What are bad ideas in RPGs?

[Rechan]

Systems that seemed to be designed just to not be D&D. Like, design decisions were made to not be D&D regardless of whether or not they're any good. EXALTED is a big sinner here.

Um, what? Exalted was designed with Anime as inspiration. It's not D&D because it isn't trying to be D&D, not to simply buck the D&D trend. It is pursuing a different market. Among other things, those that like WoD.

The Non-D&D fantasy game is GURPS.

 

[Set]

I wrote an article on playing really old (1000 years or so) characters that used that idea as one of the rationales for how you could start off at first level.

Another way to do this in D&D is to take advantage of the level drain mechanic. My character was a dedicated vampire hunter, until my ageless adversary chose not to kill me, because that would be too easy, but to take away everything I'd ever done, leaving me only with the memories of skills I might never be able to regain in my now-aged body, in these last years of my life.

Come up with some reason why Restoration won't work (curse from the Dark Powers, doncha know) and you've got a character that *remembers* being a bad mofo, but is 1st level like everyone else, just grizzled, weather-beaten and white-haired.

Some settings, such as Ravenloft, or the nation of Geb in Golarion (which has vampires in it's upper class, who keep regular slaves that they feed off of), would have this sort of potential built right into the setting, and the character doesn't necessarily have to be a vampire-hunter, so much as any old adventurer that ran afoul of a vampire (destroying his 1000 year old vampire girlfriend, for instance). This would be a particularly potent backstory for a Cleric. The vampire didn't want to kill you and send you to your beloved sun-goddess, so instead he drained away all of the gifts of faith you'd earned over the last twenty years of your life, leaving you, the former high priest, clinging by a tenuous thread, with no greater spiritual connection to She Who Shines in the Sky than a pathetic acolyte, barely fit to carry candles to light a deacon's way through the sanctum!

Ditto for an 'ex-Paladin' concept. Years of valorous deeds drained away, left a grizzled scarred Fighter who *remembers* being a shining knight, smiting the wicked and ending evil with a charge, on a celestial warhorse. Days from a past he wishes he could forget, because he knows that he'll never be able to climb his way back up that long road. Perhaps another drink of this wine will help him forget...

 

[Set]

1) Subsystems that mandate 'splitting the party.' The classic example of this is the decker/hacker in Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. Interestingly both games came up with the same solution and tried to integrate the cyber-world with the larger reality.

Other ways to do this are to have telepaths do battle in a psychic space, which removes them from the encounter temporarily, or to have dream-quests, or for shaman to use either option, having spiritual battles in separate spaces, all systems I've seen used or encouraged in supplements for fantasy games to add the 'decker problem' to D&D.

A character might have a specific 'split-the-party' mechanic built-in, particularly if it's aquatic or able to fly (and accompanying a party that can't provide aquatic or aerial options to everyone), prompting the sea elf or raptoran to 'just scout ahead' and go wandering into that Dire Shark that was supposed to challenge the entire darn party.

But yeah, Shadowrun was the worst, having specific classes *designed* to only work apart from everyone else.


A related bother is games where one character type's actions take significantly longer to resolve. This can be a fault of a system (Villains & Vigilantes granted extra actions for higher Agility scores, so that your character might go once or twice in a round, while the speedster was taking five or six actions, each spaced out throughout the round, meaning it was all-speedster, all-the-time). This can be a fault of a particularly badly-designed spell (Evard's Infinitely Game-Time-Wasting Tentacles, I'm looking at you!).

 

[The Green Adam]

Oh man, I must be one of the worst GMs ever...

Inspired by the 'Ideal RPG' thread, what are systems or ideas that screw up a game?

I'll post my list of bad ideas to spark things:

1) Subsystems that mandate 'splitting the party.' The classic example of this is the decker/hacker in Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. Interestingly both games came up with the same solution and tried to integrate the cyber-world with the larger reality.

-It's possible to do this by accident. Frex in 3e if only one character has 'face' skills then social encounters become the GM interacting with the pretty char while the rest of the party stands in the background picking their noses. But since this is an artifact of charater choices and is not integrated into the game set-up it's best handled at the table.

I do this all the time. Its all in how you handle it. In 'Trek' you'll have the landing party on the surface while some of the crew stays up on the ship. It happens all the time. I find it fun to switch back and forth for dramatic effect.

3: Silly wish fulfillment. I forget the name of the game but there was one where you were playing a god who had forgotten his own powers to keep from being bored to death. So XP was just you remembering powers you always had but had forgotten. Strange and pointless.

Seems like an awesome idea to me. What game is this and where can I get a copy? Too cool.

AD
"Digitize me Chen!"

 

[Chimera]

Economic systems that are so incredibly non-sensical that a +6 magic item costs SIX THOUSAND TIMES what a +2 item costs. No one in their right mind would see that this makes any economic sense.

Well, I can pay $500 for this .357 revolver, or I can pay $3 million for a high capacity .308. Let me think about that for a minute or two...

or

This wand will cost me a relative pittance and give me a 10% better chance of hitting my opponent. This other wand will give me a 30% better chance, but it will bankrupt the entire kingdom. Well, screw the peasants, I like nuking things...

Yes, 4e, I'm looking at YOU.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Exalted was built on the foundation of a pre-existing system (Storyteller) and setting architecture (World of Darkness), specifically to provide fans of that pre-existing system and setting with a fantasy roleplay experience tailored to their tastes. It was not designed to be "not D&D"

Go read the introduction to EXALTED and get back with me.

 

[SACERD]

Go read the introduction to EXALTED and get back with me.

I am interested now, what does it say?
I have never played exalted so I am out of the loop here.

 

[ExploderWizard]

This wand will cost me a relative pittance and give me a 10% better chance of hitting my opponent. This other wand will give me a 30% better chance, but it will bankrupt the entire kingdom. Well, screw the peasants, I like nuking things...

Yes, 4e, I'm looking at YOU.

But....................that wand goes to 11

 

[Jhaelen]

For me bad rpg design is exemplified by rules that cannot be memorized because there's either too many of them or there are various subsystems that each work differently. Systems with an overabundance of look-up tables that _cannot_ be memorized are the pinnacle of bad design.

There's several offenders but Rolemaster and Harn rank very high. I'd say Runequest and D&D 4E are on the opposite side of the equation.

 

[Engilbrand]

Any system that requires a RIDICULOUS amount of time on anyone's part to put together would be bad design.
Battles of attrition are right behind this.
My recent Exalted game fell apart because the DM just didn't have enough time to spend creating all of the things that we needed to fight. It takes a long time to just create one simple thing. An NPC enemy could take 30 minutes to an hour depending on if you wanted to do it right. The fact that White Wolf has never put out a solid "Monster Manual" for their stuff is nonsensical. Their system practically requires one. Especially in Exalted. With a beginning character I was able to destroy a Spine Chain and a River Dragon. Here's the crazy part. It was about 2 in the morning and I was literally half asleep, waking up just long enough to barely mumble a description of my action, and then roll. River Dragons are some of the most powerful "monsters" in that world, other than Exalted and Gods.