New System Deal Breakers

[pming]

Hiya.

I can only think of two, really.

1) Anything called "Bennies". Yes, this does pretty much limit it o Savage World and offshoots, but that word just *annoys the crap* outta me. I always picture a 64 year old, overweight, washed-up white guy with a bad white suit, pink tie, horrid, oversized sunglasses, and a penchant for smoking cheap sigars, named "Bennie". Specific? Yup. ...and no...I have no idea where that image comes from... I just *hate* that word.

2) Bland-sameness. If the rules give three types of attacks..."Sword Strike", "Painful Fist", and "Magic Blast". One for fighters, one for monks and one for wizards. And each boils down to "does 1d6+LVL damage"...I'll pass. Nothing sucks the life out of an RPG faster than trying to slap a different color of paint on the same car.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[amerigoV]

Hmmm, its hard to come up with deal breakers. Pointing to an individual mechanic and saying "I'm not playing anything with that in it" is pretty strong (other than some of F.A.T.A.L.'s mechanics!). Being a recent Savage Worlds convert, I really believe you have to look at how all the mechanics interact.

For example, I played Serenity/Cortex before I played Savage Worlds. That system does not jive with me. If you asked me what I did not like about it, I probably would have came up with the list similar to the OP. However, Savage Worlds has many of those things in the list as part of its system and they are exactly what I love about the system (among other things). Its not just the mechanics, its also how they work together.

D&D is the exact same thing. There are many mechanics that are shared across the various editions and its not like everyone around here gets along.

 

[Hussar]

/snip
D&D is the exact same thing. There are many mechanics that are shared across the various editions and its not like everyone around here gets along.

I have no idea what you're talking about.

*whistles innocently*

I think one thing that actually is a deal breaker for me is mechanics the rely too heavily on the players not to break them. OWoD is a poster child for this. Yes, I realize that the game is not about making uber characters and it's all about the story and whatnot. Sure. But, jeez, at least make it a bit difficult to accidentally make a power monkey character.

Note, I think this is something of an artifact of older games. The ones I've been looking at in the past five years or so have really, really tightened up the mechanics.

 

[Corathon]

I spent a lot of time thumbing through new (or new-to-me) game systems at GenCon. Several looked promising until I hit one of my "deal breakers." These are RPG pet-peeves of mine. If I see one of them, I am extremely reluctant to give the system a try.

Here are a couple:
1) Advantages/Disadvantages systems

2) Hit/Wound/Dodge/Parry/Block/Spend bennies to turn wounds into misses

Retreater

So that's two things that you have against Savage Worlds, as it has both.

I kind of agree with you about point 2, actually, but I'll play devil's advocate. "Advantages/Disadvantages" systems can work, they just need the GM to make sure that no one is allowed to create a hopping psychopath archer or the like.

And combats in "Hit/Wound/Dodge/Parry/Block/Spend bennies to turn wounds into misses" systems don't necessarily last longer. Taking Savage Worlds as an example (because I'm familiar with it) some tough foe (e.g. an ogre) might shrug off two hits and the GM might spend a bennie to stop another - but the first hit that he doesn't shrug off drops him. Not really slower than having to hit an ogre 4 times in D&D.

I don't really have a rules-based stopper. I like to have some idea of the odds, so games where the odds are easy to estimate are preferable.

 

[unan oranis]

I see these, I close book:

1. Rules are a mild variant of existing game.

2. Rules that are approaching dnd levels of complicated.

3. Few decisions in character generation.

4. Combat/challenge resolve mechanics that aren't quick or clever.

5. Bad art.

6. Bad writing.

7. Too much fluff, or lack of compelling, crumb sized fluff bits.

8. Not enough crunch, or disorganized crunch.

Of course, all editions of dnd get a pass, and I always end up playing a heavily modded version of any game in the end anyway. So really, no game passes the test except maybe chess, but even in that case the fluff is pretty dry and character generation is as cookie-cutter as it gets.

--

Unan

 

[Corathon]

I spent a lot of time thumbing through new (or new-to-me) game systems at GenCon. Several looked promising until I hit one of my "deal breakers." These are RPG pet-peeves of mine. If I see one of them, I am extremely reluctant to give the system a try.

Here are a couple:
1) Advantages/Disadvantages systems

2) Hit/Wound/Dodge/Parry/Block/Spend bennies to turn wounds into misses

Retreater

So that's two things that you have against Savage Worlds, as it has both.

I kind of agree with you about point 2, actually, but I'll play devil's advocate. "Advantages/Disadvantages" systems can work, they just need the GM to make sure that no one is allowed to create a hopping psychopath archer or the like.

And combats in "Hit/Wound/Dodge/Parry/Block/Spend bennies to turn wounds into misses" systems don't necessarily last longer. Taking Savage Worlds as an example (because I'm familiar with it) some tough foe (e.g. an ogre) might shrug off two hits and the GM might spend a bennie to stop another - but the first hit that he doesn't shrug off drops him. Not really slower than having to hit an ogre 4 times in D&D.

I don't really have a rules-based stopper. I like to have some idea of the odds, so I dsilike games where the odds are difficult to estimate.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Hiya.

I can only think of two, really.

1) Anything called "Bennies". Yes, this does pretty much limit it o Savage World and offshoots, but that word just *annoys the crap* outta me. I always picture a 64 year old, overweight, washed-up white guy with a bad white suit, pink tie, horrid, oversized sunglasses, and a penchant for smoking cheap sigars, named "Bennie". Specific? Yup. ...and no...I have no idea where that image comes from... I just *hate* that word.

2) Bland-sameness. If the rules give three types of attacks..."Sword Strike", "Painful Fist", and "Magic Blast". One for fighters, one for monks and one for wizards. And each boils down to "does 1d6+LVL damage"...I'll pass. Nothing sucks the life out of an RPG faster than trying to slap a different color of paint on the same car.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Ya know what? I really hate that word, too, actually.

 

[AngryMojo]

1) Anything called "Bennies". Yes, this does pretty much limit it o Savage World and offshoots, but that word just *annoys the crap* outta me. I always picture a 64 year old, overweight, washed-up white guy with a bad white suit, pink tie, horrid, oversized sunglasses, and a penchant for smoking cheap sigars, named "Bennie". Specific? Yup. ...and no...I have no idea where that image comes from... I just *hate* that word.

I have to agree with you. I love SW, it's my favorite system out there and I'll love and play it until the end of my gaming career most likely, but I really wish Shane Hensley came up with a different term for the re-rolls/damage mitigation. Like Fate. Or Fortune. Or Awesomenes.

 

[ExploderWizard]

As a DM it needs to be fairly simple. I don't want to run a game if it involves reading a giant rulebook or requires software to create PCs and NPCs (without a major headache).

As a player it doesn't matter. I can deal with pretty much any mechanical system if the people and the actual game content are cool.

 

[delericho]

1) More than one book required to play the game. D&D and Pathfinder get a pass on this for tradition's sake, but even those should move to a single core rulebook with their next editions.

2) Any required subscription, miniatures, collectable component, or computer software. Even when as "required" as minis in 4e - that is, you can play without, but lose a lot in the process. 4e gets a pass on this, but 5e will not.

3) Requires funky dice, whether that's WFRP 3e's symbol dice, or DCC's d7 and d30.

4) Death spirals. Being wounded can reduce my character's effectiveness, but it must not make my character easier to hit, easier to wound, or less able to run away.

5) Option bloat. This isn't an issue with "new systems" but it can be with "new systems to me". If there are too many books out there already, I won't bother buying in.

6) Legacy metaplot. As with option bloat, it's not new systems with a metaplot that bother me, but if the game already has an extensive metaplot, I'm not interested in playing catch-up.

7) 80's cyberpunk assumptions. This one is genre-specific, but if you're writing a cyberpunk game I don't want it to look like Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun. Those games were good at the time, but they were very much products of their time; we've moved on, so too must our assumptions about the near dystopia.

8) Lots of new terminology. If you're writing a class-based system, just call them "classes". Any other name just means I have to learn a new language to play the game, and I can't be bothered.

Speaking of learning new stuff:

9) New systems without purpose. Look, if you've got some new fancy mechanic that ties wonderfully into your setting, and it all makes perfect sense and flows one from the other, that's great. But if you're being different just to be different... don't. Use the d20 system, or Savage Worlds, or some other existing ruleset. Don't reinvent the wheel just to be different.

Oh, and it's not a deal-breaker (since I'll have read the game by that point), but when using an existing system don't fill your rulebook with lots and lots of fiddly new exceptions. That really irritated me about the oWoD, and it really irritated me about all those d20 games that were put out - the rules were always almost the same, but were just different enough that I had to relearn a whole bunch of minor changes just because. If using an existing system, use the system, and if you are making changes, make them big and obvious and easily remembered!