Why Do You Hate An RPG System?

[John Dallman]

I think RQ is mostly trying to model the brutal aspect of combat which you can find in many Bronze-Age treatments like Conan, 300, and so on. The side-effect is that it does indeed make some players avoid combat more than they should, but I'm not sure it can be helped.

"Should" is an interesting word here. There are plenty of cults and associated character types in Glorantha who are not about fighting, and who would be wise to stay clear of it. Yet they have considerable story potential.

 

[aramis erak]

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

There are two reasons I hate a system:
1) it mechanically focuses on hateful/toxic behaviors - non-consensual sex, non-consensual religious conversion.
2) the theme of the game is hateful or damaging behaviors from a standpoint of condoning and training said behaviors.

RaHoWa and FATAL hit #1 and #2.

DragonRaid hits severe disdain because it's intended to be used to encourage certain fundamentalist christian practices which I think are problematic. (Prooftexting/out-of-context quoting.) That said, the game engine's not horrible. Just the magic system.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

While I don't necessarily hate D&D 5e, the fact that A) I don't enjoy how it does things, B) it's very popular, and a little bit of C) it's currently the favorite game of one of my online friends who does most of the GMing, means that I can at least see hating it from where I'm typing.

 

[AtomicPope]

I can think of a couple of reasons for hating a game system:
1) Needlessly Complicated - Morrow Project immediately comes to mind where every little detail was tracked and accounted for yet rarely came into play. Do you want to know how many hit points your left pinky finger has? Well that's the game for you! Do you want to know the odds of getting your left pinky finger shot off? Assuming they're firing wild, about 1 in 200. BTW, it's one hit point. It's almost always one hit point.
2) Rewards Don't Incentive Play or Style - Champions comes to mind here where you have a 250 point character and you get 3 experience points after a session of play. That means you move the meter about 1% improvement (less if you took lots of disadvantages). Barely noticeable. Early editions of Shadowrun had this problem with Deckers where it split the party and forced everyone to wait while your decker went on a side quest in the Matrix. Then, outside of the Matrix the Decker is a schlub with mediocre skills and has to half-ass their way around. There was little incentive to play a Decker back in the day. The rules should reward behavior that reinforces a style of play. A bad playstyle reward system is Marvel Super Heroes where you lose karma for accidentally breaking things. It causes super heroes to walk on egg shells.
3) Unbalanced PCs/Trap Choices - As a player it makes it seem like you got cheated, or you made a dumb choice. In reality, you were sold a false bill of goods. Palladium games have this problem where in the same setting, same core book, same choices, one character has literally a thousand more hit points than another character and does ten times as much damage. Usually game systems are not that bad but apparently Kevin Siembieda doesn't GAF. There are absolutely "trap" choices for players in Palladium. If you take that spell, class, race, whatever, you lost out big time. The trap usually comes later. Sometimes in the beginning everyone is on a level field but later one you haven't improved with them.
4) Mechanics Don't Match the Fluff - Typically this isn't a system wide problem but appears in small sections where in actual gameplay success is very difficult when it's described as easy, or a power that's described as devastating is merely an inconvenience. This could overlap with any of the others really but I think it suits it's own section. I remember deadly weapons like the Harlequin's Kiss, which required exotic proficiencies and in game play it's less effective than your standard issue side arm. The description is a weapon that liquidates anything it touches. The reality is an unwieldy melee weapon whose damage dice are so swingy either it causes a little scratch or lots of damage but more than likely it survives. Also, don't have a critical fumble. It will kill you.
5) Updated/Revised - As someone who's been playing D&D since I was a kid, I've been through half-a-dozen editions of D&D and Gamma World, not to mention several other RPG systems, and not all of them are improvements. For some reason Gamma World kept getting worse. I actually think that latest "Wacky" edition is my favorite since the somewhat serious, deadly, and poorly edited 3e Gamma World. Ole #5 is best described as "Edition Wars" and every system has them. My own group refused to fully integrate our AD&D to 2e because it didn't include everything we were using from the PHB and UA (no Assassins, Barbarians, Cavaliers, or Monks).

 

[pming]

Hiya!

I think I narrowed it down for me:

I hate when a system presents an "option" that, if anyone in the group opts to take it, forces EVERYONE else to take said "option" as well.

Other than that, I don't think I really "hate" any RPG or RPG mechanic. Some I don't like, sure, but 'hate' is a pretty strong word.

EDIT: If I had to choose on RPG I "hate"... it would be "Amber" (the 'first diceless RPG system'). Why? It's unplayable if anyone in the group is smart and knowledgeable. Basically, if a player has an IQ of 135 and the GM has and IQ of 102...the GM is going to "loose constantly"; meaning his/her NPC's will just not succeed because the PLAYER out smarts the GM and knows more about how stuff in the situation would work. It'd be like a chemist Player trying to tell the non-chemist GM how their PC is going to "use a base substance of X, add in an amount of Y and Z, and then slowly apply heat"...and the GM saying "Ok, it smokes a bit but doesn't explode"...and the Player being annoyed because they KNOW that it would explode. Now the Player has to explain WHY it would explode, in laymen's terms, to the GM who then has to just say "Oh, ok, guess it works then". But at that point... nobody is playing an RPG; they are just taking a chemistry lesson from a chemist.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hate is a strong word, I think, but there are games I don't want much of anything to do with. This usually comes down, in broad, to one of two things:

1. Mechanics that I dislike engaging with, and as a GM, are too core to the system to be easily houserules. A subset of this is games that are not mechanically interesting to engage with; I'm too gamist in my enjoyment to find "Its fast!" is any kind of counterweight for a game that's mechanically dull.

2. Tone or setting things I find actively unpleasant. I don't mind a certain degree of darkness in a setting, but if its too pervasive and unavoidable, I just don't need to inflict that on myself.

 

[billd91]

EDIT: If I had to choose on RPG I "hate"... it would be "Amber" (the 'first diceless RPG system'). Why? It's unplayable if anyone in the group is smart and knowledgeable. Basically, if a player has an IQ of 135 and the GM has and IQ of 102...the GM is going to "loose constantly"; meaning his/her NPC's will just not succeed because the PLAYER out smarts the GM and knows more about how stuff in the situation would work. It'd be like a chemist Player trying to tell the non-chemist GM how their PC is going to "use a base substance of X, add in an amount of Y and Z, and then slowly apply heat"...and the GM saying "Ok, it smokes a bit but doesn't explode"...and the Player being annoyed because they KNOW that it would explode. Now the Player has to explain WHY it would explode, in laymen's terms, to the GM who then has to just say "Oh, ok, guess it works then". But at that point... nobody is playing an RPG; they are just taking a chemistry lesson from a chemist.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Sounds less like an RPG problem and more like a player problem to me.

 

[pming]

Hiya.

Sounds less like an RPG problem and more like a player problem to me.

Have you ever read the rules or played it? But we attempted to even make characters once. During character creation, the rules SPECIFICALLY tell you, the GM, to try and cause Player strife so that they try and "compete against each other" to try and get the "best/highest stat". There are no dice in the game...stats are done via "Bidding" on them. "I bit 10 points", "I'll bit 20", "Fine, 25", etc....and the GM is supposed to try and get the players to out bit the others by goading them into it "You're gonna let him have it for 25? That's it? Really?...huh...I thought you had more moxie that than, Phil..." ... "FINE! 40 points!" ... "Ooooo... Dana, looks like you are out bid...again. Guess the MAN wins again...unless you wanna go for 50?" ...etc.

My players immediately ignored me and talked amongst themselves to assign roles and "stats" themselves, so that the group was covered by the Strong Guy, the Smart Guy, the Fast Guy, etc.. Then they all just told me what they bid for what and nobody did any 'outbidding the other'. This...well...sorta "wrecked" the game from the get go. It assumes the Players won't really work together like that. It's a very "adversarial in the extreme....but not really at all" game. Passive-Aggressive I guess I might term it. This allowed them to always have someone who was "the best" at something; so if a situation came up where they were fighting a super strong dude...well, the Strong Guy would take it and the rest would support. In D&D terms, it seemed like you would always have a completely min/maxed glass canon in the party, but for ANY situation. And if that glass canon went down...everyone dies.

As for the IQ/Knowledge... that's just human nature and limitations. If you were to try and have a debate with your cousin who has never played an RPG in his life about if a PC is considered Hidden or not for purposes of Sneak Attack Damage...he'd be at a sever disadvantage. Now imagine HE was the DM and you were playing a Thief. ...see what I was trying to get at?

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[billd91]

Hiya.

Have you ever read the rules or played it? But we attempted to even make characters once. During character creation, the rules SPECIFICALLY tell you, the GM, to try and cause Player strife so that they try and "compete against each other" to try and get the "best/highest stat". There are no dice in the game...stats are done via "Bidding" on them. "I bit 10 points", "I'll bit 20", "Fine, 25", etc....and the GM is supposed to try and get the players to out bit the others by goading them into it "You're gonna let him have it for 25? That's it? Really?...huh...I thought you had more moxie that than, Phil..." ... "FINE! 40 points!" ... "Ooooo... Dana, looks like you are out bid...again. Guess the MAN wins again...unless you wanna go for 50?" ...etc.

My players immediately ignored me and talked amongst themselves to assign roles and "stats" themselves, so that the group was covered by the Strong Guy, the Smart Guy, the Fast Guy, etc.. Then they all just told me what they bid for what and nobody did any 'outbidding the other'. This...well...sorta "wrecked" the game from the get go. It assumes the Players won't really work together like that. It's a very "adversarial in the extreme....but not really at all" game. Passive-Aggressive I guess I might term it. This allowed them to always have someone who was "the best" at something; so if a situation came up where they were fighting a super strong dude...well, the Strong Guy would take it and the rest would support. In D&D terms, it seemed like you would always have a completely min/maxed glass canon in the party, but for ANY situation. And if that glass canon went down...everyone dies.

As for the IQ/Knowledge... that's just human nature and limitations. If you were to try and have a debate with your cousin who has never played an RPG in his life about if a PC is considered Hidden or not for purposes of Sneak Attack Damage...he'd be at a sever disadvantage. Now imagine HE was the DM and you were playing a Thief. ...see what I was trying to get at?

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Yeah, I’ve played it and you’re describing the classic player problem of “not playing the genre”. They’re not really playing in good faith for that particular game. It doesn‘t mean they’re bad players in general, they’re just not sticking to the genre. It’s like playing a 4-color, silver age superhero game and showing up with characters designed for a wetworks campaign. You can do it with the rules, but it’s not the genre you expected when you chose the rule set. And it’s when you send the players back to the drawing board to start again or pitch a different game.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Yeah, I’ve played it and you’re describing the classic player problem of “not playing the genre”. They’re not really playing in good faith for that particular game. It doesn‘t mean they’re bad players in general, they’re just not sticking to the genre. It’s like playing a 4-color, silver age superhero game and showing up with characters designed for a wetworks campaign. You can do it with the rules, but it’s not the genre you expected when you chose the rule set. And it’s when you send the players back to the drawing board to start again or pitch a different game.

I can see how someone could come to that conclusion, and I'm not disagreeing with you on it. Definitely have seen my fair share of "genre/immersion breaking antics" from Players... usually not on purpose.

But when all is said and done...this IS a thread about "hating" some RPG system or aspect. By definition such strong emotions aren't typically rational. Hence... my post about my dislike of Amber as a whole, but the whole mechanical system built around Player/GM dynamic in that game just rubs me the wrong way. A game where if the Players talk and work together, they are actually "breaking the rules", so to say, is just...well...not my thing.

^_^

Paul L. Ming