Why Do You Hate An RPG System?

[overgeeked]

Context now would be ramming Cthulu with the USS Nimitz and then having all of its reactors go super critical and explode on impact.

I forget who wrote it but there was a story written after WW2 where someone dropped a nuke on Cthulhu and he was given a mild headache as a result.

 

[billd91]

Context now would be ramming Cthulu with the USS Nimitz and then having all of its reactors go super critical and explode on impact.

I believe something to a similar effect was brought up in Cthulhu Now back in the day. Nuking Cthulhu may wreck him for a bit, but he will just reform and now be radioactive...

 

[Thomas Shey]

There's different takes on that. At least one of them says it'd have some serious effect because you've applied the power of Azathoth against him...

 

[pemerton]

In the writings of HPL Cthulhu was defeated by ramming him with a fishing boat. In pop-Cthulhu Cthulhu is on an unimaginable power scale and the fishing boat would just bounce.

In the H. P. Lovecraft story the Call of Cthulhu, Cthulhu was rammed in the head by a steam-ship...and he instantly started regenerating. Like hitting a troll with a rock. So temporarily “defeated” by taking a steam-ship to the face. We should note that at the time the story was written, the steam-ship was the most powerful bit of water-borne technology invented by humans. The effect is different on modern readers from the original intent. Then it was meant to convey the horror that even our most powerful water-borne invention was only a split second reprieve, now it reads like “LOL, Cthulhu was taken out by a boat.” The ignored context matters.

Context now would be ramming Cthulu with the USS Nimitz and then having all of its reactors go super critical and explode on impact.

HPL wrote the story in the mid-1920s. The story "quotes" from the Sydney Bulletin for April 18, 1925. When "great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency" it was in pursuit of the Alert, a "heavily armed steam yacht Alert of Dunedin, N. Z."

Here is a web page about an Australasian steam yacht of the same general era: Ship specifications - Australian National Maritime Museum. Here is its Wikipedia page: SY Ena - Wikipedia. Given that the 11-man crew of "the two-masted schooner Emma" were able to take the Alert in a boarding action, I'm guessing the latter was comparable to the vessel on that web page.

The Ena displaces 76 tons; it's maximum speed is 12 knots. HMS Dreadnought, the famous battleship built in 1906, displaced 18,000 tons with a maximum speed of 21 knots. HMS Orion, built in 1910, displaced around 22,000 tons and also had a maximum speed of 21 knots. Another 5 years later the HMS Revenge displaced close to 30,000 tons with a maximum speed of 23 knots. And for purposes of comparison, the USS Nimitz displaces about 100,000 tons and has a speed of about 31 knots.

So no, to HPL and readers of his day Cthulhu being rammed by the Alert was nothing liked being rammed by a giant warship. If we think of it in terms of contemporary fiction, it's in the same general ballpark as being hit by a semi-trailer or a tank travelling at full speed.

 

[pemerton]

I say if you take any random group of D&D DMs of reasonable size, 80%+ have expectations that defeat-in-combat to advance is on the table with some regularly. It's not the only goal for combat, as a matter of fact combats are usually more interesting when there are different goals. And it's not the only resolution - a side could retreat, be captured, surrender, etc. But "kill the undead to get the macguffin" or something similar can show up even in the portfolios of DMs who try those, and much more often for DMs who don't.eath, but because of how played no actual death.

My point was more that consequences of a narrative sort can be present in just about any RPG. So D&D can indeed have these.

But once you move beyond that, there’s very little other than PC death.

<snip>

D&D relies almost entirely on HP loss for any/all danger, and no matter how many HP you may lose, there’s nothing that happens as a result.

<snip>

I think this is largely why you see folks claim that of you remove this consequence from the game then you’re taking away all of the challenge. It’s because in D&D and similar games, that’s largely true….you’d be taking away the consequence of losing your HP, and almost everything revolves around that.

Reflecting further in response to these posts . . .

Superhero comics are a genre in which fighting - "combat" - is a normal method for the protagonists to achieve their goals. The genre also includes scouting and infiltration, travel through dangerous places, weird traps, monstrous foes, etc.

But death is rarely what is at stake.

I think what makes D&D distinctive is not just it's use of combat as a site of resolution, but it's lack of a clear basis for establishing any consequence of combat, or of threats more generally, than the slide to death at zero hp. There's no injury, capture, being the victim of Arcade or Dr Doom getting the drop on you, etc. It's a very distinctive and peculiar approach to determining the outcome of physical threats and violent confrontation.

 

[Cadence]

Superhero comics are a genre in which fighting - "combat" - is a normal method for the protagonists to achieve their goals. The genre also includes scouting and infiltration, travel through dangerous places, weird traps, monstrous foes, etc.

Tying into Cthulhu and tonnage... super hero comics also seem to have no fixed conception of how much things weight and/or how strong the heroes are!

 

[overgeeked]

Tying into Cthulhu and tonnage... super hero comics also seem to have no fixed conception of how much things weight and/or how strong the heroes are!

Fixed, no; but comparative, yes. Cam Banks, the designer of Marvel Heroic, said a few times that he basically used the 5-step ladder Marvel used to determine who was stronger than who in their comics. I forget what the original Marvel labels were, but in Marvel Heroic they became Weak d4, Human d6, Enhanced d8, Superhuman d10, and Godlike d12.

 

[Cadence]

Fixed, no; but comparative, yes. Cam Banks, the designer of Marvel Heroic, said a few times that he basically used the 5-step ladder Marvel used to determine who was stronger than who in their comics. I forget what the original Marvel labels were, but in Marvel Heroic they became Weak d4, Human d6, Enhanced d8, Superhuman d10, and Godlike d12.

In the comics they seem to usually be ok with who is stronger, but it feels like the weights of cars, semis, locomotives, battleships, etc*... and effect of momentum, often don't come close to the weight lifting ranges the characters are usually ascribed in things like the OHOTMU and the like.

*Or landmasses that are gravitationally compressed as in Avengers 159? Or maybe Tony Stark and Simon Williams expertise as engineers/scientists doesn't include large size objects?

 

[overgeeked]

In the comics they seem to usually be ok with who is stronger, but it feels like the weights of cars, semis, locomotives, battleships, etc*... and effect of momentum, often don't come close to the weight lifting ranges the characters are usually ascribed in things like the OHOTMU and the like.

*Or landmasses that are gravitationally compressed as in Avengers 159? Or maybe Tony Stark and Simon Williams expertise as engineers/scientists doesn't include large size objects?

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Gotta love superhero physics. Flying fast enough to reverse time. Carrying a plane by the nose and it not breaking off. Pushing planets out of the way. So goofy and weird. I love it.

 

[Darth Solo]

I hate games that create a certain culture which demonizes the rest of the hobby. White Wolf did this with Vampire: they were so special. They actually thought they were different in a way that made them the civilized folk of the hobby while the rest of us were tree-living monkeys. I get the same feel from D&D 5. It's like if you don't accept that 5e is the center of the rpg universe you're a f***ing OSR idiot. And while I get the marketing that drives the entire hobby by pushing D&D I HATE the D&D Nazis in the trenches shooting the knees out of other rpgs.

GURPS killed D&D a very long time ago in terms of character creation and genre verisimilitude. The Powered By the Apocalypse games redefined "classes" in a way D&D's designers missed the boat. D&D's STILL Vancian magic system is tired beyond reason - tired enough to allow Pathfinder's Spheres of Magic to present a better system.

This and how running Call of Cthulhu in the 20's and ignoring the rampant racism and sexism of the 20's is okay. As Forrest Gump said, "Stupid is as stupid does". It's just dumb how gaming groups establish a culture that says "This is okay because we're better". How?