Game Design Sins

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I don't necessarily have an issue with antipaladins or the idea of an "unholy warrior", though.
It depends on what you consider the Paladin class to be-- if they're merely a templar for the Gods of Good, then it would make sense that the Gods of Evil would have their own templars, along with every other god. But if Paladins are something special, empowered not just by "the gods" but by their conviction in moral principles that are bigger than themselves... how in the fuck is Evil, especially cartoonish D&D Evil, supposed to field an "equal and opposite" counterpart?

It cheapens the very concept. And, ironically... the very same people who keep telling me that about Chaotic Good Paladins are the mouthbreathing chucklefucks that keep demanding more and more Lawful "Good", Lawful Neutral, Lawful "Neutral", and outright Lawful fucking Evil Paladin subclasses.
 
Ignorance: failure to study and learn from the history and practice of the discipline. Stupidity is defined as the repetition of past failure with the expectation of different results.

Greed: design choices driven by the overweening love of money.

Sloth: failure to playtest and copy-edit to the best professional standards. These standards are well known and easy to understand.
 
It depends on what you consider the Paladin class to be-- if they're merely a templar for the Gods of Good, then it would make sense that the Gods of Evil would have their own templars, along with every other god. But if Paladins are something special, empowered not just by "the gods" but by their conviction in moral principles that are bigger than themselves... how in the fuck is Evil, especially cartoonish D&D Evil, supposed to field an "equal and opposite" counterpart?

 
You know that game you wrote? With that system? Yep, that's the one.

When you write a scenario to show how it all fits together complete with appropriate pre-gens, would it be possible for you to stick to the system? You know, the system you wrote back there, in the book. That's the one.

And, when you demonstrate the game by running it can you not handwave the rules aside? Yes, it's those rules and system you wrote back there. Yep, in that book (rrp £39.99).

Because otherwise it looks like even you think it's cack.

Thanks.
 
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When you write a scenario to show how it all fits together complete with appropriate pre-gens, would it be possible for you to stick to the system? You know, the system you wrote back there, in the book. That's the one.
To riff off this, if you're doing an introductory scenario your pre gens shouldn't be above starting power level (I'm looking at you WFRP 4e). It does not fill me with confidence if you're unable to make starting PCs work for a single scenario.
 
Over on ENWorld a poster linked to Sean K. Reynolds’s description of WotC research carried out in 1999. It identified the kind of games designer likely to commit the most egregious design sins: The Storyteller.

“We think that there is data to support the idea that people who enjoy being GM/DMs tend to cluster into the Storyteller segment. Interestingly, based on our own internal profiling of the staff, there's some data to support the idea that good game designers tend to cluster into the "Thinker" segment. In other words, good DMs don't make the best game designers, and vice versa. As with all things though, there will be exceptions and special cases.”
 
It's an expression of D&D 4e class design, much-maligned even though it's just codifying concepts that were unspoken in prior editions.

Classes are defined by two descriptors, their Role and their Power Source:

The Roles are Defender, Striker, Leader, and Controller:
  • Defenders stand between their allies and the enemy and try to draw fire, because they're better equipped to take hits. Fighters and Paladins are Defenders.
  • Strikers are mobile combatants that do a lot of damage, but can't last in a stand-up fight. Rangers, Rogues, Monks, and Warlocks are Strikers.
  • Leaders are support characters and healers. Clerics, Bards, and Warlords are Leaders.
  • Controllers are support characters who weaken enemies and set them up for allies. Wizards and Druids are Controllers.
The Power Sources (in the first PHB) are Martial, Arcane, and Divine.
  • Martial characters are characters who rely on skill, technique, and their equipment. Fighters, Rogues, and Warlords are Martial.
  • Arcane characters... well, they cast arcane magic. Wizards, Warlocks, and Bards are Arcane.
  • Divine characters draw upon the power of godlike beings. Clerics and Paladins are Divine.
So, by PHB3, every possible combination of Role and Power Source had been published by WotC. Except Martial Controller.

Martials had Defender Fighter, Strikers Ranger and Rogue, and Leader Warlord.
Arcane had Defender Swordmage, Striker Warlock, Leaders Bard and Artificer, and Controller Wizard.
Divine had Defender Paladin, Striker Avenger, Leader Cleric, and Controller Invoker.
Even Psionic, introduced in PHB3 had Battlemind, Monk, Ardent, and Psion.

Shadow only had two different Strikers.

But... lots and lots of people insisted beyond all reason that we needed a martial class that used skill and training to debuff and manipulate enemies.
I thought it was a genuinely interesting design space that they never explored, and there was clearly some opportunity there because Pathfinder has managed at least two (Swashbuckler and Alchemist), "spiked chain" was one of the fairly strong martial builds in 3.x and revolved around controlling a space, and zoner characters have always been a fairly popular archetype in fighting games.
 
To riff off this, if you're doing an introductory scenario your pre gens shouldn't be above starting power level (I'm looking at you WFRP 4e). It does not fill me with confidence if you're unable to make starting PCs work for a single scenario.

Oh yeah, and to piggyback on this theme:

If you are making an RPG about an established IP, don't present the writeups for the main characters as impossible to create using your own character creation rules
 
Depending on GM fiat to resolve everything. Sure, the GM will have to resolve things sometimes. Ideally you've got a core mechanic that's robust and flexible enough to handle most anything with a skill roll. But look, if your game can't function without GM fiat handling everything all the time your game is incomplete and badly designed. It's common enough that you're only going to the first circle of hell because it's biggest and all. OD&D and Tunnels and Trolls get a pass on this because of the ignorance of early days but you'd think by eighth edition T&T's combat system would actually function in play. It's not avante garde or liberating it's laziness and incompetence. Into the pit with ye!
Yes, while I understand the school of thought in Kriegspiel that having a knowledgeable, experienced referee to adjudicate was more useful than a mechanical system, when you are making a game to sell to other people, you can give them mechanics, but you can't give them life experience.
This is purely personal but I get annoyed at hit locations as it adds an extra layer of complexity to combat.
As others have said, this one depends on the implementation. If it just means that I have 8 different HP pools and everyone always does called shots to the head because it has the smallest pool, then it is a bad system. If is there to allow genuinely interesting combat options, as is Mythras, then it is worth having.
Character generation length should be inversely proportional to lethality.
This. I played in a Hackmaster game where the GM which has a cartoonish level of character generation options, and the GM had them all turned on. It took over an hour to make characters. The game was also a meatgrinder megadungeon.

I was genuinely enjoying the game, but I was losing a character at least every other session. If it has been using something like B/X or DCC, I would have been happy to keep rolling up characters and jumping back in, but after losing my third character, I just couldn't bring myself to roll up another one, so I dropped out.
Repetition if it's things like spells or feats being complete descriptions even if some rules are repeated are OK for me, but I could imagine repetition in other places being annoying.
I like repetition if it avoids page-flipping. You often get situations where a regularly used action like healing is split between the healing skill description and the combat section, with both sections being needed for the full rules.

It goes back to the tension of RPG books being both for learning a game and being meant for quick reference at the table. I'm going to use the book to learn the system once, then I am hopefully going to use it many times at the table for reference. I'd rather put up with some repetition while learning a game in order to have a book that can be consulted quickly.

But sometimes. repetition is just bad writing.
But IMO disadvantages that grant extra points during character creation should 1) have concrete mechanical penalties that don't rely on the player bothering to RP their character (usually in an annoying, half-asses, lip servicy sorta way), and 2) they should be actual disadvantages, rather than plot hooks guaranteed to grant you and the rest of the party extra XP once they come up during play.
This is the complete opposite of my view. If someone is playing a character with a drinking problem, I'd much rather it be a plot hook encouraging the player to just rp their condition in return for a reward than having some kind of addiction mechanic I have to enforce. It's the difference between throwing a character a Benny in Savage Worlds when they get drunk at an inopportune time vs. having to schedule Willpower checks every four hours that a character hasn't had a drink.
I don't know if it's a sin exactly, but I wish designers would sit down and write at least starters/concepts/outlines for a couple dozen or so adventures early in their game design process, as a normal part of designing their games.

It probably doesn't affect professional designers a lot, but I'd like to see a few more happy amateurs actually develop a clear idea of what players and GMs are going to use their system to do exactly.

I had a buddy who went on a tear developing a home-brew system for something a bit like American Gods but set in the Old West. In the process he probably had 30 handwritten pages for a skill system, including a whole bunch of work-related skills (blacksmithing, carpentry, so on). I asked how he imagined those would come up in play and how often. He was just a bit dumbfounded by even hearing the question. Of course a skills system of that type was needed! Of course it had to include a bunch of mundane skills!

After a couple of hours of him valiantly defending his design choices and hard work, I still had no idea what sort of adventures he imagined characters would go on in the setting or what those mundane skills and their related system added to the fun of any of it.
This is something I have observed with BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan . As soon has the mechanical equivalent of two rocks to rub together, he starts playtesting. When Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades was still embryonic, he'd get people together to make characters and have them fight (either each other or monsters). They weren't adventures, just scenes.

It really keeps the design, both with regards to mechanics and setting on things that actually matter.
I like the more modern version when "disadvantages" are "this will grant you a bonus EXP if it both comes up in play and makes your life more difficult".
Same here.
Meta-currency... for GMs.

Look, a GM's role is very complex. Fun! But very detailed and demanding.

To create a game system in which the GM has to "earn" permission to do their job... I think that's just plain awful now.

I get that people seem to love this in games like Fate Core. And I don't mind it if certain special dice rolls by PLAYERS generate their own narrative triggers (e.g. critical success or failure, complications on success, boons on failure etc...) but having a game shackle the GM's freedom to be creative...

Thanks, I hate it. And I hate that our current community makes modern game designers and players feel that the necessity to implement this trust system.
I generally agree. Hillfolk is the only game I like that does this, but it has a much more unique structure. It's a player-driven game where most of the action is between PCs. The GM isn't the guy who runs the world. He's the guy who is stirring shit to keep things interesting.

I don't like it in games like 2D20 where the GM is in more traditional role.
I think the biggest "Game Design Sin" is a lack of questioning why you are doing what you're doing during the design process, or maybe "making a game, but not designing it." Basically, somebody has a genre or setting idea they love, they take an existing game or game engine, and paint in the numbers. Like a PbtA game that is just AW with new playbooks, or a D&D-like that swaps out a set of classes to become a Noir game or something. Like, you could be in 2004 making a Noir game with giant chapters detailing partial actions and 5 ft. steps & Feat trees for Femme Fatales & Saving Throws. Is that the best way to evoke the vibes you are going for with your setting? Or is it cargo cult design, where you cobble together something in the shape of 5e and hope the money starts flying in?
I think that's a fair criticism, but I think it goes the other way as well. That is, some game-makers are much better at creating an interesting setting than they are at coming up with new mechanics, but feel they have to create a new system for their game when just a systemless setting book--or a book that fits the setting into one or more existing systems--would actually be more useful.

I'll admit to being biased, since at this point in my gaming arc I'm suffering somewhat from system fatigue and don't have a lot of interest in learning new ones simply to try something different. YMMV, etc.
There is definitely a balance between these two views.
Along the lines of chargen and lethality, the depth of a sub system should be no more than proportional to how much you expect to see it used. No need for 7 charts on detailed wall crawling if the game is about dueling mages.
I generally agree, but there are exceptions. Sometimes you want a rarely-used system to be elaborate because it is occasional, and you want it to feel special. Mass combats are an example of this.
Malign Completion Syndrome has to be one of my biggest pet peeves in game design-- it can badly deform a game's internal logic and stuff it full of design elements that don't make sense and don't serve a purpose. In terms of undermining intentionality... compulsive design might be even worse than lazy design.
The worst is when this is done deliberately. One of the things in D&D 3E that I hated was all the Feats that boiled down to "Add +2 to SKILL #1 and add +2 to SKILL #2." It seemed like every supplement and issue of Dragon would include another use of that template. It's not a CCG. I don't need a separate card for every expression of this Feat. They could have easily just made a generic version in the core book and been done with it.
To riff off this, if you're doing an introductory scenario your pre gens shouldn't be above starting power level (I'm looking at you WFRP 4e). It does not fill me with confidence if you're unable to make starting PCs work for a single scenario.
I've never run that scenario or used those pre-gens, so I have never noticed this. That is an odd decision, especially for WFRP. The game has Fate Points, so it is close to impossible to die in your first session. It's got the lowest whiff-factor than 1E and 2E as well.

Rolling up your character is part of the core WFRP experience anyway, so I wouldn't want to do away with that, although I realize this is a starter set.

Personally, I think "If Looks Could Kill" the first PDF adventure for 4E (also collected in Ubersreik Adventures) is a much better introductory adventure.
 
It depends on what you consider the Paladin class to be-- if they're merely a templar for the Gods of Good, then it would make sense that the Gods of Evil would have their own templars, along with every other god. But if Paladins are something special, empowered not just by "the gods" but by their conviction in moral principles that are bigger than themselves... how in the fuck is Evil, especially cartoonish D&D Evil, supposed to field an "equal and opposite" counterpart?

It cheapens the very concept. And, ironically... the very same people who keep telling me that about Chaotic Good Paladins are the mouthbreathing chucklefucks that keep demanding more and more Lawful "Good", Lawful Neutral, Lawful "Neutral", and outright Lawful fucking Evil Paladin subclasses.

IDK, I can definitely imagine a "champion" of darkness, dedicated to the destruction of all life and reaping vengeance upon the world to take their own missery and suffering out on everyone else—not necessary in the service of any evil god, but just because they hate existence and want to see it all burn—specially in a world of cartoonish evil like D&D.
 
Personally I hate this stuff even in games that play like D&D. Spell slots are silly and the arcane/divine split as an artificial D&D distinction.

I don't necessarily have an issue with antipaladins or the idea of an "unholy warrior", though.
There's nothing artificial about a split between Arcane and Divine, it's a fundamental element of the setting cosmology.
 
Baulderstone Baulderstone
Ok I see your point on Mass Combat. I guess the collary(?) would be

*unless using the normal route would turn what should be a relatively short scene (mass battle) into an all week affair(individual combat for each opponent). Even then the involved subsystem should be shorter to use/setup then the expected shortened play time.
 
There's nothing artificial about a split between Arcane and Divine, it's a fundamental element of the setting cosmology.
I showed my D&D fanatic GM how Sorcery and Theistic magic work in Mythras (especially regarding recovering power). He loved how that system could reinforce the setting’s ideas on sources of arcane and divine power.

He now wants to run D&D with the Spell points variant and have casters recovering their points through in-character means rather than just automatically every rest.
 
This is the complete opposite of my view. If someone is playing a character with a drinking problem, I'd much rather it be a plot hook encouraging the player to just rp their condition in return for a reward than having some kind of addiction mechanic I have to enforce. It's the difference between throwing a character a Benny in Savage Worlds when they get drunk at an inopportune time vs. having to schedule Willpower checks every four hours that a character hasn't had a drink.

Handing free points during character creation for selecting negative personality traits doesn't encourage RP—play isn't even taking place for RP to be possible—it encourages racking up incongruous personally elements just to beef up your character with as many abilities as possible on the dubious promise that someday (maybe) RP might possibly take place. You don't need extra build points to RP a character a certain way, you just need to RP them that way, and writing a label in your character sheet doesn't guarantee that you will. Handing a Beanie (or Luck points, "Inspiration" whatever they're called in any given game) or bonus XP for actually RPing your character a memorable way, however, does encourage good RP. Which is why I have no problem with that.
 
There's nothing artificial about a split between Arcane and Divine, it's a fundamental element of the setting cosmology.

D&D isn't even a setting, but supposedly a generic fantasy adventure game that can (theoretically) be used to play in most high/epic fantasy worlds. That D&D settings incorporate the arcane/divine split into their cosmology is they just building the world around the game's mechanics rather than the other way around. There's no fundamental reason magic and the divine have to be separate, and it in fact goes against real life occult mystical traditions, which do in fact almost invariably acknowledge the divine and involve invoking it as part of ritual magic.
 
It depends on what you consider the Paladin class to be-- if they're merely a templar for the Gods of Good, then it would make sense that the Gods of Evil would have their own templars, along with every other god. But if Paladins are something special, empowered not just by "the gods" but by their conviction in moral principles that are bigger than themselves... how in the fuck is Evil, especially cartoonish D&D Evil, supposed to field an "equal and opposite" counterpart?

It cheapens the very concept. And, ironically... the very same people who keep telling me that about Chaotic Good Paladins are the mouthbreathing chucklefucks that keep demanding more and more Lawful "Good", Lawful Neutral, Lawful "Neutral", and outright Lawful fucking Evil Paladin subclasses.
That's the problem with most people's view on alignment.
It's not "psychology and behavior with benefits", where you plot on a graph. It is literally, Alignment, as in how your soul aligns on the Great Wheel. It's a fundamental part of setting cosmology. As a result, even with a "Paladin as Templar of a God/Gods", there is still room for a "Paladin as Paragon/Embodiment of an Alignment of the Great Wheel".
 
I dunno I feel like disadvantages in something like HERO worked pretty well. If I as GM wanted an impromptu encounter I could roll on all their hunters and see who shows up. The players signed up for that kind of attack, the GMs job is made a little easier. Same with vulnerabilities and suseptibilities. Psychological ones were fun too. Violate one? Oh look one of your powers isn't working right! Wonder why that is?
 
It depends on what you consider the Paladin class to be-- if they're merely a templar for the Gods of Good, then it would make sense that the Gods of Evil would have their own templars, along with every other god. But if Paladins are something special, empowered not just by "the gods" but by their conviction in moral principles that are bigger than themselves... how in the fuck is Evil, especially cartoonish D&D Evil, supposed to field an "equal and opposite" counterpart?

It cheapens the very concept. And, ironically... the very same people who keep telling me that about Chaotic Good Paladins are the mouthbreathing chucklefucks that keep demanding more and more Lawful "Good", Lawful Neutral, Lawful "Neutral", and outright Lawful fucking Evil Paladin subclasses.
And if God is evil and the universe a reflection of that? I guess the counter point I'm making is Chaos champions get powers in Warhammer.
 
D&D isn't even a setting, but supposedly a generic fantasy adventure game that can (theoretically) be used to play in most high/epic fantasy worlds. That D&D settings incorporate the arcane/divine split into their cosmology is they just building the world around the game's mechanics rather than the other way around. There's no fundamental reason magic and the divine have to be separate, and it in fact goes against real life occult mystical traditions, which do in fact almost invariably acknowledge the divine and involve invoking it as part of ritual magic.
Well, what you're saying is true about WotC D&D. They have no concept of setting, setting consistency, or even the idea that a cosmology exists, as evidenced by their various editions.

What got handed off to them though, was AD&D, which had a definite cosmology.
 
And if God is evil and the universe a reflection of that? I guess the counter point I'm making is Chaos champions get powers in Warhammer.
Sure. If Paladins are just templars for their gods, just punchier Clerics, then every god should have their Paladins. Including NG/CG gods and morally Neutral gods, trickster gods and The Old Gods, all of them. Instead, the party line is that Paladins are special champions who have to be perfectly Lawful Good, can only serve perfectly Lawful Good deities, or else they're stripped of all of their powers permanently.

Except they can also be Lawful "Greater Good" hypocrites, Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil Hellknights, or Chaotic Evil Antipaladins. Just as special, basically the same powers, and all they have to do is whatever they were going to do anyway.

Just saying, all Paladins should either be held only to the ethical standards of Clerics of aligned deities, or the people saying they need to be held to a higher standard need to stop making up evil Paladins. This hypocritical, schizophrenic bullshit is why D&D alignment arguments have been causing gamers psychic damage for forty-five years.

edit: I'm not trying to get tetchy with you, man. You're not saying anything unreasonable, and your argument makes sense-- it's just lots and lots and lots of people saying what you're saying, while also saying the opposite, and motherfuckers need to pick a lane.
 
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Well, what you're saying is true about WotC D&D. They have no concept of setting, setting consistency, or even the idea that a cosmology exists, as evidenced by their various editions.

What got handed off to them though, was AD&D, which had a definite cosmology.

D&D didn't even have any defined settings till years after the game was published, and inconsistencies, as well as arbitrary changes to settings in D&D predate WotC. TSR made a lot of random changes and additions to various settings before WotC bought them, ruining Dark Sun with the Expanded and Revised boxed, which added a bunch of unimaginative stuff years after the original was published, messing with Forgotten Realms during the 2e era to shoehorn the Time of Troubles crap, and making a ton of revisions of Dragonlance, which kept changing over the years with multiple releases that kept adding to the world and even changing the original map to increase its size IIRC.

The Great Wheel cosmology was something that didn't even exist originally or emerge whole cloth, but was refined over the years, with additional changes and additions made with the release of Planescape.
 
This hypocritical, schizophrenic bullshit is why D&D alignment arguments have been causing gamers psychic damage for forty-five years.

Nah, D&D alignment arguments have been causing gamers psychic damage for forty-five years because alignment is subjective nonsense that's impossible to judge in an objective manner that's based on the fundamentally contradictory premise that: 1) alignment is not a straitjacket, just a tool for RP, and that 2) alignment needs to be enforced, using various means, including but not limited to stripping off class abilities for failing to play them properly, imposing advancement penalties for characters changing alignment, and including various spells and abilities that only work on specific alignments, as well as limiting certain magic items to characters who belong to a specific alignment, meaning that characters must retain a specific alignment to keep their magic loot. Which inevitably leads to people treating alignment as a straitjacket (because despite any claims in the books to the contrary it is) and breaking into arguments about how to play X or Y alignment properly, and whether or not a lawful good paladin should execute captured evil creatures that could murder the group in their sleep if they escape and the group has no time to travel for days to bring them back to civilization to face justice.

EDIT/PS: And to bring it back to the thread's topic on RPG design sins...

Including character elements that are supposedly just RP tools intended to facilitate RP, but have to be enforced with penalties if you fail to play them properly or live up to someone's subjective interpretation of what playing them "properly" entails.
 
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If you’re going to write a game that isn’t a bog-standard fantasy game about clearing dungeons, then don’t make the sample adventure in the core rule book a bog-standard, linear dungeon crawl.

I’ve seen this a bunch of times, but as an example, I give you Monte Cook’s The Strange, a game about exploring an infinite collection of alternate worlds that could be based off any myth, legend, novel, movie, or comic book.

And the sample adventure starts you off in the modern day and asks you to break into someone‘s home to find a portal to another world (which is basically a dungeon crawl in nature, including fighting a couple of zombies in the guy’s basement).
Then you go through the portal into a fantasy world and immediately get sent to an actual local dungeon, follow the only possible path, fight notOrcs, and eventually kill the bad guy in the last room of the dungeon.

And, that’s it. No opportunity to do anything interesting with this brand new world, nothing interesting about the bad guy. You could literally take this adventure and run it in D&D (just use any generic fantasy floor plan for the guy’s house), and it wouldn’t even be a decent D&D dungeon.

(Yes, I’m bitter about backing this crappy game on Kickstarter. Just like Numenera, it sounded like a great idea that utterly failed in execution.)
 
That reminds me of the time I told a certain indie game designer I was going to run his game at a con. He said, "Cool; let me know how it actually runs!"

That was a pretty WTF moment for me, and eye-opening too.
To be fair, there's a huge difference between running your own games, running games with play testers and letting it run free to the average gamer and them running it. The first two are relatively controlled.

The third. Well. I can't even.
 
Don't put something in your flavour text which isn't supported by the character generation or even in the rules.

Don't put something in your art which isn't achievable by the players.

Don't put something on the back cover (or Drivethru description) which is not supported in the game.

Oh....and please stop telling me you have 150 classes and 2000 skills and 1500 spells and 30 martial techniques. Seriously. I'm way too old for that shit. Don't tell me and for your own sake, stop making games like that.
 
Baulderstone Baulderstone Hackmaster took one of AD&D's strengths, shortish chargen, and turned it around completely while keeping the same lethal play style. I'd say that was fine if they also had a random chargen tool to expedite that but they don't as far as I know. To me that is a design fail.


Since many people have fun with HW it seems clear a design fail doesn't mean a fun fail or game fail.
 
Character generation length should be inversely proportional to lethality.

I see the logic of what you are saying, but I'd offer a counter argument. It is not a universal rule, but generally games with lighter tone favour lighter systems. Comedy games in particular often have rules-light system and, Paranoia aside, rarely leathal. You don't want to sweat the details, you just want to keep things moving and allow the players to do crazy things.

Where crunchy rules often tend to come into their own is when you want a degree realism. And with more realistic combat comes more realistic consequences, including death or permanent disability.
 
I dunno I feel like disadvantages in something like HERO worked pretty well. If I as GM wanted an impromptu encounter I could roll on all their hunters and see who shows up. The players signed up for that kind of attack, the GMs job is made a little easier. Same with vulnerabilities and suseptibilities. Psychological ones were fun too. Violate one? Oh look one of your powers isn't working right! Wonder why that is?
The problem I ended up feeling with disads was the implication that most PCs approached being psychotic. I think that was OK for Champions where a certain style of superhero comic was being followed but it didn’t work for me for fantasy games.
 
Using jargon and acronymns unique to your game in the text before you've explained them is a big one for me

...and...

Or re-naming things which have fairly standard names in the hobby just to be different, when in fact they function the same way as they do in most systems.

...So Immortal wasn't a hit with you two?

This is purely personal but I get annoyed at hit locations as it adds an extra layer of complexity to combat.

Also in GURPS (if I remember correctly) a weapon like a sword does a couple of different types of damage, like one for cutting and thrusting. Again, it's just adding extra detail that bogs the game down a wee bit.

So needless complexity would be one of my bugbears. :smile:

Oh here's another one... Rulebooks that repeat themselves over and over. :sad:

Cyberpunk 2020 did it right. Almost everything else does it wrong. I'd still use 90% of Friday Night Firefight as-written.

Meta-currency... for GMs.

Look, a GM's role is very complex. Fun! But very detailed and demanding.

To create a game system in which the GM has to "earn" permission to do their job... I think that's just plain awful now.

I get that people seem to love this in games like Fate Core. And I don't mind it if certain special dice rolls by PLAYERS generate their own narrative triggers (e.g. critical success or failure, complications on success, boons on failure etc...) but having a game shackle the GM's freedom to be creative...

Thanks, I hate it. And I hate that our current community makes modern game designers and players feel that the necessity to implement this trust system.

The referee having any kind of currency is the quickest way for me to dismiss your game as storygaming nonsense and throw it in the fire. Marvel SAGA is the exception, as it so often is.

Oh yeah, and to piggyback on this theme:

If you are making an RPG about an established IP, don't present the writeups for the main characters as impossible to create using your own character creation rules

I was amused that you can't (quite) make the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the TMNT&OS rules. When checked, they need 5 more BIO-E, which has been confirmed a few times. Less clear is why. So just give every character 5 more BIO-E.

Man, you have no idea how much that drives me absolutely batshit. Same with D&D and every. single. NPC. having stat arrays more than double the standard point buy for player characters.

One thing I liked about the D&D3e iconic adventurers (Tordek, Lidda, Regdar, horse-face, etc.) is that they were all built using the same elite array as the players.

Oh....and please stop telling me you have 150 classes and 2000 skills and 1500 spells and 30 martial techniques. Seriously. I'm way too old for that shit. Don't tell me and for your own sake, stop making games like that.

But that's how Palladium Books grades awesomeness!

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As for my own contribution to this discussion...

Rules crunch hidden in flavour text. Learn from CCGs! Make the rules as clear as possible and entirely distinct from fluff or colourful prose. White Wolf/Onyx Path, I'm looking so fucking hard at you right now!!
 
The problem I ended up feeling with disads was the implication that most PCs approached being psychotic. I think that was OK for Champions where a certain style of superhero comic was being followed but it didn’t work for me for fantasy games.
Psychotic? I mean most of mine had codes vs killing and defender of the helpless etc. Basically they tended to explain why they didn't run and hide when the times got tough.

It was something I think especially well suited to superheroes
 
D&D didn't even have any defined settings till years after the game was published, and inconsistencies, as well as arbitrary changes to settings in D&D predate WotC. TSR made a lot of random changes and additions to various settings before WotC bought them, ruining Dark Sun with the Expanded and Revised boxed, which added a bunch of unimaginative stuff years after the original was published, messing with Forgotten Realms during the 2e era to shoehorn the Time of Troubles crap, and making a ton of revisions of Dragonlance, which kept changing over the years with multiple releases that kept adding to the world and even changing the original map to increase its size IIRC.

The Great Wheel cosmology was something that didn't even exist originally or emerge whole cloth, but was refined over the years, with additional changes and additions made with the release of Planescape.
The Great Wheel is a concept that was refined, but is self-evident as a different cosmology and not a way to define realistic human behavior by the idea of the Alignment Languages, the Planes, and Planar Beings, which were already present in a fairly coherent form in the first release of AD&D1. Gary was expanding and defining these ideas in the early eighties in Dragon Magazine long before the Manual of the Planes came out in '87, let alone Planescape in '94.
 
Baulderstone Baulderstone Hackmaster took one of AD&D's strengths, shortish chargen, and turned it around completely while keeping the same lethal play style. I'd say that was fine if they also had a random chargen tool to expedite that but they don't as far as I know. To me that is a design fail.


Since many people have fun with HW it seems clear a design fail doesn't mean a fun fail or game fail.
Well, if we're talking the parody game HM4, they did give everyone a 20HP "Kicker" at 1st level. :shade:
 
Well, if we're talking the parody game HM4, they did give everyone a 20HP "Kicker" at 1st level. :shade:
That's not bad but I'm not sure that's enough to justify the charge time.
 
For me, two of the biggest design sins are "cascading" rolls and roll effect lookup. I'll give example what I mean by the first and the second is akin to OP's "Abilities that give an ability."

My critique is focused on how this plays out in combat, and in particular "large" ones (say 6 PCs vs 24 opponents) as rules that are logistically slow end up putting a lot of pressure to avoid such things, even when they are completely in line with genre and world internal consistency, and have us come up with rules exceptions (like mook rules) to make such combat playable within the lifetime of the universe.

By cascade it would be situations where I need to roll to hit, then IF I hit my opponent can roll to parry, or ones where I roll to hit and if I et a certain number I roll again. In short each interaction between each PC and each opponent requires multiple rolls to resolve. This is exacerbated if the first roll is needed to inform the second or if a decision cannot be made until after the first roll is made. (Note I do not include roll to hit then roll damage as a damage die can be rolled alongside the roll to hit and ignored if one misses).

For years, I believed if you wanted a nice back and forth combat, with tactical options for a defensive stance, or various builds like defense v dodge v offense you could not avoid this. Realized this is not the case and actually Chainmail provides the inspiration for the answer. :smile:

On roll effect look up, that also slows things (again not in a material way if you have small combats but large ones...yes indeed) as unless the table is memorable (which makes a lot of assumptions about those who will play your game) each die result will not convey a result until on cross references in a table.

In short, my view is the ability to handle complex situations and provide options should emerge from your base mechanics not from addition of sub-systems, rolls upon rolls, or large amounts of sui generis exceptions (like feats, or special rules for NPCs)
 
Oh....and please stop telling me you have 150 classes and 2000 skills and 1500 spells and 30 martial techniques. Seriously. I'm way too old for that shit. Don't tell me and for your own sake, stop making games like that.

I think that this is in part a consequence of consumer culture and the mentality of getting more bang for your buck, which has led to the mindset of confusing quantity with quality and the perception that you're not getting enough from a product if you're not getting lots of it. Hence, RPG books are judged based on page count rather than the usefulness of what's in those pages. Which has only been exacerbated by crowdfunding and the need to promise more pages as stretch goals so more people support the project.

Personally I hate endless variations of what's essentially Warriors, Skill Monkeys and Mystics, when it comes to classes, or the thousand and one versions of what's essentially a fireball spell—but this one shoots flaming arrows from your finger tips, and that one is single target, and this other one falls from the sky and it's really a blessing from your god that does fire damage, etc. Three classes is all you need. The rest can be covered by skills and advantages ("Feats", whatever), or by simple AD&D 2e style "kits" that modify your core class to add extra flavor, rather than reinvent the wheel for every "class" concept.

And you don't even need separate attack spells for every element. You just need the basic stats for how attack spells work and to have different damage types defined in the game, then use what you need to fit the character or situation.

Long lists of skills are also problematic as well, because they're too specific and tend to cover tiny variations of similar tasks that rarely come up in actual play and don't grant you any aptitude when attempting similar stuff. General skills with extra bonuses for specializations are better if you want to cover specific stuff. That way the potential for specific stuff is there, but you don't need endless lists of skills, and can always fall back on a general skill if you lack the specialization, rather than split your limited number of points across a dozen vehicles or specific weapons just so that you're not left on foot or unable to defend yourself effectively.
 
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