What type of game do you hate?

[Pielorinho]

My main dislike is playing in a random universe.

Fights are good, and sometimes random fights are good. But I like to feel that most of the encounters i get into advance the storyline.

If I'm going through the woods, anda group of ogres exact toll on us, that's fine. But if we're going along a regular trade route, and we encounter four scary magical beasts or abominations in two day's worth of travel, then my character oughtta be wondering, "what's going on here? why is this regular trade route suddenly so deadly?"

And if there's no answer to that question -- if the trade route was only deadly so that we could have some fights -- then my suspension of disbelief suffers.

As a DM, I rarely use dungeon crawls, precisely because I have a hard time giving them a strong narrative. I'm best as a DM in city-adventures, I think, and I'm reasonably good at wilderness-quest adventures. But I'm not so good at dungeon adventures.

I really like playing with social conventions in my game -- struggles between the merchant class and the landed nobility, theological disputes between monotheists and polytheists, savagery committed by humans on orcs and vice-versa. Sometimes, I'll warn my players that some attitude will mark them as a social pariah (e.g., atheists are unheard-of in my campaign world, and anti-slavery-activists are almost nonexistent among humans). But I wouldn't ever forbid someone from playing a certain way. If they want to be my campaign's equivalent of a flat-earther or an ecoterrorist, more power to them. But I think the warnings are necessary.

Very interesting thread!
Daniel

 

[Bihor]

1- I hate it when a player or the DM keep secrets, going out of the room ("just to tell you some thing") and come back for two min. and back in there again ( "ho, I forgot".). And it's appen all the time with not only the same player and the Dm, but with all the players and often it's player and player.

2- I ate it when the DM doesn't listen to the players.
I played a campagn where we cound't win . We had a ton of thing to do, 12 to be presice, all of them we tryed 2 or 3 times, and my bard ended up talking saving the life of every body. We had like 12 gp so no magic items, we had to sell swords and daggers from loot to make money. All of us asked him to take it easy, he did for only one game.
2.5 I hate it when the DM give the players .... because the players din't do what he wanted then to do.

3- and for last, Constant talking for plans for hours. It make the game anti-climatic. Planing for a hour befor the PC go, when they arrive to the dungeon a other hour, and inside every is not like they thought so a other hour of rethinking.

 

[LokiDR]

I DM a fair amount, and I use plot railroading all the time.

Example: PCs are in a town and warned not to go east. Warned several times. Of course, the PCs go east. They fight some goblins and capture the leader. Then next morning, most of the town shows up and more or less captures the party. The PCs are given a choice: leave, die, or join us and get your friend raised from the dead. They join up, and get geased to finish the job. They fell into it.

I do hate being forced to ignore options. I would have let the PCs go. I was prepared for them to fight, but they would have died. One or two could have sneaked away.

More than that, I hate bad role players. People who claim one background and play something that has no resemblance to it. People who split parties, always siding with the NPCs, and wonder why their party hates them. People who are abusive and annoying in game, and don't try to explain it is only "in game". I have had a bad experience with one player killing three games I was involved in over the span of a few months. All the games were fine before he showed up.

 

[Fictionaut]

Party cohesion is my big issue. I am a firm believer that characters should be created with everyone together prior to the game, with an eye towards a compatible party, class - and alignment-wise. I have little patience for the guy who shows up at the game with a character whose code of honor leads to inter-party conflicts every session.

Likewise, I have zero tolerance for PCs keeping secrets that could have any value whatsoever to the rest of the group. Stuff relating to personal side-plots is one thing, but even that starts to become annoying after awhile. I don't hang around secretive, selfish loners in real life, and I certainly don't want to in game.

I guess, in short, that roleplaying and realism are valuable, but not when they interfere with the basic game experience, i.e. using teamwork to overcome obstacles.

 

[jollyninja]

i hate campaigns in which i have gone from raising my pathetic level 1 character all the way to lev 10 and the dm gets lazy and claims that he can't challenge the party (of 3 pc's) anymore and that dnd is broken after level 10 when we are not playing any spellcasters and have been buying all of our magical items at double listed cost (so they suck) because it's a "low magic" world.

also i agree with the if i don't get 1000xp in a 4 hour session, it's not the game for me.

i do like roleplaying but if we are in the middle of an important quest, i don't care if the guy i'm buying my new 50' of rope from has an irish accent and i do not want to haggle. just let me buy the rope so we can continue. i hate dm's who insist on roleplaying even the most trivial of conversations.

also i hate campaigns where the players refuse to do anything. if your character lacks the burning desire to get out there and swing that axe, you have created a crappy character. if you need every adventure to be based on your character's backstory and have a tie in with previous adventures and the central plot as you see it (remember you do not see all of it), then frankly you are just a crappy player to have and therefore the dm must railroad you despite your complaints. if you need more motivation then there are goblins in a cave to adventure then frankly your character clearly does not like monitary gain or protecting the innocent or the adrenaline rush of battle half as much as your 5 page backstory says he does.

characters who are dark and brooding. man am i sick of that.

 

[shadow]

As I stated previously I hate the "deep immersion storytelling" type of games. Although the example I gave of the party spending the entire session planning an attack is an extreme example (It just happened once) I dislike deep immersion storytelling even when there is a lot of action. The problem, for me, with this style of game is that the talkative and charismatic people tend to dominate these games. Since the game relies on actual dialogue and speaking ability, players who don't have a lot of natural charisma are left in the background. I'm naturally shy, and tend to stutter some when speaking. When playing with a certain group that favored "storytelling" above "rules" I tended to be left out of a lot of the games. Although the other players who had a lot more speaking ability were having a great time, I often felt left out and frequently got bored.

 

[Christian Walker]

"On the Run" is a style of game that I've had my fill of and grow tired of very quickly, what is a style of game that you really dislike?

I just can't take Dungeon Hack any longer. To heck with that "old school feel" of kicking in one door at a time. Boooooring!

Then again, I've been playing since 1982, so I've had 20 years to get burned out on the style...