The Gaming Den

Looking at my bookshelf makes me a little sad because I see a lot of great settings that I never ended up playing due to the rules that acompany it, or that we ended up playing only to see its rules was not to our tastes.

For me thats the case of Mechwarrior RPG, Dictionary of MU, and Eclipse Phase. In the Dictionary case I even appreciate the Sorcerer rules but my groups never bought into it. In Mechwarrior case, I admit I find it awful. It feels like a lifepath chargen with a task-resolution attached. And Ecliipse is the kind of game I see myself playing when I was 12 years old with all time in the world in my hands, but that I abandoned completely as soon as I had family, work and study to care about. There are others in this situations, but for the sake of brevity Ill leave it at those three.

How about you ? Does this hapens to you ?

GURPS. The setting is basically Lego the RPG, at least the aspect of Lego where you can mix up your pirate set and space set and knights set and urban contemporary set and get something cool.

But then you introduce players who want to kill things and a GM who wants to make it a challenge to affect the world and it stops being as cool.

Yeah, the Battletech/Mechwarrior RPG. I TRIED. And i failed.
I decided to throw my character out an airlock after 4 hours of trying to play by the rules.
Seriously. You play as a clanner?
A Warrior Race BRED for combat?
A Mechwarrior will not have enough Points to get a decent piloting skill AND Vehicle Points(Yes, you need to allocate a huge fucking ammount of your starting points to something that should by all rights be GIVEN to you for free) AND unarmed combat high enough up so you can defend yourself from some prick just challenging you to an unarmed duel for the mech you spent your points on . . and beating you up horribly because you chose to be good at piloting a good mech and not at beating somebody up like a schoolyard bully.

GURPS . . i do not like fantasy, so the setting we were playing in might have been playing a role there but also my horrible luck in dice rolling.
If i need to roll over, i constantly low roll. If i then use the same dice and need to roll under? boxcars all the way down.
And then the attributes/skills system and then figuring out what dice to roll for what and how much i need to roll below what and how much i would need to improve on what to get better odds at beating that roll . .
I tried several sessions with my VERY patient with me buddies who had played it before . . and i simply could not wrap my head around it <.<

Sakuya Izayoi wrote:GURPS. The setting is basically Lego the RPG, at least the aspect of Lego where you can mix up your pirate set and space set and knights set and urban contemporary set and get something cool.

But then you introduce players who want to kill things and a GM who wants to make it a challenge to affect the world and it stops being as cool.

Someone needs to make a Lego rpg

and in that setting too, fighters can't have nice things and sorcerers rule supreme.

The World of Indiana Jones (Masterbook/d6)

There are a number of settings for FATE that sound cool, but I just can't get into that system. I can appreciate its design on a theoretical level, especially the newer iterations that remove the padded-sumo issue - it looks more functional than some of the systems I do play, in fact.

But in play, it just leaves me cold. Something about the fungibility of aspects and skills/characteristics - I've seen behind the curtain, and I can't unsee it. Maybe with a really amazing GM, but so far its never worked for me.

Stahlseele wrote: A Mechwarrior will not have enough Points to get a decent piloting skill AND Vehicle Points(Yes, you need to allocate a huge fucking ammount of your starting points to something that should by all rights be GIVEN to you for free) AND unarmed combat high enough up so you can defend yourself from some prick just challenging you to an unarmed duel for the mech you spent your points on . . and beating you up horribly because you chose to be good at piloting a good mech and not at beating somebody up like a schoolyard bully.

Hmm, couldn't you just, you know, run to your mech and use it to kill anyone who challenges you to unarmed combat for its possession? Accepting honorable challenges is for losers.

maglag wrote:

Stahlseele wrote: A Mechwarrior will not have enough Points to get a decent piloting skill AND Vehicle Points(Yes, you need to allocate a huge fucking ammount of your starting points to something that should by all rights be GIVEN to you for free) AND unarmed combat high enough up so you can defend yourself from some prick just challenging you to an unarmed duel for the mech you spent your points on . . and beating you up horribly because you chose to be good at piloting a good mech and not at beating somebody up like a schoolyard bully.

Hmm, couldn't you just, you know, run to your mech and use it to kill anyone who challenges you to unarmed combat for its possession? Accepting honorable challenges is for losers.

Not in Clan Society.
They are bred for war.
Honor comes before life.
They live by the ultimate might makes right mindset.
There are rules for this shit.

There's like three Savage Worlds World Books that are pretty much Awesome on my scale of 1-10. Savage Worlds is a festering pile of shit, but the things people put out for it are pretty cool.

Space 1889. Jules Verne-style space adventure pulp.
Gaslight Victorian Fantasy. My inner steampunk/gaslamp fanboy squees.
And Weird War Two; alternative history where the Nazis really did have the occult. Done better by Hellboy, though.

Outside of Savage Worlds having a signal to noise ratio that doesn't even come close to approaching 1:1, there was this indie RPG called Little Fears (and another RPG like it that was better for not having something I'll touch on) where you played kids who went into Dreamland and fought all the Horrors of the world.

However... you were also hunted by the Seven Deadly Sins. One of them was Lust. Pedophilic, rapist Lust. You were expected to encounter this guy at least once. Ugh.

Yeah, Brilliant Gameologists talked about Little Fears. It sounded interesting outside of the whole Prince of Lust thing. I think WoD had an rpg that was similar in premise, but I can't remember the name, and there is also Grimm, which is, again, kids going into storybook land.

maglag wrote:

Stahlseele wrote: A Mechwarrior will not have enough Points to get a decent piloting skill AND Vehicle Points(Yes, you need to allocate a huge fucking ammount of your starting points to something that should by all rights be GIVEN to you for free) AND unarmed combat high enough up so you can defend yourself from some prick just challenging you to an unarmed duel for the mech you spent your points on . . and beating you up horribly because you chose to be good at piloting a good mech and not at beating somebody up like a schoolyard bully.

Hmm, couldn't you just, you know, run to your mech and use it to kill anyone who challenges you to unarmed combat for its possession? Accepting honorable challenges is for losers.

The Clans are kinda big on martial honor. People would take it very badly if you did that and your boss would probably feel obligated to kill you.

Infernum. Excellent and detailed setting full of political intrigue, wars and adventures, but the rules were pretty awful and unbalanced.

Prak wrote:Yeah, Brilliant Gameologists talked about Little Fears. It sounded interesting outside of the whole Prince of Lust thing.

The thing of it is that Lust is expected to narratively rape one of the PCs when first encountered. That's literally how he's written as an antagonist. Considering you're playing characters aged 6-12... bleurgh.

name_here wrote:

maglag wrote:

Stahlseele wrote: A Mechwarrior will not have enough Points to get a decent piloting skill AND Vehicle Points(Yes, you need to allocate a huge fucking ammount of your starting points to something that should by all rights be GIVEN to you for free) AND unarmed combat high enough up so you can defend yourself from some prick just challenging you to an unarmed duel for the mech you spent your points on . . and beating you up horribly because you chose to be good at piloting a good mech and not at beating somebody up like a schoolyard bully.

Hmm, couldn't you just, you know, run to your mech and use it to kill anyone who challenges you to unarmed combat for its possession? Accepting honorable challenges is for losers.

The Clans are kinda big on martial honor. People would take it very badly if you did that and your boss would probably feel obligated to kill you.

What if you challenged all the clans to control of all their mechs at once, then nuked the accumulated honor-freaks from orbit? Or killed them with something that wouldn't harm their mechs?

RelentlessImp wrote:

Prak wrote:Yeah, Brilliant Gameologists talked about Little Fears. It sounded interesting outside of the whole Prince of Lust thing.

The thing of it is that Lust is expected to narratively rape one of the PCs when first encountered. That's literally how he's written as an antagonist. Considering you're playing characters aged 6-12... bleurgh.

Yeah, they mentioned him, and that he was the one real problem with the game, even squicking out a gm who would normally be fine with super over the top descriptions of gore.

Prak wrote:

name_here wrote:

maglag wrote:
Hmm, couldn't you just, you know, run to your mech and use it to kill anyone who challenges you to unarmed combat for its possession? Accepting honorable challenges is for losers.

The Clans are kinda big on martial honor. People would take it very badly if you did that and your boss would probably feel obligated to kill you.

What if you challenged all the clans to control of all their mechs at once, then nuked the accumulated honor-freaks from orbit? Or killed them with something that wouldn't harm their mechs?

They would not feel bound to the result because you are an honorless fuck.
You CAN do it.
You can have the leader of one clan challenge the leader of the other clan for the entire clan and have them duke it out 1v1.
And as long as NOBODY PULLS ANY STUPID SHIT and everybody abides by the rules established before hand, the losers clan will accept the winner as their new leader.

Right, that's why nuking all the clans at once is your first honorless act. So that it actually works.

It just does not work.
Because the clans own several dozend to hundreds of star systems and inhabit most of them.
You'd have to do a nuclear steam rolling over a good part of the known universe.

Prak wrote:

RelentlessImp wrote:

Prak wrote:Yeah, Brilliant Gameologists talked about Little Fears. It sounded interesting outside of the whole Prince of Lust thing.

The thing of it is that Lust is expected to narratively rape one of the PCs when first encountered. That's literally how he's written as an antagonist. Considering you're playing characters aged 6-12... bleurgh.

Yeah, they mentioned him, and that he was the one real problem with the game, even squicking out a gm who would normally be fine with super over the top descriptions of gore.

Friend's husband keeps trying to get me to play it. I got copies of the books, and reading it, thats basically the selling point of the game. It constantly references the idea that you are children in adult situations, and the whole thing is just nonstop kids getting molested. And not in a "Lol bad joke baby rape" nonsense. In the sense that you wouldn't feel comfortable letting the author near your kids, even with supervision.

To the point where I said I'd potentially be into playing it, if we could scale the PCs ages up to college or something, and thats apparently a deal breaker.

Legends of Wulin.

I was like "Ohmygod this is so damn cool!" I love the setting it lays out, love how the themes of the setting fit a wuxia movie, love it. Then I looked at the mechanics and I was like "What the fuck is this shit!" I cannot into a system that turns every roll into an optimization math puzzle. I play with ex-con warehousemen. Systems need to be simple enough for us to be able to puzzle out while we gorge ourselves on pizza and Kirkland Signature Vodka. So I looked at the mechanics, sighed, and tossed the book into the 'interesting yet unplayable' pile.

Prak wrote:Right, that's why nuking all the clans at once is your first honorless act. So that it actually works.

Ironically, you won't be able to get very many of them to show up because of their honor system. The traditional Clan battle starts with both sides calling each other up, listing off their force org chart, and then taking turns removing things from their own list until they're happy. It is considered very respectable to bring a smaller force than the enemy and win anyways.

Stahlseele wrote:It just does not work.
Because the clans own several dozend to hundreds of star systems and inhabit most of them.
You'd have to do a nuclear steam rolling over a good part of the known universe.

In 3062 the clans held ~40 systems outside the IS. As of 3142 the Star Adders, the largest clan left in the homeworlds, holds 12. The IS Houses hold hundreds, with the Fed Suns having 500+.

Some games that come to mind are Twilight: 2000 and Mayfair's DC Heroes RPG. Maybe Aftermath! as well.

I think the far larger category would be "settings that sound awesome, but that actually kind of suck for using in an RPG".

EDIT: forgot the exclamation point in Aftermath! (sic)

Earthdawn. I loved the settings, but the rules greatly reduced our enjoyment of the game.