What will make me close the damned thing instantly:

- Female superheroes on every page while at the same time all white males are 2 foot gnomes with evil smiles (Sounds like Paizo?)

- Extreme sexualization of every female in the book while all white men are either fat, ugly, evil, etc

- Stupid safety marxist rules and social contracts what? Paizo went dumb with this. TTRPG's have always been safe, these morons are just peddling their marxist crap on us. Throw an X in the air they say, who ya'll talking too? 2 year olds?

- Overly balanced characters, because you know, everyone has to be a winner these days!

- Political agendas

- F your pronouns

- Pink everywhere

- Overly satanic with symbols and rituals and effin gore everywhere

- Cartoony smiley little designs and characters everywhere as if the art was made and approved by 4 year olds or maybe perhaps perverts?

- Virtue calling overabundance of gays, lesbos, trannies, white females, black and arabic characters on every page, not a racist but why can't things be balanced instead of overdone?

- Lesbo, gay and trannie relationships every 10 pages, a lot of emphasis for 1-2% of the population

What will make me buy the damned thing instantly:

- Balanced male/female and racial characters but also depending on which region the story is taking place in. If it's medievil Europe make it more white, if it's Africa more black characters, if it's the Middle East more Arab characters, Asia for Asians etc...If it's North America use the right demographics as well.

- 95% or more of the characters should be straight, I'm not buying into your circus if it's otherwise.

- Races and Ancestry, this I don't mind, I actually prefer Ancestry...

- Worlds that are colorful but at the same time a little grim.

- Storytelling and world building are great

- A lot of character options but not to the point where it's used for stupidities.

- A lot of different monsters and locations

Things that will make me stop looking at a RPG:

1) Only available in .pdf.  If there is not a print option I have no interest in the game.
2) Games with built in safety tools or games that suggest using them.

• Art (or layout choices) I find off-putting. (That's not necessarily "bad art," but rather art that signals to me "this game isn't for you.")
• Any suggestion of a sociopolitical agenda/message.

1. Tiny text.
2. Dark text over dark fluff.
3. Seeing fiction before I see character generation.
4. Half the book is the author's novel, whether it's before character generation or after it.

Quote from: capvideo on January 04, 2025, 12:22:16 PM1. Tiny text.
2. Dark text over dark fluff.
3. Seeing fiction before I see character generation.
4. Half the book is the author's novel, whether it's before character generation or after it.

Oh yeah text over art is another one i hate. I also dont like putting the lore in the front of the book. I do make a small exception for liscened games but those have their own problem.

One thing?  That's simple.  Any game material that indicates that they, the publisher/writer/whatever, are putting conditions on how I use their game or who can play it.

Quote from: capvideo on January 04, 2025, 12:22:16 PM3. Seeing fiction before I see character generation.

I prefer the other way around, though it's not a deal killer.  If I'm using the book for the first time I want it to tell me what the game's about first so I know what kind of character to make.  Short fiction is a good way to do this.  If it gets too long I can always skip ahead.

1)  Woke
2)  Dungeon crawl focus - been there done that
3)  Lack of focus   
    a)  I like mechanics that are designed for and support the theme of the game
    b)  I don't like kitchen sink games

Quote from: Mishihari on January 04, 2025, 01:44:53 PMIf I'm using the book for the first time I want it to tell me what the game's about first so I know what kind of character to make.  Short fiction is a good way to do this.

In theory, this ought to work, but in practice I don't think there's ever been a game that preloads with multipage fiction that turned out to be a game I wanted to play.

I suspect that for a game, seeing the rules first and then seeing how it's supposed to be played (which is not technically fiction—it's people playing the game) is a better way to show what the game's about while also helping the reader grok the rules.

Quote from: Slambo on January 03, 2025, 11:39:45 PMIirc Synbaroum had dwarves and goblins but no elves and same with shadow of the demon lord. I dont know one with goblins but no Dwarves

Symbaroum definitely has elves though in the core book they're antagonists and not techically playable (with the caveat of changelings being a sort of elf which is playable).  They're also on the covers of the second and third core books (the advanced players guide and monster codex) where they are fully fleshed out player options if the GM chooses to use them.

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 03, 2025, 11:08:35 PMOne thing that I'll drop a game for in a hot minute is the "rotating GM" trick that Shadowrun Anarchy and Mechwarrior Destiny go with. Sure, they give you an option to not use it (at least in MWD), but the base game is built to support a very weird table dynamic.

Yeah, I ended up skipping that rotating GM thing in my multiple (admittedly short) Shadowrun Anarchy campaigns.  I didn't feel that it added anything other than uncomfortable uncertainty and none of us (both me as GM and all the players) had any experience with "narrative" style games so I figured dipping the toes into the story game pool was probably the better first step than jumping in that swamp.

Quote from: RNGm on January 04, 2025, 03:24:44 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 03, 2025, 11:08:35 PMOne thing that I'll drop a game for in a hot minute is the "rotating GM" trick that Shadowrun Anarchy and Mechwarrior Destiny go with. Sure, they give you an option to not use it (at least in MWD), but the base game is built to support a very weird table dynamic.

Yeah, I ended up skipping that rotating GM thing in my multiple (admittedly) short Shadowrun Anarchy campaigns.  I didn't feel that it added anything other than uncomfortable uncertainty and none of use (both me as GM and all the players) had any experience with "narrative" style games so I figured dipping the toes into the story game pool was probably the better first step.

I was introduced to rotating GM (or "troupe style") games in the 1980s with Ars Magica. I had fun with a handful of troupe-style campaigns, though I haven't done one in over a decade. I found Ars Magica is built around rotating PCs because of the magus/companion/grog balance, but the rotating-GM was easy to remove. Also, it was easy to add rotating-GM to other games.

I'm not familiar with Shadowrun Anarchy or Mechwarrior Destiny. Is there anything mechanically in those games that is tied to rotating GM?

Quote from: jhkim on January 04, 2025, 04:14:15 PMI'm not familiar with Shadowrun Anarchy or Mechwarrior Destiny. Is there anything mechanically in those games that is tied to rotating GM?

Standard story game trope stuff (admittedly from my viewpoint as someone whose only "story game" was the watered down version of SRA I posted above) but the GM handles the NPC metacurrency and enemy actions/rolls from what I remember.   I just didn't see the benefit in having someone able to negate or minimize the actions of the other players potentially (both as players and in their roles as GM in that session) just to suit their own views on how the story should progress.   I haven't played with a ton of very selfish attention hogs or anything (though there have been a few and arguably I was one potentially in one campaign) but I just don't have that level of trust in the mainly strangers I play with whether in person or online.  YMMV.

From the rulebook:

QuoteDuring another player's Narration, the GM's main re-
sponsibilities are as follows:
• Deciding whether an action requires the player
roll a Test
• Declaring what modifiers (if any) apply to a Test
• Determining what Attribute(s) applies to an
Attribute-only Test
• Roleplaying NPCs
• Making defense rolls for NPCs
• Knowing the information in the Contract Brief
• Arbitrating rules discussions
• Declaring that a player's Narration is finished
(such as if a Narration has lasted for too long)

Any kind of trigger warning or sensitivity drivel in the intro.  Also, I can generally tell from looking at the character sheet if I'll like the game.  If it's got too much crap crammed into it, is more than two pages/sides in length, or has a space for pronouns or "identity" beyond male/female, I'll generally skip it.

Readability is critical.  Tiny text, text over busy backgrounds, awful fonts, awkward artistic layouts, garish colors are all big negatives for me.