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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AtomicPope" data-source="post: 8435790" data-attributes="member: 64790">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).</blockquote>

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