonguez]

I think of myself as a very open minded gamer. I can enjoy playing just about any game as long as I can get on with the rest of the players. And I generally can get on with most people. So I rarely turn down a gaming session because of the system. But there is one big exception.

I don't like "supers" games. The whole genre of superheros games turns me off. And I'm not even sure why. It can't be the power levels. I've run campaigns in D&D to 20th level. And it is not that I hate the genre in any media. I've enjoyed many superhero movies and TV series. I've enjoyed some superhero comics off and on over the years. But whenever I hear about a superhero TTRPG game session, I'm like, "ugh, no thanks." And I don't just mean committing to a superhero-themed campaign, I don't even want to sit down for a session. I'm thinking at the next Gamehole Con I should sign up for at least one superhero game session to see if I can either work past this block, or at least come away with a more informed opinion and maybe some insight on why I don't like them.

There is a player in my regular game that is like this with Sci Fi TTRPGs. And I mean Sci Fi in the broadest sense. When I run any Sci Fi flavored one shot, he nopes out. The Expanse? Nope. Paranioa? Nope.

Does anyone else have similar genres that turn them off? Do you have more self awareness than I do as to why? Or is it just a "doesn't float my boat" instinctual thing?

Also, this thread is a place to defend your yum that others yuck. Not argue, berate, belittle or otherwise be belligerent about it. Just a good faith explanation why you love the genre others don't. And if you were once turned off by a genre and came to love it, what turned you around?

The genre that puts me off most is Comedy games, they just dont tend to play as funny. Not that I dont like humour in games even toons style ott slapstick but forced humour is meh. I can do melodrama as long as we embrace the farcical soap opera approach though lol.

Everything else is fairgame Supers, Sci-Fi, Espionage, Historic, Pulp - àalthough horror tends to either morph into gothic romance or an action adventure style rather than actually scary

I like the flexibility of a FATE with FAE being quite intuitive for running most genre once you embrace the freeform narrative approach, BitD is good too, complexity makes my eyes glaze over and brain shunt

 

[Reynard]

I am not sure I follow your statement there... ?

Maybe reread the post I quoted in my comment.

The concern was about the PVP nature of Paranoia and how that caused concern. But if you look at that as just shenanigans, it may reveal itself for what it is: dumb fun.

I wasn't trying to yum someone else's yuck.

 

[overgeeked]

The genre that puts me off most is Comedy games, they just dont tend to play as funny. Not that I dont like humour in games even toons style ott slapstick but forced humour is meh. I can do melodrama as long as we embrace the farcical soap opera approach though lol.

Dying is easy and comedy is hard...because most people don't understand why comedy works. The two best ways to get laughs in comedy RPGs is to either take things seriously when the situation is absurd (games like Paranoia or Monty Python) or to have an absurdly exaggerated character trait (like characters in sitcoms). Most people just want to quote punchlines or play Paranoia on zap mode. Ugh.

The writers of the Monty Python RPG get it. They even included a call-out box to help people play the game. The mechanics produce the absurdity. The easiest way to make that funny is for the PCs to treat everything as deadly serious.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

Maybe reread the post I quoted in my comment.

The concern was about the PVP nature of Paranoia and how that caused concern. But if you look at that as just shenanigans, it may reveal itself for what it is: dumb fun.

I wasn't trying to yum someone else's yuck.

Urm... Wat??

There are 8 lines of my post there, I see nothing about your response highlighting PvP in particular. And the line I quoted had no mention of PvP at all... And my own post is not about how PvP isn't fun... so....

Also note, PvP is not the reason Paranoia isn't fun for us. Pasion de las Pasiones is PvP and its a blast.

 

[Arilyn]

Your villains WANT something. And they are willing to do ANYTHING to get it. That's what makes them villains. Lean into that. Really interrogate their motivations.

For example, Luthor was a pretty boring villain until writers started to ask why he hated Superman so much, and when they did that and came up with good reasons, Luthor became one of the best villains in DC.

Oh, I know. I do this in other genres. I just struggle running super heroes, even though I've played and enjoyed supers games. Not exactly sure why. I'll probably try again some day. I do like Icons, Worlds in Peril, Marvel Cortex and I played a lot of FASERIP.

 

[MNblockhead]

First, a surprising benefit of this thread are the mentions and discussions of games I was unaware of. The great thing about ENworld is the diversity of people with diverse gaming experiences who are members. What I don't like about ENworld is that it is mostly a D&D discussion board and trying to start a discussion about any other game just gets buried in "TTRPG Other". I with there could be more system specific forums. When I'm running a non-D&D game I generally go to other forums and Reddit to discuss. I wish the forum list would be more representative of the diversity of coverage in ENworld's news posts. ENworld discusses lots of games in various news posts, in their flagship podcast, and they even have a Not D&D podcast, but the discussion forums don't reflect this at all.

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.

Yeah, this is a big one for me as well. I would happily play in a Star Wars, Star Trek, Expanse, Lord of the Rings, etc. game and I wouldn't care if the GM does violence to the canon. But I wouldn't run games in them, because many/most players want to play these games because they enjoy those worlds and expect some level of staying true to canon.

I ran a one-shot of The Expanse and I felt even more constrained by the canon because it is much more narrow lore. With Star Wars or Star Trek, you can at least just make up some world and new aliens and play outside the politics and events covered in the movies, TV shows, and books. The other problem I had with The Expanse is the hard science element of it. It really only came up in space travel and, to some extent in fights, and just made me want to handwave most space travel and I found fighting in a space ship or on ground more fun than spaceship on spaceship fighting.

At the same time, a game like Starfinder doesn't scratch my sci fi itch. To me it just plays like D&D with lasers. I would love to find a system more grounded in science (with some highly speculative, sci-fi elements like FTL travel or wormholes), but abstracted so you don't have take a correspondence course in physics to play it "correctly." Also, one not weighed down with decades of TV, movies, and books.

I should take a closer look at Traveller, but when I read discussions about it, it feels like it might be more crunchy than what I'm looking for. If I had the free time, I'd like to kitbash something with Cortex prime, but I just don't have the time to do everything from scratch.

I love Paranoia, but prefer to run one-shots or mini-campaigns. You also need players who can enjoy the silliness without going overboard and becoming so obstructionist that the story can't move forward.

For "silly" games, my favorite remains InSPECTREs. It is such a great small-group beer-and-pretzles party game and I always have a blast. But it works best with more outgoing players as it is very improvisational. I could see more introverted and passive players finding it stressful and feel like they are being "put on the spot."

Horror and suspense are hard to pull of in most games. Dread helps with the jenga tower mechanics, but that also makes success dependent in part on dexterity of the players. I also like Grim. One page of rules and a deck of cards. Call of Cthulu, Old Gods of Appalacia, The Magnus Archives, and games like that would be fun to play in with the right GM, but I would have trouble running them and capturing much of any of the feel of those stories.

I'm really enjoying running The Enemy Within for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e. It is a nice mix of D&D inspired fantasy, Call of Cthulu inspired cults and dark powers, lots of political intrique, less overt magic, more renaissance tech, dark and grim but with an 80s punk sensibility of not taking itself too seriously. I'd much rather run a long campaign where you can dip into horror, suspense, combat, political intrigue, romance, etc. without the entire premise of the campaign being based on one genre.