I play games with elves and watch movies with CGI heroes wearing brightly colored pajamas. I'm fine with suspending my disbelief to accept female waif mega-ninjas.

Quote from: Spinachcat;920821I play games with elves and watch movies with CGI heroes wearing brightly colored pajamas. I'm fine with suspending my disbelief to accept female waif mega-ninjas.

Hush, you.  REAL MEN are grunting and scratching their balls.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;920822Hush, you.  REAL MEN are grunting and scratching their balls.

And you can only uncleverly quip about it....

Quote from: jeff37923;920825And you can only uncleverly quip about it....

Well, he doesn't have any balls, so he can't scratch them, obviously.

Quote from: Brand55;920816While certainly anything can happen, there's a good reason that the UFC and other organizations have weight classes. Ronda Rousey or Joanna Jedrzejczyk can beat up a lot of guys out there, but as badass as they are they'd get their butts handed to them if they ever had to take on someone like Daniel Cormier or Michael Bisping in a fight.

That's why I always have to suspend disbelief when I see much smaller fighters, male or female, wading through supposedly capable opposition in movies and television shows. It happens a lot.

Also just being able to puch people over and over again without a glove and not fuck up your hands. Only real fist fight I ever had I got a bone bruise in my hand from punching the other guy in the head just one time. Luckily that knocked him down so I could get away.

Hurt like fuck for days.

Quote from: Simlasa;920787There's always Raumpatrouille Orion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1OKB0yXh0E

Thats German. Great series though and vastly underrated.

Well please keep in mind that at first level Gandalf still had to fear for his life whenever attacked by the common house cat.:eek:

I think "D&D fantasy" dominates because there is a clear default activity - go in dungeons, kill things, get loot. Few other games really have this, though I liked WEG Star Wars with its very clear "You are Rebels. Fight the Imperials" mandate. I guess Superheroes genre with its clear "You are a super team. Fight bad guys & foil their plans" mandate could have been dominant, and it's notable that recent iterations of D&D have themes and published adventures very much in this reactive "Foil the Villain!" mould, rather than OD&D's proactive "Get the Loot!" mould.

I find science fiction games in particular very often fail to properly answer the vital "What do we do?" question, and "Anything you want" isn't really a good answer.

Quote from: Omega;920996Thats German. Great series though and vastly underrated.

What's wrong with being German? (I was just thinking European Star Trek-ish).

Quote from: Simlasa;921007What's wrong with being German? (I was just thinking European Star Trek-ish).

The subtopic was Russian ST.

Lots of examples from other countries. Some more blatant than others.

Theres also some interesting fantasy series out there that isnt just a re-hash of LOTR. Harder to find though.

Quote from: S'mon;921005I think "D&D fantasy" dominates because there is a clear default activity - go in dungeons, kill things, get loot. Few other games really have this, though I liked WEG Star Wars with its very clear "You are Rebels. Fight the Imperials" mandate. I guess Superheroes genre with its clear "You are a super team. Fight bad guys & foil their plans" mandate could have been dominant, and it's notable that recent iterations of D&D have themes and published adventures very much in this reactive "Foil the Villain!" mould, rather than OD&D's proactive "Get the Loot!" mould.

I find science fiction games in particular very often fail to properly answer the vital "What do we do?" question, and "Anything you want" isn't really a good answer.

Yup while they look the same on paper treasure hunting and foiling villains have an important difference:
-Foiling the villains: mysterious stranger is in the inn. "Oh god, some other random guy who's going to ask for help."
-Treasure hunting:mysterious stranger is in the in. "Oh good, let's see if we can pump him for information about loot."

Quote from: S'mon;921005I find science fiction games in particular very often fail to properly answer the vital "What do we do?" question, and "Anything you want" isn't really a good answer.

This has been my biggest recurring problem with SFRPGs. When faced with the huge possibility of choices that the Players could do, they just stare blankly like a deer in the headlights. You really do have to spoon feed many of the starting adventures until the players get the understanding that they can do "Anything at all".

Quote from: jeff37923;921256You really do have to spoon feed many of the starting adventures until the players get the understanding that they can do "Anything at all".

That's a natural human trait, though, sometimes referred to as the Paradox of Choice.  I think it's also exacerbated by the fact that in an SF setting, what you can do is highly setting dependent, and at the beginning most players are unlikely to have fully absorbed all of the implications of the particular premise.

The 'what do we do?' issue of Sci Fi rpgs is solved well in Bulldogs!.  You're a little more than a 'space UPS' delivery crew in the worst broken down truck in the company, with a 'manager' who'd like nothing more than to see you take a walk without your vacc suit.

Gets the ball rolling quite nicely!

Quote from: S'mon;921005I think "D&D fantasy" dominates because there is a clear default activity - go in dungeons, kill things, get loot. Few other games really have this, though I liked WEG Star Wars with its very clear "You are Rebels. Fight the Imperials" mandate. I guess Superheroes genre with its clear "You are a super team. Fight bad guys & foil their plans" mandate could have been dominant, and it's notable that recent iterations of D&D have themes and published adventures very much in this reactive "Foil the Villain!" mould, rather than OD&D's proactive "Get the Loot!" mould.

I find science fiction games in particular very often fail to properly answer the vital "What do we do?" question, and "Anything you want" isn't really a good answer.

Good points all round.

There is an issue regard implied assumption about "what we do" even in fantasy. I meet a lot of GMs who will say "anything you want" when they really mean "go in dungeons, kill things, get loot". I guess they think this too obvious to say, but it isn't really and it can land you end with mismatched characters and expectation.

The premise "Foil the Villian" tends to work better for supers, horror, or campaigns with a built-in focus (Star Wars Rebel Alliance, Ghostbusters, espionage) than "Get the Loot", which as you mention tends favours a reactive than proactive mindset. If you are used to running games in one mode it can be tricky to retrain yourself to run a game in the other.

Note however that one of the most successful games of all time (albeit passed it's peak) are Vampire and assorted WoD games. In my experience with WoD (limited as it is) is that they are rubbish as explaining what exactly it is characters do. They set a tone, a mood but fall short of spelling it out in simple terms. So, yeah, there are always exceptions - in this case a pretty big exception.