I have found Shadowrun falls under this label.  The way people discuss Shadowrun on Dumpshock would make you think that the game was a future real life simulator other than a game with Cyberware and elves!  The Matrix has to be real, yet I find most people just kind of handwave it.  Magic is broken!  Well, possession traditions and possession itself is broken in Fourth Edition.  Why the devs decided to give a power (Immunity to Normal Weapons) which A.) Does not explain well enough what the mechanical effects are for the power and B.) No critter in the book has that power, period.  Even spirits do not have Immunity to Normal Weapons.  Otherwise, magic works well.  

Some people forget that they are playing a game!  The rules have to be so important.  I mean, have you ever had to sit through reading grandmaster_cain's fucking Mr. Lucky bullshit?  Beyond the fact that a good GM would smack that stuff down, it is just a blatant attempt to twink the rules.  

Shadowrun is very much a game that is played differently than it is described online.

"Traveller is about a bunch of old guys in a decrepit freighter trying to pay the mortgage."

That's my favorite way to start the game, but with a little bit of acumen and a little bit of luck, it's pretty easy to be running a planet in relatively short order. Running a shipping line, dealing with interplanetary politics, catering to the foibles of nobility: my experience tends toward the merchant prince end of the spectrum, not Firefly.

*Sarcasm* But if you can't yell "You're doing it wrong!", you're not a gamer!

I don't know how Ars Magica is played in real life, but I doubt it's about crunching the math on magic research and relentlessly creating new spells. Reading the Ars forums, it's extremely rare to come across anything resembling adventure.

Quote from: Haffrung;307312I don't know how Ars Magica is played in real life, but I doubt it's about crunching the math on magic research and relentlessly creating new spells. Reading the Ars forums, it's extremely rare to come across anything resembling adventure.

I know how my friends and I ran it.

Session order:
1) set up plans for current season
2) ask for any adventures; since most of my friends in those games were experienced GM's, there usually were 2-3.
3) make rolls for current season.

The adventures were usually fairly short.

An example evening, from our Isle de Sark campaign (Sark was between habitations at the time, so it was a great location):
set up tasks.
Peter, myself and Ben all have story bits to do.
Mine is the annual vis hunt. everyone else's characters say where they are looking, and I adjudicated it. One particular area had a complication, which Ben's magus and Steph's comtes for same found... and a fight ensued.
Peter's was next up. He narrates a nasty summer storm, and a ship being wrecked upon the reef by it. We (the other 7 players) each had a character in the fray trying to rescue by magic and/or mundane means the various survivors. One child is rescued who has the gift... and then he stops.
Ben puts his on hold. Ben and I get into character as our magi, and several others join us... we decide to train her as an apprentice of the covenant... a violation of the code... and lay out her training for the rest of the season. Nominally, Joe is GMing that section.
Ben runs his bit, a nasty interruption to "normalcy" for the covenant... a visitor trying to find reason to duel my Magus. The covenant rallies, and we send him off, unhappy and not too well  minded... we sent him off in regio, not mundania...
Then on to resolution... Ben rolls a botch on the joint lab work between his and my characters. 15 d10's get rolled, and 5 "0"'s come up; some roleplay of the results of the botch... Drop back into roleplay mode for the end of season covenant meeting, and reassess lab assignments in light of the meeping mushrooms and breathing walls of Ben's magus' lab.

Quote from: aramis;307317I know how my friends and I ran it.

Session order:
1) set up plans for current season
2) ask for any adventures; since most of my friends in those games were experienced GM's, there usually were 2-3.
3) make rolls for current season.

The adventures were usually fairly short.

An example evening, from our Isle de Sark campaign (Sark was between habitations at the time, so it was a great location):
set up tasks.
Peter, myself and Ben all have story bits to do.
Mine is the annual vis hunt. everyone else's characters say where they are looking, and I adjudicated it. One particular area had a complication, which Ben's magus and Steph's comtes for same found... and a fight ensued.
Peter's was next up. He narrates a nasty summer storm, and a ship being wrecked upon the reef by it. We (the other 7 players) each had a character in the fray trying to rescue by magic and/or mundane means the various survivors. One child is rescued who has the gift... and then he stops.
Ben puts his on hold. Ben and I get into character as our magi, and several others join us... we decide to train her as an apprentice of the covenant... a violation of the code... and lay out her training for the rest of the season. Nominally, Joe is GMing that section.
Ben runs his bit, a nasty interruption to "normalcy" for the covenant... a visitor trying to find reason to duel my Magus. The covenant rallies, and we send him off, unhappy and not too well  minded... we sent him off in regio, not mundania...
Then on to resolution... Ben rolls a botch on the joint lab work between his and my characters. 15 d10's get rolled, and 5 "0"'s come up; some roleplay of the results of the botch... Drop back into roleplay mode for the end of season covenant meeting, and reassess lab assignments in light of the meeping mushrooms and breathing walls of Ben's magus' lab.

That sounds pretty cool. You rarely see stuff that like on the Ars forums.

Quote from: Haffrung;307331That sounds pretty cool. You rarely see stuff that like on the Ars forums.

I haven't ever done the Ars forums. I've got 2nd,3rd, ad 4th eds... and we do troupe style when we do it.

I'd been running Exalted for a while (and hopefully I'll get a chance to do it again, soon), and I was surprised by the huge discrepancy between PCs. I was running it in fairly standard high-powered fantasy mode but one PC would have been instantly slaughtered if it hadn't been for some sturdy armor.

Exalted powers break down by Charms and if you don't have it, you're just a normal person in that aspect. If you get into a fight, you need fighting Charms. Here's where it's different online then in play:

Powers are charms, and like I said, if you get into a fight you'd better have some fighting powers. Even on the low end of Exalted power (Dragon-Blooded or whatever), you're likely to run into someone with fighting powers. Fighting powers always beats no fighting powers. It's that simple.

One player wanted to be someone who was good in a fight, but refused to take defensive powers, assuming that armor would do the trick. She basically ignored anything I said to the contrary. Forums assume that you're going to have these powers, and that if the player doesn't know better then you, as the storyteller, will helpfully inform said player and the player will logically do as you suggest.

Nevermind that many players do not appreciate having the ref building their character for them. She was particularly stubborn (and really just stopped getting invited back), but I can imagine times when players really don't have any interest in going that direction, but that really threw me because I had to play with kid gloves lest I flatten several party members.

Exalted players on forums, and I really just mean RPG.net here, tend to assume a fairly large swath of charms for PCs, and that gets very pricy. To get those loadouts, you need to play for a long time. I gave huge buckets of XP to players every game, so they average a new charm per session, and they still didn't look anything like what you hear about on a forum.

Likewise, you hear about invulnerable elder Exalts, and even with scads of XP, you're seeing them gifted with not just every charm that's in a book, but also customs and large combo arrays. Theoretical battles are played out where the mere existence of a power is proof that the NPC in question has it, and has it in a combo. I find it hard to believe that people build their worlds and run their games like that. No wonder they're so frustrated. It's like every NPC is goddamn Elminster The Pain In Your PCs Ass.

They wouldn't be playing out large, theoretical battles if they were actually playing.

Exalted char op makes 3e's look positively simplistic.  Which I always found ironic, given how many of the Exalted  fanboys would shit on D&D at every opportunity.

Said Exalted fanboys warmed up to 3E in time.

Heck, I recall how Kasumi used to orgasm on the TBP about the D&D campaign where they used all of the Completes and leveled up every adventure (which isn't a bad advancement scheme if you think about it but still).

Quote from: DeadUematsu;307414Said Exalted fanboys warmed up to 3E in time.

Heck, I recall how Kasumi used to orgasm on the TBP about the D&D campaign where they used all of the Completes and leveled up every adventure (which isn't a bad advancement scheme if you think about it but still).

I'm sure to an uninitiated Exalted player, the move to a more discrete and codified advancement process probably seems like a dream come true.  

I just could never shake the feeling that Exalted was created primarily so that WW fans could indulge in all those nasty powergaming tendencies they all claimed to be above, and nWoD hitting everything with the nerf bat didn't do much to dissuade me from that conclusion.

I ran an Exalted campaign for three years.

Yes, that discrepancy exists.  I had to fight with one hand crippled and the other behind my back because four of the six PCs were quite vulnerable.  (Three of the five Dragon-Bloods and the one Sidereal.)  One of them relied heavily on Presence Charms to mind-fuck potential hostiles out of action and whatever remained could be handled.  The last was an Immaculate Martial Artist that knew how to play; he was the tough nut to crack, at times literally.

The group, collectively, never fought anything more Exalted than some Outcastes and the Sidereal had some not-quite-lethal fights against other Sidereals.  Aside from a dogpile against a young Lunar, they faced no Celestials as a group until the end: they fought, and won, against a Circle of barely-trained Abyssals.  Half of the group died in the end; the rest escaped- and never did I truly take off the gloves.

Had I been cruel, I would've thrown just one Invulnerable Sword Princess at them; stacked Persistents and superior mobility means I Win At Mote Attrition against anyone that lacks those abilities, and that is what Exalted combat comes down to amongst those that know how to play the game.

Quote from: J Arcane;307415I'm sure to an uninitiated Exalted player, the move to a more discrete and codified advancement process probably seems like a dream come true.  

I just could never shake the feeling that Exalted was created primarily so that WW fans could indulge in all those nasty powergaming tendencies they all claimed to be above, and nWoD hitting everything with the nerf bat didn't do much to dissuade me from that conclusion.

Of course. I've always argued that Exalted is like "Art Porn" that they show on Bravo! tv... its really just porn, but they make it a little slicker and call it "art", so that "sophisticates" don't have to feel guilty about wanting to watch porn.

RPGPundit

Forgive my greenback newb ignorance but is it blasphemy to post a link to the Exalted post you are referring to here Pundit?  Or perhaps maybe just a title so I can hunt it down?  Searching for a particular post about Exalted on rpg.net is like trying to find a potential lay without HIV at a Heroin Addicts Anonymous meeting.