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

[Micah Sweet]

@Ruin Explorer and @el-remmen already covered in detail many of my feelings. I'll add that for me, personally, I can enjoy being a player in canon-heavy IP TTRPG. From my perspective as a player, it is no different than a GM who has a detailed world her or she created from scratch. Just let me know what I need to know about the setting and your campaign and expectations of tone at session zero and I'm good to go. Even if it is a setting I'm very familiar with, I don't mind what the GM does with it or whether the GM hews to continuity and canon. I accept the world as presented to me and focus on the party's story.

But running games in such setting--generally not for me. Pretty much for many of the same reasons other have posted about.

Then again, I have one exception. I love running games in The Old World setting of WFRP. Perhaps it helps that none of my players have any familiarity with the older versions of the game (either TTRPG or miniature war game) or the decades of fiction. While I hew fairly close to the setting material as presented in the 4th edition books and adventures, I also do not let myself feel constrained by them. There have been a number of times in the settings history where Games Workshop did major lore retcons, so it is matter of pick your version of the lore in many instances. I realize that all of this can be said about most or all major, long-lived settings.

So I guess it comes down to what setting do I most easily grok and naturally invest my time into, even outside of game prep, that an understanding of it has just seeped into me. Other than WFRP's The Old World, that has just always been my own homebrewed settings.

I have so many franchises I would be delighted to run a game in: Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle-Earth, numerous D&D settings, either Warhammer setting, and many more. Setting lore is pretty much my favorite thing, and I love fitting an adventuring party into a setting with some real history.

 

[chuckdee]

I dont want to make up random Star Wars characters and go around doing things in the Star Wars universe. I want to reenact the saga. I want the ambiance of Bladerunner setting, but to also lean into its themes as an RP experience. I do not want rules for attack ships to wage space wars of the shoulder of Orion. I want experiences, not generic do anything RPG packages in these IPs.

I take it a different direction. I don't want to re-enact the saga. I also don't want to play second fiddle - I want my actions to mean something. We still play IPs, but we'd give anyone that views canon as sacred a heart attack. In our MERP playthrough, circumstances caused the death of 2 out of the 4 hobbits and Sauron to get the ring.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I take it a different direction. I don't want to re-enact the saga. I also don't want to play second fiddle - I want my actions to mean something. We still play IPs, but we'd give anyone that views canon as sacred a heart attack. In our MERP playthrough, circumstances caused the death of 2 out of the 4 hobbits and Sauron to get the ring.

Alternate history is great too, but it still uses the IP's Canon as a base to spring from, and that's the cool part for me.

 

[Emerikol]

Traditionally, I've liked zero to hero games. Zero being fairly competent but not heroic. Traditionally I've viewed D&D this way. I don't go with the 0 level is the most common level idea.

So science fiction, post apocalpytic, are two other genres that fit this scheme. I've not really been able to get into games where there is no real advancement mechanic. I like the idea of a "dungeon" which can be an abandoned military base or a lost ship in space but it's still effectively a dungeon. I'm probably not as interested in social heavy games though I like some level of it as part of my regular games.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'll add that for me, personally, I can enjoy being a player in canon-heavy IP TTRPG.

I think that's basically true for me, so long as I not too expert in the setting. I get that that makes a hypocrite in some way but like, I'd happily play in a very canon-heavy Star Wars game, even though I know from experience that it stresses me out to run one.

Running wise, I know because I ran one for a while in 2004-5. I did accidentally like, pre-create master-era Ahsoka Tano as a major NPC (i.e. same basic personality, gender, race, dual-wielding Jedi, lot of trauma from surviving after Order 66 - albeit not trained by Anakin but rather a made-up Obi-Wan analog) and replicate the approximate plot of Rebels, with my Ahsoka-equivalent in the Kanan role - which still weirds me out a little, but I suppose it's all obvious ideas.

I did manage to run a canon-light SW game for a couple of years a few years back, but having learned from the earlier one, I intentionally set it in a total backwater system where neither Imperial nor Republic norms held true.

Then again, I have one exception. I love running games in The Old World setting of WFRP.

One nice thing about WFRP is that Warhammer Fantasy's canon is both vague and frequently self-contradictory over the various editions of the wargame (sometimes even within the same edition). So if a player actually knew it well they'd know that, and thus probably wouldn't try to contradict you nor be bothered by it. Hell they ran the Endtimes twice with different results, even!

 

[John Dallman]

I've never had any interest in Star Wars or Star Trek licensed settings, because I'd ceased to take any interest in the source material before I discovered TTRPGs. In 1979. The only licensed setting I've ever been interested in is Discworld, and the roots of that definitely include RPGs. To me, RPGs are their own form, and trying to hammer stories structured for other media into them is likely to fail.

 

[MGibster]

Once you've worked fast food, gutted your own animals, changed diapers, cleaned up your wife's vomit, then the association between fear and disgust goes away, and my response at least to "gore horror" starts to be less disgust at the fake blood on the screen but disgust at the meta level of the mindset that is producing or consuming such content willingly.

Horror is defined as a feeling of fear, shock, or disgust. Disgust is an element of the horror genre as a whole. I suppose if you're feeling disgust for the audience that's good enough.

It's also common for narrow focused Trad games... especially mission based ones — Star Trek, Delta Force, most police procedurals (TFG's Crime Fighter is the one I've run), Recon, Chill, Bureau 13, ALIENS Adventure Game.
Also, any campaign premise based upon being part of an organization that has rules.

The first time we played Esoterrorist, one of the players wanted to take on our employers because he thought they were screwing us over. They weren't. The GM just said to him, "This isn't that type of game."

 

[MNblockhead]

One nice thing about WFRP is that Warhammer Fantasy's canon is both vague and frequently self-contradictory over the various editions of the wargame (sometimes even within the same edition). So if a player actually knew it well they'd know that, and thus probably wouldn't try to contradict you nor be bothered by it. Hell they ran the Endtimes twice with different results, even!

Yes, I love it when my failing memory can just be explained away by "well nobody knows for certain", "there are conflicting rumors", and the fact that it is more accurate that PCs would have a very limited, and often incorrect, understanding of history, wider politics, and distant cultures and geography. Harder to get away with when your PCs have access to AI-enabled super computers.

 

[aramis erak]

I have so many franchises I would be delighted to run a game in: Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle-Earth, numerous D&D settings, either Warhammer setting, and many more. Setting lore is pretty much my favorite thing, and I love fitting an adventuring party into a setting with some real history.

There are 3 or 4 Warhammer settings, most with subsettings:

• The Old World... as seen in WFB and WFRP 1-4
  • The current setting is well after WFRP 1's
  • There is a forthcoming version set in the era of WFRP1's version, and Emperor Karl Franz; unclear whether or not it will be the winds of magic flavor.
  • Each version of the tabletop splats made some changes.
• The WH40K galaxy
  • The 40k setting in at least 3 major retcons. WH40K, the BI/FFG games DH, DW, OW, BC, RT RPGs, plus Wrath & Glory.
  • the 30K aka Horus Heresy era, used in the original Space Marine and Adeptus Titanicus. And in a forthcoming RPG.
• The Age of Sigmar
  • My limited understanding is that it's a dimension hopping one... Soulbound is the RPG for it. The PDF gave me headaches.
• Talisman Adventures
  • Pegasus Spiel released the 1st ed
  • Second ed is supposedly coming from Cubical 7.

While I love deep lore settings, I had to get off that lore minefield. too many subeditions... tho' I will stay on the Talisman adventures Setting... unless C7 mangles the mechanics.

 

[Starfox]

Honorable mention to "Blades in the Dark". While I'm very familiar with Apocalypse World type games, BitD is an opaque thing to me. I've owned the book for years and will likely never get it to the table.

I think it's the methodically structured "flow" for these games. Rules for systematic approaches to stuff that in other systems I would have simply handled with a few "ability checks" and moved on. The metacurrencies, the clocks, the strict step by step, almost "board-game" feel.

I just can't! Maybe because I'm too old? I get Free League, D&D (any edition)... hell even Against the Darkmaster and RuneQuest (Mythras) are easy enough for me to understand.

Oh well.

I am just starting what I hope will be a long-running Blades in the Dark campaign and read this with interest. Not every player around here that tried it loves BitD, the main issue being that it is too abstract. What I am working on improving is the negotiation before each roll; essentially you have to really decide what you want before you roll rather than the roll and see approach we're used to.