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  1. - Top - End - #151
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    Quote Originally Posted by Morty View Post
    Does it really delve into it? Requiem 2E is a considerable improvement over both Masquerade and Requiem 1E, but I don't know if it supports superheroes with fangs that much more. Maybe I'm biased because my Requiem 2E games had one combat scene between them (something that might come as a shock to some people here).
    It depends on frequency of Willpower and Vitae refreshes. It is still meant to be grim, gritty, and social focused, and for true superheroes with fangs you want to start with a good whack if XP (20; will give you enough for five more dots of Disciplines).

    It doesn't go fully into it, but it didn't try to stop you anywhere near as much as earlier editions did.


    The thing that annoys me about CofD/WoD is that, desire the heavy focus on social interaction, they don't bother giving any kind of system for ruining debates. But I like both systems anyway, with CtL2e being my favourite of the pack.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
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    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

  2. - Top - End - #152
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    Default Re: Worst Tabletop RPG

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    It depends on frequency of Willpower and Vitae refreshes. It is still meant to be grim, gritty, and social focused, and for true superheroes with fangs you want to start with a good whack if XP (20; will give you enough for five more dots of Disciplines).

    It doesn't go fully into it, but it didn't try to stop you anywhere near as much as earlier editions did.


    The thing that annoys me about CofD/WoD is that, desire the heavy focus on social interaction, they don't bother giving any kind of system for ruining debates. But I like both systems anyway, with CtL2e being my favourite of the pack.
    CofD does have the social interaction system, but it's modelled for trying to get something to do what you want, often over days or weeks of interacting with them. It's difficult to have a one-size-fits-all social system, though. Exalted 3E probably does the best job of it that I've seen.

    Requiem 2E does definitely beef vampires up, after 1E had massively over-corrected for Masquerade and made them pretty wimpy. But I feel like it really didn't need to make Dominate as powerful as it did; it's borderline chronicle-derailing.
    Last edited by Morty; 2020-11-29 at 06:31 AM.
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  3. - Top - End - #153
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    Default Re: Worst Tabletop RPG

    Quote Originally Posted by Morty View Post
    Requiem 2E does definitely beef vampires up, after 1E had massively over-corrected for Masquerade and made them pretty wimpy.
    I've never touched Vampire, but having started with nWoD, I actually miss the weaker werewolves of nWoD/CoD 1e.

    I get that people coming off Apocalypse didn't want that at all. However, the game had a different vibe that I enjoyed, when you couldn't pop gauru and become nigh-invincible to anything without silver or high-level magic (or a personal bane when imbalanced to spirit). Most of the rest of the 2e changes I agree with.

    On the other hand, I enjoy Mage the Awakening 2e, a game that wants players to actually use the full spell system, WAY MORE than 1e, which demanded the use of covert spells even when sleepers weren't watching, on just about every level.
    Last edited by RifleAvenger; 2020-11-29 at 06:38 AM.

  4. - Top - End - #154
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    Default Re: Worst Tabletop RPG

    Quote Originally Posted by RifleAvenger View Post
    I've never touched Vampire, but having started with nWoD, I actually miss the weaker werewolves of nWoD/CoD 1e.

    I get that people coming off Apocalypse didn't want that at all. However, the game had a different vibe that I enjoyed, when you couldn't pop gauru and become nigh-invincible to anything without silver or high-level magic (or a personal bane when imbalanced to spirit). Most of the rest of the 2e changes I agree with.

    On the other hand, I enjoy Mage the Awakening 2e, a game that wants players to actually use the full spell system, WAY MORE than 1e, which demanded the use of covert spells even when sleepers weren't watching, on just about every level.
    I'm admittedly coming from Vampire and never tried Werewolf, but the 1E Requiem powers just didn't feel very good or fun to use. 2E gave them a punch or, to make the obvious joke, a bite. But I do see the appeal of the lower power level. While 2E/CofD is an improvement on the whole, it kind of moved towards an oWoD-style "mortals are chumps" setup and I'm not fond of that.
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  5. - Top - End - #155
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    Default Re: Worst Tabletop RPG

    The one thing were I think nWoD in general and Requiem in particular was just better which got lost for a lot of people because their starting point of discussing anything Requiem was already at "It's not Masquerade anymore so it sucks and everything is ruined forever!" is that it acknowledged "There are different things you might want from playing vampires in a modern setting, so we made a setting that allows you to do different things with your vampires" while Masquerade was all "THIS is how we want the game to be played", while at the same time I never had the feeling even the people writing the books were ever really on the same page as to what they actually wanted to game to look like.

    And having tried my hand at another online convention round of SR6 yesterday I have to stick by my earlier statement. While I'm not sure I'd classify it as "the worst RPG I've ever played", it's for sure one of the worst new editions I've ever played.
    Last edited by Delta; 2020-11-29 at 08:01 AM.

  6. - Top - End - #156
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    Quote Originally Posted by AvatarVecna View Post
    I feel like the Inheritance Cycle is represented well enough by truenaming: the magic system sucks pretty hard unless you've got a high-HD dragon friend doing the heavy lifting for you.
    I would point out that mages in Inheritance are actually extremely powerful, to the point that going to war without a spellcaster of some kind on your side is basically pointless.

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    The "You can't spend more energy than you could get from a living source except that gems can be used to store power" restriction is actually more of a benefit than a drawback against unshielded enemies, as you can just drain all of their energy into you. Even terrible spellcasters - like Eragon at the start of the first book, or the random nobodies with a smidge of magical power that Trianna keeps pulling out of gutters somewhere - are still ridiculously powerful, because all you have to do is teach them one of the twelve (I think it's twelve?) words that instantly kill someone with a tiny bit of magical power by snipping a random vein which would only take a tiny bit of energy to cut if you could actually reach it.

    (Trianna's not even restricted by the limit, but it's never really explained how her magic actually works except that if she does it too much she becomes a shade - and in fact yeah, there's all the shades, who were sorcerers, and it's implied that they have basically unlimited power, meaning that Trianna (who doesn't have a dragon) is only not personally kicking butt on the battlefield because (a) Nasuada told her to do something else and (b) if she messes up she turns into a shade, and Durza (who also doesn't have a dragon) only loses to Eragon because the latter has plot armour (and also Durza has no understanding of threat assessment))

    Also, the reason that Saphira, Thorn and Glaedr are all Pretty Good, Actually is that they are also spellcasters, just like riders are. Shuriken, OTOH, is Pretty Bad, Actually because he sacrificed (not by choice) spellcasting ability (and general intelligence) for bigness.

    Finally, the dragons being big and strong and breathing fire isn't even as much of an edge as you might think - a nice weapon, quick reflexes, and being just a little bit better at magic than them is good enouch to kill them, which is why random elves with dauthdaertra kept on doing just that when the two were still at war.

  7. - Top - End - #157
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    Quote Originally Posted by Batcathat View Post
    To be fair, these two are at least pretty accurate to the movies even if it can't be great for game balance.
    Did I mention that the rules for severing limbs (which may have been optional house-rules, I don't really remember anymore) relied on the relatively improbable occurrence of someone surviving a critical hit to the wound points? Something like Vader chopping off Luke's hand without killing him would have been extraordinarily unlikely given the level disparity between them (they statted Vader at level 18 and Luke at no higher than 8 during the events of ESB). I don't have my old books handy, but Vader would have been doing at least 6d8 + Str vs. Luke having at most 18 wound points, probably less.

    Using the rules as written, Jedi past level 10 or so vs. literally anyone looks like Mace Windu vs. Jango Fett. Even a duel between a Jedi Master vs. a Sith Lord comes down to who gets the first nat 20 and insta-kills the opponent.


    Quote Originally Posted by Pauly View Post
    I had some fun times playing that system. However we played in a non-jedi environment because as a group we agreed the Force users rules were hopelessly bonkers.
    The most fun I ever had with that game was a campaign where everyone was a Jedi so we could go hog wild with it. Also, the GM instituted several much-needed house rules, like giving characters +1 wound point per character level so that PCs had a prayer of surviving critical hits.
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  8. - Top - End - #158
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    There are a bunch of little niche fangames where the entire draw is that you get to play in the universe of an established media franchise, and as such, they tend to skimp out heavily on the whole "make the game actually fun" part, since they assume you're supplying the fun by just seeing the franchise name.

    To be more specific, this is a Star Wars post. I don't remember what the system was actually called, though.

  9. - Top - End - #159
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tectorman View Post
    My worst tabletop RPG experience would have to be with Iron Kingdoms, with the caveats that my only experience was as a GM and that the bulk of my issues were that I didn't know what to do or expect and didn't feel like the rulebooks gave good guidance in that regard.

    I started out with D&D (3.5 and onwards), so I'm familiar with the idea of an XP budget for an encounter. I'm also familiar with the idea of mooks, regular bad guys, and boss monsters, and the key difference being how much of a grind they're meant to be (kobolds are mooks/one-shot dead, orcs are regular/few hits dead, and trolls are boss/all party members need to attack for a few turns; adjust of course for level).

    But with Iron Kingdoms, I didn't know if I was doing my job right. How many bad guys do I put out at a time and how do I tell the difference between fodder and monsters with staying power? Not to mention the gameplay of how damage is resolved. It felt like (on both sides of the screen) things were too swingy; you might hit or not and the damage might be entirely mitigated or drop the recipient (not a problem for mooks, but I didn't think I was using mook bad guys). Iron Kingdoms had a decent number of feats or edges or whatever they're called to do things besides straight damage, but when there's no semi-predictable grind for bad guys to go from pristine to hurt to down, if just seems like so much wasted text.

    Which is a shame because I liked a lot of what the gameplay looked like it was doing, so maybe it was a matter of execution (not that I know whose execution did thr failing).
    I actually enjoyed that game, but I agree with you; it did not have very much guidance for the GM at all, and the encounter building is probably best eyeballed based on party composition, which is in turn based on the party's system mastery.

    The good thing is it does bounded accuracy much better than 5e, since it uses 2d6 as the base mechanic and that produces a natural curve. Like, my gobber pistoleer had meh soak but high defense, so he could usually run around shooting things without too much trouble, but if something actually connected more than once or twice I was in trouble. Otoh, our human man-at-arms took almost every hit but tanked almost all of the damage.

    It also paid to realize there was a death spiral, since as your aspects fill up you suffer fairly severe penalties. It took some of our group a while to notice that. Otoh, once players could target npc aspects, that made monsters a lot easier to deal with.

    It also would have really helped if there had been more non-combat stuff to use. All those spells were all focused on combat to one extent or another, would it have killed them to add out of combat utility spells and slots for those?

    In the end, the GM ran out of their published materials, and decided to end the campaign and go back to 5e. And if course, the new version of the IKRPG is going to be 5e, with a Kickstarter in Q1 21. Which is appropriate, since it started with 3e.

  10. - Top - End - #160

    Default Re: Worst Tabletop RPG

    Quote Originally Posted by Kazyan View Post
    There are a bunch of little niche fangames where the entire draw is that you get to play in the universe of an established media franchise, and as such, they tend to skimp out heavily on the whole "make the game actually fun" part, since they assume you're supplying the fun by just seeing the franchise name.
    Beyond that, established universes often also have problems that make them bad TTRPG settings. The needs of single-author fiction are fundamentally different from the needs of multi-author fiction, and established universes are often structured around a single story that is of finite scope. This is one of the big problems LotR games have. The story of LotR is A) complete and B) not about your characters, which makes it difficult to write a satisfying LotR game.

  11. - Top - End - #161
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    Default Re: Worst Tabletop RPG

    Quote Originally Posted by Kazyan View Post
    There are a bunch of little niche fangames where the entire draw is that you get to play in the universe of an established media franchise, and as such, they tend to skimp out heavily on the whole "make the game actually fun" part, since they assume you're supplying the fun by just seeing the franchise name.

    To be more specific, this is a Star Wars post. I don't remember what the system was actually called, though.
    I've seen some surprisingly good systems as well where fans have tried to stimulate a setting with as few rules as possible, especially if the makers do iterate in the design over time. It tends to be those that yeast the setting as a starting point, and going ' this is meant to let you okay games like Magical Dream Ship, bit but actually play the story of Magical Dream Ship'.

    But they are rarer than systems which just use 'you can play Magical Dream Ship'.

    It's also why Call of Cthulhu works better when you're not playing it as a purist. Humourously Lovecraft's works are so well known that they don't work for true Lovecraftian horror anymore (Lovecraftian Science Fiction still works, but you can argue how well).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

  12. - Top - End - #162
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    Quote Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley View Post
    Beyond that, established universes often also have problems that make them bad TTRPG settings. The needs of single-author fiction are fundamentally different from the needs of multi-author fiction, and established universes are often structured around a single story that is of finite scope. This is one of the big problems LotR games have. The story of LotR is A) complete and B) not about your characters, which makes it difficult to write a satisfying LotR game.
    Well it's difficult if you ignore the plain possibility of players playing members of the Fellowship, like you do in, you know, myriad LotR games that are not roleplaying games.

    The only reason for roleplayers to neglect such obvious solution is because they have The Stupid about playing established characters.
    Last edited by Vahnavoi; 2020-12-02 at 09:25 AM.

  13. - Top - End - #163
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    Quote Originally Posted by NigelWalmsley View Post
    Beyond that, established universes often also have problems that make them bad TTRPG settings. The needs of single-author fiction are fundamentally different from the needs of multi-author fiction, and established universes are often structured around a single story that is of finite scope. This is one of the big problems LotR games have. The story of LotR is A) complete and B) not about your characters, which makes it difficult to write a satisfying LotR game.
    I have never played a LotR RPG (even CRPG, though I have played other PC games set in Middle-Earth) but I have known people who role-played (both TT and LA) the Tolkien's setting. The most obvious problem is the laser focus on LotR game instead of Middle-Earth game. Middle-earth can accommodate much more, just like a historical game is incredibly broader idea than the First Crusade (or Norman Conquest, or whatnot).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Well it's difficult if you ignore the plain possibility of players playing members of the Fellowship, like you do in, you know, myriad LotR games that are not roleplaying games.

    The only reason for roleplayers to neglect such obvious solution is because they have The Stupid about playing established characters.
    Creating your own character is part of what role-playing is about for many people. Playing pre-established characters with known destinies takes a lot of the fun out of creating your own story.

    MERP set most of its action more than a thousand years before the end of the Third Age. They also took liberties with allowing more spellcasters in the game. You could meet a Ringwraith an interact with some of the characters in the appendices, and that was about it.

    The One Ring sets its action between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, so the players can meet characters like Radagast, Beorn, Bard, or even Bilbo or a very young Aragorn, but the Ring is hidden in the Shire throughout the period the game covers. There is an excellent campaign called the Darkening of Mirkwood that runs through about 30 years of history and involves the players doing all sorts of significant things to slow down the advance of the Shadow. Sure, they won't be in the Fellowship trying to destroy the Ring, but my players enjoyed it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    Creating your own character is part of what role-playing is about for many people. Playing pre-established characters with known destinies takes a lot of the fun out of creating your own story.
    This so much. I'd have absolutely zero interest in a game where I'd be playing such a well-established character, that would take all the fun out of RPGing for me.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    Creating your own character is part of what role-playing is about for many people.
    I get that. It's not, however, fundamental to actually making or playing a roleplaying game.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    Playing pre-established characters with known destinies takes a lot of the fun out of creating your own story.
    But the destiny of those characters is not necessarily known in context of a game.

    You know the Ring is thrown into Mount Doom in the book. But if you take basically any board game (for example) where you play Frodo and friends, getting the Ring to Mount Doom hinges on your active effort, skill and luck. Frodo as played by you might never get there. Sometimes, you get unlucky and Sauron wins. Sometimes, you really do die in Shelob's lair and Samwise has to make the final stretch on his own. So on and so forth.

    Even if you manage to replicate the book's events exactly, acting as Frodo (etc.) can still be as rewarding as, well, acting as Frodo in a play or movie. A lot of people would like to do that. It wouldn't be hard to implement on a tabletop.

  17. - Top - End - #167
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    I get that. It's not, however, fundamental to actually making or playing a roleplaying game.



    But the destiny of those characters is not necessarily known in context of a game.

    You know the Ring is thrown into Mount Doom in the book. But if you take basically any board game (for example) where you play Frodo and friends, getting the Ring to Mount Doom hinges on your active effort, skill and luck. Frodo as played by you might never get there. Sometimes, you get unlucky and Sauron wins. Sometimes, you really do die in Shelob's lair and Samwise has to make the final stretch on his own. So on and so forth.

    Even if you manage to replicate the book's events exactly, acting as Frodo (etc.) can still be as rewarding as, well, acting as Frodo in a play or movie. A lot of people would like to do that. It wouldn't be hard to implement on a tabletop.
    The problem is that there is a significant difference between board games and rpgs. In a board game, the focus is entirely on mechanics. What you're trying to achieve is irrelevant; all that matters is how you achieve it, whether or not the game, itself, is fun. One of my favorite games is centered on the concept of being a city planner, and I can scarcely imagine a more boring job. Yet, that doesn't matter because you're not trying to live the life of a city planner. You're acquiring and organizing tiles to synergize with one another and earn you points. It's basically a competitive puzzle game, and that's fun regardless of the coat of paint used.

    An rpg, however, puts the focus on character, reaction, interaction, and decision-making. So, you know, playing a role. One of the main draws of an rpg is, inherently, customization and choice. If you are handed a pre-existing character with a pre-defined personality and a pre-determined fate, what is left for you to role play? You're just filling a seat in a pictureless movie. Now, sure, if the mechanics of the game are good, you can still have fun with those, but that's not roleplaying; that's playing a tactical combat game with extra steps. Of course, those games can be fun, but you didn't come here for that; you came to roleplay.
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    From having participated in am dram, I can see how it could be fun. It's not why I pay RPGs, if I wanted to follow a script while improvising occasional lines and set pieces I'd find a really terrible play to be in.

    Now purely mechanical pretend can be fine, but they're generally not the kinds of build I want to play.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    I get that. It's not, however, fundamental to actually making or playing a roleplaying game.
    I'm not so sure. It might in fact be fundamental. Are there any successful RPGs that don't include some form of character generation rules? I can't think of one that doesn't, even games like TSR's Marvel Superheroes, where the main attraction was to play a pre-established character and the modules all assumed you would.

    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    You know the Ring is thrown into Mount Doom in the book. But if you take basically any board game (for example) where you play Frodo and friends, getting the Ring to Mount Doom hinges on your active effort, skill and luck. Frodo as played by you might never get there. Sometimes, you get unlucky and Sauron wins. Sometimes, you really do die in Shelob's lair and Samwise has to make the final stretch on his own. So on and so forth.

    Even if you manage to replicate the book's events exactly, acting as Frodo (etc.) can still be as rewarding as, well, acting as Frodo in a play or movie. A lot of people would like to do that. It wouldn't be hard to implement on a tabletop.
    Granted, such activities can be fun, but as others have already pointed out, they are a different sort of activity from an RPG.
    A board game where you play the Fellowship is not quite the same experience as an RPG where you play the Fellowship. Your actions are restricted to what is possible in the rather limited engine of the board game.
    There are no RPGs I know of that have fixed scripts that you have to play out in their entirety as with a play or movie. Acting can indeed be fun and challenging, and improvisational acting is almost the same thing as playing a character in an RPG, but not quite.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    I'm not so sure. It might in fact be fundamental. Are there any successful RPGs that don't include some form of character generation rules? I can't think of one that doesn't, even games like TSR's Marvel Superheroes, where the main attraction was to play a pre-established character and the modules all assumed you would.
    I mean, one of the best ways to start a fight in smaller RPG communities is to ask whether Marvel Heroic Roleplay has a character generation system.

    More generally - there are a lot of RPG campaigns that come pre-packaged with existing characters, who have tie-ins to the storyline in the campaign. For all intents and purposes, that's a situation in which both the characters and the campaign are the same outline for everyone. These campaigns frequently include the main adventure path or quickstart for a lot of big players, including the D&D starter sets and most White Wolf products. I would hesitate to say that you're not roleplaying if you play The Lost Mines of Phandelver.
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  21. - Top - End - #171
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    Quote Originally Posted by Friv View Post
    I mean, one of the best ways to start a fight in smaller RPG communities is to ask whether Marvel Heroic Roleplay has a character generation system.
    I did qualify my statement with "successful".

    More generally - there are a lot of RPG campaigns that come pre-packaged with existing characters, who have tie-ins to the storyline in the campaign. For all intents and purposes, that's a situation in which both the characters and the campaign are the same outline for everyone. These campaigns frequently include the main adventure path or quickstart for a lot of big players, including the D&D starter sets and most White Wolf products. I would hesitate to say that you're not roleplaying if you play The Lost Mines of Phandelver.
    The games those specific sets tie into do have character generation rules, even if the actual starter boxed set doesn't.

  22. - Top - End - #172
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    Default Re: Worst Tabletop RPG

    All RPGs I know have character creation rules, but plenty are made with the idea of supporting playing existing characters as well.

    Like, for example, Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine has a whole cast of very detailed characters that you can and are kind of expected to play if you're doing the official "modules". These include the titular Chuubo (a boy who made a Wish Granting Engine), Jade Irinka (who is the actual Sun), Leonardo de Montreal (a mad scientist with the DRAMA dial stuck at 12), and etcetera. Much of the writing for these supplements kind of assumes you're playing them.

    And outside of the more "standard" dice throwing, I've been in plenty of roleplays with pre-existing characters. One, for example, was a years-long game based on Super Robot Wars. If you know Super Robot Wars, the whole fun of the games is taking a bunch of preexisting mecha characters, throwing them together, putting them in a new situation, and seeing what comes out. So a lot of the fun is, in fact, in playing characters that already do exist, and trying to think how they'd react to different situations.

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    Default Re: Worst Tabletop RPG

    Quote Originally Posted by Jason View Post
    I did qualify my statement with "successful".
    Well, in that case I think I have several questions before I can give you a satisfactory answer.

    #1: What's your bar for "successful"?

    I would have thought of MHRP as a 'successful' RPG; it only ran for a year, but it put out five books, won five awards, and still has a community to this day. Are we limiting ourselves to 'games that put out books for several years' as a successful measure, or are one-time books that sold well highly counted?

    #2: What's your bar for "character generation"?

    Is it sufficient to have a playbook that asks a couple of questions for you and places you in an archetype, or do you need to be able to make a major mechanical or story decision? If you have set characters as the default, with optional rules at the back for players who like that kind of thing, does that count, or does any form of generation render the game invalid?

    #3: What's your bar for "RPG"?

    Do you consider "How to Host a Mystery" to be an RPG? I kind of would, but that's a topic rife with disagreement as well. What about games like Ghost Court, where the players are taking on specific roles with specific goals but played out as much like a party game as like a more traditional one-shot?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Friv View Post
    #3: What's your bar for "RPG"?

    What about "Actual Cannibal Shia LaBeouf"?
    Last edited by Saint-Just; 2020-12-02 at 05:51 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Friv View Post
    Well, in that case I think I have several questions before I can give you a satisfactory answer.
    I'm tempted to say "we're already in a thread that is almost entirely subjective with it's 'worst' criteria, use your own bars," but I'm willing to say what I think might be acceptable criteria.

    #1: What's your bar for "successful"?
    Hmmm. How about a game with any two of the following: Widely played in its day, had material produced for it for more than one year, had more than three books produced for it.

    I don't generally consider awards to be useful criteria for "successful".
    A game that only ever had one book produced for it and was still widely played for years might be considered "successful", but I can't think of such a game.

    #2: What's your bar for "character generation"?
    Off the top of my head: The player must be able to make decisions about the character he or she will be playing in the game that are more than cosmetic. That is, they must result in real mechanical benefits or drawbacks in the game. And the player should be able to make at least some cosmetic decisions as well.

    Entirely cosmetic choices like "which Monopoly token do I play" don't count.
    Entirely random character generation that does have a definite mechanical effect on the game, like drawing a card to determine if you are the murderer, doesn't count. There has to be some player choice.
    Having pre-existing characters available ready for play is acceptable, as long as there is also a system to create your own.

    #3: What's your bar for "RPG"?
    A game that uses a human game master/referee as the ultimate arbitrator of the rules, does not require physical props or maps (but can use them) beyond one or more randomizers like dice or cards to determine success. It tells a story and allows the players to make decisions that affect the outcome of the story. For starters.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Celestia View Post
    The problem is that there is a significant difference between board games and rpgs. In a board game, the focus is entirely on mechanics. What you're trying to achieve is irrelevant; all that matters is how you achieve it, whether or not the game, itself, is fun.
    You're getting sidetracked by a distinction that doesn't actually matter. RPGs can and frequently do have mechanical depth and framework to board games, and more involved board games (including some LotR games) start to approach roleplaying games in intricacy. Crossing mechanics between board games and roleplaying games has never been a big issue.

    Quote Originally Posted by Celestia View Post
    An rpg, however, puts the focus on character, reaction, interaction, and decision-making. So, you know, playing a role. One of the main draws of an rpg is, inherently, customization and choice. If you are handed a pre-existing character with a pre-defined personality and a pre-determined fate , what is left for you to role play?
    The entire actual trip to Mount Doom. I slashed over "pre-determined fate" because the single most important point I'm making here is that playing established characters doesn't require exact replication of the actions they take in source material, consequently meaning their fate can differ based on what players do in a game.

    The basic premise of a roleplaying game is that a player decides from viewpoint of a specific character what to do in a virtual scenario, and how, and why. The basic concept and process of play doesn't change just because the character was not made by their player. The basic concept and process of play doesn't need to change either just because the scenario is familiar.

    This shouldn't be so hard to grasp.

    ---

    @Jason:

    Video game industry says hi.

    I know there are a lot of tabletop gamers who are irrationally opposed to the idea of CRPGs actually succeesing at being RPGs. I don't know if you are one of those, I'm bringing them up just to point out how their opinions don't matter on this point. The genre of CRPGs was founded on emulating tabletop games to whatever degree computers just could. This includes character customization. Plenty of CRPGs, going to the very dawn of computer games, offer custom character creation as intricate as any tabletop game.

    However, somewhere along the line, more strongly predetermined characters were introduced to the genre, like in, to give one example, the Baldur's Gate series. These didn't make CRPGs unsuccesfull or unrecognizable as a genre, on the contrary many of them became beloved selling points for their franchises, and so in the video game world, premade and custom characters both happily exist.

    Because, again, the actual process of play doesn't change and doesn't need to change because the characters are set and the situation is familiar. The player still needs to make decisions. They have to, with their own brain and skill, think of who their character is and what they should do in any given situation. They have to form opinions and take actions, and again, if they make a mistake somewhere, knowing how things went in the source material will no longer tell them exactly how things will go in the game, and they will have to use their own understanding of their character and the situation to perform in their roles, exactly as they would with a custom character.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    @Jason:
    Video game industry says hi.
    Video games are almost RPGs. They'll have reached that point when artificial intelligence reaches the point where the GM can allow the players the same freedom they have in a table-top RPG.
    A good GM in a tabletop game can deal with literally anything the players can come up with.
    Video games are still limited by what the programmers thought to include as options.

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    Human GMs often can't deal with anything their players could come up with - that is the chief reason for common pitfalls in tabletop scenario design, chiefly, railroading.

    There have been video games for almost three decades now with branching game paths which allow a player to have more impact on the course of the game than railroading GMs allow players to have on the tabletop. If the standard for being an RPG hinges on having an answer to anything, many human held games fail to qualify and contemporary computer games outdo them.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
    Human GMs often can't deal with anything their players could come up with - that is the chief reason for common pitfalls in tabletop scenario design, chiefly, railroading.

    There have been video games for almost three decades now with branching game paths which allow a player to have more impact on the course of the game than railroading GMs allow players to have on the tabletop. If the standard for being an RPG hinges on having an answer to anything, many human held games fail to qualify and contemporary computer games outdo them.
    The best human GMs provide far more player freedom than a CRPG can at this point. The worst human GMs do not.

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    Default Re: Worst Tabletop RPG

    The worst GMs were outdone by computers at latest by 1992 when Star Control 2: Ur-Quan Masters was published, and even today it'd take a pretty good human GM to do Star Control 2 equivalent. I'll be holding that as a benchmark for a simple computer game that qualifies as a roleplaying game.

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