Why Do You Hate An RPG System?

[Anoth]

Yes, I agree. Classes, leveling, hit points, all very meta; I still play games with them, just don't focus in on those parts that bug me. Games are like cookies, I love oatmeal, with raisins too, I know some that can't stand the raisins, same as I don't care much for lemon, I'll eat the lemon ones, except not buy them. Sort of like if someone is running a game, I'm way more apt to play something that isn't my favorite, rather than if running the game I want to run, it will be a system I prefer. All of the popular games, are good for the most part, because then if they weren't we wouldn't be having such a big discussion about them.

If you like raisins in cookies you are having badwrongfun

 

[aramis erak]

I don't want to gum up the Dishonored thread with this tangent, but the fact that so many people expressed a revulsion for the 2d20 system got me thinking how I don't hate any system I can think of off the top of my head. There are some i prefer not to play, but no game makes me feel like the developers shot my dog (or favorite sci-fi franchise, as the case may be).

So if you HATE a system, why? Explain it to me.

• Game is designed to specifically support utterly vile behavior by characters as the intended actions. FATAL rises to this, having rules for adjudicating PC commission of forcible rape.
• Game neither does what it claims on the cover nor provides a good experience played as written.
• Game is about subject matter that would be interesting if not sorely mishandled by the rules.

Many a heartbreaker is neither fun nor what the designer claims, and yet... most still don't rise to hate. Many rise to simple disdain.

I disdain 2d20 as written, not hate. It's built to provide a strong dose of player's success desire fulfillment.¹

I don't dislike metacurrency in games, and I really do dislike the rabid kneejerk hate for metacurrency systems. They imply immersion is the only form of valid roleplay... the metacurrencies are just as much a valid method of encouraging players to play the character as written as understanding the character motives in some insane level of detail.

-=-=-=-=-
¹:When I wrote this, I was thinking of Conan and MC3. Dune, however, has fixed several issues I had with the system, and I am enjoying Dune.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No its legitimately why I dont like class and level system and think spellcasting should be a skill.
I cant think of any good rationale as to why someone gets a whole chunk of new powers because they were out killing stuff, Experience is entirely a meta-concept. If you can provide a logical explanation for it then I'd really love to hear it.

What you're saying doesn't support the idea of XP as a meta-concept. What you're saying supports the idea that XP is a poor attempt to model the in-game reality that it's trying to reflect. (Which is totally fair.)

But it is trying to represent the concept of learning by doing. That you get better at fighting by actually fighting, and you get better at other things by doing those things (which they assume you do in proportion to how much you fight).

 

[Zhaleskra]

Because it's F.A.T.A.L.

Other than that, I can't think of systems I actively hate. There are some that I've experienced that I will never play again. Others that I will play again, but only if there's nothing better on offer and I really need a gaming fix.

Some things have changed over the years. I started with AD&D2e and had fun, but looking back at it, the warts are too obvious. I like to understand why the mechanics are designed the way they are. When there's a logical reason for having a laundry list of spells (e.g., each spell being a "fruit" grafted to the branches of your magic organ, say), that makes more sense than "that's the way the game has always done it". I don't like it when you can learn the advanced version of a spell without learning the previous versions, which leads to my love of HARP's scaling system for magic and psionics.

When the mechanics don't hold up what the authors want the game to accomplish it stretches my suspension of disbelief. Then again, I can accept that infinity worlds have a CP/SP/GP/PP economy, but my suspension of disbelief snaps when they all have the same exchange rate. Though I suppose multiverse and spelljamming could explain that, as long as you establish it was put in place by a spelljammer crew or a planewalker. So, unless it's classic Paranoia, I don't like "just because" rules.

 

[Umbran]

Hr. Upthread, I saw some things that saddened me. I mean, I guess they go hand in hand with talking about "hate". IMHO, hate should be reserved for things that do actual harm, not hobby games.

But, when folks start casting aspersions on others for playing a game that they "hate"... well, yeah, clearly there's some hate going on there.

The question shouldn't be, "Why do you hate an RPG system?" It should be... why do you apply the emotion of hate to a thing that harms nobody and is only used as an entertainment?

 

[aramis erak]

Hr. Upthread, I saw some things that saddened me. I mean, I guess they go hand in hand with talking about "hate". IMHO, hate should be reserved for things that do actual harm, not hobby games.

But, when folks start casting aspersions on others for playing a game that they "hate"... well, yeah, clearly there's some hate going on there.

The question shouldn't be, "Why do you hate an RPG system?" It should be... why do you apply the emotion of hate to a thing that harms nobody and is only used as an entertainment?

I see a couple trends, and they're sociopolitical in nature...

• Hatred being equated to all forms of intolerance.
• the propensity of RPGers to hyperbole as a subcultural element. (see also, "No Sh**, there I was…")
• The social limits on expressing hatred
• The "cork-popping" effect when social permission is given to hate something. (The first several pages show this)

The thread itself gives permission for the mild hyperbole, and the cork-pop effect, seems to trigger what should properly be disain or dislike to be expressed as hatred.

And, in a few cases, it appears the poster believes alternate approaches mechanically or in playstyle are causing a net detriment to the gaming populace. I strongly disagree with most.

I've only read one game that rises to being truly hate-worthy (FATAL), because so much of it is focused upon subjects that are socially unacceptable by or to protagonists...

... but if they aren't in hyperbole mode, and/or don't have an undervalue on the term hate, then there are some downright discomfort-inducing members of this forum.

 

[Aldarc]

FATE is the classic example. In order to play FATE, you need to engage with the meta-currency of fate points, or else you won't be able to sway the narrative when you need to.

Fate is your classic example, but the idea that it is somehow antithetical to roleplaying is not supported by the sheer number of groups and players who successfully roleplay using the Fate system. It's fine to say that you find its rules a hindrance to your roleplaying and that it is not to your taste. But to say that it is inherently antithetical to roleplaying? That's just false.

FATE literally says that you should steal that thing, and invite the accompanying trouble, because you want the fate point.

In Fate, the player says that they want to be presented with opportunities to be a kleptomaniac and then GM provides them with such opportunities in a way that creates story complications, drama, and/or gives the narrative momentum.

4) FATE - Wants to be rules light Nar game based on character growth and development. Hasn't a clue how to support that and actively thwarts its own ambitions. In practice, it's a system best enjoyed by ruthless power gamers.

In my years of "in practice" with Fate, I can safely say that power gamers are not the people who most enjoy Fate. It's usually the contrary, namely those who enjoy character-driven narrative, with most of my power gamers preferring games that rewards their system mastery and tactical play better, such as in D&D/Pathfinder.

Nor do I mind abstraction for the purpose of achieving certain design goals or speed of play. The problem with Fate points is how they end up influencing how the players play and how the players think about playing, especially as they gain some system mastery.

IME running Fate for a number of years, Fate points provide a feedback loop where the game play reinforces the character concept in a manner that makes most players feel that their character concept is being acknowledged and engaged with by the narrative. A player's character concept or backstory can be orthogonal to the play experience of games like D&D, where a player backstory or things they imagine their character doing can be safely ignored by an adventure path, module, or DM with their own homebrew adventure. However, Fate requires the GM to actively engage the character and the player's concept of that character.

Many people have had this bad experience with alignment and so want nothing more to do with it, and I totally get that. But the Aspect system actually sets this up as a core quality of the game, and it's not really the compels that bother me (though those could be heavy handed as well) but the whole system. In other words, it's not even primarily the potential loss of agency here, it's that system encourages bad RPing in my opinion.

In my actual practice with game play, both running and playing, I am at a loss about your assessment here as I have never experienced how Fate encourages "bad RPing."

Alignment is a meta concept or morality and ethics imposed on the character. A Trouble is a meta-narrative concept that the player selects for their character to face. When we read Spider-Man or watch a Spider-Man movie we expect to see Peter Parker grapple with their decisions balancing the role of Peter Parker and Spider-Man in the narrative because Stan Lee picked "With great power comes great responsibility" as the character's Trouble that complicates their life. The Trouble is the player's self-inflicted lightning rod for story complications.

A good RPer calls on his character traits (even if he gets no reward for doing so) at dramatically appropriate moments. A good FATE player calls on his character aspects as often as possible and for as flimsy of reasons as possible.

A good Fate player calls on their character traits as often as possible too, but they may decide to only invoke their aspects when they need a mechanical boost at a dramatically appropriate time to warrant it. You are still roleplaying your character and their traits in Fate even if you are not invoking.

As such, what you typically see in a game of FATE is frantically leveraging the Aspect system for straight forward gamist reasons with the result that FATE's primary aesthetic of play ends up not being Nar, but gamist.

IME, Fate's primary aesthetic tends to be fiction-first as these "gamist mechanics" require that the players/GM engage the fiction of the narrative and character concept.

"Adding a complication" is not radically different from "My character is penalized," and choosing to be penalized to you can get that precious Fate Point isn't all that different from intentionally failing.

That may be the case if you approach the game in a "play to win" manner that is often prevalent in tactical skirmish games like D&D, but IME with Fate, it is far more often a source of drama in the narrative.

For example, one character that I was GMing in a fantastical pseudo-Renaissance Venetian setting had the High Concept (not Trouble) of "Black Sheep Scion of House Marzini". He was leading his party to find a bronze bell from a destroyed abbey for a ritual. This led him to another abbey on the edge of the city that had it. When the party arrived to the abbey asking to use the bell, I introduced a complication based on the PC's high concept, namely that one of the abbey's monks came from one of the rival houses of House Marzini. I gave the player a list of names for noble houses that I had prepared, though not for this purpose, and I asked him which of the houses was a rival to House Marzini. This complication led to a stand-off in which the PC refused to grovel at the feet of this monk from a rival family, so the PCs had to find another way into the abbey and steal the bell. What this also did was expand the narrative and world of the setting. As a GM, I now had the name of a rival house to the PCs that I could use in the future, and the PCs now had a rival house that expanded their sense of the world and their PCs place in it.

Likewise in another game of Fate, a player told me that their character was a veteran of a war, who was left nearly dead on the battlefield. During play, I introduced a complication by having his commanding officer now being a hired-sword for the warehouse thugs they were facing. Instead of immediately escaping the burning building, the PC now wanted to fight the man who left him for dead.

I commonly used Troubles in this way to build upon a PC and their backstory. IMHO, a Trouble is not about penalizing a character. I actually see it as the opposite: it's rewarding the player by having the narrative actively engage their desired character concept.

Also, since I consider the characters to belong to the players, not the GM, I don't really like the GM yanking them around so overtly.

IME, and I acknowledge your own experiences will vary, but I have never felt yanked around so overtly by the GM in Fate as I do in D&D. It's difficult for me to feel yanked by the GM when my self-written troubles is fundamentally me telling the GM how I want to be "yanked." So when it happens, it feels incredibly natural and consensual for my character.

I'm saying that the player knows how their own character would act, to a much greater degree than anyone else at the table does; and that a player doesn't need a mechanical reward to act in-character.

Players also have the greatest incentive to "bend" how their player would or should act for the sake of "winning" the game, often with a certain degree of self-deception. The psychology of roleplayers is not one-hundred percent devoted to roleplay as some sort of high art or ideal. Even those noble souls who aim towards such lofty goals are not immune to their existence as human players of a game. While players may know best how their character would play, that does not mean that most games necessarily provide incentives to act in-character and that players will roleplay how their character would play. The spirit is willing but the flesh is so weak.

IMHO, Fate's mechanics are not about telling you how you should play your character - in fact, it's quite the opposite, as the rules suggest that if there is an issue of confusion about what an Aspect means in play that the players and GM should clarify or rewrite it so that the GM and player are on the same page - instead, Fate's mechanics serve as lightning rods for the narrative created to reinforce the player's ability to play the sort of character they want to play. Does a player "need" mechanical reinforcement for this? No. Have I found it helpful in the context of Fate? Yes. Does it make me or my players bad roleplayers? No, not unless you are advocating that this constitutes "badwrongfun" and we know that you wouldn't dare do anything as egregiously rude as that, would you?

 

[slipshot762]

Hit points is a dealbreaker for me, using such for characters is anyway, I seem to not mind if they are used for vehicle or building superstructure or for non-corporeal creatures. Despite having played a little of everything I'm strictly D6 system now largely for that reason.

 

[Celebrim]

Hit points is a dealbreaker for me, using such for characters is anyway, I seem to not mind if they are used for vehicle or building superstructure or for non-corporeal creatures. Despite having played a little of everything I'm strictly D6 system now largely for that reason.

I tend to prefer hit point based systems, but I can totally understand why they would annoy some people. While you can usually do some plausible mapping between hit point loss and in fiction wound creation, there are always edge cases where that isn't easy and in particular, the lack of a strong mechanical connection between the fortune and the fictional wound creation means that this mapping is only flavor. You lose the potential of cinematic creation of fiction through the system, and you lose a tight coupling between the fictional wound and in the in game fiction. That is to say, in an hit point system, I can narrate the production of wounds however I want, but if we finish a session and come back a week later, and a player sees that he's lost 35 hit points, because that represents no concrete wounding, all the player really knows is that he's 35 hit points down and his fictional positioning (what wounds he's supposedly received) is lost and never really mattered anyway.

So I get it. I really do. It's just that hit points seems like the dumbest system of all time until you actually use all the other systems out there.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Hit points kind of depend. Are they actually "aliveness" points? If so, cool. Do they pretend to be abstract luck/endurance points but are really meat points when you get down to it? Those can go away.

If the positive energy plane can heal you to death then HP are meat points.