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:

Meow Meow Meow Meow
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Meow Meow Meow Meow Meow Meow Meow Meow

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!

🤣😁😂

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.

Nobilis seemed to have an awesome premise, and was intriguing due to being diceless. But each time I try to read it, I give up very soon because it's not easily approachable. So I am bouncing off this one even before playing.

Universalis. A game system meant for a lot of flexibility and universality, with people 'voting' with their coins for what each one of them considers important in a scene or worldbuilding. In practice, the worldbuilding phase felt like everyone was incentivised to add a gotcha twist to a previous setting fact by flying just narrowly around it and adding something subversive. Another player made a comment along the lines of 'the ruleset of Universalis is getting in the way of the playstyle of Universalis'. The bidding mechanics for resolution of disputes (IC and meta) seemed like a cool idea, but felt clunky in practice and mathematically suspect (though by now I forgot the details).

LANCER. This only applies to the setting, not the mechanics (I love the mechanics). In a medium where everyone publishes yet another grimdark / dystopia / post-apoc, I was cheerful to find a game that brands itself optimistic. However, upon closer examination, it became hard for me to take all the eutopian claims at face value, as the description of the Union (the designated big good faction) came out as either self-contradictory/inconsistent (branded as post-scarcity and with reduced private ownership, and yet megacorps seem to play a huge role in the Union, and there's a lot of artificial scarcity through licensing), hegemonic, expansionist, and self-righteous. This makes it hard to take the proclaimed eutopianism and goodness as written, which clashes strongly with the authorial stance that none of the descriptions are propaganda/satire/overhyped.

Mindjammer. A vaguely posthumanistic setting in the vein of Culture for FATE? Count me i . . . wait a minute. The alleged big good is memetically genocidal towards any creeds except government-approved ones to a dogmatic level, the techology seems to be spread in an oddly top-down manner, and the former two points combine to undermine posthuman stuff in an oddly WH40k-reminiscent manner. And there's a designated villainous faction that looks like a parody of WH40k. And then the system, which seems to have a stovepipe design antipattern: lots of minor subsystems for all sorts of activities that are based on overarching principles, each repeating many of the same words, but often with small differences, so it's difficult to memorise and inconvenient to look up, and hard to consider when deciding what kind of character you want.

Continuum/Narcissist/Seedless Bloom/Splintered Rose. Cool ideas about time travel. Extremely unhelpful manner of explaining the timeline cosmology/physics (a lot of the basics only become clear only after you read advanced supplemental material).

FATE. I can't explain why, but I've tried a few time and just kept bouncing off it.

Apocalypse World. Dungeon World was my intro to PbtA and I love it. So naturally I want to try AW. Reading the material, I felt like I could get into it. But, the few times I tried to play, nah. Could've just been the wrong GM or group. Dunno.

Ironsworn. Chargen and then nothing. I can never get an actual game started. It's not for lack of effort. Or maybe it is. Heh.

Grimwild. I love the rules in the abstract. I mean they really look great to me! But when I've played the game it's been kind of meh.

FATE: Feels a bit too vague to me and in my experience, players tend to go for super loose concepts, then bend the narrative to a forced interpretation that lets them activate them. Might just be what I've seen of it, but I can't help feeling the system's design encourages, or at least greatly facilitates such a "game the system" approach.

Degenesys: I liked the premise and the flashy art style drew me in. Played a pre-made adventure and many things felt... off. Then I read more about the world and the writer's... let's say slightly problematic ideas and it all made sense.

Mork Borg: Let's be honest, it's a graphic design showcase book. The books look great and exciting, but the layout makes them hard to use in practice and the actual gameplay is... I'll say "underwhelming". That's even more the case for Cy_Borg and Pirate Borg, whose premise excites me much more than MB's death metal medieval fantasy one.

Vampire: Pretty much all the White Wolf games, but I'm saying Vampire because that's the one I've mostly read and played. I know most people tend to complain about its loose writing of how powers and disciplines work, but it's never really been an issue for me. Neither is the "very open to PvP and opposing agendas" vibe. What throws me off is how rich the metaplot is and how most Vampire fans seem to be very adherent to it. Some even take the idea that various WW games are "compatible" and "in the same universe" so you get people hellbent on various metaplots from various games combined into one big mega-plot, which in turn informs the way they run their games (as GMs) or their expectations from the story and other people (as players or GMs).

/end_rant

Fate, in my experience, really requires the right group. It’s very hard to get right, but when you do — oh baby. But that’s rare enough that I’ve basically stopped running and teaching it.

Interested in hearing about what makes Grimwild meh, and the Borg games are another case of needing the right crew, mood, etc. They certainly aren’t for everything and everyone and definitely have a vibe some folks don’t like, but I think they pack a ton of fun into a very skinny set of rules. I’ve been thinking about running some CY_BORG or Blackpowder & Brimstone. Or maybe even the original!

You should try "Chronicles of Darkness" then.

Same flavor, a bit lighter mechanics/even more vaguery, but dispenses with the burdensome meta plot.

SPICY TAKE:
Blades in the Dark. I actually like to PLAY BitD, so I only half-don't like it, but I really don't like running it... In my experience it is SO demanding of the GM. After a Blades session, I just feel mentally exhausted. You're just constantly on your toes, adjudicating Position and Effect and coming up with Devil's Bargains and world building and running the gameplay, not to mention just the basic communications of the plot.

Every time I look at the book on my shelf, I get anxiety.

This is probably less applicable to pbp actually... as one has much more time to do those things.

But still...

The One Ring. Mainly, the bad math was a turn-off. TN16 - you have a ~10% chance of success with a 1d6 stat.


Risus. I was so intrigued by the system and had a great first impression: clichés are super-fun to RP situationally. It does suffer from 1d6 stats being next-to-useless, but not as badly-mathly as TOR. However, the math is omnipresent. Encounters are less about what your character would do and more about gaming your stats. The most detestable tactic is the Inappropriate Cliché: do something that makes no sense and get rewarded by inflicting triple damage, which is a one-hit KO against any cliché with less than 4d6 (the max amount a cliché can have).

The intent is to reward player creativity. But that’s actually what makes it problematic. My Improv Poetry cliché, no matter how well I RP its use against a sentai squad of ninja zombies, should not grant me three times the potency of a teammate who put just as much heart and soul into their post when using a cliché called Sword.

—and I say this as someone who, in real life, de-escalated a situation between a double-decker bus full of high school kids and gun-toting Neo Nazis by saying the F-word in front of two nuns.

It’s honestly not what I would call a bad design (which is why I *want* to like it)… it’s an ingenious system! Just not for me. I think I prefer dice to be a simple randomizer.

I think you buried the lede there.

So many questions, were both the Neo-Nazis and HS kids in the bus or was it just the HS kids? Were the nuns with the kids or the Nazis or a separate entity? How did the nun's respond?

I feel like this could make for a fun TTRPG encounter

Neo-nazi youth-nuns with guns. I think I saw that movie...

*To the Tune of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles*
Teenage Neo-Nazi's with Guns, Nuns with a Hallow Point. Catholic Power

Yeah, well… of all the life experiences to casually toss in as a semi-relevant afterthought, that’s probably the only story that should be restricted to Main Topic.

What’s even worse is that, in hindsight, it did more to discredit my point than it did to support it.

We were in Rome, and Neo Nazis were doing a demonstration. They had uniforms, shaved heads and a flag. Their presence messed up traffic, forcing our bus to stop right beside them.

I was 21, technically a chaperone on my brother’s high school trip (Catholic school), and several American teenagers who had never seen a real live Neo Nazi before pointed out the windows. The girls giggled. This I watched from the upper deck’s back seat. My brother’s friend said, "Guys, this isn’t a joke." One man drew a gun and started to board the bus. The friend was ignored. Word of the gunman boarding prompted curious faces to press against the windows.

So here I was, too young to have any real authority. Old enough that I had to be a Chaperone so I could go. The situation forced me to live up to my fake title. I stood up to say, "Guys, don’t piss them off." At the word ‘don’t,’ I realized there were two nuns sitting beside me, and my next word was going to be ‘piss.’ Having graduated from that school, I knew it was really bad to say that in front of a nun. Worse than a Neo Nazi murdering kids? No, but this didn’t need to be an either-or thing.

Without skipping a beat, I redirected my sentence to whatever phrase popped into my head. It came out as, "Guys, don’t F••• with them."

The kids were shocked, staring at me and the nuns as they slowly sank to their seats. My dad yelled my name. I stammered, "but Dad.. the Nazis.."

I turned to face the nuns ready to get hell. Both were completely calm and poised (as always). One gave me a nod.

Yikes!

A quick Google search tells me this is, more or less, the so-called "New World of Darkness" so I'm guessing it corresponds to Vampire: The Requiem? Only played a LARP game of that, can't say I was thrilled about the cut down to 5 clans or the 5 social clubs, but in fairness, it might have been the group/STs and I left before we got too deep into what's really going on in the background.

Yep!

I don't like VtR, but I like the meta-plot of VtM/WoD. And all of the numerous vampire clans are pretty tied into and central to that burden of metaplot. So just thought it might be worth a look for you.

The more mass appeal you go for, the blander your product becomes. More people like it, but less people love it. If you take risks, you end up alienating people (and I'm talking about playstyle preferences, NOT social issues), and Hasbro doesn't want to take risks. They want D&D to be the game that anyone can sit down and play, and anyone can and lots do but... it's just not great.

Definitely DCC for me, I've tried it twice via play by post. It's not for me

5E, he said, giving an unpopular opinion. I just don't like it. I feel that it is oversimplified and heavily weighted in favor of the players. I enjoy D&D, but 5e just kills the fun for me.

I'm also an unpopular-opinion-haver since I dislike 5e too lol.

I'm also not a fan of 5e, but conversely to you, it's because it's too overcomplicated. :D

Sorry to keep at this, but did I miss something? So one of the neo-nazis drew a gun and started to board your bus? You told the kids to stay quiet and not antagonize him, and then....?

Cyberpunk RED. I bought the PDF when it first came out and played a long-term game with my IRL group soon after. The over complicated character sheet, the combat mechanics, the netrunner "mini game"... There's a lot of crunch with little to no return for a fun cyberpunk experience.

I wanted to like it since it was the only system that had Cyberpunk 2077's lore / roles by default, but the same can be achieved in a system better suited for someone like me.

The tour guide and the Neo Nazi leader (whom we named "Lester Lightbulb," later, from the safety of our hotel) talked the gunman into putting the gun away and stepping off the bus.

That conversation was on the lower deck, in Italian and, from where I was sitting, out of earshot. There was talk later of how, had things gotten worse, there would have been Bad Press because we were Americans. I don’t know if there’s any truth to that.

Wow, that's insane. I'm glad everything turned out okay, and appreciate the update.

I didn’t want to hijack the thread, but it would have been rude of me not to answer.

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Interesting take. Maybe that’s why I gravitate to weird niche games.

Certainly. I'm no fan of 5e either and a big part of GamersPlane's initial appeal for me was the chance to find people willing to try out weird niche games. I think the slow pace, read-based format of PbP accommodates trying new games because you have the time to look up stuff in rulebooks, it's not like holding up a live game by flipping through pages.