Author Topic: rpgs you hate and the reasons why  (Read 27090 times)

Addled GM

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #15 on: March 13, 2011, 06:11:44 PM »
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.

After running this a few times I moved on to other better systems and have learned that the key to a great supers game is the magical effect of comic book logic.  I would have had you villain come back with a devastating alien based technology that he got after being teleported onto an alien ship and killing the crew.  Nothing worse for PC supers than to know that the destruction of lives and property is their fault.  Also you could go with the good old troup of the guy in the mysterious suit that for some reason or another keeps popping up.  They finally catch him and it turns out to be their arch nemesis from back in the day sporting new threads.  And never forget robots and clones.  Good ol' Doc Doom never gets killed but his clones and doom bots do.  Hell, even when he does get killed he can get out of hell using magic.     

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #16 on: March 13, 2011, 06:36:24 PM »
Superhero games are difficult to run not because of the powers themselves - its the variety of them. Exalted characters and epic level D&D characters are just as powerful as superheroes yet its possible to run a campaign with them pretty easily. The difference is that Exalted and D&D GMs know what to expect from their players and the games build all material to support those assumptions. Superhero games as a rule don't. It's one thing to have a game where you can teleport enemies into space - it's another when the system doesn't provide you many ways to deal with it.

I think one of the reasons I like Wild Talents so much is that by boiling all super powers into three categories and focusing the rules on how powers interact with each other, it gives a GM a lot of discretion on how to handle individual interactions. Useful powers that indirectly attack someone always get a resistance check and if they murder the enemy a trauma check. Furthermore, you have to spend a lot of points to teleport someone into space as the range is crazy.

Fizban

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #17 on: March 13, 2011, 08:55:58 PM »
I wrote (read: stole most mechanics of) a simple Superheroes game whereby the players chose their superpower, and powered it through use of XP.  They basically had to fill in a little thing on the sheet, "For 0xp, I can..., For 1xp I can..." etc up to 5xp.  So for example, one character had the ability to create doorknobs for free, and then could attach them to to something and pull them open like a door, for XP depending on the size of the door and the thickness of the thing the doorknob was attached to.  Since we used candy for xp (my favourite was fruit tingles) people would seek to spend their XP pretty quickly (you got XP by playing your character or making the story push forward).

It seemed a lot to do with setting for my guys.  People who came up with powers that tried to game the system found that they weren't having as much fun as those whose powers were more light-hearted and fluffy (eg Disco Inferno, whose powers were something like, For 0xp I can make any musical device play funk; for 1xp I can make my gun shoot louder than anyone else's gun... up to for 5xp I can force all people in the area to take part in a choreographed dance scene like a musical).  Also, since each character had to pick a secret shame/flaw for their character, which was basically designed for me to use against the players if they were being dicks, those with cheesy powers just found that their secret shame came up constantly, whereas those who chose quite nasty flaws to begin with had a good chance of being able to mitigate them by their own actions.

Was a great, fun system to play for a few laughs, sort of like an icebreaker game to get people into the idea of roleplaying, before thrusting a more complex system at them.

BenignSpy

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #18 on: March 22, 2011, 02:04:47 PM »
Old W.O.D. Too many dice.
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Moondog

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #19 on: March 22, 2011, 02:06:29 PM »
Old W.O.D. Too many dice.

Shadowrun 4e. Gun Adept.

23 dice for Heavy Pistols.  3 passes per round. Two shots per pass.

138d6 isn't too many dice. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MANY DICE.
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BenignSpy

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #20 on: March 22, 2011, 02:18:32 PM »
Old W.O.D. Too many dice.

Shadowrun 4e. Gun Adept.

23 dice for Heavy Pistols.  3 passes per round. Two shots per pass.

138d6 isn't too many dice. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MANY DICE.

Bah!

When you spend more time counting up "successes" than you spend declaring an action, that is too many dice.*

*Side note:
W.O.D. also had that fixed damage system. (Body score in damage, ect.) If you roll 30bajillion dice for sneak attack damage, spell damage, swordtotheface damage, I do make an exception.
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Moondog

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #21 on: March 22, 2011, 02:44:57 PM »
One thing I really do hate about OWoD's system is that my awesome pumonca biker can hit a dude with a chainsaw with 9 successes but fail to do a single point of damage because hits matter approximately fuckall in melee. "Argh! Fuckin' dicepools!" was often heard at my gaming table.

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Kelkesh123

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #22 on: March 23, 2011, 09:07:16 AM »
I hate any RPG that requires me to acquire another twenty dice.

I hate RPG's with lists of powers that go on for twelve or so pages.

I hate RPG's that come with statistics for anal circumference.

I hate RPG's that are pretentious.

I also hate lawyers, cops, and doctors.
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ethan_dawe

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #23 on: March 23, 2011, 02:48:12 PM »


I hate any RPG that requires me to acquire another twenty dice.

I hate RPG's with lists of powers that go on for twelve or so pages.

I hate RPG's that come with statistics for anal circumference.

I hate RPG's that are pretentious.

I also hate lawyers, cops, and doctors.

Okay Francis!

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Re:
« Reply #24 on: March 23, 2011, 04:02:41 PM »
He doesn't hate vests though.

Moondog

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #25 on: March 23, 2011, 09:04:41 PM »
Or lasagna Mondays.
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BenignSpy

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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #26 on: March 23, 2011, 09:12:24 PM »
I also hate lawyers, cops, and doctors.

What about THE Doctor, do you hate him?
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Re: rpgs you hate and the reasons why
« Reply #27 on: March 27, 2011, 02:49:16 AM »
I also hate lawyers, cops, and doctors.

What about THE Doctor, do you hate him?

Better fucking not!
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