RPGS that you want to like but....

Since I moved I am slowly moving games back and forth to a storage unit. I have some games I really want to play and like but there is something that doesn't sit quite right. Not every game is for everyone.

One for me is Legend of the 5 Rings. I like the lore, I like the setting but for some reason something with saving face and honor seems too rigid and all you seem to need to know as you start play puts it off for me and I cannot really say why. Since I do not know anyone locally plays it I maybe misunderstanding something but seems to be a block for wanting to play.

I know it is a great game but for whatever reason I struggle with it.

That's understandable. Some games are heavily tied to the setting and it requires a big time investment to understand everything. Blades in the Dark is the same for me. I played a mini campaign and I didn't like it. I never knew the lore well enough to get invested, and I don't really like playing criminal types. I do like some games based on the system though, like Scum & Villainy is amazing.

I had that feeling with 7th Sea 2nd edition. Loved the setting, but when I tried to run it with my real life group a few years back we bounced off it hard.

Mutants and Masterminds (3e). I love how well the creators thought out the various powers, ranked them, etc. I knew the character I’d play… but… 8 stats! I can pour points into the powers I want, use the rest for stats. Stats can have very large numbers, so… do I dump a few, not fly even though—

…

I finally ended up not making the cut for a M&M recruit and got picked for Masks shortly after, and found that I much prefer its loosier-goosier PbtA that allowed me to just make a few simple choices and use my imagination.

I guess it’s not M&M that I "don’t like" …and definitely, I’m not dissing the game design. It’s brilliant, and the rule book has amazing art! This experience was more of a recognition that I’m a rules-lite guy, and with so many systems out there, I should just embrace that.

I wanted to like both L5R 5th edition and Blades in the Dark (I backed the kickstarter) but ended up liking neither. I still like L5R 4th ed though, so there's that at least. I was really looking forward to the new version of Tribe 8 that's coming too, until I heard they were using FitD rules for it. :/

I wanted to like Worlds Without Number too, but the character I wanted to play turned out way overpowered compared to what I wanted when we converted over from OSE. I wanted a dabbler, but even the lowest level of powers that were in the vein of what I wanted also gave me much more powerful abilities.

I am in a WWN numbers game and I love it so much. I don't quite understand your complaint. Are you saying you want a very low powered character like in OSE and your character now is too strong? Does not compute lol.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. I wanted a character with limited magical abilities, some stealth, and handy with a sword; in OSE, it was easy as a multi-classed character that would only be dabbling in all three areas, never getting really strong, and at the start, would have only very limited abilities. As a beginning character in WWN, it was much more powerful in all three areas immediately - things that we'd struggled against we were overcoming very easily without any real difficulty at all, and my magic abilities were much, much higher than before. And that was as a dabbler - the other characters who specialised were effectively killing machines. I like low fantasy, and moving to WWN made it much more high powered fantasy, which I'm not a fan of.

I have different approach to this question.... :)

For very long time I was looking for "my perfect system" that would become my main system for most of my games. I even write down its futures it would have to have. I looked into MANY indie and less known systems. I even started to design my own rules system based on Y0E but with step dice (like in Bladerunner or T2K) which would have dice pools, would use all those interesting dice (4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20 sided ) to resolve skills, push your luck elements, supporting narrative result(a la Genesys, but with regular dice) and even have exploding dice - probably I wanted too much... but almost been there! And maybe even one day I will go back to my design.... :)

BUT... one day... when I wanted to actually play with my system or even with Y0E SRD rules... I realized that MOST interesting (by the story and triggering my imagination to be running wild) content, adventures and modules are(or was) made for DnD... especially for OSR(OSE) style that I adore... And I would have to spend literal hours on converting monsters and other things from this content sources to "my system of choice". And I don't have time to write my own modules/adventures and will never have(prefer to spend it on something else).

So I come to realization that I have to find system that will be compatible with content designed for DnD - so I will save a lot of time. 5E is definitely not for me, especially as "main system" and OSE is too simple, so simple that I prefer even simpler: Knave. Fortunately I have found what I was looking for in Tales of Argosa or Five Torches Deep.

So, my story is: I wanted to like all the wonderful, original indie RPG systems... and I liked them... but practical things have drawn me to DnD and d20 again... and... what to say... literal decades of content have strong "arguments" in them.

(if only Alternity line would be continued...:) )

Powered by the Apocalypse games. I love the premise! I love the game pitches. I adore the simplicity.

And I hate playing in and running them. I just struggle each and every time. I think I might like a more fine-scale resolution to my games.

7th Sea (2e). What a fantastic game, I loved the flow and the acrobatic system that allowed free-form stunts without having to predefine everything in the scene. The players roll, and then the GM can describe only what's needed for them to decide on how to spend their successes. i.e., "You can save the map from the ship's fire, but you'll take a burn: spend two stunt points to avoid that."

However.

Running the game, I ran into cognitive overload. Similar to some of the narrative elements of FFG Star Wars/Genesys, the narrative spends require thinking hard and fast on the fly to resolve each player turn, especially when they roll a ton of points they can spend. While I normally cherish the mental challenge, at the same time, I'm not always prepared to do it - everyone has a muddy-thinking day, and after staring at the players blankly for ten seconds thinking only of 80s cat food commercials, it's embarrassing.

Morris would have wanted it that way.

This is going to sound heretical, but: D&D 5e.

I'm in a Zoom gaming group with a friend and his buddies. Everyone is nice and all, so it's not that. I don't know if it's because I came in late to the group, but it's been a year and I'm just not wowed with it, especially lately since we've shifted from seeking out this "chosen" person to doing odd jobs and working on a murder mystery.

I've read through the rulebooks and it seems like I should be enjoying it. Yeah, there have been changes to the game since I started out with AD&D over 40 years ago, but nothing really seems like a deal breaker. It just lacks the excitement (and fun) that I've had on GP with other Fantasy RPGs like S&W, DCC, and even Tiny Dungeons. Maybe I'm just in a boring group?

Pathfinder. I have a very strong love / hate relationship with it. I try, I really really try to get into it and love it, but honestly the overreliance on crunch and 16 million classes is quite frankly overwhelming. It’s the very definition of bloat, although I see why people who swear by it do so. It doesn’t help either that Paizo’s writing quite literally makes me want to poke hot needles in my eyes.

That all said I’d love to get into a Pathfinder game. Love hate you see.

Wow, it's wild we've had the complete opposite experiences lol. I played a full caster and at level 5 I had 5 hp and 2 spells per day. If that is too powerful I don't want to know how boring OSE is lol.

D&D 3/3.5 (and I guess by extention, Pathfinder -- at least 1e). Beyond that?

They all have the same issue for me: Too much crunch.

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy some good mechanics. All the mechanical aspects of a game are interesting to me, and I enjoy that part of gaming. However... those systems are certainly too much of a good thing. Complete overload.

I guess I'm a "medium crunch" (give or take) kinda guy.

I'm running my first WWN campaign, and my experience with the players and their 1st level characters is closer to that of nezzeraj's. They are NOT overpowered at all. I felt obligated to recruit another player (we started with 5) because I didn't think they'd survive when they reached the site of the first adventure (just dealing with wilderness encounters at the moment).

To be fair, we did convert existing characters, so went in at (I think) level 3 rather than level 1, but it was immediately obvious that we were much higher powered than our old characters had been.

There you go. WWN characters gain power twice as fast as OSE generally. (Same as DCC and Shadowdark).

Yeah, we were about level 5 or 6 in OSE. ( I think I was something like 2/2/3 in my classes, but the single classed characters were 5 or 6 I think).

Lots to respond to here. First:

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Nezz, would like to hear about what you're liking so much about WWN.

cowleyc, amen. After many tries, I've finally just given up wholesale on PbtA games that have moves. They're just not for me.

I would also add Paranoia to my own list.

Sure! I like the flat math, for one. My highest skill is rank 2, everything else is 0 or untrained. My highest ability modifier is +1. I love the method for rolling hp where higher rolls replace your hp, not add to it. Even though I had terrible luck and only gained 1 hp per level until I finally rolled really well and got 18 hp at level 6. This keeps fights very deadly but I can at least take 2 or 3 hits. Combats never drag on too long because how low the hp is. I like the retainer system (I'm aware other games have this but I've never played those or the GM never used them so it was my first experience). I love the magic system. You have very limited castings but spells are very powerful, so picking to prepare the right spells and knowing when to use them is very satisfying. (I really dislike systems like 5e and Pathfinder where you have spells like Bless where you get like +1 to one roll or something. Makes magic feel very cheap. Give me 2 or 3 spells but I can fly for hours or do 10d8 to constructs or something lol.) I like cantrips have a separate magic system called Arts. The spell names are very flavorful and fun. I like that attacks are 1d20 but skills are 2d6. That's all I can think of right now.

Didn't help that my real life group has 5-6 players, so at any time there were a lot of successes between them. I've heard the system runs a lot better with a lower player count, but I'm not about to disinvite friends so the system runs better.

Damnit, now I've got that in my head.

I think you nailed it for me, too, Nezz. :)

I also love the open sandbox feel, which maybe Harrigan is mistaking for cat litter. ;) Just kidding!

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Nice -- sounds quite cool. I should give the damned thing a read. I just struggle mightily with Crawford's writing style...

BTW, that style of hit point increase is my very favorite in all the OSR. Really good stuff...

You're welcome!

I haven't read the whole things because it's quite massive, but the character creation and rules are only the first 60 pages, 93 pages if you include the magic system too. It was pretty easy to read although it is wordier than it needs to be. I agree about the HP, it's very slick.

That method dates all the way back to OD&D and people arguing it should be done that way, rather than just adding a new die every level... because the rules were vague. It's also present in a ton of White Box-based games.