New System Deal Breakers

[Balesir]

Interesting topic!

Like several others, I really don't have any specific "pet hates" that will turn me off an RPG at first glance; maybe that's part of the reason I own so many of the darned things!

Once I have begun to understand what the game is "about", however, there are some criteria that affect whether or not I want to actually play it. Generally, they boil down to this:

"It is imperative that all of the players, including the GM (if there is one), get to make interesting, meaningful choices and decisions that contribute in a compatible way to the progress of play."

Things like "players get control over all aspects of their own character" can fit, here - but only if that is compatible with the overall aim of game play (as designed). For D&D I very much want players to control their own character completely - but for HârnMaster it's unnecessary and for Universalis it makes no sense whatsoever.

Games that say one thing and deliver another drop out of this as a 'pet hate' - but it's often not clear that this is the case until I get into actually studying the game. Games that promise "you can play a craft guildsman, a skald or a lady-in-waiting" and then proceed with pages of weapon and armour tables and a book of combat spells just make me sigh. So, I can play "a craft guildsman, a skald or a lady-in-waiting" who quits to become a badass mercenary? If I create "a craft guildsman, a skald or a lady-in-waiting" I want to play them as such; if I am going to play a badass mercenary, cut the c**p and let me create a character who is a badass mercenary, for goodness' sake!

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

I don't have any dealbreakers for a game system. There are a couple of things that will, at first glance, disappoint me, though.

Any system that really touts 'realistic' combat makes me raise an eyebrow. My experience has been that this kind of a system is one where you have to roll a bunch of hit locations, check for vital areas, see if arteries were hit and so on. That should probably be dealt with on the narrative level, depending on the amount of hit points or damage taken.

Poorly written stunts/feats/powers. When something is broadly written, it can lead to a great deal of player confusion. A player gets it in their head that it SHOULD be able to do something they want it to do which feels broken (to me, the GM, anyway). I prefer to NOT pull rank on players and tell them the way its going to be but when I have to do that, I will. I just think to myself that I wish the writers/editors had taken a closer look at it.

 

[Balesir]

Any system that really touts 'realistic' combat makes me raise an eyebrow. My experience has been that this kind of a system is one where you have to roll a bunch of hit locations, check for vital areas, see if arteries were hit and so on. That should probably be dealt with on the narrative level, depending on the amount of hit points or damage taken.

I know exactly what you mean, but I have found there to be a distinct place for getting away from "hit points" (including things like "health levels", which are just "a low number of hit points with fancy names").

Switching to wounds being dangerous, hindering additions to the character, rather than depletion of a de-facto resource pool, gives a radically different "feel" to injury and harm that can be excellent for certain types of game play, in my experience. It doesn't have to be hideously complex - you just need to change the "paradigm" of injuries from "they subtract from life" to "they stick to you and threaten wellbeing until you get rid of them".

 

[amerigoV]

#1. Unless your savage worlds or a similar crunch game, don't make me go through the hoops of making an NPC that the players have to go through. 3.x/d20/PF I'm looking at you. I like games where NPCs break the rules somewhat IMHO this is one the strengths of D&D 4e.

???

Savage Worlds core book specifically says NEVER make an NPC/enemy via the same process as you would build a PC.

Page 140 SWEX (second paragraph in the Monsters and Villians section): "One major word of warning before you go any further. Don't create monsters or villian like player characters. Just give them the abilities you want them to have and spend your time and mental energy on better things, like the plot of the game or how best to entertain your group."

 

[Zhaleskra]

I'm not really in the new system market unless something really peaks my interest, and these days, that takes an awful lot.

I have a few pet peeves that aren't deal breakers, but make me wonder what the designers were thinking.

1. "Let's use the whole set of dice" systems, especially when it seems like you switch what kind of die you roll on every roll. Bonus Ick points if there's not even an explanation (even a bad one).

2. Roll under, high. This is the only kind of "roll under" I can see being justified as "counter intuitive".

3. Coolness for coolness's sake: when everything is awesome, nothing is awesome. IMAO.

 

[Mallus]

I'd like to play along, but the truth is I don't have any categorical system-related deal-breakers. My DB's exist at the level of individual campaigns. I don't mind what a system does, so long as the group uses it well.

Right now I'm running AD&D and playing Savage Worlds and Pathfinder.

The restrictive classes and lack of a unified mechanic in AD&D aren't a problem because my players invest their character with a lot of personality, and they don't mind my pulling most task resolution out of my hat, in lieu of a more formal system.

Savage Worlds has a great implementation of advantages/disadvantages and a mostly low level of granularity. Despite that rut characters are interesting, distinctive, and on-par in terms of power/ability to act.

Pathfinder is build-centric, but so what? There's a lot of fun to be had monekying with all the available character options. I find I've missed gearhead-ing a PC together, trying to find the middle ground between capable and ludicrous. I was intrigued by the new-to-me base classes, so I let the mechanics drive my PC concept --a lame elven wind oracle-- and the result was a nice synergy between the PC's mechanics and fiction.

In each case, what worked could have been a problem: AD&D too limited in its character-modeling tools and too dependent on DM Fiat, SW too generic, too same-y, and Pathfinder too crunchy.

 

[Gundark]

???

Savage Worlds core book specifically says NEVER make an NPC/enemy via the same process as you would build a PC.

Page 140 SWEX (second paragraph in the Monsters and Villians section): "One major word of warning before you go any further. Don't create monsters or villian like player characters. Just give them the abilities you want them to have and spend your time and mental energy on better things, like the plot of the game or how best to entertain your group."

My point was more that player character gen is pretty fast with SW and you could make NPCs like you make PCs and it still would be a pretty fast process.

 

[amerigoV]

My point was more that player character gen is pretty fast with SW and you could make NPCs like you make PCs and it still would be a pretty fast process.

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.

 

[mmadsen]

This has been kind of a solved problem since the late '90s when people started putting caps on how many disadvantages you could select for your character.

I believe that Champions, when it introduced disadvantages back in the 1980s, already had limits on how many points you were expected to get back from disadvantages.

This still left players with every incentive to choose disadvantages (and limitations on powers) that weren't really that disadvantageous, so GMs were later warned to be on the lookout for abuse and to disallow any disadvantage that wasn't a disadvantage.

Later games solved the problem by skipping the up-front point-rebate for points that were only earned when the disadvantage came up in play.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Rememberd something else that's a "deal-reconsider-er" for me.

Class systems that are either too specific or too broad.

Too specific would be class systems that allow little customization beyond weapon/spell choice. Yes, the primary difference between two fighters or two wizards should be in how the characters are role-played, but I also want some ability to distinguish them mechanically.

Too broad would be systems where there's so much choice that the "umbrella" of class becomes meaningless, and you might as well be using a classless system. I want the archetypes to remain recognizable.