Signs a tabletop RPG will suck

Any books that opens with an essay attempting to justify its own existence is going to suck.

> "The pronoun game" textbox

Counterexample: 3rd and 5th edition of Shadowrun are worse than 4th one

To be fair, D&D 4E was a decent system when they fixed the math. It's just a shit as a D&D system with shit marketing.

And there it is. Goodbye thread.

>"What is an RPG?"
Bitch you know what a fucking RPG is. Don't act the cunt.

>Waaahhh.... Someone has an opinion I don't like, this thread is ruined now.

OT: tbqh the opening pages of most editions are shit.
>muh fantasy RPG
>muh prestigious history
>muh "I did it first, so I do it better"
>muh "I'm an RPG so I'm nothing like the other games you played."

If you gave me a dollar for every one of these essays I've read in a rulebook I'm checking out, maybe I'd stop skipping them.

At this point, they're like EULA's. No one reads them, but everyone knows what the basic points are because they all read almost exactly the same.

"World's most popular role-playing game"

Just say "Dungeons & Dragons" you fucking sperg. It's not illegal.

One of my big peeves is games who shit on other games in order to show how superior they are.

Let's invert the thread a bit: What sort of things would you like to see more in rulebooks?
>fucking short, to the point, examples, especially in systems any more complex than 5e dnd

>John Wick

My blurb names problems, but namedrops only games that mitigate those problems in some fashion.

I would like to see more sections on recommended reading.
Like Appendix N for Adnd 1e.

fuck this man

Paranoia is kind of the exception that proves the rule. Everyone should know going into it what the game is about, so no one becomes attached to a clone that's about to be vaporized.

Before I looked him up I just thought tg really hated the Keanu Reeves movie

Every system I've played without a "what is an RPG' section has been terrible.

A character creation section laid out in the order people actually make their characters. For example, putting class selection at the start, not the end, of the section.

>tfw mostly play GURPS and every big book has a one~four page list of movies and books at the end.
Found so many good books and series off Space.

This.

Usually when they assume you're "a veteran" and know what an RPG is, they're really assuming you're a smug neckbeard here for "sophisticated" or "mature" games.

This is all excepting the super short 3-page style rulebooks. Those are fine.

GURPS 4e is best GURPS.

>It starts of with some quote of a character of the game.

Lies, you will never again see the glory of GURPS Vehicles 3e.

This may sound shallow, but lazily shopped photos for art. It tends to come out looking worse than if they'd just never bothered.

They're working on it.
It'll probably herald a new golden age for mankind, or something.

what did he mean by this?

No grid. Tactical movement is almost 90 percent of combat.

A separate space on the character sheet for sex and gender.

Social combat.

Magic that is not identical to any other form of dealing damage or has effects that cannot be replicated via mundane means.

RPG books where your car gets stolen and your dog gets shot. It's pretty brutal.

When the GM gives you a text file that the contents page he wrote, because the contents page in the book is approximately in the middle of ~200 pages.

I still admire the stroke of genius the Wachowskis had giving Reeves the single role in the world he was capable of convincingly playing.

I don't know, man. I mean, the alternative was Will Smith. Imagine that. The Matrix series would've been completely and utterly different, and sometimes I can't decide to myself whether it'd have been a good kind of different.

I'd like to see an Appendix where all the content is organized and listed in different useful formats.
> Magic items by rarity
> monsters by CR level
> Ecosystem tree that ties together different monsters together, like GithYanki/Zerai connected to Illithid/each other.

The Matrix would be worse.

The sequels would be better.

Actually, I've heard Wizbro have sued people for saying D&D in their books.

>Uses female pronouns as the default

>A separate space on the character sheet for sex and gender.
No game has done this.

Hello Eclipse Phase how are you today

That sounds pretty cunty, if I had to say. It works for Paranoia, absolutely, but that's part of the point.

FATAL.

>Eclipse Phase
You know, given their forums went spergy SJW a few years ago that doesn't surprise me.

Uhu, or it's maybe because, you know, people can and do change bodies all the time, and sometimes are forced to.

Yes, but then you have to wonder why gender is a relevant concept at all in that society. It should have gone the way of the dodo long ago if transhumanity has truly taken hold, or at least be so irrelevant to not deserve a spot on the character sheet.

Whats the hate on 5e? I recently got into shadowrun and will admit the core rulebook and some of the splatbooks could use an editor, but what makes 4e better than 5e?

Well made sample/quickstart characters. The basic rules at the start of the book. More concise rules text in general. Shadowrun style in-world comments in the margins.

I think it all being accessible to the masses is a rather recent thing in the setting.

Shadowrun 5e?

All the rules in 5e are rules that were in 4e made either more obtuse (throwing the Priority system on chargen), less functional (Limits) or kept super bad (anything involving the Matrix).

Pre-Anniversary 4E books are better written, with cleaner rules that work better than 5E.

>No grid. Tactical movement is almost 90 percent of combat.

A clunky grid system is no better, nor a more accurate simulation, than abstract rules combined with theatre of the mind. If anything, a grid system encourages a highly artificial, entirely gamist view of the scene that's even further removed from any real combat.

>A separate space on the character sheet for sex and gender.

It's the 21st century gramps, everyone relevant is agreed that this is OK.

>Magic that is not identical to any other form of dealing damage or has effects that cannot be replicated via mundane means.

That's just opinion, and a shitty one at that.

That section isn't for Grognards, it's for newcomers and people that actually don't fucking know. Just skip over them like everyone else. Or, if you are curious, read them and get an idea of what the authors think an RPG is and what you can expect from the book.

It's mainly "muh edition" shit, same as with DnD 5e vs PF/3.5.

The chief complaint that actually gets given any coherent voice boils down to powerfags complaining about limits. Basically there are now limits on how many successes you can generate from a dice pool. Unimaginative powergamers now can no longer simply optimize through gear to throw buckets of dice at any problems they encounter in-game. Their optimized bullshit characters are no longer super flexible, and they mad. I know two people who stopped playing when we switched to 5e and I'm rather glad because they were boring gamists who viewed literally everything in game strictly in terms of mechanics.

>it's Current Year gramps, stop disagreeing with me on genderfuckery you bigot

>Magic that is not identical to any other form of dealing damage or has effects that cannot be replicated via mundane means.

Are there any RPGs with magic that you like ?

Because every RPG with magic I can think of has magic doing things that can't be done by mundane means.

Me too.

And your hot wife dies of cancer.

Fuck off, mate.
You may shit upon his GMing style (and with a good reason), but all of his RPGs are at the very least solid and often have some of the best ideas and implementations of RPG mechanics that I've seen.
Wilderness of Mirrors, Aegis Project, Cat, 7th Sea, Houses of the Blooded - all of those are great.
>b-but muh "Play Dirty" meme!
The man is a great game designer first, and the shitty GM second. Stop memeing.

This.

Hey, John, how are the sales for 7th Sea? Still sticking with that weird raise distribution thing?

>that weird raise distribution thing?

Having never heard of 7th sea before, I've got to ask: What do you mean by this ?

Reading reviews, apparently the resolution system involves rolling at the beginning of a scene. This generates a number of raises, which are basically units of success. Then, as the scene goes on, you distribute these raises to complications that appear in the scene. I'm not sure exactly how it works, and I haven't gotten a clear explanation.

That is different. I can see some problems, and some ways to solve those problems, so I'll wait for a detailed explanation before judging it.

>some of the best ideas and implementations of RPG mechanics that I've seen.
Please give examples that I can understand instead of naming RPGs that I've never heard of before.

The fuck is 'social combat'?

Social Justice Warrior: The Triggering.
An RPG where you check privileges of cis white males, try to become the specialist of snowflakes, tap into your otherkin powers, and try not to become so triggered that you lose your sanity. Social Combat is an aspect of the game in which you make rolls typically reserved for physical combat in situations like arguments, chimping out, and using buzzwords.

Strongly associated with Exalted, it is the idea that you can invest resources into being good talker instead of fighter; a Diplomancer in other words.
Many people feel that it is weird that by rolling some dice, having good stats and wearing the right equipment you can effectively control others. GMs especially dislike it being possible to talk your way out of every fight.

Never played Exalted. How is this any different than the D&D bluff or diplomacy skill?

It tends to be multiple rolls, I think, and I think there are whole bunch of mechanics for it, honestly I too have never played Exalted, most of the stuff I know about it comes from Keychain of Creation.

Literally full "roll initiative" combat, but only with words.

Also, on most settings where you have "Supernatural Charisma", it's never clear if you are just that of a convincing man or you are just mindraping people. Exalted is one of the best examples on how fucked up it can get since with just spending a little bit of "mana" you can turn any mortal into your undying pet.

Pretty fun.

That's more about helping first time players learn about how to roleplay in the terms if an RPG, isn't it?

Curious to hear examples of this happening

Most people just say Werewolf the Apocalypse.

As am I.

I don't doubt that they exist. I don't doubt that they are terrible. I just want to know how bad they are.

The Council of Earna uses "supernal energy fluctuations" or "ki", not silly spells like the rest of those crazy cat ladies & "Christian Wiccans".
>Fun Fact: The Council of Earna was a "coven" on SpellofMagic.com that were self-proclaimed "battlemages". The reason I know this is because I use SpellsofMagic.com as inspiration for campaigns.

(You) tried so hard with all those buzzwords but nobody actually gives enough of a shit about non videogame Shadowrun to respond to your bait.

Keep trying, lil' guy! One day you'll be swimming in replies!

> Your skills will increase based on what you used that session.

I've only seen this in a homebrew that we all knew the GM was still working on. But it was still something I will not go through again. I regularly found myself in situations where I had to choose between:
- Doing something with a good chance of solving the immediate problem. When many of the problems were "how do we not die here ?"
- Doing something with a high chance of failure that uses a stat I want improved

The worst part is that the GM was fair in how our characters improved. He was always improving whatever we used the most that session.

> Game is based on a popular setting that you never got into.

The problem here is that the GM and other players will keep assuming you know more about the setting than you do. Leading to situations of:
> GM: You see an x
> Player: What's an x ?
When it happened to me, I always felt like I was slowing the game down by asking.

I don't have it anymore and forgot the title, but I know I almost played an RPG about wizards in a modern-day setting that started with some "forget everything you heard about wizards" spiel as if that was the *real* way magic works.
It was an extremely rules-light system (characters didn't have a stat for social interaction, and the book literally said it doesn't matter what kind of dice you roll) that proudly states wizards do not cast spells, in fact the only thing they do is summon a demon that's controlled by the GM and can refuse orders.
All the time I was reading I thought, well this is pretty far from most people's conception of a wizard game, so most people would be disappointed.
Sorry I can't be more help.

>GM:You see a monster of the brundle variety
>Player: Okay, I'm gonna make a perception check to try to guess what it is by it's features.
>GM: Roll an 8 or higher
>Player: *Rolls 10, good enough
>GM: It has two legs, a long shaft, and a bit of an oversized head...
>Player:Hmm... wait just a minute!
>GM: BRUNDLE PENII SWARMS, EVERYONE DIES
>Player: I entered the magical realm again, FUCKING SHIT.

Is that what it's like?

Mixing fluff and crunch in explanations, there is nothing wrong with a plaintext fluff description, but keep it a separate field(?) from the description of it's mechanical effect.

It's more like
> GM: You see a blobalator
> Player: What's a blobalator ?
GM then spends 10 minutes explaining what they are, with assistance from the other players. Someone pulls up a picture of one on Google.

Then the game continues until the next thing that I've never heard of before.

Fair enough.

But that brings up another one for the thread:
> The game takes the name of something that everybody has some idea of, then slaps that name on something completely different.
For example, 'wizards' in that game you talked about.

I know what you mean. I'm currently playing Star Wars Saga with a group of extreme Star Wars geeks, and I always feel really stupid.
>GM: You discover the room is full of holocrons!
>Them: How incredible!
>Me: Wait what's that
They still all mock me for assuming that "Bifty" was an alien race, when it was actually the name of our contact.

>They still all mock me for assuming that "Bifty" was an alien race, when it was actually the name of our contact.

I'm a bit of a Star Wars geek. None of my SW knowledge would have prevented my making that mistake.

No way that's not fair use but the point is the small company can't afford to have a long legal battle. Such bullshit

By any chance would the game you experienced be PTU/PTA.

I feel that for some games with that problem it can be mitigated either by explaining the things properly (each class has a blurb of what it is, items have both the mechanical AND the fluff explanation of what is) or having a "For the less knowledgable" chapter which is 100% fluff and makes it clear that if you DO know about the world you don't need to read through and it gets back to the part you'll want on page XYZ.

>I've only seen this in a homebrew that we all knew the GM was still working on.
It's also a rule in CP2020.

>Someone has an opinion I don't like, this thread is ruined now.
Pretty sure he means that the thread will devolve into edition warring.

>A character creation section laid out in the order people actually make their characters.
I still can't understand how Rifts UE managed to fuck up the chapter order so badly.

>Social combat.
I don't think this should be categorically true, though I know of no counter-example.
>Magic that is not identical to any other form of dealing damage or has effects that cannot be replicated via mundane means.
Now that's just plain not right. GURPS does magic well, and so does Ars Magica if you recall that it's not supposed to be equal. Hell, Magical fucking Burst is all magic and although the system's far from perfect, focusing too much on magic is far from the reason why.