What are the Top 3 Things that Draw YOU to an RPG?

[Easy e]

Greetings all,

As I spend more and more time trying to understand what games people like to play and why, I realize more and more that I have no idea what people like to play! Therefore, I am interested in the top 3 things that draw your attention and make you want to play a RPG? What are the things that grab you the most?

Of course, three is an arbitrary number but I want to put some limit on it. This is NOT a thread to dismiss or challenge other players preference, just a chance to lay out your preferences and why.

I will give it a shot to get the ball rolling:

1. Quick character design. I like to be able to have a new character made in about 10-15 minutes. Just enough for me to have a handle on who they are and then get into playing them. I am also not too broken up if they die, as a new character is only minutes away.

2. Games where the GM does not roll any dice, only the players roll dice. I find this speeds up game play a lot, and keeps the pace of the game moving, without making players feel like they have lost agency.

3. In my old age, I like to switch games fast and furiously; so I prefer easy to understand rules-lite systems. A lot of crunch just causes me to mix up the rules between games and editions of games.

[Xervous]

In no particular order

1. The system knows what it wants to do and tells you about it. This is lore, mechanics and design intent being presented to the user. For example, BitD wins on all three points, certain editions of Shadowrun would win on all 3 if not for %#$& decking. M&M3 is another great showing even though it’s not a specific setting, as it tells the users what it’s thematically good for, highlights pinch points, and talks about what use cases various rules are intended to address. WHFRP & Dark Heresy score highly for delivering intuitively on atmosphere.

5e D&D gets an F on lore and mechanics/design intent clarity. 3.5e gets an F on clarity and a B on lore.

2. Skewed curve dicepools. In short, I really like the math that comes out of dicepools.

3. Non storytelling system. I won’t play storytelling systems. Their structuring does not make happy brain chemicals. I want a living world before me as a player. If I want to pull on events at the meta level I’ll just settle back in as forever GM or write another post for the discord collab. It’s not a question of “what’s best for the story?” it’s “what would Henric do?” I’m roleplaying here.

[Tanarii]

Easy to run.
Easy to play.
Fast and tense combat.

[Ameraaaaaa]

1 rules light as hell. My only irl player/gm (depends on mood) is my 12 year old bro. For reference the longest system we have fun playing was knave at 7 pages long.

(sidenote We since switched to a homebrew system of mine where character creation is just a name and a class/profession/whatever-fits-the-setting and the only mechanic is roll a d100 roll under skill check with a dc of "how likely it'd be given the circumstances." So a marksmen shooting a moving target from 10 feet away might be like dc 80% or lower. Thinking of switching to flipping a coin and having advantage/disadvantage. Or a d4 with dc 2 being easy, dc 3 being average and dc 4 being hard. We keep it rules light.)

2 freeform traits. Like fate aspects or risus's traits. Makes it easy to use for any setting.

3 one player is capable of surving. Again i only have the one player.

[Telok]

Clarity and precision. Don't say a character is a "professional soldier" or "veteran of battles" or "heroic" when a guard dog is as or more dangerous in combat and focusing the entire character's skills & abilities makes them only 20% better than an untrained small child. Don't say "only roll when its important" without strong clear guidelines on what you mean by 'important'. State things clearly and plainly, honestly clearly and plainly. No weasel words about "all play styles are ok" or "just use plain English" when some styles really truely don't work for what the game purports to do and your rules are actually using special meaning keywords.

No damn fool multiple cross referencing. If I'm having to flip back and forth between spells, conditions, and combat sections just to figure out what your "ice slick" spell actually does then I'm out. No digging important general combat rules out of random gear descriptions. No having four damn things named "disentegrate" and using wildly different rules for all of them. Yeah, no. I might accept a comprehensive cheat sheet with all that stuff in in one place, but it has to be in the actual rulebook and not some homemade thing off in an obscure corner of the internet.

Make hard choices. I want to be conflicted because there are several good options for something but no best options for it. There shouldn't be a single way to be good at skills, or one choice that lets you cherry pick all the best spells, or one true way to be actually any good & relevant in a particular area. There shouldn't a single area of character ability that's so head and shoulders above the others that being a bit below average in that one thing makes a character a drag on the game. There's narrow exceptions to this of course. But a game needs to be intentionally making specific exceptions, not just accidentally violating this point because the designers didn't bother to think.

[Pauly]

1) Logically consistent reality based rules. For me D&D is only fun in the lower levels, but the higher levels get ridiculous. I’m not anti-magic or anti-future tech or anything like that, but there has to be some grounding. I look at rules like Exalted and see nothing in it for me.
Examples: Traveller, Call of Cthulhu

2) A setting that is fun to play in. Original Space 1889 rules were bit of a mess but the setting was so much fun it’s still my all time favorite setting.
Examples: Deadlands, L5R (haven’t played L5R but I have recently looked at it and has elements that speak to me).

3) What Telok said. Which I will summarize as professionally edited rules.
Examples: Anything published by Avalon Hill.

4) A game that knows what it is. The game puts focus on its core concepts but lets you fast forward through the bits that aren’t so important.
Examples: Gumshoe with its focus on investigation. D&D with a focus on providing a bland generic western European inspired fantasy.

[SimonMoon6]

(1) Games that can handle high-powered characters (heroes and villains) without the game falling apart.

For example, D&D 3.X does not do well at high levels. While you can technically make characters of really high power levels, the game just doesn't work at those levels. It's too complicated, there are too many fiddly bits, it's too hard to tell if one 30th level character is balanced well enough to fight another 30th level character, and things tend to devolve into "rocket tag". GURPS is another game that struggles with high power levels. Technically, you can use GURPS Supers to make superheroes, but... no, just don't. The game is fine for normal non-powered people, but super powerful (or even super skilled) people can just make the game curl up and die.

A game that does well at high levels is Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG. While ordinary people can function as characters, you can also have characters in the game with the powers of Superman (either post-Crisis or pre-Crisis, it doesn't matter, the game can easily handle those power levels).

(2) Games that can create a wide variety of characters.

Generally, the things I look at are "how well does the game handle shape-changing characters" and "how well does the game handle 'meta' powers".

For shape-changing, I'm looking for more than Mystique-style "turning into another person". At a minimum, the game needs to handle Beast Boy style "turn into any animal" powers... without it being a Champions-style nightmare of building every possible animal that you might turn into with its own character sheet (animals should already have their own stats in the game... you shouldn't have to create them yourself). But beyond that, I'm also looking at "turn into animate versions of inanimate objects" along the lines of Plastic Man or the Metal Men. Or turn into any shape. Or even the classic "just turn my arm into a weapon" along the lines of what Metamorpho would sometimes do. And these should all be easy in the game system. It shouldn't be a burden to have to use those abilities. D&D 3.X has had issues with "polymorph" abilities. First, they were too powerful, so they got nerfed, but they were still too powerful, so they got nerfed again, and then Pathfinder nerfed them, until you're no longer turning into other creatures but are instead taking on the appearance of another creature, with some but not many of their physical abilities. So, that's no good. OTOH, Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG makes all of these abilities quick and easy to use, without being overpowered (or at least no more so than other powers).

For "meta" powers, I'm looking at those abilities that let you neutralize, copy, or steal (copy and neutralize at the same time) someone's else's abilities. D&D 3.X doesn't do that much (I mean, neutralize with anti-magic field... and there's a class called "spell thief" I guess). Champions makes the math to use powers like these into a nightmare. But Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG makes all such powers relatively easy to use.

(3) Games that can handle a wide variety of settings.

Usually, I don't need some game to have its own setting. I can make my own. And I might want to play a multi-genre sort of game. So, I want a game that doesn't have to be just one thing. If the setting is baked into the rules system, then I can't really use that game unless I want to use the setting. If the setting is trash, then the game is worthless if I can't remove the setting. Like, D&D 3.X doesn't really have a specific default setting (even if it is supposed to be Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms), but it still does have an implied setting where there are cities full of magic shops and you can not change that without destroying the balance (what little there is) in the game itself. No magic shops? Okay, fighters are useless (more than normal). A game that is neutral towards the setting or even suggests how to play in other settings is what I would prefer. Like GURPS can do any setting (just not high-powered ones), Champions can do any setting (but has a lot of math no matter what), and Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG even has rules for playing in settings that are more realistic than a typical superhero setting.

(4) The occasional quirky thing that appeals to me specifically.

Like, the original version of TORG had rules that made atheism just as powerful (or differently powerful) as belief in deities. So, an atheist character had a reason to exist in a world where divine magic could seem to be real. Unfortunately, the new version of TORG has removed that and the creators of the new TORG have made it very clear that they have no intention to ever add atheism back as a playable option.

Or, the original version of TORG had the possibility with exploding dice and an exponential/logarithmic scale to have all sorts of ridiculous things happen. One of my favorites was that when casting a spell, the duration could be based on how well you rolled. And if you rolled really well, a spell might last for years! But they removed that in the new version of TORG. :(

[Quertus]

Magic. Or to be more precise, the setting should feel Magical, full of wonder and mysteries to Discover. And, yeah, I should probably be playing a Wizard.

Internal Consistency. Rules first, everything just works and makes sense. The rules and the setting align. Thinking in character and thinking by the rules are the same thing, produce the same result.

Able to still be playing the same character 20 years from now.

[Kurt Kurageous]

Greetings all,

As I spend more and more time trying to understand what games people like to play and why, I realize more and more that I have no idea what people like to play! Therefore, I am interested in the top 3 things that draw your attention and make you want to play a RPG? What are the things that grab you the most?

Of course, three is an arbitrary number but I want to put some limit on it. This is NOT a thread to dismiss or challenge other players preference, just a chance to lay out your preferences and why.

I will give it a shot to get the ball rolling:

1. Quick character design. I like to be able to have a new character made in about 10-15 minutes. Just enough for me to have a handle on who they are and then get into playing them. I am also not too broken up if they die, as a new character is only minutes away.

2. Games where the GM does not roll any dice, only the players roll dice. I find this speeds up game play a lot, and keeps the pace of the game moving, without making players feel like they have lost agency.

3. In my old age, I like to switch games fast and furiously; so I prefer easy to understand rules-lite systems. A lot of crunch just causes me to mix up the rules between games and editions of games.

Have you heard of the latest version of 'Kobolds Ate My Baby'? I see a high correlation with that and your list. And I agree 100% with your list.

Because I usually DM, I like flexible resolution mechanics that are easy for both players and me to consistently use, but does not tie me to always using them.

I like worldbuilding that doesn't come with a whole new set of rules I have to implement.

I also like player options that are easy to understand and are consistent with the core mechanic. Things like Ki points, sorc spell points in a vanican system, and the like annoy me. One way to run them all.

I like games that have book-keeping (weight and encumbrance) and accountancy (coin counting) mini-games. And I hate mini-games with their own rules (dino races) that only apply that one time in that one place...

I like games that have a distinct feel to them. One of my long time favorites was Basic Action Superhero (BASH) that was generic in representation enough to run everything from nonmagical to fantasy/scifi. It felt like the comic book it wanted to be.

[NichG]

1. I want the act of playing them to be transformational to me the player - I learn something, I explore something I couldn't otherwise, I understand something from a new point of view, I experience a new feeling I had not previously experienced, I gain some kind of insight.

2. I want to be able to engage in very high abstraction levels of open-ended exploration and discovery, in the sense that I don't want to know upon reading the rules 'what the game can possibly be about'. The game doesn't have to provide that structure to be discovered (it could come from the game prompting the GM as to how to create that structure at need, for example), but its best for me if the game doesn't get in the way of making the world feel connected, real, and worth asking questions about. For example, the 'wrought iron cage made of tigers' philosophy of 4e's design in keeping combat and non-combat things strongly siloed, with fireballs not lighting things on fire and so on, doesn't appeal to me. Whereas a game that lets me say e.g. 'okay, there's a lot of combat stuff in the rules, but I want to dig deeply into the economy of how mithril is produced and try to run a mining company' or 'I want to research why there are the schools of magic that there are, and try to come up with a grand unified theory of magic' or 'I'd like to try my hand at ruling a territory' or 'I'd like to find a mate and settle down and farm' is great for me, even if the game doesn't 'support' those things strongly out of the box.

3. I'm not particularly interested in the drama of randomness, challenge, or balance all that much - that is to say, the sorts of push back or 'difficulty' that I'm interested in have to do with mental engagement with the scenarios of the game and not things like feeling threatened, feeling like I'm taking risks, feeling like the outcome is uncertain etc. That doesn't mean all randomness must be removed, but I much prefer a design model in which randomness is a stand in for incomplete information in scenarios than in which its being used to ensure that there's tension.

[Quertus]

For example, the 'wrought iron cage made of tigers' philosophy of 4e's design in keeping combat and non-combat things strongly siloed, with fireballs not lighting things on fire and so on, doesn't appeal to me.

OK, you had me even before this was a 4e comment - what is a 'wrought iron cage made of tigers'?

[NichG]

OK, you had me even before this was a 4e comment - what is a 'wrought iron cage made of tigers'?

It was a way people referred to 4e design philosophy to not let the fiction of an ability mean that its combat functions would imply noncombat uses. So like, 'fireball is a combat AoE damage effect, it doesn't actually produce fire, or heat, or light, or allow you to get through a paper walled house during a skill challenge. Just because you have a ritual that lets you fly out of combat, doesn't mean you can fly in combat. Just because you have a move that shouts the dead back to life in battle doesn't mean you can save someone bleeding out during a surgery. Etc.

I take the nonsensical description to be tacit approval of the separation even when it makes no sense for a coherent fiction.

[Pex]

In no particular order:

1) The game mechanics - how things work.

2) I get to do cool stuff without the game punishing me for doing it.

3) The campaign itself is fun to play in - The DM, other players, the plot.

[RedWarlock]

1. Mechanical complexity. I LIKE more widgets to fiddle. They can have default, minimum options, but if you can combine three different subsystems effectively, I'd like to see it.

2. Nonhuman capacity. I don't just mean a dozen kinds of multicolored humans with different earns/noses, I want to see flying races, non-humanoid PCs, larger AND smaller. In a D&D-style setting, I want ogres, werewolves, centaurs, pixies, and awakened sugar gliders. I don't want them to be kneecapped to a humanoid standard in the translation from the monster to the PC, because of arbitrary PC restrictions, and that includes VIABLE AND UNIQUE variation in species attributes, not just "and pick your two +2s".

3. Customizable mechanics that actually represent the powers they claim to present, with actual variety. PC-class shapeshifters, summoners, etc, who can do something ENTIRELY different from another PC of the same class without being hobbled.

[Quertus]

It was a way people referred to 4e design philosophy to not let the fiction of an ability mean that its combat functions would imply noncombat uses. So like, 'fireball is a combat AoE damage effect, it doesn't actually produce fire, or heat, or light, or allow you to get through a paper walled house during a skill challenge. Just because you have a ritual that lets you fly out of combat, doesn't mean you can fly in combat. Just because you have a move that shouts the dead back to life in battle doesn't mean you can save someone bleeding out during a surgery. Etc.

I take the nonsensical description to be tacit approval of the separation even when it makes no sense for a coherent fiction.

Wait, you mean the phrase was invented for and because of 4e? That explaining its meaning in the context of 4e actually explains the phrase? I mean, I figured with such evocative imagery, there had to be a cool story behind it, I just never imagined it would be so germane to my interests. Sounds like it would be out of character for me to not add this to my lexicon, then.

[NichG]

Wait, you mean the phrase was invented for and because of 4e? That explaining its meaning in the context of 4e actually explains the phrase? I mean, I figured with such evocative imagery, there had to be a cool story behind it, I just never imagined it would be so germane to my interests. Sounds like it would be out of character for me to not add this to my lexicon, then.

I think I first heard someone use it on these forums, but unfortunately I don't remember who (or if they were quoting one of the designers or something), but yeah, it was in the context of explaining how 4e's approach was philosophically different.

Edit: Aha, I got it wrong. It was instead 'wrought iron fence made of tigers', and I guess there was an ENWorld post. https://www.enworld.org/threads/a-wr...tigers.241646/

[Atranen]

1. The system knows what it wants to do and tells you about it. This is lore, mechanics and design intent being presented to the user. For example, BitD wins on all three points, certain editions of Shadowrun would win on all 3 if not for %#$& decking. M&M3 is another great showing even though it’s not a specific setting, as it tells the users what it’s thematically good for, highlights pinch points, and talks about what use cases various rules are intended to address. WHFRP & Dark Heresy score highly for delivering intuitively on atmosphere.

5e D&D gets an F on lore and mechanics/design intent clarity. 3.5e gets an F on clarity and a B on lore.

This is top of my list as well. I'm interested in a pretty diverse range of systems -- 5E, heavy combat rulesets like lancer, fast dungeon crawl OSR games, Blades or PbtA games, and the one unifying thing is that the game knows what it wants to be.

I see that via the mechanics supporting the narrative, regardless of what that might be. In OSR, you're investigating dangerous places and die easily--so you have wandering monsters and chargen is fast. In Lancer, you are in a massive mech duking it out with other massive mechs, and so the combat rules are evocative and heavy and the narrative ones light.

To add to this, players and a DM who are interested in the narrative style the game supports. Don't shove a square peg into a round hole; if your group wants a light dungeon crawler, ditch 5e. If your group wants a heist game, play Blades or some hack of it.

I guess that's 1. For the others:

2) A designer and a community I want to support. This might be the biggest one for me. I don't love 5e, but it's got a great (and, crucially, an accessible) community in a way other games don't. They just don't have the same name recognition and that's a barrier to new players. Other games have better or worse communities for what they do as well.

3) Accessible rules. I have a lot of different systems I like playing, so something that's easy to pick up (or at least has pdfs I can get for cheap online) is a big plus.

[Kurald Galain]

(1) Mechanical diversity between characters; this is most apparent in combat but it isn't only about combat. 3E and PF are good examples of this; another system that does it well is Aberrant. A game doesn't even have to be rules-heavy to do this well, but surprisingly some rules-heavy games manage to fail at it.

(2) If your character is skilled at something, the rules back this up. Don't give me such nonsense as "you're the world-class expert so you're a whopping ten percent better at skill checks than your teammates!" or "you're already a superhero at level one and you have to roll to see if you can climb a tree!" This is part of alignment between setting and rules. I suppose I'm also against "you can heal people in combat but not out of combat!" and such, but that really only applies to 4E, doesn't it?

(3) A grand overarching plot and feeling of depth to the setting, with (optional) background material on factions or history whenever you want to look into that. Old-style World of Darkness is famous for this, and I find Pathfinder's organized play program comes close; I haven't really seen this anywhere else. The deep feeling that the world is actually bigger than your party is hard to create.

[Pauly]

Just to reverse it, top 3 things that will drive me away from a game. Trying hard to not just put the opposites of top 3 things hat draw me in.

1) Angst. RPGs are something I do in my precious free time for fun. Anything that’s too angsty depressed or emo will get a hard no from me.

2) Ambiguous outcomes. It doesn’t have to be binary yes/no, but I want the decision -> action -> resolution cycle to be fast and clean so the game can move on.

3) Amateur art. I know the author’s girlfriend’s mother says she’s a really talented artist, but nothing kills my interest faster than some dodgy line art done by someone with no sense of perspective.

[noob]

I am extremely surprised that no one mentioned "the presence of a playerbase" as a thing that draws them toward an rpg.

[animorte]

I am extremely surprised that no one mentioned "the presence of a playerbase" as a thing that draws them toward an rpg.

That was definitely mentioned in different words:

2) A designer and a community I want to support. This might be the biggest one for me. I don't love 5e, but it's got a great (and, crucially, an accessible) community in a way other games don't. They just don't have the same name recognition and that's a barrier to new players. Other games have better or worse communities for what they do as well.

I may have missed another example.

[Xervous]

I am extremely surprised that no one mentioned "the presence of a playerbase" as a thing that draws them toward an rpg.

It’s a bit more nuanced than that. A player base (at all), a medium sized player base, a large player base, a player base in my RL local area. I’d only be mildly concerned about the first one because my main obstacle as a forever GM is time.

[Telok]

I am extremely surprised that no one mentioned "the presence of a playerbase" as a thing that draws them toward an rpg.

If I want a game enough I make a player base. Advertising can sell anything to someone.

Hmm. I'm wondering if I can go back and squeeze in "doesn't suffer major fridge logic fails mid session on a regular basis" to my first post. Or maybe "the system flaws don't become some of our groups' running snark gags that crop up every session or two".

[EggKookoo]

Greetings all,

As I spend more and more time trying to understand what games people like to play and why, I realize more and more that I have no idea what people like to play! Therefore, I am interested in the top 3 things that draw your attention and make you want to play a RPG? What are the things that grab you the most?

1. Complexity where it should be; simplicity everywhere else. I don't have a preference for overall complexity. I don't mind a rules-heavy system. But the system should put complexity where it doesn't interfere with at-table gameplay. I'd be okay with a game that encourages me to refactor my PC periodically (leveling, extended downtime, etc.) but when the GM says "what do you do?" my choices should all be at my fingertips. Any at-play complexity should come from the scenario and/or environment, not from my PC sheet.
2. Mechanics that focus on player role. The GM is playing a different game, mechanically, than the players are. The game system should be designed like a user interface, where the tools presented to the GM are optimized for running encounters, playing NPCs, planning adventures, and so forth. The tools presented to the players should be optimized for PC detail, progression, customization/uniqueness, and so on. I decidedly do not like systems that try to force NPCs to function just like PCs (looking at you, D&D 3e), nor am I an adherent of the "rules as a physics engine" mindset.
3. Non-combat depth. D&D is the poster child here, but a lot of games provide tons and tons of detail for combat merchanics, while fast-talking your way past a guard is often a single pass/fail roll (if that). I expect a game to prioritize this kind of stuff, so I get that, say, combat will often have the most focus. I just want other interersting mechanical things to do than make attack rolls.

You didn't ask, but things that push me away from an RPG:

1. Dice pool systems... mostly. They can be done well, but usually they're not. I view them like movie reboots -- okay in principle but usually poorly-done. It's easy to create a system that is a headache to wrap my brain around as a GM. Here I'm talking mainly about stuff like the old WoD d10 system, not just a system that has you add multiple dice.
2. Single-die systems... mostly. Again, not that there's an intrinsic problem with a system that only uses d6s, or d10s, or whatever one die size. It's just that I don't find multiple dice sizes to be any kind of fundamental issue that's being solved by using only one. It's often touted as a quality feature, but it's not some kind of magic bullet that will fix a bad system.
3. Special custom dice: It just feels gimmicky to me. Or an attempt to "own" mechanics. While I can understand that, it's just not my thing, I guess.
4. Too derivative for no reason: This is less common nowadays, but in the years following the release of AD&D 1e, tons of games used a lot of D&D terminology or idioms for no obvious inherent reason. If your game has a "wisdom" attribute that basically means "perception," just call it "perception."

[noob]

1. Complexity where it should be; simplicity everywhere else. I don't have a preference for overall complexity. I don't mind a rules-heavy system. But the system should put complexity where it doesn't interfere with at-table gameplay. I'd be okay with a game that encourages me to refactor my PC periodically (leveling, extended downtime, etc.) but when the GM says "what do you do?" my choices should all be at my fingertips. Any at-play complexity should come from the scenario and/or environment, not from my PC sheet.
2. Mechanics that focus on player role. The GM is playing a different game, mechanically, than the players are. The game system should be designed like a user interface, where the tools presented to the GM are optimized for running encounters, playing NPCs, planning adventures, and so forth. The tools presented to the players should be optimized for PC detail, progression, customization/uniqueness, and so on. I decidedly do not like systems that try to force NPCs to function just like PCs (looking at you, D&D 3e), nor am I an adherent of the "rules as a physics engine" mindset.
3. Non-combat depth. D&D is the poster child here, but a lot of games provide tons and tons of detail for combat merchanics, while fast-talking your way past a guard is often a single pass/fail roll (if that). I expect a game to prioritize this kind of stuff, so I get that, say, combat will often have the most focus. I just want other interersting mechanical things to do than make attack rolls.

You didn't ask, but things that push me away from an RPG:

1. Dice pool systems... mostly. They can be done well, but usually they're not. I view them like movie reboots -- okay in principle but usually poorly-done. It's easy to create a system that is a headache to wrap my brain around as a GM. Here I'm talking mainly about stuff like the old WoD d10 system, not just a system that has you add multiple dice.
2. Single-die systems... mostly. Again, not that there's an intrinsic problem with a system that only uses d6s, or d10s, or whatever one die size. It's just that I don't find multiple dice sizes to be any kind of fundamental issue that's being solved by using only one. It's often touted as a quality feature, but it's not some kind of magic bullet that will fix a bad system.
3. Special custom dice: It just feels gimmicky to me. Or an attempt to "own" mechanics. While I can understand that, it's just not my thing, I guess.
4. Too derivative for no reason: This is less common nowadays, but in the years following the release of AD&D 1e, tons of games used a lot of D&D terminology or idioms for no obvious inherent reason. If your game has a "wisdom" attribute that basically means "perception," just call it "perception."

Using only 6 sided dice does solve a single issue: the availability of dice.
6 sided dice are way more common than other dices thanks to how many games uses them.
Coins are even more common(for non game reasons) so a rpg using those for randomness would be even more accessible.
However with a 30+ pages system you had to buy the issue of dice availability is moot since you are buying equipment and invest a lot of time to play anyway (basically it is not solving the start up difficulty problem).
Likewise you lose again the interest of dice availability if you require people to roll 20 six sided dice.
It is way too common for D6 based systems to both require you to roll 20 six sided dice but also require you to own a 30+ pages book of rules.

[EggKookoo]

Using only 6 sided dice does solve a single issue: the availability of dice.
6 sided dice are way more common than other dices thanks to how many games uses them.
Coins are even more common(for non game reasons) so a rpg using those for randomness would be even more accessible.

In practice, it doesn't make much difference to me. Dice are not difficult to get, and they last forever.

However with a 30+ pages system you had to buy the issue of dice availability is moot since you are buying equipment to play anyway (basically it is not solving the material problem).

Right. You're already forking over cash for the game itself. Dice aren't expensive and it's not like you need to get a new set for each new system.

[ngilop]

1: The artwork. If the art on the cover and inside as I quickly flip through it look a certain way it has one strike against it.

2: The character sheet. If I look at the character sheet and am not able to understand most of it, that's another strike.

3: The character creation rules. If the rules are not well written, confusing, or downright absurd, that is strike #3 and Its out.

[Atranen]

Using only 6 sided dice does solve a single issue: the availability of dice.
6 sided dice are way more common than other dices thanks to how many games uses them.
Coins are even more common(for non game reasons) so a rpg using those for randomness would be even more accessible.

I playtested a system recently that used playing cards for resolution; basically draw two cards from a deck to get a d% roll. The face cards were separated into a special deck you could draw from an activate as special abilities. Then you could swap the cards you drew or draw an extra card and replace if your character was skilled. The main motivation behind it was accessibility -- the designer said he knew people working with prisoners who wanted to introduce them to RPGs, and dice were a barrier but cards were not.

Anyway, it was a fun system and satisfied my criteria.

[NovenFromTheSun]

1. Bestiary. Whenever I get a new PDF the first thing I go for is its bestiary. This is the part that appeals to me both as a prospective player and GM, and if it fails to impress then my enthusiasm for the RPG quickly goes down.

2. Variety: I don’t want to be doing the same thing every session, in either side of the GM screen.

3. Player skill. As a player, I want the things I do while playing the game to have an effect on outcomes (combat or otherwise), not just my character sheet or the dice.

[Eldan]

These days, I care very little about basic mechanics in general. I have a dozen generic or close to generic systems and usually, I can port almost anything over if I don't like the rules.

Mostly, I care about interesting worldbuilding these days. And mechanics that interact with worldbuilding.