What is the most superficial reason you have rejected a RPG for?

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Ralph Dula said:
I just flashbacked to The Old Stone Fort, where the characters were to invest a fair amount of points into skills necessary for the job they were hired for, leaving them woefully underskilled for combat when the reason it was a GURPS Horror module showed up.
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...and then the horror began:grin:?
 
Ralph Dula said:
Given some GURPS fans I know, I half-expect you to tell me he replied with the “1,000 hours of training equals 1 character point toward the skill, so by the time most characters are 18 they have +10 in the Survival skill for the environmental areas they’re native to.”
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Nah, this was playtest, after all. I didn't even get a reply. They just changed the rule. :storm:

CRKrueger said:
I’m sure if I ever did GURPS, I’d flush point buy for a lifepath generation system where characters would get things based on culture, profession, etc. The problem with that is, I don’t have the proficiency with the system to know what’s a “kinda wimpy, ain’t it” bonus or a “are you out of your goddamn mind” bonus.
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Actually, you wouldn't need to bother. GURPS has a basic presumption that people know the basics to deal with daily living and routine vicissitudes in their milieus, as a matter of routine. Cooking skill is for haute cuisine or impressing the Princess; you don't need it to cook an average, satisfying dinner at home. Driving skill is for Car Wars-type stunts; you don't need it to survive the daily commute (well, not unless you're a Bostonian). Survival skill is for wilderness travel where you're reliant on forage/hunting and dealing with potentially harsh environments; you don't need it if you're an auto camper weekending in a state park and eating out of your cooler, or just for knowing the proper clothing to wear in a New England winter. And so on.

Even when it comes to professional skills, -12 (which costs at the absolute worst a handful of points) is considered enough to hold down a routine job.
 
Endless Flight said:
I kind of feel the same way when I see “the fiction” and I have no issues with the games themselves that use the terminology.
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That's funny cause "throw" always made so much more sense to me. Throwing is what I as a player do to the dice. What they do when they hit the dice tray is roll.
 
Dyrnwyn said:
In development for three years, and quite possibly outdated in another three...
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I was originally interested in the 3.x edition they did, but they only rekeased the first part of their multi-part campaign.
 
Savage Schemer said:
That's funny cause "throw" always made so much more sense to me. Throwing is what I as a player do to the dice. What they do when they hit the dice tray is roll.
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Saving throw also sounds a lot catchier than saving roll.
 
Savage Schemer said:
That's funny cause "throw" always made so much more sense to me. Throwing is what I as a player do to the dice. What they do when they hit the dice tray is roll.
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That's what they say about "smoking a cigarette"...
 
Two years back I stumbled onto a small-press RPG. Set on Earth, it had a very different history than real life, but as it was set up to avoid modern politics I wasn’t going to complain about that. Unfortunately, I bought the first adventure of their campaign, and it had issues, so I kind of forgot about it.

Last night I stumbled onto the fact they are now on DrivethruRPG. I looked at the preview for an adventure, and the first few lines quickly showed the author never read the background in the core rules, as the adventure involved the very politics that the core book established don’t exist in the game world.

My superficialness comes from the fact that this is the second time in two years a game I’m interested in has introduced real-world politics that were previously established not to exist in the setting. The Dula can only stand one game at a time where politics are ham-fisted into a setting by someone who doesn’t know the setting, and that limit has already been reached.
 
There are no limits to politics :hehe:...

unless...

you enforce them with an iron fist of crimson revenge on a forum called...

the RPG Pump !! [pumps fists in the air]...

or something like that :evil:.
 
I finally got to see the preview for a module I’ve been interested in for a few years, and I see it’s one of several modern modules that use the “infinite opponents attack your PCs until they go the right way” trope that was very popular in the 80s.



I always hated such encounters, more so as I grow older and thoughts like “If they have infinite numbers, why don’t they do something to stop the PCs, instead of just hanging out in one spot on the map?” and “PCs might waste a lot of resources here, preventing them from being able to win encounters with finite opponents” have come to mind.



Back in the day I used to dream of farming XP from such encounters, so I could start an adventure with a PC with a single digit in levels and leave it with several dozen.
 
I downloaded the Lore & Legacy Quickstart some months ago, but didn’t look at it after seeing the plethora of fungus on the cover. I looked at it today, and was pleasantly surprised a main part of the setting is the war against the fungi hordes.



Unfortunately, two bits put me off on buying the full game.



  1. The dwarf entry for the game horrifies me with the authors’ understanding of anatomy. Apparently a body grows “hair,” which grows on the top of one’s head. One can also grow a beard, which is a substance entirely separate from what “hair” is made of. Dwarfs in the art are shown to have eyebrows, but I imagine I have to buy the full game to learn if they are a synthesis of “hair” and “beard,” or are a separate material entirely.
  2. The cover art shows a party of idiots staring at some treasure, their backs to a bunch of fungi in a world where fungi is the enemy, and none of them have noticed the giant biomechanical mecha that the fungi use is sneaking up on them. Turns out they are the pregen PCs for the quickstart, and I could never ask people to roleplay such a bunch of morons.
 
A couple years ago, my friends and I were on a kick of trying wacky new systems, and one of them that came up was Eoris Essence. The main rulebook was really pretty, but the rules were almost unreadable. After flipping to the back and checking out the character sheet, we dismissed the game outright.
eoris-l.jpgNormally I'm not too intimidated by complex systems, but the more you look, the worse it gets. Now imagine having to account for all these things as a GM. It now sits on a shelf and looks pretty.
 
Glömmerska said:
A couple years ago, my friends and I were on a kick of trying wacky new systems, and one of them that came up was Eoris Essence. The main rulebook was really pretty, but the rules were almost unreadable. After flipping to the back and checking out the character sheet, we dismissed the game outright.
View attachment 39646Normally I'm not too intimidated by complex systems, but the more you look, the worse it gets. Now imagine having to account for all these things as a GM. It now sits on a shelf and looks pretty.
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For similar reasons I didn’t buy Immortal: The Invisible War, and I have a RPG which the publisher gave away PDFs of that I also won’t play after trying to decipher the character sheet before reading the rulebook.
 
Farsight Quickstart: We have rules for radiation exposure.


Me: Great! It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a game address radiation in a serious and realistic mann-



Farsight Quickstart: You need to make up your own rules for long-term radiation exposure, and rads naturally filter out of the body at the rate of one Rad per eight hours with no ill effects.



Me: What the fuck?



Farsight Quickstart: You mean “f##k.” Swearing is forbidden in our Quickstart where we casually discuss the fall of galactic civilization and an adventure where a captain may have accidentally sent all but three of his crew to their deaths.



Me: Was this written in the Mirror Universe?



Farsight Quickstart: Humans come from Earth, so of course they’re called “Terrans.”



Me: …..



Farsight Quickstart: Check out our amphibian PC race! The are “among the most cute” of all species, and their culture is all about stealing and using the goods of others. Also, they live in “gigantic fungal skyscrapers!”



Me: YOU HAVE SPACE-FROG KENDER LIVING IN GIANT MUSHROOMS! ALL YOUR WRONGNESS IS EXPLAINED WITH THAT!
 
I haven't refused to buy anything because of it (yet) but glossy paper really sticks in my craw. The new edition of Delta Green was the first time I noticed it. Its become very difficult for me to read under almost any lighting and I'd happily sacrifice color art if I could get a product with untreated paper (or just print color on matte paper - Sine Nomine does this and it looks fine to me).

Glossy paper plus a lot of red, in the borders or subject headings, is even worse. UGLY. I hate it.

The original AD&D hardbacks had good thick matte paper that didn't blind you every time you opened it. It smelled nice and had some texture to it so you could turn pages easily. Idk if that kind is even available any more.
 
Savage Schemer said:
To be clear: he's not wrong! It isn't a genre so much as a reference to a particular medium that was used during a particular period of time. I'm just that guy that knows that and still says, "who cares! It's a useful shorthand for '1930's era action adventure', and everyone knows what you mean when you say it!".
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I had a similar revelation when being forced to study Westerns for film school

"Western isn't a genre. It's just a time/place when a type of movie is set. Heist movies. Revenge movies. Any more than movies set in an estate in England in 1980 are "Estate movies".
 
Glömmerska said:
. After flipping to the back and checking out the character sheet, we dismissed the game outright.
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I don't care how pretty your game is or how compelling the setting.
Show me your character sheet. And I will judge you.

(I know, this isn't a petty or superficial reason).

I hate* on Exalted because of the ridiculous swords in the art.
I hate* on Shadowrun because of a tattooed ogre or orc with punk hair I saw on a cover once.
I hate* on pretty much everything by White Wolf because I met one of their minor authors once. In 1993.
I hate* on everything D&D even though I'm literally a player in a D&D5e campaign. I silently sneer at it on my side of the VTT. Reason? I couldn't sneak as a fighter in Red Box.


*by hate I really mean "ignore".
 
Hobbits or Halflings.

I'll only play a Middle-earth based game with those in it any other fantasy and I'm not interested. At best they get edited out of my version. Can't stand them in anything other than M-e.
 
Glömmerska said:
A couple years ago, my friends and I were on a kick of trying wacky new systems, and one of them that came up was Eoris Essence. The main rulebook was really pretty, but the rules were almost unreadable. After flipping to the back and checking out the character sheet, we dismissed the game outright.
View attachment 39646Normally I'm not too intimidated by complex systems, but the more you look, the worse it gets. Now imagine having to account for all these things as a GM. It now sits on a shelf and looks pretty.
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I have that game and yes it's very pretty and has a complex system. That said, I think it suffered from translation issues. The game was made by two colombians neither of which was very good at english, if I remember correctly. That character sheet is only for one of the playable races, I think there are two more races, also with their own equally complex character sheets.
 
lategamer said:
I hate* on everything D&D even though I'm literally a player in a D&D5e campaign. I silently sneer at it on my side of the VTT. Reason? I couldn't sneak as a fighter in Red Box.


*by hate I really mean "ignore".
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Amusingly, fighters being unable to sneak and sneak attack as well as some low-burn scum from the gutters is part of the reason why I tend to reject everything D&D:devil:!
 
Glömmerska said:
A couple years ago, my friends and I were on a kick of trying wacky new systems, and one of them that came up was Eoris Essence. The main rulebook was really pretty, but the rules were almost unreadable. After flipping to the back and checking out the character sheet, we dismissed the game outright.
View attachment 39646Normally I'm not too intimidated by complex systems, but the more you look, the worse it gets. Now imagine having to account for all these things as a GM. It now sits on a shelf and looks pretty.
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Aw, c'mon! They simplified it for you by making you count dots instead of numbers. Hundreds and hundreds of dots. In ONE character sheet. :shock:

And you also need to count dots to measure your character's appearance and psychological and emotional state. Cuz why just RP it out or have a brief description of what you look like when you can count dozens and dozens of dots just to figure out THAT aspect of your character?
 
A friend once opined that you can tell aor about a RPG by looking at the character sheet. Not sure whether it's true, or conformation bias, but there have def been times when I felt that way looking at one.
 
raniE said:
I realize this isn't exactly the thread for it but Fighters (or Wizards, Priests, what have you) have never been unable to sneak in D&D.
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Depends on who you were playing with. Some DMs definitely felt that yes, Fighters are unable to sneak..in fact, you have to be Rogue/Thief/Assassin or Ranger in order to do so:shade:.

Which actually lead to my first experience in AD&D being with a custom-made class with the rules in the DMG. I wanted to play an Old Shatterhand-inspired character from the time he went to the Wild West. (He could sneak very well back then, but he definitely wasn't a Ranger, and even less a Thief). Except I wanted him to be more urban-based.
At the end, that required a custom class, otherwise no sneaking, and no disabling guards:grin:!
 
AsenRG said:
Depends on who you were playing with. Some DMs definitely felt that yes, Fighters are unable to sneak..in fact, you have to be Rogue/Thief/Assassin or Ranger in order to do so:shade:.

Which actually lead to my first experience in AD&D being with a custom-made class with the rules in the DMG. I wanted to play an Old Shatterhand-inspired character from the time he went to the Wild West. (He could sneak very well back then, but he definitely wasn't a Ranger, and even less a Thief). Except I wanted him to be more urban-based.
At the end, that required a custom class, otherwise no sneaking, and no disabling guards:grin:!
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Well, no amount of rules can save you from a bad GM, unfortunately.
 
AsenRG said:
Depends on who you were playing with. Some DMs definitely felt that yes, Fighters are unable to sneak..in fact, you have to be Rogue/Thief/Assassin or Ranger in order to do so:shade:.

Which actually lead to my first experience in AD&D being with a custom-made class with the rules in the DMG. I wanted to play an Old Shatterhand-inspired character from the time he went to the Wild West. (He could sneak very well back then, but he definitely wasn't a Ranger, and even less a Thief). Except I wanted him to be more urban-based.
At the end, that required a custom class, otherwise no sneaking, and no disabling guards:grin:!
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Also depends on what you mean by "sneak". If you mean "an actual ability to sneak (specially if it includes Backstab/Sneak Attack)", then only Rogue-types have ever had that ability. But technically anyone could attempt to move pass an unwary creature, and the creature just got a standard listen roll to detect you, which I think was something like a 1-2 in a d6 in OD&D. And I'm not sure you could use that to sneak up on them, I think only characters with Hide/Move Silently could do that IIRC, but It's been decades since I've read any old rules. There was also always a lot of confusion, cuz I think a failed Hide/Move Silently roll got you auto-detected, rather than triggering the regular listen check to get detected. It was kind of a weird inconsistent mechanic.
 
VisionStorm said:
Also depends on what you mean by "sneak". If you mean "an actual ability to sneak (specially if it includes Backstab/Sneak Attack)", then only Rogue-types have ever had that ability. But technically anyone could attempt to move pass an unwary creature, and the creature just got a standard listen roll to detect you, which I think was something like a 1-2 in a d6 in OD&D. And I'm not sure you could use that to sneak up on them, I think only characters with Hide/Move Silently could do that IIRC, but It's been decades since I've read any old rules. There was also always a lot of confusion, cuz I think a failed Hide/Move Silently roll got you auto-detected, rather than triggering the regular listen check to get detected. It was kind of a weird inconsistent mechanic.
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Yes, anyone could always attempt to sneak or hide. Thieves had the ability to Move silently or Hide in Shadows, but anyone could try to get past a group of orcs sitting around a campfire or similar. Anyone could also sneak attack, that’s partly what the surprise roll is for. You just won’t get extra damage unless you have the special Backstab ability.
 
I always made all those kind of checks ability score checks (d20 roll under ability score, with penalties depending on difficulty), and thieves/rogues got to roll both that and their % checks and if either succeeded they succeeded and if both succeeded they did it extra special good.

It solved both the silliness of "Fighter can't sneak/climb walls" and "Thieves/Rogues skills are way too low to start with".

But I haven't played TSR D&D in a long time at this point.
 
The listen/surprise rules modelling stealth for non thieves was one of the big light bulbs that went off in my head when the OSR took off and people started doing those deep dives into old school rulesets. Until that point I felt much the same as AsenRG.
 
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Character sheets are something I always check in an RPG.

Art. If it is terrible, poor art, I will skim/read your FREE RPG, but I’m not paying for it.
 
Imaginos said:
Character sheets are something I always check in an RPG.

Art. If it is terrible, poor art, I will skim/read your FREE RPG, but I’m not paying for it.
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The Storyteller character sheet on it's own was a work of genius that probably did a huge amount to make gaming seem friendly to new players.

In constrast I remember AD&D character sheets that highlighted every arcane and baroque aspect of the game unnecessarily. (It's helpful to experienced players to have everything they might need such as Bend Bars/Lift Gates percentage chances there in front of them, but my god, does it make the game look complex and arcane and slow down character creation if you believe you need to fill in all those things)
 
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