We've all got our pet peeves about one system or another -- this is a more generalized idea of things that happen across multiple systems that annoy you.
For me: "false advertising" -- when a game system's cover or artwork promises one type of experience, but the game itself provides a completely different one, or at the very least discourages it. Remember all those bare-chested barbarians in fantasy games where you had to wear plate armor to survive? How about the SF game with Han Solo's Twin Brother, a sapient Celery Stalk wielding a blaster rifle, and a member of the Pride of Chanur on the cover, which inside had what amounted to "Chartered Accountancy -- IN SPACE"?
Here's another one -- specific franchise books whose supplements don't actually provide any detail beyond what you could see for yourself just by watching the movie/show (or reading the book), or boil down to a book of stats for the main characters and nothing else. (I remember here Decipher's "Lord of the Rings" game map of Balin's Tomb, I think it was -- a square room with a rectangle in the middle marked "sarcophagus". Really, ya think?)
-The Gneech
Three words- Mega. Damage. System.
Three words- Mega. Damage. System.
Hey I happen to enjoy maga damage from time to time. Palladiums real offense against gaming is their attitude of "we intentionally left the rules vague so that GM would have to make house ruling". After all vagueness and arguements are the heart and soul of RPGs.
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My biggest pet peeves? Obviously lacking in the play test department and not having rules for important things that should come up in any kind of play testing.
Things like rules for healing (repairing?) AI or having the ability for a starting character to take a first aid skill without having to worry about opening a hole to the warp should at some point come up if your testing your darn games! Or jumping for that matter.
No index. Buying the copy right to an old classic wonderful game system that brought me many hours of joy about 25 years ago and then adding every house rule your gaming group ever developed over 25 years, turning a 100 pages of game rules into 500 pages.
And
Then
Not
Publishing
An
Index
It's like the a**hole DM who had obscure house rules for every stupid thing buying your beloved game system just because he had a couple of thousand bucks laying around and the publisher no longer existed publishing a book forcing his house rules on everyone.
Not that this could ever happen.
I hate it when a game system has a fairly in depth character generation and then doesn't provide you with sensible rules to play said character. COUGH*palladium*COUGH
False advertising gets my goat too. As in 'we are no longer going to publish/sell product X'. Then they bring out product Z which isnt a new version off product X its INSPIRED by product X. Yeah right you just got players to buy the books they didnt have for product X before they went the way of the dodo and then did a revamp (that is a pun).
Systems that keep things vague arent that bad really not compared to the 'We know we gave 50+ canon backgrounds for something but we feel it helps give you a feeling of not quite knowing which legend/myth/rumour is true', Give it a rest.
YEAH no index how can you not put in an index. Or as I have found with some books an index that is wrong!
My biggest pet peeves? Obviously lacking in the play test department and not having rules for important things that should come up in any kind of play testing.
Things like rules for healing (repairing?) AI or having the ability for a starting character to take a first aid skill without having to worry about opening a hole to the warp should at some point come up if your testing your darn games! Or jumping for that matter.
Or having rules written so incomprehensibly that you have to make your own just to play.
I think the worst was when I picked up Fireborn, had a group who wanted to play it, and then when we tried to make characters found out they had forgotten to print the rules for getting skills in the book.
As if this wasn't bad enough, I had to pay to get the errata.
Dying during Character Creation...
Call of Cthulhu, yes?
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Dying during Character Creation...
Oh, Traveller. How do I hate thee! My *third* character survived character generation, and died in the first five minutes of play. Apparently blasters kill you. No dodge. No saving throw. No Action Point to re-roll. Just, 'roll up another character, Ian.'
Yuk.
Also, upgrades / new editions that make a game (or it's setting) *smaller* and less than it was before. The new World of Darkness, for instance. I love that the design for Eberron was 'must accomodate everything from core *and* you get four new races and a new class,' and wish that other settings / editions would embrace this sort of 'everything that has come before *plus*' mentality, and not 'thirteen incredibly well-developed and popular clans, down to five...'
The new, new WoD! 400% smaller, 70% less 'super' in your supernatural and 50% less interesting! All for only 25% more dollars! Blech.
A peeve of mine is when I buy a new system, only to find it's only a thinly coated veneer of another. For example, I was pretty stoaked when Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition came out. Until I took a good hard look at the numbers, and realized that I would basically just be playing D&D 3rd edition, except rolling d% instead of d20s.
Exact. Same. System.
Granted, character generation and leveling were different, so it wasn't, strictly speaking, all that obvious. But you peel that all away, it was d20 without the d20s.
Ya coulda just purchased a license, people!
Also - any modern/future (basically, anything where firearms are the primary method of fighting) combat system that amounts to "take cover, shoot, repeat until dead." Which is sadly a good portion of them. I realize that this is "realistic", but at a gaming table, it's boring as hell. That was, IMO, the most glaring flaw in d20 Modern and Star Wars RPG (d20, not d6).
Any system where in Character Generation you are allowed to pick skills that increase stats. Increase them so much in fact that if you do not have these skills your character is truly gimped.
Any system that only allows my nobleman a 38% chance to recognize Uncle Szabo's heraldry... that only allows a 34% chance to successfully 'press to talk' with my radio...
And of course any system where a hand held pistol (Wilke's) can *destroy* a Main Battle Tank. But, that main battle tank's main gun can't even chip the paint on the pistolier's armor... Yeah, I am talking about you, Mega Damage...
*scratches head* Wait... all three of those belong to the same system... coincidence? I think not *grin*
Also - any modern/future (basically, anything where firearms are the primary method of fighting) combat system that amounts to "take cover, shoot, repeat until dead." Which is sadly a good portion of them. I realize that this is "realistic", but at a gaming table, it's boring as hell...
For what it's worth, it's a decent way to survive a firefight, but you're better off trying to win by a) denying the opponent cover, b) planning ambushes that kill the opponents quick fast and in a hurry. How do you deny an enemy cover? Maneuver. The bad guys are shooting from a burned out building. Pop smoke (create concealment), suppress (Ready Action)(with your automatic weapons) their firing points and assault the building. Be careful for boobie traps ;) Also, indirect fire weapons are a godsend in these situations. Grenades, Grenade Launchers... Any game can simply devolve into "I stand and attack" for as you correctly pointed out, "is boring as hell." Firefights are about angles, ranges and fancy French words like enfilade and defilade. It's all tactics, just different from fantasy-fare tactics :)
GNOME
Virtually everything in Call of Cthulhu.
Oh, wait, you mean the "bad" kind of insane.
badump-TISH!
-The Gneech
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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Releasing the game before it's finished.. Hello 4th Edition! My gaming group gave it a fair shake, but there were so many things that seemed off that we stopped. Then out came a new DMG and lo, they fixed it! And then came an update online, and lo! They fixed it again. Here's a wild idea: playtest your game BEFORE you release it. I don't want to pay to playtest your game. And the ill will you engender by releasing a game before it's ready ensures I won't be giving you a second chance.
Maybe I was playing a different edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay... but the version I played was nothing like D&D 3rd edition. It was VASTLY more brutal, and down to earth. Magic wasn't nearly as 'friendly.'
Touche' on the magic system - for the most part (I can still scratch the paint on most spells and relabel them with their D&D counterparts). Though I can't ever recall anyone playing a mage in our Warhammer games.
As for the deadliness - I dunno. A little more florid in its prose (again, paint), but for the most part, not that much more different than low level D&D. 1st Edition did a far better job with the random deadliness, IMO.
I have a problem with games that make assumnations about what kind of character you'll be playing, or won't be playing as the case may be, and using that as an excuse not to include the material, even if it's a valid idea. It's okay to assume that no one will be playing a gun toting hard-boiled plup detective in a high fantasy game (and thus not include rules for that), but it's not okay to assume that no one will want to play an evil or anti-hero character in such a game.
Games that use the excuse of Rule 0 to not fully flesh out the rules or include a full range of options. While this may free the hands of truly creative Game Masters it only introduces a larger margin of possible error for average or poor Game Masters. Fluff and story may be nice but ultimately I'm paying for the rules system and expect to receieve a full set of them. This also reflects back on the first idea.
No index. I cannot express how annoying I find the lack of an index to be. It seems that the more rules and the greater the complexity of the game the more likely it is to lack an index.
Lack luster art in a major and well selling game system. I know that good art is expensive and thus can let small time publishers and independent games go by, but a large and well-to-do system should have good art in it.
Three words- Mega. Damage. System.Hey I happen to enjoy maga damage from time to time. Palladiums real offense against gaming is their attitude of "we intentionally left the rules vague so that GM would have to make house ruling". After all vagueness and arguements are the heart and soul of RPGs.
I remember the lengthy rant Siembieda posted in several of his books to explain why knocking someone out with a punch or a sap to the head is impossible and "unrealistic". Apparently he never watched any pro boxing.
Hmmm, just curious: if anyone here has played FATAL *shudder* does it have anything in its game system that will drive you insane?
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Dying during Character Creation...Oh, Traveller. How do I hate thee! My *third* character survived character generation, and died in the first five minutes of play. Apparently blasters kill you. No dodge. No saving throw. No Action Point to re-roll. Just, 'roll up another character, Ian.'
Yuk.
Well, character creation in Traveller is like playing blackjack. You keep improving the character, going through re-enlistment after re-enlistment, until you die in the service of your empire or you luck out, make it to retirement age, and are forced out.
If all your characters are dying, don't press your luck. Stand pat on a reasonably healthy young lieutenant and muster out.
Hmmm, just curious: if anyone here has played FATAL *shudder* does it have anything in its game system that will drive you insane?
If anyone has actually played FATAL, they were already insane, so the rules couldn't really do more damage. ~_^
Although, I do think the possibility of creating a character who has a negative circumference for their anus is around the top of the list.
I always found it irriatating when a game system would not factor in modifiers for injuries. The idea of maintaining the exact ability to defeat your opponents whether your in perfect fighting shape or on the verge of death or collapse I find really silly. Always have. It's just one of those things I always had to fix. There's also a few mentioned above I whole heartedly agree with as well.
The revamping of game systems and the expectation of you as a customer to follow suit...games that do this on a reqular basis (as anything less than 10 years) I want pretty much nothing to do with. It isn's the games fault, its the companies and I won;t support them anymore. I either dust off the old games I spent years developing or start a new one or just settle and keep what I have and stick my tongue out at the company.
Well, character creation in Traveller is like playing blackjack.
Exactly. Best analogy for it that I've read.
Dying during Character Creation...Sorry for the shameless plug and off topic comment, but Chris...if your ever interested in seeing what happened with my Legion game let me know. Always have room at the table for you on the PBP or just to let you persuse my efforts. Once again, thanks!
Maybe I was playing a different edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay... but the version I played was nothing like D&D 3rd edition. It was VASTLY more brutal, and down to earth. Magic wasn't nearly as 'friendly.'A peeve of mine is when I buy a new system, only to find it's only a thinly coated veneer of another. For example, I was pretty stoaked when Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd edition came out. Until I took a good hard look at the numbers, and realized that I would basically just be playing D&D 3rd edition, except rolling d% instead of d20s.
Exact. Same. System.
Granted, character generation and leveling were different, so it wasn't, strictly speaking, all that obvious. But you peel that all away, it was d20 without the d20s.
Late to the party on this one. But I agree with Kyrt, here. The combat is way more brutal and debilitating. Leveling up is not the same at all, and the career system is nothing like D20.
A friend of mine are running a WHFR 2E game right now. It has been one of my favorite campaigns I have ever been in.
Okay, I'm gonna drop a PFRPG gripe in here, you all know I'm not a hater — but this is the thread for it.
Bard. Perform Skill.
It looks like, under the Bardic performance section of the CRB, that you don't actually need ranks in the Perform skill to use some of the Bardic Performance powers! Awesome, my current character is starved for skills and I can't pay the tax.
But ho! If you look under the perform skill which is really not where I need this information to be, it tells you that a bard needs ranks to use his powers!
And that is the story of how I ended up shuffling skill points to something I don't really want long after I thought my character was finished.
When a game says its "universal" game system for any genre...when they really mean any one genre, and running a sci-fi or modern magic game jsut doesn't work.
"I spent all these points on IQ and an annoying amount of pre-req spells to get a 3d6 fireball!! FEAR ME!!!"
<GUNSHOT>
"I spent $350 on a gun that does 4d6, and 4 character points to use it" <blows smoke off the barrel>
GURPS, im lookin at you.
Any system where in Character Generation you are allowed to pick skills that increase stats. Increase them so much in fact that if you do not have these skills your character is truly gimped.
Every single one of the super heroes in my Palladium Heroes Unlimited game were boxers.
All eight.
Even the pacifist.
Lets see:
A portage skill so you dont die from carrying your gear. (rolemaster)
I made a cool shapeshifting Bjorner mage and due to lack of clarity in the rules missed a whole set of combat abilites I need to actually hit someone with a claw/bite (Ars Magica 2ed)
A damage mitigation system in a superhero game that mechanically prohibits "arachnoid man" from hurting/ stopping/ slowing down "the Bulk" in "arachnoid mans" own story (TSR's marvel super heroes).
Level based progression. With the possible exception of LFR's 1st and 2ed which may be the closest to a hyrbid level/point buy I have seen.(palladium, d20, 4ed)
Injuries not penalizing performance.(too many to list)
Cloud not impacting crunch.
Grappling...no system gets it right....some try...and do it ok...but really all systems have failed to do so.