What are some aspects of tabletop games that you just don't enjoy anymore?

I feel like it's taking up too much of my free time and I would like to go thrill-seeking before I'm too old.

Thrill-seeking is expensive, you need to change a lot about yourself if you're tabletop gaming now and want to do expensive things later.

I've got the money right now. I just feel like I don't ever find the time.

Character builds.

Fucked-up shit. You know, when you're younger "And then we EAT THE BABIES!" gets a reliable laugh. But after a while gore and depravity seem beside the point.

Overall, though, I enjoy my games even more than I used to. My group is great!

other players

I'm tired of GMs who run high fantasy games that try to be "subversive." It was novel in college, but I don't have the patience for it anymore. I'm down for playing a game in an original fantasy world, but the reason why I choose play Dungeons and Dragons it's explicitly because I enjoy its trappings. I like elves. I like dwarves. I like wizards. I like dungeons. I like dragons. Just let me have my high fantasy schlock, please; save the genre introspection for when we play FATE or something.

The part where, after only reaching like 2nd level, all my friends lose interest for a year at which point we start over again with new 1st level characters. In six years of playing my most powerful character has been 4th level.

Grognards. Edition wars. Alignment arguments.

I actually still really love tabletop gaming, and I do it every week. I just have lost a lot of patience with the player base. My group has slowly evolved over the years, and now all my players are "normies" or casual nerds. Not one of them came into the hobby through Magic or larping or anything like that. I find that the hardcore gamers are too often just a pain in the ass to deal with.

>What are some aspects of tabletop games that you just don't enjoy anymore?
I'm sick of "experimenting" with new game systems. I'm sure the perfect game for us is out there, somewhere, but all this time spent doing one shots and "mini campaigns" to get a "feel" for a dozen different quaint indie games was time we could have spent making meaningful progression in an actual campaign.

I'm sick of homebrewing. Settings, sure, monsters, definitely, items, absolutely. But classes? Feats? Game mechanics? I understand the frustrations when systems feel a bit fiddly, but at this point in fifteen years of tabletop gaming it feels like trying to fix these systems just breaks them more.

Similarly, I'm sick of theorycrafting and all the debates that crop up. I honestly can't give a shit what the absolute most optimized build I can make is or what tier the classes are in anymore. It barely registers at the table when you aren't trying to gauge that shit in your head 24/7

Tactics. Man I do not care about the rolls and stuff. I feel like they hurt the narrative because then everyone has to improvise in order to make it fit while excluding whoever got fucked by those same rolls.

I guess I like linear stuff because usually someone has an ideal in mind when they make a linear narrative so when it strays it's like it's just a bunch of guys doing lol wtf ever which is exactly like real life, and if I cared about that kind of storyline I wouldn't be playing.

>Everything's been backstories and character "arcs" since the World of Darkness days and I just want to delve a dungeon, dammit.
That's why OSR is a thing

I'm going to sound like an asshole, but I honestly don't give a shit about a lot of the extraneous narrative stuff that people tend to get really invested in these days.

GMs who get really invested in selling their worldbuilding project to you, players who come to the table with a two page long backstory wanting to see this specific character go through some personal emotional arc, all that stuff really bores me even though I spent a good chunk of the early 2000s trying my damndest to get involved in that sort of stuff, since it's what most newer players were into and largely it's what the community is still into.

But I just, don't really care.

I don't care who the party was before we entered the first dungeon, and I don't need an extended prequel session to come up with the story of how we all met.

Similarly, I really don't care what happened in the realm ten thousand years ago if it isn't relevent to the dungeon we're delving at the moment. I'm more than happy to know that Bullywugs and Kenku are natural enemies if there's a Kenku tribe near the Bullywug camp I can play off each other, and I'm more than happy to know their religious rites if it will help me solve a puzzle, but extraneous lore and window dressing never interested me in The Elder Scrolls games either, so they're not going to interest me here.

I don't need to justify why we're going to the dungeon. We're adventurers; in character we're going because we like treasure, and out of character we're going because we supposedly enjoy a game about going into dungeons.

Basically I find it really hard to feign interest in groups who are feigning interest in dungeoneering and actually want to play out a character drama. Everything's been backstories and character "arcs" since the World of Darkness days and I just want to delve a dungeon, dammit.

Deleted to correct an embarrassing typo but to follow up on that, yes, this is primarily why I play OSR stuff these days.

GMs that ignore the ruleset and freeform RPing
Used to be all right with that but I can't FUCKING stand playing something that lacks depth, it's part of why I hate flavorless/generic systems, it just feels cheap and, honestly, not gamey enough for me.
I enjoy roleplaying, drama and all of that, but one of the most fun aspects of any system for me is meddling with the different builds, combinations and making a good backstory out of that.
RPGs that streamline your options too much, or worse, not give any limitations to what can be upgraded don't really feel rewarding for me anymore.

>water dwarfs

The endless online discussions that lead nowhere and are.mostly full of endless screeching.

It's like I know it's nearly all shit posting here, that nothing intelligent is ever really discussed, that it's not even that good a format to have a decent discussion as doing so in person is usually far more rewarding, but I keep coming back like some crack addict when I could be designing, writing or playing games.

We're twin spirits then. I don't care about character drama, I'd rather try to create fun character dynamics while raiding a temple or fighting our way out of kobold hell, one axeswing at a time. Why we're in a sunken city I don't really care about or what led everyone there, I just want to explore and have a freaking adventure.

D&D has kinda forgotten what it was.

If you asked what the goal of D&D was to someone early in the game they would have said to enter dungeons fight monsters and ultimately get the treasure. That's why you gained XP from finding treasure. There's nothing wrong with this style of play.

If you ask someone now you're more likely to get some grand spiel about narrative, story telling, being anything you want to be (as long as it's a good at killing stuff) But fundementally the games mechanics are still about killing monsters and taking their stuff so it's a strange disconnect. Players who want this are better off playing a narrative focussed system but still stick to D&D for some reason, while seemingly looking down on 'murderhobos' ' rollplayers' and 'munchkins' who just want to dungeon crawl.

I hate free-form and the GM making too much shit up as well but for different reasons. I don't want 'gamey'-systems, I want well designed simulationist systems that act as its own 'simulated world'. That way I can actually feel a bit immersed, as if this could happen (since the world operates logically with consequences and possibility to fail at any time). This is why I hate the GM fudging rolls as well, I want the things to play out as they 'would' play out.

HEMA-fags that care way too much about realism who can't see how ACKSHUALLYY they are in every single thread about combat, and ruin my sessions because they always argue about how weapons don't work that way etc
No one cares dualwielding isn't effective IRL. It's fantasy. You can shove your masterwork spear folded over a gazillion times up your ass and go play in the mud instead with the rest of you.

That it ends

I've been looking for over a decade for the perfect dungeon crawler. Basically D&D meets descent, tactics and combat oriented, with the roleplaying bits optional.

I was hopeful for 4ed but they had to make it an MMO which I hate with a passion. Yes I do know it's weird.

inb4 autism: I didn't mean an actual MMO, just much too MMO-ish for my tastes.

Have you tried D&D? I don't mean the garbage WotC tried to pretend is D&D, I mean real D&D.

But there actually WAS a historical 'dual-wielding' style though (shorter parry-blade and sword), so I don't see how they can complain that much.

When I played pathfinder it felt like Descent but with more roleplay, that's exactly why I hated it though. I play boardgames to boardgame and I play roleplaying games to roleplay, DnD feels like some horrible hybrid.

>Muh secret club

Having to play with other people

...

Nothing about the games themselves. But: having social anxiety. I've been into PnP RPG's for 3 years now, and into wargaming for roughly 1 year. I haven't played a PnP session since my old GM moved away, and i only play wargames with my GF, because the thought alone of going in to a flgs/GW store and talking to strangers already gives me a mild panic attack. Add to that the fact that i just don't like most people i meet because i'm an autistic fuckwit that thinks "damn, those guys are cringey as fuck" way too fast, but at the same time is not very good at saying no, so i end up getting caught in friendships i have no interest in, until i just stop going there, deleting my social media, and in some cases, even change my phone number.

So, yeah. I actually enjoy tabletop games very much, i just don't enjoy myself.

[screams externally]

The players.

Go and pick up a copy of OD&D, AD&D, or Basic. Gold standard for dungeon-crawling.

:(

>but at this point in fifteen years of tabletop gaming it feels like trying to fix these systems just breaks them more.
Because they're building on a fundamentally broken foundation where everything is interlinked and busted. Why do you think games like FantasyCraft and Legend rewrote the game from the ground up?
>It barely registers at the table when you aren't trying to gauge that shit in your head 24/7
Yeah, except when the Cleric casts a single spell and now they've made the Fighter useless, or the Druid's animal companion stomps them in usefulness, or when the Wizard ends a fight in one spell, or when the Fighter gets fucked over by anything targeting Will while everyone else gets to ignore it.

This thread is goddamn depressing

I'm a wargamer, not a tabletop RPG guy, and I'm getting increasingly depressed about the ongoing skill disparity in my group, which, to be fair, is no worse than any other group I've played in when I do us vs them team wargames.

It's one thing to make a mistake. To make the same mistakes over and over again after every game despite it being pointed out to you repeatedly? I used to get mad. Now I just suffer when I see it, internally cringe.

>brainlet gets upset that people point out that he's a brainlet

I feel you, man.

Same, they are just bitter backstabbing asses that need to min max everything. The sense of wonder and simply exploring a setting is long gone with them. I rather explain the rules 20 times per session to a new guy than play with jaded asses.

Welcome to Veeky Forums, we're all depressed failures around these parts.

Roleplay. Very few people are creative enough to have an original thought because their characters are usually shameless clones of popular media. Female ditsy wild mage is fucking garbage I HATE I HAAAAAATE

So why not play a system without wild mages?

Having only gotten to play regularly just a few years ago, I was finally able to actually play the games I had spent over a decade reading and admiring. However, now, everytime I get play in a group, no matter how chill, I get horrible stomach pains.

So playing is the aspect I just don't enjoy anymore.

>checked
Also check mine.
I've just gone to wargaming, I prefer imagining the combat as it happens, the movement of bodies through space in a deadly environment.

DO NOT follow the traditional D&D guidelines for advancement. The days of campaigns going on for literal years are done and over with (for the most part). Speed up level advancement and your players will stick around longer - trust me. Because players who feel rewarded for giving up IRL time are returning players.

>high fantasy games that try to be "subversive."
example,please.

Dwarves are all desert traders
Elves are industrialists
Humans are a dying race
Halflings are renowned for being mercenaries
Etc

That sounds dreadful. My first campaign as GM ran for three months and my players got from level 1 to level 5.

I'm sick of players who start bullshit arguments when they can't get their way.
>Can I use X spell to do Y?
>No, X spell does X.
>But, I don't have Y spell. And I dont want to take it, either.
>Tough cookies.
>But why can't X do Y? All I'm doing is changing range, direction, effect and everything else about the spell. Here's a retarded reason why you should let me do it.
I worked hard on my current campaign. I worked for four solid weeks making sure every power had a stat block, that each attack or spell or whatever had some sort of useful niche. If you want X, take X. If you want Y, take Y. Take both, I dont care. But I made everything exactly how I made it for a reason.

I guess that's what I'm really sick of: players taking the hard work of a GM for granted. I know I'm not perfect, but I put a lot of effort to make sure games run well and my friends have fun (and that's on top of a full-time job and part-time classes.) I don't have to do any of this stuff, and once in a while, if I'd like a little show of appreciation. So players, show a little love to your GM once in a while. We do this for you.

oh,lol deal with THIS reality!

Do what I do and just give in and put in less effort to your games - at least when it comes to statting out your monsters and NPCs. Just grab anything from the Monster Manual and refluff it, and maybe change one or two things about it to fit the fluff you made for it. Make extensive use of the monster creation rules in the back of the DMG - it is rather complicated if you try to fine tune every little aspect of a monster, but if you just take the easy way out (and you should) and just use the base Offensive/Defensive stats, it'd really easy.

YOUR PLAYERS WILL HARDLY NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE.

Note: I'm only talking combat-wise. Roleplay and story wise, keep putting in the same amount of effort.

>Be in group
>Not quite foreverGM, but usual GM
>New guy joins, he's okay, nothing special.
>A few months after he joins, he mentions well in advance that he can't make a particular Saturday, it's Yom Kippur, he'll be in synagogue
>The easily best roleplayer in the group, let's call him Chris, goes FULL /pol/ tard, and starts "accidentally" trying to get the Jewish guy's character killed, ranting about how Jews created communism, how the holocaust is a lie but the kikes should have all been gassed.
>Everyone is massively uncomfortable, and after 2 sessions of this shit, I give him the boot.
>Game has very much gotten more stale and less enjoyable though, as everyone left just kind of shows up and attacks things and cashes in their loot without trying to really engage the setting anymore.

I'll take your advice for systems where I can, like D&D or whatever. Unfortunately, my group has been playing a bunch of point-buy systems lately where i reaoly need 90% if a stat block and it's much harder to cut corners. But, I can definitely try just slapping some numbers together and see how that works. Worst that could happen is that I fail and have to try again.

The part where everyone just becomes busy because we're all friggin adults now with responsibilities to take care of.
>I don't wanna spend my Saturday powerwashing my siding. I wanna continue the adventures of Shifty McShitthief and Baron Lightitallonfire. But noooooooo

Not that guy, so I can't speak to his particular position, but I may have an example which is relatively similar. There are many peaceful, picturesque trails where I live. They are a joy to traverse or have picknicks along, but as soon as high school lets out, all of that is gone. During the summers, they litter, loiter, noise pollute, and more. It isn't that I hate unfamiliar faces at these locations or even think they are a secret, I just don't enjoy anything most of them bring.

That I can't find groups to play with
taste is so shit no one will play games with me

This kind of reasoning won't work with grognards though. They don't react well to "sort of", "similar to" and such. Hypothetical situations and rare examples also enrage rivet counters in my experience. Unless it's the most widely established fact and without deviation they will huff.

The creating a story with friemds aspect.

>tfw misread the op.

I'm tired of when personality clashes between group members occur and neither talk like adults so the feeling of tension never fucking leaves.

I can't get excited to play against randoms anymore. It's more about the social aspect of hanging out with friends now than playing the game.

Start small. Drive to neighiboring towns. Got beaches or lakes? Give them a visit, no time committment, nothing major. Acclimate yourself to basic travel. Then, take a week off work and tell your group you can't play that week. Go on a trip.
You will find your time.

Make some time, my dude. Talk to your boss, tell him you want some time off, doesn't matter if it's paid or unpaid. Most decent places will give you a week if you're upfront about what you want to do.

Mtg: Playing casually and suboptimal decks. After being a tourneyfag for about ten years. I just hate the stupid brews some people give to play when the itch is coming back. Playing janky combos and ridiculous tribals is fine, but please put them in working deck-frames.

PnP: Power gaming and people playing edgy mary sues.

Kinda ironic.

There are a few things:
>be me
>be coming back from a quarter-long break in RPG'ing due to bad schedules
>starting new campaign, asking my long-time players what they want to play in terms of tone (ie., Roll Play or role play, heavy or light moral tones, character driven or a more straightforward plot)
>get like 5 wildly different opinions so at best we compromise into a lukewarm content state

Or how about people bitching about how other systems suck but don't want to play them even to test them, so they just want to do fucking 3.5. Sorry, I want to try 4 and 5e.

Or how about getting tired about meta-conversations about power tiers and CoDzilla min-maxing.

Or how about getting tired of "this isn't like 3.5" conversations. It's Savage Worlds, it isn't supposed to be like 3.5. Deal with it.

Or how about people asking why they can't do Y with X, when they need Y' for Y? I don't care that you are a 5th level Ranger, you don't get an inherent bonus to your survival roll. Take the skill and don't be cheap with your ranks at level up, or go suck a dick.

Or how about everyone growing up so our schedules don't work anymore :(

A friend invited another guy to our group without asking. I know the guy; most of my group went to high school together. We casually play barebones old school games a few times a month, and the new guy just wants to play 5e. He bitches and moans and doesn't respect the effort I put into creating things from scratch. Even the fucking food I spend hours cooking whenever they come over.

I don't enjoy playing them anymore because my group fucking left.

I'm burnt out on crunch heavy games. Over the years I've seen so much crunch for the sake of crunch without really thinking too hard about why this needs to be in the game, who would enjoy this bit of crunch, and what is the goal of this of this crunch existing? Streamlining has become a dirty word due to being associated with casuals, but there's a lot of rules heavy games that could be made better by trimming the fat.

I've also become disillusioned with the idea of autistically fleshing out a setting. It creates a weird tension where the sessions are serving the setting instead of vice versa. I'm also a bit jaded at seeing anons talking about their sweet pile of ideas that they call a setting then watching their projects shrivel and die because instead of thinking through what they want to accomplish with their games or what the key mechanics are they just keep throwing more fluffy ideas on the pile.

I can understand where you're coming from. I'm technically more than ok with people playing janky homebrews or casually, but there's this kind of self righteous casual that I find hard to disassociate with these kinds of decks. They're the kind that whine about tourneyfags and netdecking and suck the dick of their fine, homebrewed decks without realizing they're using the same decks most people are because card pools are only so deep and good cards tend to be noticed quickly.

Doing the work required. I've DM'd a bit in the past, but my friends asked me to set up a campaign on roll20 since we all live in different parts of the country these days so meeting physically isn't feasible. I don't know if it's a problem with roll20 but making maps and getting the encounters set up is such a pain in the ass. I can't half-ass it either or the whole table suffers for it.

I can't just be a player anymore either since none of my friends are confident in their ability to DM anything. I want to play a memey homebrew class for my next campaign and that's preventing me from looking at a random group.because I feel like I'd need to ask too many questions and make too many concessions for it and it'd be a big hassle for a DM that I don't think is worth the effort. Beyond that, what keeps me out of games is that I just plain dislike most of the people I play with, though that's my fault.

If only fantasy grounds wasn't the biggest piece of jewish software ever created

>da joos

This. My friends and I like being able to say "fag" and "rapetrain"

You and everybody else about everything. They make me think the world's gone insane.

That inspiration has long sense left and I've been phoning it in, but I'm so good at improvisation and been playing so long I can recycle old content and no one knows the difference and thinks I'm a great DM when really I just let them run around the limited sandbox and hide the fact that they've fought the same encounter almost on a semi-monthly basis with different costumes.

Most of the players that are left are real jerks.

Sounds like what I'd do if I couldn't constantly steal content from other posts and published settings.

Though I'm used to this sort of thing since I've never had an original thought in my life.

user what you want is Dungeon World. It's fast, with a strong core mechanic built to enhance the story, not restrict it like the shitty D&D mechanics. Failure in Dungeon World is actually interesting, and all of the abilities are codified into the core mechanic to make it fast, fun, and easy to use. The combat is also much, much better. A dragon doesn't need 300 hit points to be challenging like it does in D&D, it can do stuff that's actually terrifying, like rip a character's arm off. Also, armor is damage reduction so no more of this "less likely to hit, but still does full damage if it does hit" bullshit. The monster stats are incredibly light, character creation is extremely fast and fluid, with just as many options as D&D when you consider that most of D&D is trap options. There is no powergaming in Dungeon World, just a fast story-based game that still has the mechanics from D&D that you love (hit points, classes, etc) but with much stronger mechanics that lead to a more fulfilling roleplaying experience.

My last session of Dungeon World, my human fighter wrapped a vampire in a bear hug and wrestled him out a window into the castle moat. That is real roleplaying, not babby D&D shit where you have to make two different rolls and then have some autist look up how far you can move about while grappling. Dungeon World is about fun and good story, not rules and combat bullshit.

My party never showing up leaving me and the DM to just sit around and resent our friends.
When they do show up the entire session turns into shitty meme references

Why leave the role out of roleplaying games then? It just makes it a game and having to deal with assholes, nothing more.

Oh holy fuck. Why do always Golden Players (what I call the best roleplayer of every game) have to have some fatal flaw? Fuck, man.

Being GM.

And I haven't even been into TTRPGs for a year yet.

Not that guy, but he did say
>tactics and combat oriented, with the roleplaying bits optional.

Gave the wrong guy the boot goy :^)

>fatal flaw
Doesn't sound like Chris had one. Got kicked from his group for no reason. Maybe you can pick him up.

This

Completely agree with this. I can't stand the community and what it's become. It's just full of beta faggots who get offended by the slightest thing.

Painting forums are my pet hate. I want a forum full of assholes, one where if someone sucks you don't get banned for saying they suck. But I can't find it any where, everyone has gone to reddit and kikebook.

Is it so wrong to just want some goddamn honesty when it comes to painting feedback?

There's something I hate

>Muh social anxiety

Get over it faggot. I'm sick of everyone saying they have social anxiety and whine like a cunt because of it. No one gives a shit, either get on with things or STFU.

Social anxiety is a jewish myth that convinces people they need medication they don't need. The cure for it is to just go and be social, then you will stop being a little bitch and self obsessing.

>TWO katanas!