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

[Laurefindel]

Free League's Alien has a similar setup and does horror the same way. Still not as brutal as CoC.

I don’t know, I’m constantly terrified of the chain-panic roll of death!

 

[HaroldTheHobbit]

Supers. I just don’t understand how to have or generate fun in that genre. I blame that mostly on that supers comics have always been a very minor thing here in Sweden compared to the US. It might be different for younger gamers who have grown up drenched in the MCU franchises.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What makes CoC horror for me is that the rules are so bare-bones. You can never count on success, combat is always lethal, and monsters are always dangerous. In a more advanced "balanced" rules set combat is survivable. Not so in CoC.

Free League's Alien has a similar setup and does horror the same way. Still not as brutal as CoC.

By this logic, virtually all games which aren't combat-centric D&D-style games are "horror", though.

So that's extremely low bar, I'd suggest.

Re: "lethal", "brutal", "can't count on success"? Have we played the same CoC? I've mostly played official CoC adventures (standard, not pulp) and I'd say most combat encounters break down into:

A) You're intended to run away, it's usually signposted well, and usually the monsters you're intended to flee are slower than most of the investigators (or have situationally been prevented from just chasing down and steamrolling the PCs by the adventure design), plus the investigators generally just have to reach a car and then floor it. I will say the fact that running away is often viable is a point in its favour over D&D where it is genuinely rare-as-heck to see monsters who aren't as fast as or faster than most PCs.

B) You're intended to win, and the fight is alarming, but relatively trivial assuming the investigators bought "normal" weapons with them and can harm the enemy, and aren't like, three elderly unarmed librarians who still haven't worked out how to even damage the enemy (which, being real, they almost never are).

Also "bare-bones" seems a strange description of CoC to me. It's a medium-crunch RPG, with quite significant and detailed rules (unnecessarily so in many, many ways - a lot of stuff that will come in maybe one session in twenty or even fifty). Do you just mean it doesn't have a lot of advantageous combat options?

It seems like you're just contrasting it against 5E D&D and relatives thereof, and again, by that standard, virtually all games are "horror" games. CoC I would say is just a pretty outdated system that persists in part because it's fairly straightforward/accessible but more importantly, has a ton of pre-existing content, much of which is really in-depth and atmospheric. I feel like Mothership is showing how very quickly you can develop that kind of content though, and how a system which even mildly actually supports horror (rather than just not actively opposing it, which I would say is CoC's difference from 5E, which does kind of actively make it hard to do). That the Alien RPG does the same seems like a point against the Alien RPG and perhaps one of the reasons it's increasingly being eclipsed by Mothership despite Mothership not exactly being a masterpiece of design.

 

[Micah Sweet]

By this logic, virtually all games which aren't combat-centric D&D-style games are "horror", though.

So that's extremely low bar, I'd suggest.

Re: "lethal", "brutal", "can't count on success"? Have we played the same CoC? I've mostly played official CoC adventures (standard, not pulp) and I'd say most combat encounters break down into:

A) You're intended to run away, it's usually signposted well, and usually the monsters you're intended to flee are slower than most of the investigators (or have situationally been prevented from just chasing down and steamrolling the PCs by the adventure design), plus the investigators generally just have to reach a car and then floor it. I will say the fact that running away is often viable is a point in its favour over D&D where it is genuinely rare-as-heck to see monsters who aren't as fast as or faster than most PCs.

B) You're intended to win, and the fight is alarming, but relatively trivial assuming the investigators bought "normal" weapons with them and can harm the enemy, and aren't like, three elderly unarmed librarians who still haven't worked out how to even damage the enemy (which, being real, they almost never are).

Also "bare-bones" seems a strange description of CoC to me. It's a medium-crunch RPG, with quite significant and detailed rules (unnecessarily so in many, many ways - a lot of stuff that will come in maybe one session in twenty or even fifty). Do you just mean it doesn't have a lot of advantageous combat options?

It seems like you're just contrasting it against 5E D&D and relatives thereof, and again, by that standard, virtually all games are "horror" games. CoC I would say is just a pretty outdated system that persists in part because it's fairly straightforward/accessible but more importantly, has a ton of pre-existing content, much of which is really in-depth and atmospheric. I feel like Mothership is showing how very quickly you can develop that kind of content though, and how a system which even mildly actually supports horror (rather than just not actively opposing it, which I would say is CoC's difference from 5E, which does kind of actively make it hard to do). That the Alien RPG does the same seems like a point against the Alien RPG and perhaps one of the reasons it's increasingly being eclipsed by Mothership despite Mothership not exactly being a masterpiece of design.

What do you mean when you say, "the Alien RPG is increasingly being eclipsed by Mothership"? Do you have sales numbers, or have you just heard better things about the latter, or believe more people are playing/talking about it?

 

[Heilemann]

By this logic, virtually all games which aren't combat-centric D&D-style games are "horror", though.

So that's extremely low bar, I'd suggest.

Re: "lethal", "brutal", "can't count on success"? Have we played the same CoC? I've mostly played official CoC adventures (standard, not pulp) and I'd say most combat encounters break down into:

A) You're intended to run away, it's usually signposted well, and usually the monsters you're intended to flee are slower than most of the investigators (or have situationally been prevented from just chasing down and steamrolling the PCs by the adventure design), plus the investigators generally just have to reach a car and then floor it. I will say the fact that running away is often viable is a point in its favour over D&D where it is genuinely rare-as-heck to see monsters who aren't as fast as or faster than most PCs.

B) You're intended to win, and the fight is alarming, but relatively trivial assuming the investigators bought "normal" weapons with them and can harm the enemy, and aren't like, three elderly unarmed librarians who still haven't worked out how to even damage the enemy (which, being real, they almost never are).

Also "bare-bones" seems a strange description of CoC to me. It's a medium-crunch RPG, with quite significant and detailed rules (unnecessarily so in many, many ways - a lot of stuff that will come in maybe one session in twenty or even fifty). Do you just mean it doesn't have a lot of advantageous combat options?

It seems like you're just contrasting it against 5E D&D and relatives thereof, and again, by that standard, virtually all games are "horror" games. CoC I would say is just a pretty outdated system that persists in part because it's fairly straightforward/accessible but more importantly, has a ton of pre-existing content, much of which is really in-depth and atmospheric. I feel like Mothership is showing how very quickly you can develop that kind of content though, and how a system which even mildly actually supports horror (rather than just not actively opposing it, which I would say is CoC's difference from 5E, which does kind of actively make it hard to do). That the Alien RPG does the same seems like a point against the Alien RPG and perhaps one of the reasons it's increasingly being eclipsed by Mothership despite Mothership not exactly being a masterpiece of design.

And the price for most pedantic post goes to...

I don't think the poster meant to suggest that any game that isn't crunchy is automatically horror, roll for SAN for the reductio ad absurdum. Moreover CoC is hardly medium crunch, it's basically a simple roll under through and through (whereas 5E is in fact medium crunch...). Sheesh.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

believe more people are playing/talking about it?

This one, and I think it's pretty obvious.

The sheer amount of enthusiasm for Mothership, the relatively much higher number of actual-plays involving it than Alien (especially now, rather than when Alien came out), and so on. It's obviously not scientific, but I think you'll agree it's nearly impossible to be scientific here because we simply don't have the kind of hard data needed.

That's not to say Alien isn't successful - it obviously is - they just did a Kickstarter for an sort of "deluxe" edition. But I'd suggest - and I think that the nature of that Kickstarter supports it, that the main audience there is a more "collector"-ish one, one who is less interested in playing the hell out of game, and more interested in cool stuff - like cool minis (which that absolutely has). But just look at how the backers were distributed - they're weighted massively towards the "cool stuff" end, which is very interesting. There's probably more actual cash-money in pursuing this market, note - RPGs which do tend to make pretty sweet chunks of change compared to ones that focus on actual playable material and so on.

 

[Heilemann]

they just did a Kickstarter for an sort of "deluxe" edition.

The kickstarter was for the second edition.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And the price for most pedantic post goes to...

I don't think the poster meant to suggest that any game that isn't crunchy is automatically horror, roll for SAN for the reductio ad absurdum. Moreover CoC is hardly medium crunch, it's basically a simple roll under through and through (whereas 5E is...). Sheesh.

Nah.

CoC is absolutely medium crunch. I suggest you re-read the actual, surprisingly overdetailed rules, which refute the "It's just percentile roll under man" shenanigans. By that logic, all of 5E "It's just d20 roll over man". I say this having played CoC recently a few times and being kind of shocked about how clunky the rules are, because I didn't remember them being that bad, having played it last a decade or two earlier. 5E is at the lower end of heavy crunch, but clearly heavy.

And my point isn't that the poster meant that, it's that the reasoning given makes most RPGs "horror-friendly" or a huge proportion of them. SAN being this slowly draining resource with limited consequences supports my argument that CoC isn't very well-designed for horror, as I explained.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This one, and I think it's pretty obvious.

The sheer amount of enthusiasm for Mothership, the relatively much higher number of actual-plays involving it than Alien (especially now, rather than when Alien came out), and so on. It's obviously not scientific, but I think you'll agree it's nearly impossible to be scientific here because we simply don't have the kind of hard data needed.

That's not to say Alien isn't successful - it obviously is - they just did a Kickstarter for an sort of "deluxe" edition. But I'd suggest - and I think that the nature of that Kickstarter supports it, that the main audience there is a more "collector"-ish one, one who is less interested in playing the hell out of game, and more interested in cool stuff - like cool minis (which that absolutely has). But just look at how the backers were distributed - they're weighted massively towards the "cool stuff" end, which is very interesting. There's probably more actual cash-money in pursuing this market, note - RPGs which do tend to make pretty sweet chunks of change compared to ones that focus on actual playable material and so on.

Wouldn't it make more sense just to say that you like Mothership more than the Alien RPG, and why, rather than insist that your opinion means more somehow because you believe a lot of other people you don't know share it? What value does the latter bring to the discussion? Are we talking about profit?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Wouldn't it make more sense just to say that you like Mothership more than the Alien RPG, and why, rather than insist that your opinion means more somehow because you believe a lot of other people you don't know share it? What value does the latter bring to the discussion? Are we talking about profit?

No. That would be some weird tangent you could go off on as an ad hominem, but that's on you if you want to do that. I clearly outlined my reasons for thinking why Mothership worked better as a horror RPG, you ignored those.

Re: profit I mention it because nerds love to claim something making a lot of money means it's broadly popular, but I think you need to examine things a little more closely than that.