Worst Tabletop RPG

[KineticDiplomat]

The line of argument that goes “well you CAN make X work in D&D if you have a really good GM, good players, everyone agrees on it, and maybe you hack and home brew, and you get creative, and you use a slew of supplements” (Yes, mild hyperbole, no, not by much) is not a great argument for why you should.

D&D
-Melee is at best simplistically adequate, and rather dull.
-Ranged combat is at best simplistically adequate and rather dull.
-Non-combat skills are at best simplistically adequate. This includes all of socializing, investigation, etc.
-Magic is the win button, so fights often become the magic puzzle game.
-PCs scale up by (if I recall) something like 41% every two adventuring days. Sooo...you kind of need “level scaling “ and/or go from killing giant rats to killing actual giants in the space of a story arc.
-Predominantly relies on chopping your way through dungeons.
-Due to the nature of its power dynamics often encourages player social practices that maybe aren’t that great for selling the hobby.

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And because it got to market first, we have this incredibly blah system that has a legion of fans swearing they should use it because “if you just do (list) then it’s many mediocrities don’t show through!” It is the rotting tree that chokes the sunlight from an emerging ecosystem.

[Vahnavoi]

D&D games can include horrific elements, but they won't simulate them breaking your character, or your character getting desensitised to such things.

Blatantly untrue, D&D has had rules for both physical and mental destruction of a character since 1st edition of AD&D at least. Furthermore, rules for the latter (mental destruction) are not necessary or even particularly effective at creating horror. Best kind of horror is player-facing, and given how fragile low-level characters are and how the system gives you pretty much every horrifying thing you can think of to throw at them, the system naturally lends it to survival horror at low levels. Players will naturally play their characters as paranoid lunatics, suspecting every chest to be a mimic, every pretty woman to be a succubus, every door to be trapped and every social situation to be a trap invented for their demise.

That D&D "can't do horror" is more a result of players saying "on a second thought, we don't like any of that", than the rules missing anything relevant.

[Eldan]

I mean, I know several systems that try to include mental damage of some kind, but most sanity rules I've seen, I've found really really bad. Roll 1d100 to see if you are insane now is just kind of bad design.

[Kardwill]

The WEG Star Wars core book had some of the best advice on GMing a space opera and making it look like Star Wars ever. Those West End Games guys new their stuff.

Yeah, their GM-advice sections were pretty awesome. And everything they told you about the way to ave your game feel like a movie, too.

And then, they completely fell on their face when they provided the stats for the first movie characters : All of them had skill levels far, FAR above those of even a end-of-campaign PC.
Oh, and stormtroopers were better shots than most starting PCs, but that one didn't bother me too much. Seeing moisture-farmer Luke with several skills in the 5-to-6 dice range, and Vader right in the middle of "You wanted him as your character's nemesis? Lol! Not even in your dreams" Mary-Sue-territory DID bother me. A lot.

[JellyPooga]

Quick - name a sci-fi romcom. A sci-fi whodunnit. A sci-fi coming of age film.

Starship Troopers

[EggKookoo]

It's more often seen with the people trying to run science fiction in D&D and bending over backwards to fit wizards in. I just want to scream 'get Traveller/Alternity/Eclipse Phase/Rocket Age/Cyberpunk/Scum &Villainy [delete as appropriate]' at them.

Well, maybe. I'm running my 5e Eberron campaign right in a very dying-earth, ancient-world kind of way. Magic is definitely just old science/tech that no one really quite understands any more. Heck, even what spellcasters think of as the schools of magic are the result of specific events or devices (conjuration is the byproduct of a planet-spanning matter-replication/transit network, necromancy is a decaying, malfunctioning nanotech medical system, and so on). I try to describe everything in a way that could be interpreted to be leftover ancient tech. A stronghold might really be a grounded spacefaring vessel, perhaps. My intent is to make it feel like Book of the New Sun to some degree.

I would say it works. Some of my players don't care. Others love it. Everyone understands that I'm taking a game that was built to replicate a quasi-LotR setting and using it for something else. That disconnect actually adds to the effect, I think.

[Willie the Duck]

And then, they completely fell on their face when they provided the stats for the first movie characters : All of them had skill levels far, FAR above those of even a end-of-campaign PC.
Oh, and stormtroopers were better shots than most starting PCs, but that one didn't bother me too much. Seeing moisture-farmer Luke with several skills in the 5-to-6 dice range, and Vader right in the middle of "You wanted him as your character's nemesis? Lol! Not even in your dreams" Mary-Sue-territory DID bother me. A lot.

All of WEG licensed properties seemed the same in this regard. I get the impression that they felt they couldn't give their movie/show heroes any flaws -- perhaps because of the Gods, Demigods and Heroes issues D&D once had, perhaps because some superfan would think it inconceivable that Han had any flaws (despite showing them in the films), etc. I tended just to ignore the listed stats and treat character X as sufficiently powerful as the place I put them in the game. If you are going to give an NPC stats, then you had better be prepared to have the PCs defeat them. If you don't want them to defeat Darth Vadar, don't give them the opportunity (including stats in the first place).

[Anonymouswizard]

All of WEG licensed properties seemed the same in this regard. I get the impression that they felt they couldn't give their movie/show heroes any flaws -- perhaps because of the Gods, Demigods and Heroes issues D&D once had, perhaps because some superfan would think it inconceivable that Han had any flaws (despite showing them in the films), etc. I tended just to ignore the listed stats and treat character X as sufficiently powerful as the place I put them in the game. If you are going to give an NPC stats, then you had better be prepared to have the PCs defeat them. If you don't want them to defeat Darth Vadar, don't give them the opportunity (including stats in the first place).

Weirdly I had the opposite problem when I first picked up the Laundry RPG, where they gave Bob only 30% in the Sorcery skill. It makes sense for the character, he's better than your average person at it but his skills are mainly in using computers to do it, but it feels too low for a sorcerer in actual play. It got better when I read more of the book, Plus while I don't think he';s createable out of the gate (I've not run the numbers) his skills are low enough that you could surpass him with a long enough game.

I think the most out there character provided is Angleton, but he's Angleton. Incredibly powerful, kept out of the action, and you can still take him down if you put your mind to it.

[Lord Torath]

fatal looks like it could be fun for a while, as long as nobody comes in with the wrong expectations. just like there are people who watch the worst b-movies to have fun at how crappy they are, the same could be doable here*. i wonder if someone can share experiences along that avenue?

Except in the case of FATAL-the-B-Movie, the lighting is so bad you can hardly see the action, the editing is so poorly done that the bits you can see are almost impossible to understand, and the stuff that is understandable is vile, bigoted, and misogynistic.

[RifleAvenger]

I actually think many people do realize that D&D is not necessarily the best game for what they are trying to do. It's just that most of them figure it is easier to just shoehorn something into D&D rather than go through the effort of learning a new game and getting their game group to play it.

I think this is something the "why do people insist on playing everything in D&D/X-system?" forget. Most people have limited time to spend learning how to do something. While it would probably be optimal for play experience to choose a tailored system for every game, it's not an optimal life experience. Especially when one starts venturing into games crunchier than D&D 3.5 (urghhh Shadowrun...). Switching systems on a regular basis also means diminishing returns in terms of time spent learning a system.

I own the following TTRPGs: Call of Cthulhu (6e, 7e), D&D (3.5e, 5e), Final Fantasy RPG (3e, 4e), Ironclaw 2e, Lancer, Mistborn RPG, Numenera, nWoD/CoD (Mage, Werewolf, Hunter, Changeling, Princess), Pathfinder 1e, Shadowrun 4e20A, Blades in the Dark, and Chuubo's Magical Wish Granting Engine. I've also read the books for Dark Heresy and Only War as part of being a player in them.

How many of those have I played in or run more than three times? CoC, D&D, Pathfinder, Mage, and Werewolf.

How many of those have I never played despite having the books? Both FF RPGs, Changeling, Mistborn, and Chuubo's.

And I think that, while there are plenty of people who have read and understood more systems than that, most people wouldn't even try to learn that many.

I know for a fact that many people in my group aren't willing to put in the time to learn a system from the outset; they'll give it a go, but if it doesn't impress them when they've little knowledge of the system, they won't stick around to learn more. This isn't them being intractable D&D fans, it's not wanting a constant set of homework assignments.
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Also, while D&D does indeed do everything that not's a dungeon or hexcrawl crawl with complete mediocrity (without serious effort from the GM), it does at least adequately work. My GM choosing to run their high-political story, about a region facing a political/economic revolution at the same time as an existential threat the powers that be want to just wish away, in D&D 5e probably wasn't the best choice. There's been some serious lack of mechanical meat for all the maneuvering my PC is trying to do, and asking D&D players to consider the ethical ramifications of killing "bandits" that are really "radicalized racially and economically marginalized groups" is asking for dashed expectations.

However, of all the games I own, I'm not sure I could name one that would clearly do this better. Especially since once the story shifts to combating the existential threat, D&D's heroic fantasy combat frame will probably handle that better than those better equipped for the earlier pen-and-boardroom stuff.

Even if I had one that did, its not my place to demand the GM learn the system.
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It's entirely fair to point out that X system handles Y concept better.

I don't think it's fair to ascribe ignorance, laziness, or malice to people who want to keep using Z system because the front-load of effort to learn system X is too great.

[Anonymouswizard]

I also find that people tend to overestimate how hard RPGs are to learn. I'm not saying that everybody should be running GURPS to HERO level stuff, but Paleomythic is simple and will do stone age games far better than D&D. Heck, CoC is relatively easy to learn, if not the easiest game I've tried, most people can pick it up in a session.

I think half of the problem is people think most games are as hard to grok as D&D, and even 5th edition is probably on the heavy side of the industry. I've not met anybody who has trouble with the mechanics of Unknown Armies (although coming up with identities can be hard), even magick is fairly simple to wrap your head around (although depending on Adept school Charging might be a concern).

[Jason]

I also find that people tend to overestimate how hard RPGs are to learn. I'm not saying that everybody should be running GURPS to HERO level stuff, but Paleomythic is simple and will do stone age games far better than D&D. Heck, CoC is relatively easy to learn, if not the easiest game I've tried, most people can pick it up in a session.

I think half of the problem is people think most games are as hard to grok as D&D, and even 5th edition is probably on the heavy side of the industry. I've not met anybody who has trouble with the mechanics of Unknown Armies (although coming up with identities can be hard), even magick is fairly simple to wrap your head around (although depending on Adept school Charging might be a concern).

Grumpy old man mode: ON
RPGs are a lot simpler than they used to be. Try shooting an RPG at a tank in 1st edition Twilight: 2000 sometime, or combat in Rolemaster. Or 1st edition AD&D with stuff like the weapon speed factors and weapon vs. armor type modifiers for that matter. Try designing a starship in MegaTraveller sometime.
Why, today's systems are positively rules light compared to what we had back in the '80s, you young whippersnappers!

[Anonymouswizard]

Grumpy old man mode: ON
RPGs are a lot simpler than they used to be. Try shooting an RPG at a tank in 1st edition Twilight: 2000 sometime, or combat in Rolemaster. Or 1st edition AD&D with stuff like the weapon speed factors and weapon vs. armor type modifiers for that matter. Try designing a starship in MegfaTraveller sometime.
Why, today's systems are positively rules light compared to what we had back in the '80s, you young whippersnappers!

I was going to bring that up, as even the Rolemaster derivatives are lighter these days, but I thought it was too obvious.

RPGs these days also have the benefit of reducing the number of independent systems, to the point where they have to pad rulebooks out by pretending to be in-universe briefings.

[RifleAvenger]

I also find that people tend to overestimate how hard RPGs are to learn. I'm not saying that everybody should be running GURPS to HERO level stuff, but Paleomythic is simple and will do stone age games far better than D&D. Heck, CoC is relatively easy to learn, if not the easiest game I've tried, most people can pick it up in a session.

I think half of the problem is people think most games are as hard to grok as D&D, and even 5th edition is probably on the heavy side of the industry. I've not met anybody who has trouble with the mechanics of Unknown Armies (although coming up with identities can be hard), even magick is fairly simple to wrap your head around (although depending on Adept school Charging might be a concern).

Grumpy old man mode: ON
RPGs are a lot simpler than they used to be. Try shooting an RPG at a tank in 1st edition Twilight: 2000 sometime, or combat in Rolemaster. Or 1st edition AD&D with stuff like the weapon speed factors and weapon vs. armor type modifiers for that matter. Try designing a starship in MegaTraveller sometime.
Why, today's systems are positively rules light compared to what we had back in the '80s, you young whippersnappers!

I was going to bring that up, as even the Rolemaster derivatives are lighter these days, but I thought it was too obvious.

RPGs these days also have the benefit of reducing the number of independent systems, to the point where they have to pad rulebooks out by pretending to be in-universe briefings.

Whether simpler than prior decades or not, it's still an effort. Proposing a new system to a group is, to some extent, giving them a reading assignment. Unless you want the frustration of trying to teach the system during play. If people decide that they'd rather take "mediocre, but we know how it works," I'm not going to fuss at them about it.

Nor can you really take into account what else people are doing in their lives.

Spoiler: Anecdote: My Life

Show

I'm juggling my job, writing a paper for a scholarly journal on the side, prepp'ing and GM'ing a game, playing in another, and trying to keep up with the raid treadmill in an MMO. On top of reading this and others forums, trying to work in finishing video games I bought and never finished, keeping up with family, daily life necessities like hygiene, cleaning, exercise, shopping... and most of the stuff I mentioned in the middle isn't all that important.

I do find time to read new systems, but that's also because my mind finds reading rulebooks fun for some reason.

Meanwhile, some of the people in my group are going through depressive episodes because of the wreck this year has been, one is preparing for his PhD comprehensives, etc. and none of them find reading through a rulebook to be an inherently good use of their time. Only an obstacle to something potentially better.

So when I slap down a new book in front them (figuratively, we're all online), I can try to tell them "it really just comes down to rolling xdX and counting successes!" or whatever, but usually the lie gets put to that rather quickly. People are willing to put up with going through the effort a few times, but when it becomes a repeat requirement for every new game idea pitched, it gets wearisome.

Especially since knowing the rules is only a first step. I'd rather play my main in a fighting game than try to counterpick someone with a winning matchup I don't play; similarly, I can understand someone choosing to run the system they know and tweak it to the scenario, instead of running a system better fitted to the scenario they've no experience with.

Personally, I'd attempt the latter with TTRPGs - you can't learn a new system without trying. However, again, I enjoy that learning process. A lot of people don't, nor do they have the time for it, and I'm don't think they should be judged for that.

[Quertus]

The gist behind my question was to explore if "not good for X" was specific to D&D, or just a case of any particular game that's good for X will likely be not so good for Y.

As I tried and failed to get across, D&D is bad for *bad* attempts at mysteries or horror.

D&D is bad for bad attempts at Horror, that don't take into account what would be horrific for magical monster-hunting murderhobos.

Like most (all?) systems, D&D is bad for handing out insanities randomly, rather than having well-researched cause and effect between the personality type of the individual, the trigger, and the particulars of the insanity.

D&D is bad for bad mysteries, that break if the PCs' capabilities allow them to jump the rails.

D&D is *great* for giving (caster) characters tools for investigation. With the advent of spot/listen/search/sense motive, 3e (is / and later are(?))… mediocre at mundane investigation. D&D is *terrible* at letting a GM create a mystery at a particular difficulty for an arbitrary party, sight unseen (in other words, IMO, it's *perfect*!).

D&D could be *better* at either of those without sacrificing anything but page length and research budget. And that makes sense, because those were not it's focus - dungeon crawls were. That doesn't make it uniquely bad at those - it just makes it like any other RPG.

However, *people* are uniquely bad at Horror and mysteries, attempting to pidgin hole specific plots, details, challenges, and reactions into places where they don't fit. This makes D&D *seem* unsuited to horror or mysteries; really, if people could see past their biases of what they *expect* horror or mysteries to look like, D&D can handle them just fine. To the tune of "some of the best experiences I've had with either".

Again, a system where the designers had done the underlying work on psychological disorders and triggers, or with a more robust mundane investigation toolkit, could probably handle them *better*. But I'm not actually aware of any systems that make D&D's performance woefully suboptimal.

[Telwar]

I think this is something the "why do people insist on playing everything in D&D/X-system?" forget. Most people have limited time to spend learning how to do something. While it would probably be optimal for play experience to choose a tailored system for every game, it's not an optimal life experience. Especially when one starts venturing into games crunchier than D&D 3.5 (urghhh Shadowrun...). Switching systems on a regular basis also means diminishing returns in terms of time spent learning a system.

I own the following TTRPGs: Call of Cthulhu (6e, 7e), D&D (3.5e, 5e), Final Fantasy RPG (3e, 4e), Ironclaw 2e, Lancer, Mistborn RPG, Numenera, nWoD/CoD (Mage, Werewolf, Hunter, Changeling, Princess), Pathfinder 1e, Shadowrun 4e20A, Blades in the Dark, and Chuubo's Magical Wish Granting Engine. I've also read the books for Dark Heresy and Only War as part of being a player in them.

How many of those have I played in or run more than three times? CoC, D&D, Pathfinder, Mage, and Werewolf.

How many of those have I never played despite having the books? Both FF RPGs, Changeling, Mistborn, and Chuubo's.

And I think that, while there are plenty of people who have read and understood more systems than that, most people wouldn't even try to learn that many.

My ratio is MUCH more skewed than yours. 3+ times for me would be D&D and Shadowrun (across multiple editions for both). Owned-and-not-played...oh god I forgot the games under the daybed; my shame is in the Spoiler tag.

Spoiler

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In no particular order: Feng Shui, Laundry Files, Dresden Files, WEG Star Wars, Hackmaster, GURPS, Paleomythic, Spycraft, Stargate SG1, PF1, PF2, Star Trek (Last Unicorn), Midnight, The Dark Eye, The Black Company, Iron Heroes, Iron Kingdoms (d20), LotR (Decipher), Eclipse Phase, Warhammer FRPG (the new one), Scion, Exalted, Monster Hunter Incorporated RPG, Millennium's End, Deathwatch, and Deadlands (sobs quietly at the list)

I used to play the living heck out of 3.5. A friend of mine is in a PF1 and asked for help, so I dutifully got out my PF1 books from the box under the daybed where they live, and tried to help. And despite having used 3e to get my start understanding Excel, and having been a reasonable optimizer in the past, I just blanked. Even looking at Mythic Adventures, where I had absolutely gorgeous ideas for, I couldn't remember them or make any suggestions.

I imagine it'd be the same for 4th edition, though I'd have to get someone to send me the offline CB; I at least still have the books.

It's entirely fair to point out that X system handles Y concept better.

I don't think it's fair to ascribe ignorance, laziness, or malice to people who want to keep using Z system because the front-load of effort to learn system X is too great.

Exactly. At least, not without knowing them better.

I also find that people tend to overestimate how hard RPGs are to learn. I'm not saying that everybody should be running GURPS to HERO level stuff, but Paleomythic is simple and will do stone age games far better than D&D. Heck, CoC is relatively easy to learn, if not the easiest game I've tried, most people can pick it up in a session.

I think half of the problem is people think most games are as hard to grok as D&D, and even 5th edition is probably on the heavy side of the industry. I've not met anybody who has trouble with the mechanics of Unknown Armies (although coming up with identities can be hard), even magick is fairly simple to wrap your head around (although depending on Adept school Charging might be a concern).

It's not really that they're hard to learn, that it's One More Thing, and we're all getting older and have more responsibilities. Really, there are two forms of resolution mechanic, roll-and-add (d20, GURPS) and roll-and-count (Storyteller, FFG Star Wars). It's just all the little details on top of that. One of our group really, truly, doesn't particularly like 5e, but they're relatively new to the hobby and have a kid to raise, so while they're game at trying another system, they run into not having the time to read and understand the system. Like, when we went to try FFG Star Wars, which they did enjoy, they couldn't remember the symbols to save their life. Meanwhile, I'm here (a) not having a kid and thus having a lot more free time, and (b) have a fairly visual memory so I don't have nearly that level of problem.

The other problem is knowledge. Like, I know Paleomythic exists, and actually have it, as someone on another forum mentioned it and it sounded interesting. But I would have to a) want to play a paleolithic-era game, and b) know that it or something like it was likely to exist, and c) convince the rest of the group to buy in on it. Whereas sticking with a system you know means you can eliminate searching, and you already likely have buy-in, so that emotional effort is not needed*, so all that's left is modifying your existing system to do that, and some people enjoy the hell out of that.

* - I would KILL to get my group to play Exalted. And yet it's just not worth the effort to try to get them on-board. It's going to be enough to get them to let me run the PF2 beginner box.

[EggKookoo]

Whether simpler than prior decades or not, it's still an effort. Proposing a new system to a group is, to some extent, giving them a reading assignment. Unless you want the frustration of trying to teach the system during play. If people decide that they'd rather take "mediocre, but we know how it works," I'm not going to fuss at them about it.

Most players I've played with are not system geeks. They don't care that there's a "better system" somewhere out there. They put up with a given system because they have to have some basic competency with it in order to play in the first place. The last thing they want is to learn a new system for each genre.

Besides, there's a certain fun in trying to adapt things.

[Cluedrew]

But I'm not actually aware of any systems that make D&D's performance woefully suboptimal.

How many horror systems have you actually tried or at least read? Have you played Laminations of the Flame Princes or read the rules of Don't Rest Your Head? I would go on but those are the only two I can name off the top of my head.

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I am a big believer in system does matter and if you don't want to learn a bunch of new systems I would say at least learn a generic system - say Fudge - that is designed to be modified. Or go the other way and learn a Powered by the Apocalypse system so all the other systems are just a step away. Also the instructions for how to play those games are "it's 2d6+stat, everything else is on your character sheet"... and a reference sheet or two, but I played several systems without ever opening a rule-book.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I use 5e D&D exclusively, for a few reasons.

First and foremost, it does most of what I want to do, and is easy to mod for the things it doesn't handle directly. I have a world that I want to explore, and I like heroic fantasy. The draw of "new genres" is completely outweighed by the overhead. Plus I'm just not that interested in most other genres.

Second, I play 99% of the time with brand new folks that I'm teaching the game as we go. I've had 13 different groups (with some repeat members, but usually not an entire group) over the last few years. Most of them were relatively short-lived--8-12 session (afterschool club games). Except for the three non-club groups, none of them owned their own books or spent significant time outside of the session on game things.

So I need something stable that I know like the back of my hand. Throwing in tweaks/homebrew is a minor thing for me, especially amortized over many groups. And I have a huge library of content (a wiki with ±400 items already, among other things) already ready to go. Teaching a new group a new game, plus learning it myself, plus creating all the necessary content, plus finding people who want to play <niche genre> is a huge extra load. Basically, the startup costs are tremendous. Which kinda defeats the purpose, especially since it's not something I care very much about (those other genres not really being my cuppa tea).

[Anonymouswizard]

How many horror systems have you actually tried or at least read? Have you played Laminations of the Flame Princes or read the rules of Don't Rest Your Head? I would go on but those are the only two I can name off the top of my head.

Call of Cthulhu and a couple of it's derivatives (Delta Green and The Laundry), Unknown Armies, coreline Chronicles of Darkness, a few WoD/CofD gamelines are perspective-flipped to traditional horror but still manage to count, some WoD/CofD gamelines are just straight horror where you play a monster, and some genre horror systems (for SFH there's at least Alien, Eclipse Phase, and Those Dark Places, arguably the various WH40k games). More that I've left off as well but that should cover all the big names.

Note that these can take very different stances on how fear and madness work.

I am a big believer in system does matter and if you don't want to learn a bunch of new systems I would say at least learn a generic system - say Fudge - that is designed to be modified. Or go the other way and learn a Powered by the Apocalypse system so all the other systems are just a step away. Also the instructions for how to play those games are "it's 2d6+stat, everything else is on your character sheet"... and a reference sheet or two, but I played several systems without ever opening a rule-book.

Totally agreed! Although my generic of choice these days is Fate (the Fudge spin-off with some narrative mechanics bolted on), and that can take some explaining due to Aspects.

[Cluedrew]

I use 5e D&D exclusively, for a few reasons. [Mostly good reasons to use D&D.]

Yeah all my comments about people misusing D&D don't apply if you actually use do D&D for what it was meant for (which is less then it is marketed for). Although for new players there are lots of systems that are even easier to pick up and play but 5e is not a terrible choice.

Totally agreed! Although my generic of choice these days is Fate (the Fudge spin-off with some narrative mechanics bolted on), and that can take some explaining due to Aspects.

Fate, Fudge, FAE... sort of Powered by the Apocalypse (if you consider the family instead of any particular system), GURPS although I've never looked at the rules for it. Actually I have a huge list of systems and there are probably more on it but I hardly have that thing memorized. Plus some are just a name like "Last Word" and I couldn't tell you a thing about that system. There are a lot of systems out there.

[sktarq]

Most players I've played with are not system geeks. They don't care that there's a "better system" somewhere out there. They put up with a given system because they have to have some basic competency with it in order to play in the first place. The last thing they want is to learn a new system for each genre.

Besides, there's a certain fun in trying to adapt things.

QFT
You know what is a better game system? One where people actually play it. That means that this buy-in is everything. And most people don't really care to know more than a couple systems. A "perfect" system that is not used because because "good enough" is right there isn't perfect in my mind.

i never heard about fatal or rahowa before. i had a few good laughs reading recensions.

fatal looks like it could be fun for a while, as long as nobody comes in with the wrong expectations. just like there are people who watch the worst b-movies to have fun at how crappy they are, the same could be doable here*. i wonder if someone can share experiences along that avenue?


*the main obstacle to trying it is the manual, since i would never want to actually give money to the guy who made that stuff. but i'm sure it can be found on the internet for free.

Tried that. No seriously we did. We tried to play FATAL strait with none of the acting out stuff. But it is boring as sin. Incredibly slow. . . Masses of incoherent writing and oddly placed tables (just finding everything you need to reference is a massive chore) not all the writing was clear (there were several order-of-operations debates...I think....I remember there were debates FATAL was new and shiny back then)...oh and because your characters were randomly generated trying to figure out what they were doing together or what they may actually get up to was a challenge...with muckrakers, craftsmen, and farmers more likely than anything...oh and all that time you spent on trying to create those characters with oh-oh-so many dice rolls and tables? Then tend to die very easily so there tends to be a large amount of prepwork-to-playtime ratio. And again it was boring to play. Draining even. It was a slog and presented as hobby we do to enjoy ourselves. The North African war logistics wargame seems both far more speedy, mentally stimulating, etc....and I'm including drawing the grids for your own paper spreadsheets to fuel deliveries to the trucks that make water deliveries to some tripwire guardstations somewhere.

Far more fun to flip through the rule book point and laugh and to come up with technically possible but highly unlikely combinations with amusing/horrific results to get reactions out of your friends.

[NigelWalmsley]

That seems in line with my intuition about how playing FATAL would work. There's a place for random character generation and high lethality, but it's not a place where a 900-page rulebook is acceptable.

[NichG]

On D&D edits, etc...

I tend to play/run a different system on every subsequent campaign, but I still end up coming back to D&D 3.5 as a base system maybe 1/3 of the time (though generally extremely homebrewed to the extent of being a 'total conversion' style of thing rather than just some added elements). I don't think its just availability of players (I have a stable group I play with), or system familiarity (the homebrew stuff is equally unfamiliar to everyone, and there have been a handful of systems I've created completely from scratch for the particular campaign in that rota), or lack of familiarity with non-D&D systems (since 2/3 of the stuff I play or run actually isn't D&D). I wouldn't say D&D is my top system (that would probably be Nobilis top, 7th Sea second), but it's probably my top moddable system (I've tried modding L5R and 7th Sea for comparison, as they've come closest to having the kind of texture and scale that D&D provides as a base system; edit: WoD feels like a good contender for moddability as well).

What it comes down to that other systems don't do as well I think comes down to what I'd describe as mechanical inspiration or 'hooks'. D&D has a lot of cruft built up over multiple editions, leaving bits and pieces of subsystems or highly specific interactions. That sort of historical texture creates a lot of hooks that give me ideas as a designer of things I can slot in or have interact - I could have something mess with ability scores, apply or modify (typed) buffs and debuffs directly to rolls, modify hitpoints, max hitpoints, apply and over-ride multiple kinds of mechanically-different mitigation sources (elemental resistances, immunities, DR, percentage resistances, bonuses to saves), deal with creature Types and Subtypes, deal with various kinds of slots and casting resources and sources of abilities, older edition lore about why spells and effects do what they do (such as the Planescape rules about which spells work on which planes and why), etc.

That means there are lots of things which can feel mechanically distinct, hooks for attaching the effects of items or effects, etc. You can then assign priority over different sub-parts of the system to create thematically distinct forces within a homebrew world. Building that from scratch is actually kind of hard, because you have to intentionally make the system messy and disorganized but in some kind of purposeful way that hangs together in order to get that sort of texture. It feels more natural when it has happened organically over the evolution of a system than if you try to build it from scratch.

Now, there is somewhat of a familiarity advantage even with total conversion homebrew. You can lean on player expectations from the base game and break them to make certain things seem much more serious. Something that permanently lowers someone's maximum HP in a way that Restoration/etc can't do anything about? That immediately reads as scary. Something that starts applying wild magic rolls? It has an immediate reputation and character that you can borrow from. Similarly, when homebrew breaks certain expectations a player would have it can quickly drive interest - this thing lets us apply a multiplier that multiplies other multipliers rather than adds? Or, this ability lets you cast spells without consuming per-day resources? Or, this lets you exceed the normal limit of skill ranks or feats by level? Ok, that immediately looks broken - maybe there's a new ubercharger or early entry trick or whatever - and so it can quickly capture players' attention. So there is at least some element of that in the decision.

[Dragonsonthemap]

Notorious dysfunctional bigot games aside, I actually think the worst system I've actually played is D&D 3.5. It's an unbalanced mess that has caused far more intraparty conflict than every other system I've played combined. Every subsequent edition of D&D and even Pathfinder have done everything 3.5 tried to do better, despite their flaws. Even the OSR retroclones I've played are better than 3.5.

That all being said, I've only once played a system that didn't feel like it ran into all the problems of D&D of any edition that people are talking about the moment you tried to stray even slightly off of the system's beaten path. Pretty close to every system feels like "do this one very specific thing, or just kinda make it work with houserules," the problem being that that one specific thing is almost always more specific than what the system purports to be for (say, 3.5 and 5e functioning best in narrow - very narrow in 3.5's case - level ranges, or the FF Star Wars games only really working if you're trying to simulate a particular approach to the SW universe that doesn't match the movies are about). The exceptions to this are go-wide systems like FATE or GURPS, but that's because they require about that same amount of work just to use them well at all; sure, they're great once you've narrowed and reworked them for your specific campaign, but unless all your games are going to be in that setting from now on, you're going to have to put that work in again. So I really think that, on the issue of "well it's fine if you force it to work," D&D is entirely unexceptional and completely typical of roleplaying games. The handful of games out there - Lancer comes to mind - that do their one thing so well that you can just play the game without tons of modding are the exceptions.

[Telok]

I've never had a problem, mechanically, introducing people to new systems. You can oftem boil them down to a 2-sided pre-gen character sheet, a sheet with one side setting info and the other side a map, and one or two sheets of rules or common tables. Done it four or five times in the past decade and nobody had any problems* with the mechanics after the second session.

It's often especially easy with stuff like HERO because at some point someone else already did that and I just needed to find their work. I think it was hardest with a heavily modded Classic Traveller I used to run a game in the old Elite/FFE computerspace game setting.

* Well there was one guy who kept coming up with "shortcuts" for math bits that screwed him over and that he never told anyone about. He took "get told the damage, subtract weapon penetration from armor rating, if remaining armor is more than zero subtract that from the damage" and changed it to "add damage and penetration, then subtract armor". Only after the campaign ended did he mention the shortcut. It did explain why he ended up with two cyber-legs, his character didn't wear leg armor when other characters wore power armor.

[Max_Killjoy]

I also find that people tend to overestimate how hard RPGs are to learn. I'm not saying that everybody should be running GURPS to HERO level stuff, but Paleomythic is simple and will do stone age games far better than D&D. Heck, CoC is relatively easy to learn, if not the easiest game I've tried, most people can pick it up in a session.

I think half of the problem is people think most games are as hard to grok as D&D, and even 5th edition is probably on the heavy side of the industry. I've not met anybody who has trouble with the mechanics of Unknown Armies (although coming up with identities can be hard), even magick is fairly simple to wrap your head around (although depending on Adept school Charging might be a concern).

It always makes me stop and wonder when I see HERO listed as being on the "hard end".

For me, it's one of the more intuitive systems, without a bunch of conditional states or conflicting bits, and without subjective rulings necessary outside of the specific "special effects" of individual power or equipment builds in the limited instances when they become relevant to how things interact.

Maybe the arithmetic involved makes people think it's complex (even if it's all grade-school-level), but to me something like 5e with all its conditional states and binaries and judgement calls, or any game with levels/classes that makes me jump through hoops and wait several levels and put things together piecemeal to realize a character.

[Willie the Duck]

It always makes me stop and wonder when I see HERO listed as being on the "hard end".

For me, it's one of the more intuitive systems, without a bunch of conditional states or conflicting bits, and without subjective rulings necessary outside of the specific "special effects" of individual power or equipment builds in the limited instances when they become relevant to how things interact.

Maybe the arithmetic involved makes people think it's complex (even if it's all grade-school-level), but to me something like 5e with all its conditional states and binaries and judgement calls, or any game with levels/classes that makes me jump through hoops and wait several levels and put things together piecemeal to realize a character.

I suspect people who say it is 'hard' only know it from reputation. That, or when they say hard, they really mean 'nitpicky' or 'looks like work, not fun' or similar. I get why it isn't everyone's cup of tea. My wife is a non-gamer, and I'm sure it looks like busywork to her, and if I tried to explain it in straightforward fashion, I couldn't dissuade her of that notion. Ex: "Okay, with those positive and negative modifications, I can make a 6 dice blast, costing me 6 * 5 * (1+0.25+0.5+0.75)/(1+1.25+0.5) points, where the Active Cost (which determines the Endurance cost) being based off of the 6 * 5 * (1+0.25+0.5+0.75) portion. That will do 6d6 stun, plus an amount of body equal to the number of 2-5s rolled on the damage dice, plus twice the number of sixes. For the same amount of points, I could make a two dice Ranged Killing Attack, which would do 2d6 body damage, with an amount of stun equal to the body damage times a multiplier determined by you stopped caring about thirty seconds ago, didn't you?" I'm honestly not sure which of these -- this level of what-can-feel-like-pointless-math, or a D&D-like arbitrary-and-specific rules feels more like hoop-jumping to me, but I can see why any given individual might fall into the camp of favoring one over the other.

I also find that people tend to overestimate how hard RPGs are to learn. I'm not saying that everybody should be running GURPS to HERO level stuff, but Paleomythic is simple and will do stone age games far better than D&D.

Paleomythic might be one of the most accessible games ever made. Set of binary stats. Number of which determine your overall competence (dice pool). Presence of a specific relevant one gives a +1 dice bonus to a task. Relevant tool gives another bonus dice (this and only this one having a 'roll 1 and damage your tool' effect). Small set of also-binary career skills you can pick up which offer equally straightforward benefits. Done.

[EggKookoo]

Ex: "Okay, with those positive and negative modifications, I can make a 6 dice blast, costing me 6 * 5 * (1+0.25+0.5+0.75)/(1+1.25+0.5) points, where the Active Cost (which determines the Endurance cost) being based off of the 6 * 5 * (1+0.25+0.5+0.75) portion. That will do 6d6 stun, plus an amount of body equal to the number of 2-5s rolled on the damage dice, plus twice the number of sixes. For the same amount of points, I could make a two dice Ranged Killing Attack, which would do 2d6 body damage, with an amount of stun equal to the body damage times a multiplier determined by you stopped caring about thirty seconds ago, didn't you?" I'm honestly not sure which of these -- this level of what-can-feel-like-pointless-math, or a D&D-like arbitrary-and-specific rules feels more like hoop-jumping to me, but I can see why any given individual might fall into the camp of favoring one over the other.

I see it as less of a question of easy/hard and more of one of return on effort. I can add 1 + 0.25 + 0.5 + 0.75 and divide it by 1 + 1.25 + 0.5 with out too much gear-grinding, but I'd much rather play a game where I just need to add +2 and then +4 to a single die roll. The latter might not have a lot of fidelity to some alleged level of "realism" but honestly I just want to generate a weighted pseudo-random number and get on with things.

[Anonymouswizard]

It always makes me stop and wonder when I see HERO listed as being on the "hard end".

In terms of character creation it's about the third or fourth most complex game I own, which is a really high barrier to entry. Although on the plus side if everybody on the group is as good at maths you'll likely all build to the same power level.

Note that people also claim that GURPS is hard, but to me it's not that difficult. Certainly easier to learn than Anima: Beyond Fantasy.

Paleomythic might be one of the most accessible games ever made. Set of binary stats. Number of which determine your overall competence (dice pool). Presence of a specific relevant one gives a +1 dice bonus to a task. Relevant tool gives another bonus dice (this and only this one having a 'roll 1 and damage your tool' effect). Small set of also-binary career skills you can pick up which offer equally straightforward benefits. Done.

Yeah, it might have been a bad example for how easy a lot of games are to pick up, but it's probably how easy games should be. It's made me wonder if my games are too complex.

Plus it is just a great game. There's some minor bits of text I'd like to see changed (mainly replacing 'bikini garments' with something like 'loincloth and breastwrap'), but the actual rules are incredibly accessible and I could teach the game in five minutes. Especially as it was designed to be a 'one book and done' deal, it's incredibly easy for everybody to be on the same page.

We really need less multiple book messes and more single 'we madea game, it's for playing X, it's easy to pick up' games, /vut I've ranted to enough people about the problems of multi-book cores.