Why Do You Hate An RPG System?

[Blue]

I know what is unbeatable, and if a DM throws an adult Red Dragon at my 1st level character, that's on them, not me, and is exactly why I wouldn't try again. There's no challenge there, nothing.

If the DM throws an adult red dragon without foreshadowing you don't want to go that way, forces it to be a combat encounter, and provides no course to retreat, then it's on them.

You ignore the information that there's a red dragon up in the mountain, enter it's lair, attack it, and expect that it will be combat balanced so that you have a reasonable chance to defeat it - nothing wrong with what the DM is doing there. And even then the DM could still save you from yourself by providing escape - perhaps passages too small for it to follow, or a goal that it would want you to do for it in exchange for not dying.

 

[Blue]

I came to hate AD&D because I found the classes to be too restrictive; I couldn't see a logic in the fact that knowing how to pick locks meant to you weren't really good at fighting, or knowing how to use magic meant you couldn't grasp swordsmanship or lock-picking.

GURPs should have been right up my alley, but every time I've examined their rules it has turned me away. I can't say exactly what I don't like about it, but I won't touch the game.

Literally the last two characters I created were a shadow sorcerer who knew how to pick locks, and a conquest paladin who knew how to pick locks. I could use magic and pick locks. I could be a swordsman (well, glaive-woman) and pick locks. Neither was created to show you up, just how I naturally created them. One was a fairy criminal shadow sorcerer who used to be part of the unseelie court but broke off, and the other was an urban bounty hunter who would bring in those who did wrong before taking her vow.

Now, if you want to say "I don't understand how I can be a caster as powerful as just-casters and a swordsman as powerful as just-swordsmen" I'd agree that fits D&D. But less absolute than that and we find a lot of ground can be covered, even with something as restrictive as a class/level setup.

 

[Aldarc]

NVM.

 

[pemerton]

You ignore the information that there's a red dragon up in the mountain, enter it's lair, attack it, and expect that it will be combat balanced so that you have a reasonable chance to defeat it - nothing wrong with what the DM is doing there.

I think the number of cases in the history of RPGing where the players understood themselves to be playing a B/X or AD&D-type hexcrawl, and were playing low-level PCs, and had any familiarity with the game system, and deliberately decided that they would climb the mountain to try and defeat the red dragon, is so close to zero that for practical purposes we can treat it as zero.

So if I hear reports of a game that resembles what you've described, I would be curious: Where did that information about the dragon in the mountains come from - at the table, I mean, not in the fiction - and how was it made salient? Why did the players act on it in the way you describe? I would be pretty confident that at least one of the four variables I mentioned didn't obtain in that game - most likely the first.

 

[pemerton]

The players decide what their characters do. So the player decides what their characters care about. Even if the player writes a War and Peace length backstory about their deep connection to their family, the player is rightfully free to decide at any moment they don’t want to be inconvenienced by that strong family connection. So despite making a character for whom “family is everything” if that family ever becomes an inconvenience, the player can (and almost certainly will) decide the character simply doesn’t care enough to bother.

Whose RPGing are you setting out to describe in this post? Yours? Mine? @Campbell's? Everyone's?

 

[Aldarc]

I disagree: the players set the stakes. Otherwise, its a railroad at best.

The core of a TTRPG is the survival of the PC. Sure, there are secondary goals (clouds of them in most of my campaigns), but all are contingent upon the PC remaining alive, physically viable and sane. Remove the core, and we're back to imaginary friends.

Well you see, if PCs set the stakes, then there should be more stakes than simply life or death, as they can determine their own stakes, including those beyond such boring stakes. Otherwise all situations in a TTRPG will only amount to risking death. Therefore everything becomes window-dressing to a railroad that tries to make everything in a TTRPG about life or death.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Than more than one way?

Yes. With more than character death as the consequence. You said those who don’t agree with you lack an imagination. Yet, you can’t seem to imagine a game without threat of PC death having a point or amounting to more than people impressing each other with their imaginary friends.

It's 'you're', too.

The fact that you’re an internet grammar guy tracks so well with everything else you’ve posted.

So that makes my point.

Of course!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Sure.



I'm not sure for most purpose, insanity of the scale CoC might as well be death.

Ultimately, yeah it absolutely is. But it tends to happen incrementally. And there are consequences for it. Many games, with D&D being a big example, tend to not have mechanical consequences other than loss of HP, which can lead to PC death. There are some minor exceptions to this across editions that allow for some kind of consequence that lingers, but they’re pretty few and far between. I think this is a big part of why many GMs lean so heavily on PC death.

Of course there can always be narrative consequences…failing to clear the Caves of Chaos or failing to learn what happened to the Carlyle Expedition or what have you. But every game can have those.

So with PC death, what’s the consequence for the player? They lose that PC, yes….but they just replace it with another. Perhaps the lost PC was particularly enjoyable to them or what have you, but the game goes on, and the player continues to play.

This is why I said that death isn’t always the most meaningful consequence. There could be (and in many games are) ways forward from that point that allow the player to continue with that PC but which result in a more meaningful change in the game than simply swapping out a PC.

 

[Blue]

Yeah, character death is often the least interesting result for many games.

But the threat of character death can be a very interesting, recurring point in games like D&D that feature lethal combat as a common challenge resolution.

Both in and of itself, in the tension that risk creates is a spice for combat - which is a length mechanical aspect of the game when it occurs. Add in the simple fact that many/most combats, especially in the published modules, aren't about anything except overcoming in order to move forward in the plot. Leaving either it's foreordained you'll win, or having a DM willing and experienced enough to think of suitable alternatives every time.

Plus in D&D death isn't particularly non-interesting because it's so easy to undo. It's not like we're talking perma-death in most cases once you are beyond early levels. Heck, if there's a character who can cast revivify it's about the same amount of non-interesting as being knocked out for the length of the combat, which can happen even if death is not on the table.

Again, this is in the context of a game where lethal combat is an expected and common challenge resolution.

It's why games like CoC or BitD have alternate mechanisms such as sanity or trauma - in order to be able to provide that risk and the tension in a meaningful non-fleeting way without having it be the boolean alive/dead of D&D. That's a great place to be from a system.

But even there - I know players who'd rather kill a character and get an unwounded new one than have a permanent disadvantage. That's not me at all, but I'm not going to say their fun is wrong.

 

[dragoner]

If the DM throws an adult red dragon without foreshadowing you don't want to go that way, forces it to be a combat encounter, and provides no course to retreat, then it's on them.

You ignore the information that there's a red dragon up in the mountain, enter it's lair, attack it, and expect that it will be combat balanced so that you have a reasonable chance to defeat it - nothing wrong with what the DM is doing there. And even then the DM could still save you from yourself by providing escape - perhaps passages too small for it to follow, or a goal that it would want you to do for it in exchange for not dying.

That is curating the encounter, though from the player side as well, I know my 1st level character can't beat a dragon, and forced into a fight, to "learn me a lesson about GM power" or something. That's it, I die, game over.