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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 9870169" data-attributes="member: 75787">This is a very interesting example. About half the people find this a very cool mechanic and love it. But another half find that the implementation is a real problem. I was in the second group as I found myself annoyed by the mechanics and doing very non-genre things to avoid auto-failing future actions (such as never being near a team-mate to avoid gaining stress when they fail rolls, not searching a dead body in case I rolled badly and became so stressed that in the next combat I’d be useless). If you don’t learn the system, it can be fun. But once you do, you end up metagaming it or deliberately choosing bad options so you DON’T  meta game it. 2e fixes some of this, but for me I suspect it’s a system where seeing how it works makes the fun go away.I will say that classic D&D has an intended play style of “you are a random collection of zeroes and by killing monsters and gaining loot you will become a random collection of heroes” and it does a great job. Specifically it’s one of the very few systems where very disparate characters can play together and it feels natural, fun and well-supported. Another system that captures its style well is Night’s Black Agents. Its intended style is “Jason Bourne / John Wick vs. Dracula” and it has a bunch of mechanics that make you really feel like a bad-ass spy hero. It balances mundane spy work with action rules very nicely, and has bonus mechanics (like one where you have a specialty and once a session, if it could possibly work, it works) that allows for cinematic coolness. Plus it has the single best skill in all of RPG history, preparedness. You can use this to ensure you always have the tool you need, and at higher levels can state how you prepared for events; for example, when you realize vampires are invading the safe house, you can spend points and say “I expected this sort of trouble, so I wired white phosphorous grenades on the stairway”. Cue explosion, heroes looking highly competent and general fun.</blockquote>

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