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

[MGibster]

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.

The cascade failure in Alien usually goes as follows. One player fails a Stress roll, the result is their Stress goes up plus everyone present must make a Stress test. Next player fails and the result is their Stress goes up and everyone present must make an Stress test. It just keeps happening and after the first time it loses all its charm.

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".

I don't find CoC to be a meatgrinder either, but it's dangerous. When the bullets start flying, even a reasonable plan can turn into a dead or severely injured Investigator in short order. The PCs can stack the deck or shave the dice in their favor, but at some point they're going to roll snake eyes or draw a bad hand. I sure as heck don't mind dangerous games where characters can die. I don't think D&D is deadly enough!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Now, not everyone died. There were two PCs throughout the entirety of Gradient Descent who managed to survive the entire campaign.

So like to me that's what means it's definitely not a meatgrinder lol. If the number of casualties is way lower than an a sci-fi horror movie across an entire campaign... And one that I'm told is a "megadungeon" (I dunno if this is true, it's just what the DM said) to boot - I carefully avoid reading up on Mothership adventures I haven't done.

We haven't done Gradient Descent, the DM does threaten us with it occasionally, but we had 100% survivors on the time travel campaign. (we were crowing that "Just this once, nobody dies" until we realized how many people we'd killed along the way in that one lol. Also to be fair the time travel aspect means you can really leverage the hell out of cunning plans.)

To me, that's a meat grinder.

I guess to me that's just a Tuesday lol. I mean, if everyone lives through a one-shot horror adventure that feels kind of wrong to me. The very first Mothership adventure we ever ran there was only one definite survivor (and one in the balance, but probably not), but it felt completely right and didn't feel like we'd been cheated or treated unfairly at all. Indeed given what we faced, it was a miracle anyone made it out of there, and testament to our dedication and teamwork.

I mean at least two of my PCs died near the finish line ensuring other people lived (one he put himself in an airlock because I knew he correctly thought he was dying and about to become dangerous, the other stayed to ensure a nuclear bomb went off in an alien hive) and to me, that was completely thrilling, rather than "meatgrinder". To me meatgrinder means if you touch combat or similar PCs are dying left right and centre, regardless of how sensible the tactics the party uses and so on (and I've seen games like that - hell a lot of OSR games pride themselves in that), regardless of quickly or well they solve puzzles, regardless of how cautious and sensible they are, regardless of them preparations they make, and I haven't really seen that in Mothership. I guess what I'm saying is for me "meatgrinder" implies "killed by mere contact with systems" or "killed by RNG without any real way to mitigate it", and I don't find that to be true of Mothership personally, but it's fine it means different things to different people! Also there are probably adventures where that does happen, we just haven't played them.

The cascade failure in Alien usually goes as follows. One player fails a Stress roll, the result is their Stress goes up plus everyone present must make a Stress test. Next player fails and the result is their Stress goes up and everyone present must make an Stress test. It just keeps happening and after the first time it loses all its charm.

There's nothing like that in Mothership that I'm aware of. If you had several PC Marines repeatedly failing panic checks it could get bad but that's a good reason to have a balanced party. I almost always play Teamsters myself.

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.

Yeah but you only need to roll if you need to roll. The whole idea is to not roll, to do smart things your character knows how to do that mean you don't have to. If you're rolling, things have probably already gone south. At least this is what the DM explained to us, and what he said the book and/or discussions about the game online indicated. Plus you can get Advantage if you do have to roll.

 

[TiQuinn]

So like to me that's what means it's definitely not a meatgrinder lol. If the number of casualties is way lower than an a sci-fi horror movie across an entire campaign... And one that I'm told is a "megadungeon" (I dunno if this is true, it's just what the DM said) to boot - I carefully avoid reading up on Mothership adventures I haven't done.

We haven't done Gradient Descent, the DM does threaten us with it occasionally, but we had 100% survivors on the time travel campaign. (we were crowing that "Just this once, nobody dies" until we realized how many people we'd killed along the way in that one lol. Also to be fair the time travel aspect means you can really leverage the hell out of cunning plans.)


I guess to me that's just a Tuesday lol. I mean, if everyone lives through a one-shot horror adventure that feels kind of wrong to me. The very first Mothership adventure we ever ran there was only one definite survivor (and one in the balance, but probably not), but it felt completely right and didn't feel like we'd been cheated or treated unfairly at all. Indeed given what we faced, it was a miracle anyone made it out of there, and testament to our dedication and teamwork.

I mean at least two of my PCs died near the finish line ensuring other people lived (one he put himself in an airlock because I knew he correctly thought he was dying and about to become dangerous, the other stayed to ensure a nuclear bomb went off in an alien hive) and to me, that was completely thrilling, rather than "meatgrinder". To me meatgrinder means if you touch combat or similar PCs are dying left right and centre, regardless of how sensible the tactics the party uses and so on (and I've seen games like that - hell a lot of OSR games pride themselves in that), regardless of quickly or well they solve puzzles, regardless of how cautious and sensible they are, regardless of them preparations they make, and I haven't really seen that in Mothership. I guess what I'm saying is for me "meatgrinder" implies "killed by mere contact with systems" or "killed by RNG without any real way to mitigate it", and I don't find that to be true of Mothership personally, but it's fine it means different things to different people! Also there are probably adventures where that does happen, we just haven't played them.


There's nothing like that in Mothership that I'm aware of. If you had several PC Marines repeatedly failing panic checks it could get bad but that's a good reason to have a balanced party. I almost always play Teamsters myself.


Yeah but you only need to roll if you need to roll. The whole idea is to not roll, to do smart things your character knows how to do that mean you don't have to. If you're rolling, things have probably already gone south. At least this is what the DM explained to us, and what he said the book and/or discussions about the game online indicated. Plus you can get Advantage if you do have to roll.

I’m really going to have to go back and look at that Advantage and see what you mean - maybe we missed something key there. Sometimes you’d have it but not always.

So, meat grinder.

FOR ME…lol…meat grinder is any game where there’s a high death rate which 40% to 50% of the PCs did in our Mothership campaign - spanning Another Bug Hunt and Gradient Descent. Now, I personally want a meat grinder in a horror game that’s based on every sci-fi horror movie you’ve ever seen. But my response to MGibster was based on what he said about Alien, and sounded like maybe he wouldn’t like that. But regardless…50% death rate for our PCs across that campaign is a much higher percentage than most games we play. YMMV.

Gradient Descent is what I’d call a mega dungeon, and I count it as one of the best. It’s not a mega dungeon in the old TSR sense of the word but then I’m not always a fan of those. Old style mega dungeons were often just room after room after room of sameness and the size seemed more the point of those dungeons existing. GD is probably about 60 rooms spread out across 6 levels, but each room feels like it has a distinct purpose for being there, and the place feels suitably epic. It took us in total about 12 sessions to get thru it. I think of most dungeons today being much smaller than that, so yeah, I’d call it a mega dungeon. There are definitely some twists to the place that maybe up the stress level too which I won’t disclose for spoiler reasons. I also highly recommend it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I’m really going to have to go back and look at that Advantage and see what you mean - maybe we missed something key there. Sometimes you’d have it but not always.

So, meat grinder.

FOR ME…lol…meat grinder is any game where there’s a high death rate which 40% to 50% of the PCs did in our Mothership campaign - spanning Another Bug Hunt and Gradient Descent. Now, I personally want a meat grinder in a horror game that’s based on every sci-fi horror movie you’ve ever seen. But my response to MGibster was based on what he said about Alien, and sounded like maybe he wouldn’t like that. But regardless…50% death rate for our PCs across that campaign is a much higher percentage than most games we play. YMMV.

Gradient Descent is what I’d call a mega dungeon, and I count it as one of the best. It’s not a mega dungeon in the old TSR sense of the word but then I’m not always a fan of those. Old style mega dungeons were often just room after room after room of sameness and the size seemed more the point of those dungeons existing. GD is probably about 60 rooms spread out across 6 levels, but each room feels like it has a distinct purpose for being there, and the place feels suitably epic. It took us in total about 12 sessions to get thru it. I think of most dungeons today being much smaller than that, so yeah, I’d call it a mega dungeon. There are definitely some twists to the place that maybe up the stress level too which I won’t disclose for spoiler reasons. I also highly recommend it.

Advantage is just 5E style, ie if you have it you roll twice and take the best. And whilst I don't know the exact conditions for handing it out, from a player side it's typically been similar to D&D and other games that use Advantage/Disadvantage. If you've never used it that's a bit rough! Especially as players can create situations where Advantage would apply much more often than ones where unavoidable Disadvantage applies (again similar to all games using this). It does seem to be an actual official rule, people discuss it. But again avoiding rolling at all is best.

Hopefully we will get to try Gradient Descent in the next year or two!

 

[TiQuinn]

Advantage is just 5E style, ie if you have it you roll twice and take the best. And whilst I don't know the exact conditions for handing it out, from a player side it's typically been similar to D&D and other games that use Advantage/Disadvantage. If you've never used it that's a bit rough! Especially as players can create situations where Advantage would apply much more often than ones where unavoidable Disadvantage applies (again similar to all games using this). It does seem to be an actual official rule, people discuss it. But again avoiding rolling at all is best.

Hopefully we will get to try Gradient Descent in the next year or two!

There were times we had advantage, but I don’t remember the exact mechanic for when we got advantage on a roll. Resolve was like Inspiration, but you got one Resolve per session survived.

The whole don’t roll vs roll thing - I dunno. All I can say is “I guess you had to have been there?” And I think that counts for me as well. Like, I want to see a group go through a Mothership game and play it in a way where you make choices that don’t require rolling and still progress the story. At some point, you have to do something uncertain - that’s going to require a roll, right? And you can’t always guarantee that it’s going to align nicely with your chosen skills.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

There were times we had advantage, but I don’t remember the exact mechanic for when we got advantage on a roll. Resolve was like Inspiration, but you got one Resolve per session survived.

The whole don’t roll vs roll thing - I dunno. All I can say is “I guess you had to have been there?” And I think that counts for me as well. Like, I want to see a group go through a Mothership game and play it in a way where you make choices that don’t require rolling and still progress the story. At some point, you have to do something uncertain - that’s going to require a roll, right? And you can’t always guarantee that it’s going to align nicely with your chosen skills.

Generally you roll when there's stress (in the non-mechanical sense) and or tight time pressure or your character doesn't really know how to do something. Obviously in combat situations that's hard or impossible to avoid though you can often get Advantage initially if you get the drop on people/creatures. One thing our DM is very good about is outlining the stakes of a roll too, if they would be known (usually they are) which has caused rethinking approaches or trying to find a way to make things more certain before.

I think how much the DM forces you to roll is going to have a lot of impact on er... PC turnover lol, especially as every failed roll is one more Stress. Players have a big impact here too. I notice one you said one of your players lost four PCs to bad rolls and like, whilst I am certain luck played a part, at some point when one guy has lost four PCs and two others have lost zero some questions may potentially be, with love, raised. Like, is that guy behaving in a way that exposes his PC to more danger? Is he failing to look for ways to avoid rolls or get Advantage? Does he keep playing Marines and Androids (who in my experience have by far the highest death rates despite/because on paper they are the toughest)? Looking at my own group, most of the PC deaths I've had weren't down to bad rolls at all. On the contrary, they were despite good rolls, because I'd been stubborn or stupid or essentially volunteered to die. Another player absolutely got his David-esque android owned because he just kept deciding to do unsafe things without preparation or forethought and without help from others and didn't have the insane luck you'd need to get away with that. But that same player had another PC be the sole survivor of an expedition despite horrible rolls, in large part because he spent most of it cowering behind the other PCs lol.

I'm not sure what this all amounts to except it's surprisingly fun lol.

 

[TiQuinn]

Generally you roll when there's stress (in the non-mechanical sense) and or tight time pressure or your character doesn't really know how to do something. Obviously in combat situations that's hard or impossible to avoid though you can often get Advantage initially if you get the drop on people/creatures. One thing our DM is very good about is outlining the stakes of a roll too, if they would be known (usually they are) which has caused rethinking approaches or trying to find a way to make things more certain before.

I think how much the DM forces you to roll is going to have a lot of impact on er... PC turnover lol, especially as every failed roll is one more Stress. Players have a big impact here too. I notice one you said one of your players lost four PCs to bad rolls and like, whilst I am certain luck played a part, at some point when one guy has lost four PCs and two others have lost zero some questions may potentially be, with love, raised. Like, is that guy behaving in a way that exposes his PC to more danger? Is he failing to look for ways to avoid rolls or get Advantage? Does he keep playing Marines and Androids (who in my experience have by far the highest death rates despite/because on paper they are the toughest)? Looking at my own group, most of the PC deaths I've had weren't down to bad rolls at all. On the contrary, they were despite good rolls, because I'd been stubborn or stupid or essentially volunteered to die. Another player absolutely got his David-esque android owned because he just kept deciding to do unsafe things without preparation or forethought and without help from others and didn't have the insane luck you'd need to get away with that. But that same player had another PC be the sole survivor of an expedition despite horrible rolls, in large part because he spent most of it cowering behind the other PCs lol.

I'm not sure what this all amounts to except it's surprisingly fun lol.

So the characters he was playing was scientist and then after that marines. The scientist died because obviously he was the most qualified to operate the REDACTED and became REDACTED.

But here’s the thing: Marines and Androids have a higher death rate but that’s also half the characters you can play!

I just think our DMs run thing very differently.

 

[Emerikol]

Nah.

CoC is absolutely medium crunch. I suggest you re-read the actual, surprisingly overdetailed rules, which refute the "It's just percentile roll under man" shenanigans. By that logic, all of 5E "It's just d20 roll over man". I say this having played CoC recently a few times and being kind of shocked about how clunky the rules are, because I didn't remember them being that bad, having played it last a decade or two earlier. 5E is at the lower end of heavy crunch, but clearly heavy.

And my point isn't that the poster meant that, it's that the reasoning given makes most RPGs "horror-friendly" or a huge proportion of them. SAN being this slowly draining resource with limited consequences supports my argument that CoC isn't very well-designed for horror, as I explained.

I've never played CoC so not speaking to that game (I don't care for horror) but 5e is medium crunch because 3e/Pathfinder fill the heavy slot. Fate would be light crunch.

 

[Reynard]

I've never played CoC so not speaking to that game (I don't care for horror) but 5e is medium crunch because 3e/Pathfinder fill the heavy slot. Fate would be light crunch.

Fate is interesting because it serves as a light crunch foundation to some games that reach into the medium or even high crunch categories (the original Dresden RPG, as well as Daring Comics).

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I've never played CoC so not speaking to that game (I don't care for horror) but 5e is medium crunch because 3e/Pathfinder fill the heavy slot. Fate would be light crunch.

It's a scale, and if you put 5E at medium (especially in the middle of medium), then you create a ridiculous situation where almost all games are light or medium.

5E has more and more complex rules (even accounting for exception-based design) than easily 85% of games out there (especially 2024, which somehow managed to make 5E slightly rules-heavier, albeit also slightly more sense-making in some areas!). 3E and PF1 aren't that much heavier than 5E, they just have even more exception-based content. World of Darkness (in any version) is arguably lighter than, or on-par with 5E (arguably! Conventional forms of Exalted are maybe as heavy or heavier). Things like Daggerheart, which is not a simple game, are significantly lighter than 5E (I'd say that's towards the heavier end of medium crunch).

You could make a generalized argument that, compared to the 1990s, most games are lighter-crunch than they used to be, and that's a valid argument, but if we're looking at games today (even if we include ones published in the past and not really played anymore), because of the far higher number of RPGs out there today, 5E is absolutely at the lighter end of heavy crunch.

I mean, let's look at the top 20 on Drivethru today:

1) Daggerheart - Lighter than 5E
2) Legend in the Mist - Lighter than 5E
3) Cosmere - Lighter than 5E
4) Ashes Without Number - Lighter than 5E
5) A Legend of the Five Rings sourcebook - Don't know for sure, but going to guess current Lot5R is lighter than 5E (correct me if I'm wrong Five Rings fans!)
6) Warhammer: The Old World - Lighter than 5E (albeit maybe by less than the others)
7) Cosmere sourcebook - see above
8) Exalted 3E sourcebook - Exalted 3E is as heavy or heavier than 5E
9) Imperium Maledictum sourcebook - IM is lighter than 5E (it's a surprisingly light game, towards the low-middle of medium crunch)
10) Mythic Bastionland - Hugely lighter than 5E
11) A 3PP 5E sourcebook
12) The Outer Darkness solo TTRPG - Don't know, pretty sure it's hugely lighter given it's solo though
13) Coriolis sourcebook - Despite owning Coriolis I don't know it well, but it says Year Zero Engine and that's lighter than 5E
14) Daggerheart again - see above
15) Mutants and Masterminds 4E sourcebook - Not familiar with M&M 4E. Previous editions were lighter than 5E but not by a huge amount, so let's guess "about the same as 5E" (M&M 4E fans correct me)
16) Traveller sourcebook - I actually have so little idea re: current Traveller I'm not even going to guess - feel free to enlighten me.
17) CoC adventure - CoC is much lighter than 5E (even though it's surprisingly heavy for what it is, and into medium crunch)
18) Warhammer: The Old World - Lighter than 5E
19) Cosmere again, see above
20) Cyberpunk RED - Being generous you could maybe claim similar crunch to 5E?

So of these 20 games referenced by the top 20 in Drivethru, only one is plausible to argue as being heavier than 5E (Exalted 3E).

Two or three are about the same.

The vast majority are clearly lighter.

I think people sometimes let 5E off easy crunch-wise because of the exception-based design, and you can definitely cut a game a break for that a bit, but still, 5E has a ton of really specific and weird rules, like how it handles surprise, stealth, healing (hit dice!), loads of unnecessary extra things to track (six different saves!), lots of really inconsistent stuff (CON basically isn't a stat in the same way the other five are), the surprising complexities of Actions, Reactions and Bonus Actions and how spells interact with them (not in a intuitive or obvious way!), and what exactly an Attack is vs a Weapon Attack or the like (admittedly 2024 made that last one a little less twisted, but it's pretty twisted in 2014).

None of this makes 5E a "bad game" or "unplayable"!

It clearly isn't either of those things. But the slow piling up of specific and unintuitive rules, often with quite complex conditionality and the interesting decision to write the rules (including on the exception stuff) in an MtG-esque way mean it is, imho, very definitely a rules-heavy game by modern TTRPG standards, even if by 1989-1993 standards (which is I think what you're judging it on), it wouldn't have been.