Irrational Hatreds in RPGs

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I hate the multi-variant of Elves that exist in the RPG multiverse, and which seem pale clones of each other. When I see Elves, I want them to be ball of steel Elves, and not limp dick pointy-eared couch-fainting laddies.

Phew, that felt good... x-).
 
Elves are so ubiquitous in most fantasy games that they’ve become over-familiar and twee, where they should be mysterious and awe inspiring. Sometimes they feel forced into a setting, when lazy writers just ape Tolkien rather than trying to develop new ideas. One method of trying to re-capture a degree of freshness back into the concept of elves, and possibly create some greater verisimilitude into a given fantasy setting is to rename them in some way.

I call them cunts.
 
Yeah, that sounds right. It's a fascinating and detailed world, but it seems like a lotta homework. I prefer to get the bullet points of a setting and run with it.

The original The Empire of the Petal Throne box set gives you everything you need in 140 pages to run a campaign and is not at all dense, the free and excellent The Petal Hack boils it all down, including ruleset, to 60 pages.
 
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These days I tend to skip over games that feature the "Tolkien standard" races: elves, dwarves, orcs, and halflings. I'm really tired of them, and have been for some time, even if they are "not your standard elves." I will still play D&D and OSR retroclones and such, but getting me interested in a new game or setting that features those species is a pretty hard sale.
Yeah I love Middle Earth, and I love playing in it. But I really can't see the point in playing in generic high fantasy settings that are just the author's version of Middle Earth. Might as well just play in the real thing, or play something completely different I reckon
 
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I liked the Sundered Skies take on elves. They are all part plant and worship "The Wild" and use fleshforges to make humanoid animal hybrid things as a slave race.

Very different from standard elves, enough so that it doesn't feel like yet another Tolkien fantasy elf with small changes.
 
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.

Classes
Levels
Items that can only be used by one Class
Hundreds of different mechanics, some only used by one class
Artificial restrictions on how good/skilled/powerful a PC can get
Different rules for PCs and NPCs
 
Honestly I'm kind of the opposite. Just tired of bog standard tolkien elves and dwarves in pretty much every setting.

I’m not a big fan of those, either, but I don’t hate them (though Elves....hmmmm...yeah they do suck):-)

I should probably be clear here’s and state that I don’t forbid any player choices in games that feature this stuff. Next DND game I run though might be OS Essentials, race as class. Most of the archetypes are human already.
 
I hate elves.

I liked the Sundered Skies take on elves. They are all part plant and worship "The Wild" and use fleshforges to make humanoid animal hybrid things as a slave race.

Very different from standard elves, enough so that it doesn't feel like yet another Tolkien fantasy elf with small changes.
I hate not-elves too.
 
Doomy already beat me to it, but all of my hatreds are rational and it's the rest of the world that is wrong.

My hatred of certain specific gamers (and communities) who defend these mechanics, however, borders on the psychotic. Double if the person is claiming that the rule in question is "realistic". Eat a hot dictionary.

D&D-style morality mechanics
WoD-style morality mechanics
Morality mechanics in general
Picking a class when you gain a level
Subraces
Fixed subclasses
Critical failure tables
Savage Worlds -- especially the way attributes don't inform skills in play

Honestly, I'm getting so fucking sick of the "Tolkien Only" style of D&D and its elitist gatekeeping fanboys that I'm starting to get a little sick of the Tolkien elements of D&D, even though they're as essential to what makes it D&D as the Howard and Leiber elements.

There are some RPG personalities that I have some... pretty harsh grudges against, but I feel like going into those would be against the spirit of this forum.
 
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Balls of steel elves...huh

It occurs to me that most people would be outright shocked by the elves from the Silmerillion. Indeed, I think Elric of Melnibone would find the prospect disturbing. Generally I lean towards elves being somewhat chaotic and lawless. But the organized malice and ruthlessness of the sons of Feanor. Imagine a world where the terror of the hosts of the elves has all the dark lords crawling under rocks looking for a place to hide.
 
Tieflings, warforged, Genasi...pretty much anything not big standard fantasy. But mainly the first one. Devil people? Why? ,
Playing the devil's son's advocate here, but...why not? I mean, if demons can mate with humans, as some myths suggest, what are the odds of it never happening anywhere :grin:?
And if it happens, why wouldn't the progeny want to prove themselves by becoming heroes, or at least, PCs:shade:?

Honestly I'm kind of the opposite. Just tired of bog standard tolkien elves and dwarves in pretty much every setting.
I'm tired of both elves, dwarves, and all the non-standard playable races...

But I've got purely logical reasons for that :tongue:!
 
Honestly, I'm getting so fucking sick of the "Tolkien Only" style of D&D and its elitist gatekeeping fanboys that I'm starting to get a little sick of the Tolkien elements of D&D, even though they're as essential to what makes it D&D as the Howard and Leiber elements.
Hell yeah. "We can't add devil people and dungeonpunk and at-will spells and tactical combat and anything that actually resembles anything the kids nowadays enjoy, D&D must ONLY be the things that I liked when I was a child."

But D&D is essentially a series of entirely different games only really united by some shared terminology and the use of a d20.
 
I hate the multi-variant of Elves that exist in the RPG multiverse, and which seem pale clones of each other. When I see Elves, I want them to be ball of steel Elves, and not limp dick pointy-eared couch-fainting laddies.

Phew, that felt good... x-).
Limp dick pointy-eared couch-fainting laddies = the literal definition of elf.
Ball of Steel...the word you’re looking for is...Dwarf
 
race as class
giphy.gif
 
I'm living for the bored-out-of-her-mind look on the sacrifice's face. Like she's so done with this and is ready for him to just knife her already.
The illustrator sure took a lot of liberties with the, at times admittably scant, historical and archaeological data. The contents of the book are much better in this regard,
 
Playing the devil's son's advocate here, but...why not? I mean, if demons can mate with humans, as some myths suggest, what are the odds of it never happening anywhere :grin:?
And if it happens, why wouldn't the progeny want to prove themselves by becoming heroes, or at least, PCs:shade:?
Ok, so far I’ve just been having fun, but let’s look at Tieflings. Supposedly half-Orcs are a race that we shouldn’t have in D&D because of the high chance of a non-consensual nature of the conception. But Demons and Devils on the other hand...:tongue:
You can‘t play a Tiefling in any of the published D&D settings except the Underdark or Planescape without having to deal with two things....
1. Possibility of Rape
2. Certainty of Racism
We’ve been told having these things at the table is BAD, so then we‘re supposed to just let players have ridiculously rare beings as PCs, even to the point of having an entire party of them, and the rest of the world they interact with, filled with primarily normal humans are going to embrace the PCs with loving arms as heroes.

I’d literally prefer to play My Little Pony as it makes more goddamn sense.

Someone wants a Tiefling, they should be prepared to deal with looking like a creature from most people’s nightmares, in a world where (especially in Faerun’s North), their kind are an actively hostile enemy.

You should know by now, I’m all about the Verisimilitude, so sure, all the Planetouched are “possible”, as well as Giff, Thri-kreen, maybe even an Arduin Deodanth. But...the world and NPCs will respond in a Verisimilar manner.

What I do is allow certain races as “common”. Anyone can pick from these. In addition you have..
Uncommon
Rare
Very Rare
Unbelievably Rare
Last of Your Kind
Chosen One
...as rarity levels.
If you want something other than common, you have to roll. It’s an open-ended MERP Roll, so expect the highest levels to be over 300.

If, someone comes to me with a really good character concept, and they are a player I know is trustworthy, then I might let them have one. Also if the current events in the setting allow it, different races may be allowed. For example, someone needs to roll up a replacement character, and the PCs are in Athas, it’s going to be an Athas character, even if the group is returning to the Realms.

But...my races aren’t balanced. Half demons and devils aren’t Tieflings, they’re Cambions. A Warforged can’t drown, is immune to poison and disease, doesn’t need to breathe, etc.

So, players get an advantage from things being verisimilar as well.
 
Hell yeah. "We can't add devil people and dungeonpunk and at-will spells and tactical combat and anything that actually resembles anything the kids nowadays enjoy, D&D must ONLY be the things that I liked when I was a child."

But D&D is essentially a series of entirely different games only really united by some shared terminology and the use of a d20.

All true. :-)
 
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.

Savage Worlds -- especially the way attributes don't inform skills in play

These are two of my biggest irrational hatreds: Holistic "body" attributes and attributes that have no impact on skills in play.

Also, I don't think this is irrational, really, but I hate games that keep secrets from the GM. There is never an excuse for that.
 
I have to say, I prefer Elves to Dwarves. Annoying little diggers and the stupid Scottish accents.
 
A couple of mechanics I don't exactly hate, but prefer systems that do it differently -
  • Combat systems where armour affects the chance to hit. I don't really like that mental model, although i'll quite happily play in a D&D game. I like something either really abstract or something where the armour absorbs damage.
  • Task resolution systems that don't routinely incorporate some sort of graded difficulty adjustment. In CoC, for example, a character with 20% or 30% in a skill might as well not have that skill at all.
  • At the other end of the scale, over-complex and highly simulationist systems, especially ones where you start by rolling your character's background.
  • More of an annoying design flaw, but Super weapons or items that are logically a common part of the setting but have balance problems in the game due to flaws in the mechanics. The example that comes to mind is Book-4 super weapons in Traveller, in particular the Gauss Rifle, although it's not the only system I've seen with this issue by a big margin. Nothing wrong with the fiction but the mechanics were poorly designed. Don't get me started on the interactions between canon-heads and suggestions that they just nerf the stats so it's not a one-shot TPK.
  • Again, more in the space of annoying design flaws, but game mechanics with god stats, especially when they're unassailable except through a specific character path. For example, combat sense in Cyberpunk combines with likely-to-be-lethal damage to often make combat a race to the draw that solos will always win. The fiction works on some levels but it doesn't work well mechanically.
 
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I'm picturing the pregnant succubus looking down on some poor, suffering soul in the lake of fire and shouting, "You said we didn't need protection!" and the guy's like, "nu, uh there ain't no way I'm getting out of this eternal torment to parent your damn kid!"
 
I'm not sure I can actually define what it is I hate. It's not exactly grit. It's not exactly grimdark. It's not even exactly shocking-for-the-sake-of-being-shocking. I like all that stuff, at least from time to time.

It's the feeling that a game was written by a sociopath. But by a wussy sociopath, one that doesn't dare go out and actually become a serial killer, so he just sits at home and fantasises about it a lot. Someone who has heard that there is such a thing as human emotions, but is incapable of actually having any, and instead makes do with a combination of half-assedly memorised trivia and appeals to the absolute lowest possible urges and instincts. The kind of person who sounds like, "dur... fuck... dur... encyclopedic details of medieval torture equipment... dur... shit... dur... gratuituos and only partially accurate description of Sumerian marriage law... dur... rape... dur..."

So, you know. The F.A.T.A.L.s of the world.

And this is an irrational hatred, because, well, who does it harm? Surely profoundly soulless people with no emotional depth have a right to exist. And surely that right includes writing roleplaying games and trying to sell them. No one's forcing me to read. I am perfectly aware of all that.

But I think there's just something about emotionally stunted people that hits just a little too close to home. I've spent my whole life learning to fake having such alien things as "taste" and "sensitivity." Whenever someone is being blithely insensitive and tasteless, I just want to yell at them to stop it before they bring down the neurotypical inquisition on both of us! :tongue:
 
I'm not sure I can actually define what it is I hate. It's not exactly grit. It's not exactly grimdark. It's not even exactly shocking-for-the-sake-of-being-shocking. I like all that stuff, at least from time to time.

It's the feeling that a game was written by a sociopath. But by a wussy sociopath, one that doesn't dare go out and actually become a serial killer, so he just sits at home and fantasises about it a lot. Someone who has heard that there is such a thing as human emotions, but is incapable of actually having any, and instead makes do with a combination of half-assedly memorised trivia and appeals to the absolute lowest possible urges and instincts. The kind of person who sounds like, "dur... fuck... dur... encyclopedic details of medieval torture equipment... dur... shit... dur... gratuituos and only partially accurate description of Sumerian marriage law... dur... rape... dur..."

So, you know. The F.A.T.A.L.s of the world.

And this is an irrational hatred, because, well, who does it harm? Surely profoundly soulless people with no emotional depth have a right to exist. And surely that right includes writing roleplaying games and trying to sell them. No one's forcing me to read. I am perfectly aware of all that.

But I think there's just something about emotionally stunted people that hits just a little too close to home. I've spent my whole life learning to fake having such alien things as "taste" and "sensitivity." Whenever someone is being blithely insensitive and tasteless, I just want to yell at them to stop it before they bring down the neurotypical inquisition on both of us! :tongue:
It's the equivalent of yelling "cunt!" in the library. You're not offending anyone, you're boring them.
 
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