Anti-Pretentious games

[diaglo]

games that use antiperspirants.. unlike the gamers who play them... would include:

Car Wars

Star Fleet Battles

and Synnibar... but i just could never bring myself to enjoy that one

 

[Darkness]

Huh. Looks like I failed to copy-paste the end of my last message onto the boards: (I wrote it in Word.)


In any case, some comments in this thread are very insulting. EN World is not the place for insulting people, small group or no. Please stop that.

 

[hong]

Huh. Looks like I failed to copy-paste the end of my last message onto the boards: (I wrote it in Word.)


In any case, some comments in this thread are very insulting. EN World is not the place for insulting people, small group or no. Please stop that.

Sorry.

 

[WayneLigon]

The first and most obvious of these would be the D20 system itself. It quickly managed to dominate the RPG market, doesn't sell itself as something brilliant, but in reality has managed to not only outdo every other gaming system on the market....

Er, I think it being D&D did that. It could have been pretentious, or not, or called all of us dirtbags to our faces and it still would be the dominate RPG.

Another one in my opinion would be Amber: it has all the intelligence and innovation that other RPG systems make themselves out to have, with none of the fake artsyness or blowing of its own horn.

It's certainly hard to blow your own horn when you've been out of print for years, yes.

 

[maddman75]

I'll put up Exalted as a nonpretentious game. Its coolness for the sake of being cool. This isn't about angst or tragic drama, its about a 15 dice pool and a grand diaklaive. For you n00bs that's a sword eight feet long with a blade nearly a foot thick. How can you weild such a blade - because you've got the blood of the gods in your veins! You can defeat armies single handedly, quickly become master of the underworld, or discover ancient secrets of the lost First Age.

And that's just a starting character. Get some XP under your belt and you can do some *really* cool stuff.

Nor does it try to tell you how to play it. You can go for constant over the top action, a grim world full of pain, or even rail at the frustration of being the reincarnation of a grand hero while the world thinks you are a demon.

Does this thread have a point other than "White Wolf is teh suk!"?

 

[Nisarg]

I didn't find BRP Cthulu at all pretentious. It does exactly what it set out to, dryly & extremely efficiently. d20 Cthulu has some pretentious (but IMO enjoyable) WoD-style text in it.

I agree that BRP Cthulhu is not at all pretentious. It has managed to remain the foremost terror RPG since pretty well the beginning of the hobby without having to blather on about being a "deep rpg of personal horror" or create pseudo-intellectual nonsense about the game being about anything other than getting your head chewed off by a tentacled nasty.
It also qualifies as anti-pretentious, because it is in reality far better at creating (under the aegis of a good DM) true PERSONAL human horror than any other rpg out there (definitely better than vampire).
You can make cthulhu be about fighting deep ones and stopping cultists, or you can make it about role-playing dealing with a slow dark descent into madness as everything around you loses its familiarity bit by bit and turns into something menacing.

The "wod-style text" I think you're referring to in Cthulhu D20 is the advice to gamemasters, which didn't strike me as WoD-like in the least. It was useful, sincere, not pseudo-intellectual or poseurish; in other words it was actually worth reading.

Nisarg

 

[Nisarg]

(RE: AMBER)
It's certainly hard to blow your own horn when you've been out of print for years, yes.

Actually, Amber only went out of print last year. Its been in print every year since its first printing in 1991 until 2004, and has been played since 1986. In any case, the manuals are not pretentious in their attitude, and Amber players (myself excluded) tend to be pretty quiet about their fandom, even though they're one of the biggest blocks of fans of any single RPG outside the big 3 (D20, WW, Palladium).
Its the only game I can think of that has at least 6 Cons worldwide each year devoted to it exclusively.

Nisarg

 

[GMSkarka]

Does this thread have a point other than "White Wolf is teh suk!"?

No.

It's sort of his raison d'etre. He does it on other fora as well.

 

[S'mon]

The "wod-style text" I think you're referring to in Cthulhu D20 is the advice to gamemasters, which didn't strike me as WoD-like in the least. It was useful, sincere, not pseudo-intellectual or poseurish; in other words it was actually worth reading.

Nisarg

Hi Nisarg - ok, I'll fess up, I haven't actually read any WoD books (except a quick look at Exalted). I accept my comment was inappropriate and uncalled-for.
The d20 version of CoC is a lot less dry than the BRP one, the art style is not so much to my taste and the text is a little, mm, turgid maybe - "The light at the end of the tunnel is the oncoming train" - but I don't want to denigrate it, it's still a very nice piece of work by Monte et al. I enjoyed the GM advice & found it quite helpful. And it doesn't have any pieces of fiction in it (IMO fiction in a RPG rulebook is always a bad sign).

 

[Kapture]

However, I was condemning the companies and designers who I feel overtly encourage these fanboy's mentalities, marketing to those kinds of pseudo-intellectual elitisms. I hope that's not breaking the rules.

Nisarg

Dude, you're a hero of the working class, and a rebel.

I think people should play the games they like. I think any broad statements about the worth or quality of games is fanboy trolling, and anybody who returns fire is a sap.

There's a way to ask questions about which games people find simple without baiting. If you really want to try.