Author Topic: rpgs you hate and the reasons why  (Read 28910 times)

2sound2furious

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rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« on: March 12, 2011, 07:07:17 AM »
this is a thread where you can diss rpgs you don't like so people can avoid them

(old) World of Darkness

this is like new world of darkness except everything sucks. vampires are angsty goths, werewolves are furry hippies, changelings are pussies, wraiths were pretty cool actually but geists are cooler etc.

there were also other stupid books like Mummy: The Resurrection and Who: The Fuck Cares

RuneQuest

there's ducks in it

Big Eyes, Small Mouth

anime

Salkovich

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2011, 07:49:44 AM »
This is now a thread where you can "diss" flowers you don't like so people can avoid them.


Sunflowers



Need I say more?

Orchids



Look at those lazy fuckers
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Wooberman

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #2 on: March 12, 2011, 09:04:57 AM »
Orchids man... MOTHERFUCKING orchids...
The only thing worse than them is the Amorphophallus titanum.



Its all like "Ooh look at me, I only flower once every 50 years so you gotta wait around and take in the smell of Bigfoot's dick that so happens to be sticking out here".

Fucking attention whore.

The name means Giant Misshapen Penis btw.

clockworkjoe

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #3 on: March 12, 2011, 02:39:07 PM »
I HATE TREES

<a href="" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win"></a>


also I dislike Legends of the Five Rings - not sure but probably because of the snotty attitude I've encountered from the few people that played it. Also seems like shameless japanophilia as it reduces characters to two dimensional caricatures of real people but what do i know? It's probably a great game and I am stupid for disliking it.


beej

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #4 on: March 12, 2011, 03:29:05 PM »
Good good.  Give into your anger.  Let the hate flow through you.
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clockworkjoe

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #5 on: March 12, 2011, 04:25:37 PM »
I also dislike games that go overboard on the house rules. If you have 20 pages of handwritten 'rules' that extensively modify the base system and only have 1 copy for all of us to use then fuck your game asshole

Salkovich

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #6 on: March 12, 2011, 04:41:12 PM »
I'm sensing a trend in that Ross dislikes people more than games.

Asshole.
"It's heresy. Burn the heretics." - Ross Payton NEVAR FORGET
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clockworkjoe

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #7 on: March 12, 2011, 05:41:05 PM »
I'm sensing a trend in that Ross dislikes people more than games.

Asshole.


Mckma

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #8 on: March 12, 2011, 06:32:45 PM »
I'm not particularly a fan of Savage Worlds.  I guess I just feel that it really forces you to play combat characters (at least that is how most of the scenarios that my friends have run) and the combat is pretty boring and repetitive for as long as it takes (as opposed to like CoC which is repetitive but short, or DnD which is long, but at least has powers and stuff to mix things up).  Dealing new initiative each turn really slows things down and the way that combat is typically a lot of mooks just slows things way down.  Also, something about character creation just doesn't jive with me, but I'm not quite sure what...

I don't know, I've just always been bored while playing...

Addled GM

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #9 on: March 12, 2011, 07:35:13 PM »
Rifts

The greatest pool of batshit crazy ideas strangled by their "system."  Rifts is much like chocolate to diabetics.

Star Wars

If any character from the movies show upthe PCs attack like rabid dogs.  If you play with any normal group there's always the guy who nags over every detail. 

Marvel RPG

The old system with the random powers and percentile system.  It wasn't so bad until we used the ultimate powers guide.  I remember one guy who ended up with nothing more than the power to control steam and the next guy could open rifts in time and space as well as open gateways to other universes.

 

Joven

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #10 on: March 12, 2011, 08:16:11 PM »
Whats wrong with the power to control steam (assuming you can also produce it)?
Steam is hot as shit, can be used as a smoke screen, blast a bunch into someones lungs and have it condense into water and drown them, build your own steampunk power armor suit, turn any collection of random crap into steam pipe bombs you throw and expand the steam violently to blast shrapnel everywhere, and best of all make spaghetti in seconds.

I kinda hate Pantheon, havent ever played it, but its the only non-con AP I couldn't really get through listening to.

Moondog

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #11 on: March 12, 2011, 08:26:44 PM »
You know what RPG's I really don't like/enjoy?

Dark Heresy and Call of Cthulhu (blasphemy on that last one I know).

I really don't like d100 systems (with Eclipse Phase being a notable exception) because of how very random a d100 is compared to a d20 (which I grew up on, as it were).

Combine the fickle d100 with the two system's heavy emphasis on your characters being largely incompetent at everything (at the start with DH, at least) and it just ends up being this horrendously frustrating experience for me, because I rapidly get frustrated when my characters repeatedly fail tasks that should be relatively routine because the game only lets me start out with a skill of 35 and I always manage to roll in the high 90's.

Also I can't stand grimdarkhurfdurfFORTHEEMPRAH/ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Also, RuneQuest. For the same reasons as above.

But I love games with stupidly random, nonserious CharGen such as Synnibar and TMNT:AoS and the Maid RPG.
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2sound2furious

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #12 on: March 13, 2011, 12:20:52 AM »
yeah i don't care much about d100 systems either. don't have any problems with Unknown Armies though, i guess the setting is so sweet it balances out the awkward system. also has a lot better sanity system than CoC.

Addled GM

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #13 on: March 13, 2011, 05:12:45 PM »
The guy that had steam powers had no way of creating steam, just controlling it.  He also had no super tech skills so the best he could do was walk around with a humidifier or a portable nebulizer asthma machine.  Steam punk goes out the window pretty fast when you look at how unbalanced that shit was.  Who cares if I carpet bombed him with steam punk grenades, he just opened a tunnel back in time and smothered me as a baby.

Addendum
Marvel Universe

The only reason I dislike this is that I played in two games.  The first was set in the DC universe.  We met Batman for some reason and he ended up getting knocked out.  When this happened my shapeshifter character ended up in the batplane with him.  The plane was on autopilot so I took off his mask, copied him, disfigured his face, took all his fancy toys off him, and threw him into the middle of the atlantic ocean.  For some reason the game ended after that session (score 1 for dicks everywhere).

The second game was in the Marvel U.  I played a character that was min maxed to absurdity.  The character could go insubstantial and according to the rules I could just leave objects inside people.   Also I could turn 60 feet tall.  Oh yeah and I had superstrength and retarded modifiers to every stat due to a broken point buy system.  Needless to say the character was never hurt and made the game damn near unplayable.  this was also during the great 3.0 optimization wars so I guess I'll scapegoat some of this onto that. That character ended the game because the GM didn't come up with a way to deal with it.  After robbing most of the banks in the world it became very boring.  It taught me a valuable lesson about both game balance and not being a dick though.

I ran the game and had a similar problem in that the players (after my initial dickery) got together and optimized their PCs to wreck my game.  I deserved it though.  It was then when the realization that you could make a PC with no superpowers that could destroy galactus with kung fu sank in.  Also the magic rules were so broken that the doctor strange of the group could have kicked in the hulk's ass while turning superman to dust.  Another guy came in with a gambit ripoff who could charge things up like himself and then build an infinte amount of energy using his bishop like ability to absorb energy and shoot it back.  He just stood there and waited for it.  He also informed me that he could have done this cheaper with a cyclops like ability and multiple man clones zapping him to power him up.  I managed to make it to the end of the first session.  Oddly enough they burned through the story with their Power Cosmic level monstrocities in about an hour.  After that I threw what I could at them and just watched as the game fell apart beneath the weight of brokeness.
« Last Edit: March 13, 2011, 05:44:31 PM by Addled GM »

crash2455

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #14 on: March 13, 2011, 05:43:11 PM »
The guy that had steam powers had no way of creating steam, just controlling it.  He also had no super tech skills so the best he could do was walk around with a humidifier or a portable nebulizer asthma machine.  Steam punk goes out the window pretty fast when you look at how unbalanced that shit was.  Who cares if I carpet bombed him with steam punk grenades, he just opened a tunnel back in time and smothered me as a baby.

Addendum
Marvel Universe

The only reason I dislike this is that I played in two games.  The first was set in the DC universe.  We met Batman for some reason and he ended up getting knocked out.  When this happened my shapeshifter character ended up in the batplane with him.  The plane was on autopilot so I took off his mask, copied him, disfigured his face, took all his fancy toys off him, and threw him into the middle of the atlantic ocean.  For some reason the game ended after that session (score 1 for dicks everywhere).

The second game was in the Marvel U.  I played a character that was min maxed to absurdity.  The character could go insubstantial and according to the rules I could just leave objects inside people.   Also I could turn 60 feet tall.  Oh yeah and I had superstrength and retarded modifiers to every stat due to a broken point buy system.  Needless to say the character was never hurt and made the game damn near unplayable.  this was also during the great 3.0 optimization wars so I guess I'll scapegoat some of this onto that. That character ended the game because the GM didn't come up with a way to deal with it.  After robbing most of the banks in the world it became very boring.  It taught me a valuable lesson about both game balance and not being a dick though.

I ran the game and had a similar problem in that the players (after my initial dickery) got together and optimized their PCs to wreck my game.  I deserved it though.  It was then when the realization that you could make a PC with no superpowers that could destroy galactus with kung fu sank in.  Also the magic rules were so broken that the doctor strange of the group could have kicked in the hulk's ass why turning superman to dust.  Another guy came in with a gambit ripoff who could charge things up like himself and then build an infinte amount of energy using his bishop like ability to absorb energy and shoot it back.  He just stood there and waited for it.  He also informed me that he could have done this cheaper with a cyclops like ability and multiple man clones zapping him to power him up. 

I've had a discussion of superhero games with my group, and I think the problem is that Superhero games are grossly unbalanced to begin with.  I mean, you have to consider that the concept of a superhero is grossly unbalanced, so translating that to a game is going to be something similar.

Even in games without randomly generated powers, it's hard to keep things balanced if you're not watching your players like a hawk.  In a M&M game I was running, my players dealt with the serial antagonist (and they said that they wanted a serial antagonist) by teleporting him into outer space.  And these characters were still Power Level 10 (the baseline) I think.

If I ever run a superhero game again, it's definitely going to be more "street level."

tl;dr - Superhero games: Fun to play in, not so fun to run.