Irrational Hatreds in RPGs

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EmperorNorton

EmperorNorton

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You know, there is just something about some things. I have no logical reasons for them. I don't ever see a reason why anyone ELSE shouldn't like them. But for some reason, I can't stand them.

No idea why. No actual argument to be had about it. Any argument that other people had in favor of it I'd just kind of shrug because, well they aren't wrong but that doesn't stop my endless distaste for it.

The one that always jumps to mind for me is rolling percentile dice for anything other than things like treasure charts. I hate percentile skill systems.

Why? Fuck if I know. I just hate it. I'm sure that there are tons of really great games made with percentile rolls, but for some reason I just can't get over how much I dislike them.

So what are your irrational hatreds in RPGs? Not the ones that you have reasons for. That you can argue for. The ones that you have no real reason for other than that it makes you go eugh.
 
EmperorNorton said:
You know, there is just something about some things. I have no logical reasons for them. I don't ever see a reason why anyone ELSE shouldn't like them. But for some reason, I can't stand them.

No idea why. No actual argument to be had about it. Any argument that other people had in favor of it I'd just kind of shrug because, well they aren't wrong but that doesn't stop my endless distaste for it.

The one that always jumps to mind for me is rolling percentile dice for anything other than things like treasure charts. I hate percentile skill systems.

Why? Fuck if I know. I just hate it. I'm sure that there are tons of really great games made with percentile rolls, but for some reason I just can't get over how much I dislike them.

So what are your irrational hatreds in RPGs? Not the ones that you have reasons for. That you can argue for. The ones that you have no real reason for other than that it makes you go eugh.
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The whole Vampire/WoD line.
In the past 2nd edition D&D
Probably others.
 
Endless Flight said:
Irrational hate is too strong, really, but systems where characters have fewer than four attributes. An example would be all their physical ability (strength, speed, endurance, agility, coordination) being grouped in an attribute called Body.
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I think somewhere along the line D&D enforced this idea that 6 is the appropriate number of stats in my brain and if you go to far above or below that I have irrational fits.
 
EmperorNorton said:
The one that always jumps to mind for me is rolling percentile dice for anything other than things like treasure charts. I hate percentile skill systems.

Why? Fuck if I know. I just hate it. I'm sure that there are tons of really great games made with percentile rolls, but for some reason I just can't get over how much I dislike them.
Click to expand...

This makes me sad as you will never know the beauty of Mythras. If it helps, all dice systems are just percentiles with less transparency than actual percentiles.
 
There's two things for me. I wouldn't describe them as hatreds, neither are they irrational. But they annoy the crap out of me in RPGs. and in fantasy in general.

The first is time. Time scales in a lot of RPGs are way, way too long. Take a fairly standard amount of time 'before now' in RPGs. 10,000 years. That long ago was the end of the extinction event that saw off sabertooth cats, woolly mammoths and cave bears. Farming was just getting started in the Middle East and it's the mid point of the range for when the entire population of everyone alive today is directly descended from the entire population of everyone who was alive then.

In other words, it's an incomprehensibly long time ago.

So how come fantasy games have kingdoms that are that old? It's one of those things that bothers me. Especially with me living in an area that has sites dating back to the Neolithic, the iron age, the middle ages and the modern era dotted here there and everywhere. The range of dates RPGs use just seems unrealistic and excessive.

The other one is distance. An average person can walk 20-30 miles in a day. They could walk a couple of miles, go to the market town and walk home in half a day or so. Covering maybe 5-10 miles in the process. Armies could manage a smaller distance and still be able to camp up at the end of the day. Or fight if they had to. Harald Hadrada's 200 mile march from London to York, done at a rate of 20-25 miles a day, is considered a mighty feat.

So how come it's acceptable for towns to be that kind of distance apart in RPGs? Neverwinter to Luskan is about 150 miles. That's over a week's travel on foot. And according to the map, there's nothing in between. No towns, no sites of interest. Just a road. And 200 or so miles of Neverwinter Wood.

The scale is a good argument for the Realms being a Tippyverse. And it's far from the only setting that has this issue.
 
Joey2k said:
Real world names in fantasy adventures/settings. Nothing makes me feel like I'm still on earth as running into Prince William, Sir Robert, or Elizabeth the barmaid.
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Mine is the opposite. Hatred is too strong a word, but I'm annoyed by all the made-up fantasy names, which I often find difficult to remember, much less pronounce or spell. I'd much rather deal with Lord Bob than Lord Xzvy'thnk.
 
Stevethulhu said:
So how come it's acceptable for towns to be that kind of distance apart in RPGs?
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they don't show the many locations of KOFR, Kampground of Forgotten Realms

as for mine, I don't know that i'm going to get all super hatred here, but..
  • big dice pools, like most iterations of Shadowrun or WoD. Your odds are just not that different once you get to a point
  • Numenera's intrusion mechanic
    • First off, it's adversarial, right there in the name
    • secondly, they defined it like shit, and it took 3 iterations for them to get it clarified. Ironically, I really like Cortex's doom pool and opportunity, and they are very similar, except for the fact that one of them doesn't sound adversarial and scales what you can do with it.
 
TristramEvans said:
MY HAT OF 2D20 KNOW NO LIMIT
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42a405.jpeg
 
Stevethulhu said:
There's two things for me. I wouldn't describe them as hatreds, neither are they irrational. But they annoy the crap out of me in RPGs. and in fantasy in general.

The first is time. Time scales in a lot of RPGs are way, way too long. Take a fairly standard amount of time 'before now' in RPGs. 10,000 years. That long ago was the end of the extinction event that saw off sabertooth cats, woolly mammoths and cave bears. Farming was just getting started in the Middle East and it's the mid point of the range for when the entire population of everyone alive today is directly descended from the entire population of everyone who was alive then.

In other words, it's an incomprehensibly long time ago.

So how come fantasy games have kingdoms that are that old? It's one of those things that bothers me. Especially with me living in an area that has sites dating back to the Neolithic, the iron age, the middle ages and the modern era dotted here there and everywhere. The range of dates RPGs use just seems unrealistic and excessive.

The other one is distance. An average person can walk 20-30 miles in a day. They could walk a couple of miles, go to the market town and walk home in half a day or so. Covering maybe 5-10 miles in the process. Armies could manage a smaller distance and still be able to camp up at the end of the day. Or fight if they had to. Harald Hadrada's 200 mile march from London to York, done at a rate of 20-25 miles a day, is considered a mighty feat.

So how come it's acceptable for towns to be that kind of distance apart in RPGs? Neverwinter to Luskan is about 150 miles. That's over a week's travel on foot. And according to the map, there's nothing in between. No towns, no sites of interest
Click to expand...
I completely agree. The US is a good example of how towns and cities were actually spaced out. Since the US is relatively new and not overdeveloped like England, you can still see the pre Industrial logic in how they made cities. You would usually have towns along a road spaced around 10 miles from each other. This gave an overlap to the multitudes of villages and hamlets that they served and allowed a person on foot to travel to a market, conduct business and return home in a day. Cities then became a way for a nation to extend their reach and provide better services to the majority of their population which was rural.
Also, almost all of known Human history has happened within 4,ooo years. So to add to your gripe... an earth shaking event that happened 2k years in the worlds past would not continue to shape history. it would be a footnote and barely remembered. we have 30 generations every thousand years. That is a lot of time that passes. A Nation that is 40 years old will have 3 generations with grandparents telling their kids of unification and such. Look at how much has changed on Earth since WW2, let alone the Great War.


To the OP... my irrational hatred is for FATE. Screw that system, I am tired of having it propped up as the savior of gaming on every design thread asking for any advice at all. At this point, I don't even want to look at it or learn it. Just leave me alone about it.
 
I have something of an irrational dislike of percentile systems.

Not so much now. But historically I've been very dismissive of percentile stuff.
 
Stevethulhu said:
There's two things for me. I wouldn't describe them as hatreds, neither are they irrational. But they annoy the crap out of me in RPGs. and in fantasy in general.

The first is time. Time scales in a lot of RPGs are way, way too long. Take a fairly standard amount of time 'before now' in RPGs. 10,000 years. That long ago was the end of the extinction event that saw off sabertooth cats, woolly mammoths and cave bears. Farming was just getting started in the Middle East and it's the mid point of the range for when the entire population of everyone alive today is directly descended from the entire population of everyone who was alive then.

In other words, it's an incomprehensibly long time ago.

So how come fantasy games have kingdoms that are that old? It's one of those things that bothers me. Especially with me living in an area that has sites dating back to the Neolithic, the iron age, the middle ages and the modern era dotted here there and everywhere. The range of dates RPGs use just seems unrealistic and excessive.

The other one is distance. An average person can walk 20-30 miles in a day. They could walk a couple of miles, go to the market town and walk home in half a day or so. Covering maybe 5-10 miles in the process. Armies could manage a smaller distance and still be able to camp up at the end of the day. Or fight if they had to. Harald Hadrada's 200 mile march from London to York, done at a rate of 20-25 miles a day, is considered a mighty feat.

So how come it's acceptable for towns to be that kind of distance apart in RPGs? Neverwinter to Luskan is about 150 miles. That's over a week's travel on foot. And according to the map, there's nothing in between. No towns, no sites of interest. Just a road. And 200 or so miles of Neverwinter Wood.

The scale is a good argument for the Realms being a Tippyverse. And it's far from the only setting that has this issue.
Click to expand...
Eh, 150 miles between cities with nothing in between isn’t that out of bounds for the Old West. When you have a giant continent vs. an island, things can be really spread out. Coastal cities with a huge forest in the middle, look at upstate New York. It’s unbelievable how much open space there is in the US, even today.

I’m not saying the North of the Realms is realistic, but when you’re talking about such a huge area, looking to England or France isn’t the best model. For Luskan-Waterdeep specifically, all transport is shipping, probably.
 
Faylar said:
I completely agree. The US is a good example of how towns and cities were actually spaced out. Since the US is relatively new and not overdeveloped like England, you can still see the pre Industrial logic in how they made cities. You would usually have towns along a road spaced around 10 miles from each other. This gave an overlap to the multitudes of villages and hamlets that they served and allowed a person on foot to travel to a market, conduct business and return home in a day. Cities then became a way for a nation to extend their reach and provide better services to the majority of their population which was rural.
Also, almost all of known Human history has happened within 4,ooo years. So to add to your gripe... an earth shaking event that happened 2k years in the worlds past would not continue to shape history. it would be a footnote and barely remembered. we have 30 generations every thousand years. That is a lot of time that passes. A Nation that is 40 years old will have 3 generations with grandparents telling their kids of unification and such. Look at how much has changed on Earth since WW2, let alone the Great War.


To the OP... my irrational hatred is for FATE. Screw that system, I am tired of having it propped up as the savior of gaming on every design thread asking for any advice at all. At this point, I don't even want to look at it or learn it. Just leave me alone about it.
Click to expand...
One of the best sources for fantasy world demographics in Warhammer 1st edition. The World Book chapter has a great section about spacing out settlements from each other, population density and other useful stuff. And presented in a way that is very readable.

Modern designers could learn a lot from WHFRP 1e. Not so much the rules, but the book itself and the way it's structured. It's not perfect, but it comes very close.
 
Decks of cards. I don't know why. I have no aversion to card games, or cards in my boardgames, and I understand that it's just another tool of randomization often employed for aesthetic reasons (the upcoming DCC Dark Trails game uses decks of cards for firing guns, for example). But I freaking hate them.
 
CRKrueger said:
Eh, 150 miles between cities with nothing in between isn’t that out of bounds for the Old West. When you have a giant continent vs. an island, things can be really spread out. Coastal cities with a huge forest in the middle, look at upstate New York. It’s unbelievable how much open space there is in the US, even today.

I’m not saying the North of the Realms is realistic, but when you’re talking about such a huge area, looking to England or France isn’t the best model. For Luskan-Waterdeep specifically, all transport is shipping, probably.
Click to expand...
Tehe realms have no support for the cities though. They kind of assume that food and infrastructure just happens. Even the trade seems to happen from other cities with no support either. Chult has 1 city, 1 ruined city, 1 fort, and no supporting farms. villages, hamlets, etc... none.
That is common for most of the realms too. There seems to be no really developed areas. It is all adventure spaced so that cities are isolated and unable to get aid except from adventurers when the need arises.
I would understand if they just painted broad strokes on the canvas and let people fill in as they need, but they don't even do that. So much of the terrain is locked in canon that adding anything is always going to alter canon.
 
CRKrueger said:
Eh, 150 miles between cities with nothing in between isn’t that out of bounds for the Old West. When you have a giant continent vs. an island, things can be really spread out. Coastal cities with a huge forest in the middle, look at upstate New York. It’s unbelievable how much open space there is in the US, even today.

I’m not saying the North of the Realms is realistic, but when you’re talking about such a huge area, looking to England or France isn’t the best model. For Luskan-Waterdeep specifically, all transport is shipping, probably.
Click to expand...
The Old West is a good example of how technology and topography matter. Yes, towns were spread out. But the land is also vast and open. Then you add in transport developments that were ongoing at the time. Namely, the development of relatively rapid transit networks in the form of railways. And high speed communication in the form of telegraphs.

The Old West is the transition point between the fastest way you could get a message somewhere being to give it to a guy on horseback and hope it arrives in a week or two, and the message gets sent today, delivered tomorrow or the day after.
 
I think it was 1E Shadowrun that did it to me, maybe 2E, but giant dice pools canceled out by other giant dice pools to just to say, "you missed him."
 
Stevethulhu said:
One of the best sources for fantasy world demographics in Warhammer 1st edition. The World Book chapter has a great section about spacing out settlements from each other, population density and other useful stuff. And presented in a way that is very readable.

Modern designers could learn a lot from WHFRP 1e. Not so much the rules, but the book itself and the way it's structured. It's not perfect, but it comes very close.
Click to expand...
Yeah, one of the most underrated books in how much information and setting it gives packed into one book. There’s no bad decisions in content organization or presentation.
 
CRKrueger said:
Yeah, one of the most underrated books in how much information and setting it gives packed into one book. There’s no bad decisions in content organization or presentation.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say none. The section on actually playing the game is a bit homespun. But it's a book that gives you a game, a world and a ton of material to use in play. And in a very accessible writing style. Add in the first Realms of Chaos book and Warhammer Battle 3rd edition for a fantastic game.

Still my preferred flavour of Warhammer.
 
I think the great spans of time in fantasy games is to reinforce that the game world is not changing. "It was always like this and always will be" sort of thing.
 
Faylar said:
[...]
To the OP... my irrational hatred is for FATE. Screw that system, I am tired of having it propped up as the savior of gaming on every design thread asking for any advice at all. At this point, I don't even want to look at it or learn it. Just leave me alone about it.
Click to expand...
You stole mine. So now you must be my subject of irrational hatred. :wink:
 
There are a few things that I can say I hate, but I don't think they are irrational.

I really hate that FATE Core is a beautiful product, sounds awesome as you read through it, but doesn't deliver. But, that technically is down to me and my group's inability to actually use it.

I really hate convoluted creation myths that if you stripped out wouldn't make any different to a setting whatsoever. This come close to being irrational as I also hate creation myths in general.
 
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