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

[Heilemann]

The only thing that I would push back against here is that "cozy" lacks stakes. The stakes in cozy games tend to be smaller and personal. Some stakes are more personalized. You can have dramatic stakes in cozy games/stories. It's just not usually things like death, end of the world, fate of the kingdom/galaxy, Dark Lord BBEG, etc. You may not like these sort of stakes. I have no intention of saying that your feelings here are wrong. Only that you can have stakes in cozy games.

Not that they were out and out cozy, but some of the most tense and memorable games I’ve run have been ones where the stakes were super low. It’s much more relatable and personal.

 

[Composer99]

The only thing that I would push back against here is that "cozy" lacks stakes. The stakes in cozy games tend to be smaller and personal. Some stakes are more personalized. You can have dramatic stakes in cozy games/stories. It's just not usually things like death, end of the world, fate of the kingdom/galaxy, Dark Lord BBEG, etc. You may not like these sort of stakes. I have no intention of saying that your feelings here are wrong. Only that you can have stakes in cozy games.

Wasn't there a game brought up here on EN World where the player characters are collecting ingredients for magical jams (very cozy concept), only the magical jams are what's keeping their valley in the light of the sun or otherwise holding back eternal night or some such (definite stakes)?

I'll look for it when I'm more awake.

Edit to add: Here it is: Midnight Muscadines.

 

[chuckdee]

Pelgrane Press is also making a Cozy Mystery type of game in ME with the numbers filed off.

I see it still listed here - See Page XX – December 2024

But the official page is gone. I wonder if Tolkien Estate got to them?

 

[zarionofarabel]

All things D&D. Old D&D. New D&D. Especially professionally published D&D with someone's houserules. Wow am I tired of "the next new hotness/D&D killer/fantasy heartbreaker" being just YET ANOTHER version of houseruled D&D. I swear a this point there has to be like a thousand very slightly differentiated versions of D&D. Bleh.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Cozy at least is a genre that is up and coming in TTRPGs.

Yeah cozy I can see because that's not a genre it's a tone, like D&D is absolutely a game it's extremely easy to make "cozy", in fact I've seen it happen without any intentionality at all, just convergent ideas from the players and DM.

But it is not a tone I'm fond for RPGs either lol. I'm not fond of the polar opposite either though (i.e. "crapsack world" stuff or "every NPC is a horrible jerk to the PCs" stuff).

I've long said: Call of Cthulhu's dirty little secret is that combat works.

For real.

The first thing I was told about CoC online was that combat was super-fatal and you couldn't win combat.

But by that time we'd already played CoC quite a bit and we knew that wasn't true!

And why wouldn't violence work? When the Navy and the Marines landed in Innsmouth they made pretty quick work of cultist and their Deep One friends and relatives.

Exactly. If it's just cultists and low numbers of humanoid monsters or smaller beast-like monsters, several people with semi-automatic or pump-action firearms are likely to be a decent solution.

And if it's anything else, just run for the car!

I'd say CoC persists for the same reason any system persists for a long time and that's because it's pretty good and what it set out to do.

Personally I think it's mostly the adventures. Horror is a hard genre to write adventures for, especially ones that really work. So having decades and decades of adventures is a huge advantage over other horror RPGs. That Mothership inspired so many people to write adventures and it has a surprisingly large number of them is a big part of why that's doing well too imho.

 

[MGibster]

Personally I think it's mostly the adventures. Horror is a hard genre to write adventures for, especially ones that really work. So having decades and decades of adventures is a huge advantage over other horror RPGs. That Mothership inspired so many people to write adventures and it has a surprisingly large number of them is a big part of why that's doing well too imho.

I keep wanting to give Mothership a shot. I grew less enamored with Alien because I don't think it works well for marine campaign because combat gets kind of boring. Maybe the 2nd edition address that. I also really, really dislike the cascade failures of Stress tests. One might argue it's in genre, but it isn't fun when it happens in game.

 

[TiQuinn]

I keep wanting to give Mothership a shot. I grew less enamored with Alien because I don't think it works well for marine campaign because combat gets kind of boring. Maybe the 2nd edition address that. I also really, really dislike the cascade failures of Stress tests. One might argue it's in genre, but it isn't fun when it happens in game.

Hmmm, based on that, I'm not sure you'd dig Mothership either. You can definitely have one character panic, thus causing everyone to take additional stress, and possibly trigger more panic rolls. Also, combat isn't as detailed but is pretty dangerous. We were using some modifying rules to make it a little bit more survivable, which suited our group. I don't want to discourage you - I adore the game - but it's definitely a meat grinder.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Hmmm, based on that, I'm not sure you'd dig Mothership either. You can definitely have one character panic, thus causing everyone to take additional stress, and possibly trigger more panic rolls. Also, combat isn't as detailed but is pretty dangerous. We were using some modifying rules to make it a little bit more survivable, which suited our group. I don't want to discourage you - I adore the game - but it's definitely a meat grinder.

I disagree, I have to say, re: "meat grinder".

I think it's much like CoC here as @MGibster described. In that, in a lot of situations, so long as you actually have guns and get the drop on enemies, you can be extremely effective. Especially if PCs have the stats to support that. It can be quite deadly but like, not excessively so. PCs have a relatively decent amount of HP. If you do stupid things yeah you may die but like, it usually requires you to do something stupid for it to be a "meat grinder". This opinion may be influenced by the adventures I've played in and/or the fact that I am naturally extremely cautious and well-prepared though! The DM did say one adventure that we'd all be dead and/or dying at least three times I hadn't told us not to do certain things lol. But I'm not the only one!

I've played a lot of games of Mothership, too, and I've never seen "a panic chain" or the like. I don't think that's easily possible. Yes, one character panicking will increase Stress but my experience is that PCs will usually have very different stress levels - like one guy will be on 15, and another will be on like, 5, so it's unlikely the guy in 5 will panic. There are definitely volatile combinations (a bunch of soldiers and an android is asking for trouble lol) but most of the panics I've seen have been just one PC getting hit by it.

The only rules modification we've made is that we made armour decrease by one each time it's used rather than just going away entirely, but I'm not even sure that is a rules modification!

 

[TiQuinn]

I disagree, I have to say, re: "meat grinder".

I think it's much like CoC here as @MGibster described. In that, in a lot of situations, so long as you actually have guns and get the drop on enemies, you can be extremely effective. Especially if PCs have the stats to support that. It can be quite deadly but like, not excessively so. PCs have a relatively decent amount of HP. If you do stupid things yeah you may die but like, it usually requires you to do something stupid for it to be a "meat grinder". This opinion may be influenced by the adventures I've played in and/or the fact that I am naturally extremely cautious and well-prepared though! The DM did say one adventure that we'd all be dead and/or dying at least three times I hadn't told us not to do certain things lol.

I've played a lot of games of Mothership, too, and I've never seen "a panic chain" or the like. I don't think that's easily possible. Yes, one character panicking will increase Stress but my experience is that PCs will usually have very different stress levels - like one guy will be on 15, and another will be on like, 5, so it's unlikely the guy in 5 will panic. There are definitely volatile combinations (a bunch of soldiers and an android is asking for trouble lol) but most of the panics I've seen have been just one PC getting hit by it.

The only rules modification we've made is that we made armour decrease by one each time it's used rather than just going away entirely, but I'm not even sure that is a rules modification!

I think we were two marines, one teamster, one scientist and one android playing Gradient Descent.

I guess my question is what makes you think you have great stats in that game unless you are actually able to survive and buy additional training, which is not really a guarantee? Like just playing freshly rolled characters for Another Bug Hunt, you get exposed to combat pretty quickly, and at that point, you don't really have tremendous stats. I think at best, you've got stats that may be get into the 40s, and with a skill boost, you maybe have a 50/50 shot of succeeding on rolls.

Now, not everyone died. There were two PCs throughout the entirety of Gradient Descent who managed to survive the entire campaign. My first PC died, and my second made it to the end. Another player had 4 PCs just due to some really bad rolls. To me, that's a meat grinder.

Edit: We were also using Armor Degradation and Resolve as alternate rules to help survivability.

 

[Heilemann]

All things D&D. Old D&D. New D&D. Especially professionally published D&D with someone's houserules. Wow am I tired of "the next new hotness/D&D killer/fantasy heartbreaker" being just YET ANOTHER version of houseruled D&D. I swear a this point there has to be like a thousand very slightly differentiated versions of D&D. Bleh.

It me. How many variants are enough for you people?! <yells at cloud>