The gaining of power in Lords of Creation was too much for me. It was AD&D on steroids. I forget the details but by level 12 or so you could create your own world and rule it with an iron fist.

First edition Traveller. Essentially all characters were assumed to be ex-military and when they mustered out they rolled randomly on a chart. One guy could get a free used laser pistol, the next a free used spaceship.

It doesn't ruin it for me but I wish stats in GURPS had more range. The vast majority of the characters I've seen have stats between 9 - 14. They all look alike. Oh, I've seen a few fantasy warrior types with 16 or 17 Strength but those tend to be outliers (the character would have nothing else going for him.) Occasionally a brave soul will drop a stat to 8, beyond that is too gimpy.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;746644oh, let me add skills for 3e.  Believe it or not, I'm not bothered by feats because I don't play with powergamers.. But skills seems to be an overly complex and very time consuming part of character creation/advancement for something I feel can just as easily be done via role playing or an ability check.  If something takes up half your character sheet, it better be worth it.  Imo of course

I love castle and crusade because they pretty much did get rid of the skills.  Instead you get to pick a primary attribute, or two if your a human.  You class picks a primary attribute as well.  Plus your class has a primary attributes as well.  So none humans can get two primary attributes while humans get three.

All skill rolls relating to the primary attribute has its DC reduce by six I believe.  So if you were facing a 18 DC challenge to track a orc and wisdom is a primary attribute that challenge is now 12 DC.  Add in the fact that your level is added to the skill roll along with your attribute bonus.  We are looking at d20 + level + attribute mod.

I just love how that game streamlined skills like that.  What it basicly does is allow only six skills, but because they are so diverse it gives off the illusion that you have a unlimited amount of skills that you can do.

Whereas I hate the Siege Engine though when it comes to C&C it's hardly the only thing that Ruins it for me.

I love those games that just give me the tools to play and let me do my own thing.  

I'm no fan of authors who feel to further their own agenda/beliefs that have nothing to do with the game, but rather they are using the game as their own soapbox.

The single thing in an RPG that ruins it for me?

Players.

Quote from: Simlasa;746714Oh, no, it's not on my list as I've never seen it beyond the cover. I only meant to add it to theDungeonDelver's list of politically pointed RPGs... if he'll have it.

I don't think I'd mind Price of Freedom if played as a satire of extreme Right Wing 'patriotism' and paranoia in the Reagan era... regardless of its actual intent.

Actually I still have the original boxed-set of the Price of Freedom, and while the main setting was a Soviet invasion of the U.S., there were variants that included alien invasion a 'la the TV series "V". I never had the later edition so don't know if they included that as an option.

Yes, it was "Red Dawn" the RPG, but as a teen growing up in the 1980s, it struck a chord with me and my friends, as did other games like "Delta Force". It was not satirical at all - if you want that, "Paranoia" is the game for you.

Here's a few examples of "games I like but.." I can think off, ordered chronologically.

1. Here's a relatively obscure one: Bughunters for Amazing Engine. At the time I liked the idea of an Aliens bug-hunt style game but I never liked the idea that the characters were all Paranoia style clones. And yes AE wan't a great system, but it wasn't as bad as people made it out to be and it had a interesting range of settings.

2. Jonathan Tweet's Omega World is probably the best take on Gamma World out there. Unfortunately it was never a standalone game and I could never get past the inelegance of a mutant power defined as "like Cleric spell X".

3. Agents of Swing the Fate spy game was a disappointment. I like Fate and I was very much in the market for a long time for a spy-fy game, something in the line of Man from UNCLE or Mission Impossible. Instead it turned out to be more Austin Powers inspired which I never liked. In particular replacing the traditional Fate ladder terms with words like "Groovy" was a complete turn off.  I binned the book (print copy) not long after purchase.

4. I like the new Dr Who game. I'm not a massive fan of the show but it's a good system and a colourful universe. I would have bought a copy but my hang up is I really don't like games illustrated with photographs. I find them off-putting. WEG Star Wars gets pass for some reason. They managed to pull it off.

Bug Hunters characters weren't Paranoia style clones.  They were Blade Runner style replicants.

Bug Hunters is Blade Runner verses Aliens verses Terminator verses Predator.

With a better budget and execution it might have been the great gritty near future movie sf alternative to Traveller's space opera.

In Rogue Trader the PCs are the most important members of a centuries (if not millenniums) old Dynasty with incomparable power and influence over one or more space sectors, and they command a ship with over 10 thousand crew members. Yet, every time you find a new planet or place of interest, the game expects that the most important people aboard the ship go out to dungeon crawl the damn thing.

That really turned the game down to me after several months of GM'ing it. I later realized that the best way to fix that goes going Ars Magica mode: the players have two characters, a more powerful character using the RT as written, and another minor character they can take down to explore planets and stuff like that. But I also came to dislike the system quite a bit, so I don't see myself playing it again, at least not for now with so many cool games I bought and haven't even tried yet.

Quote from: Maese Mateo;746798In Rogue Trader the PCs are the most important members of a centuries (if not millenniums) old Dynasty with incomparable power and influence over one or more space sectors, and they command a ship with over 10 thousand crew members. Yet, every time you find a new planet or place of interest, the game expects that the most important people aboard the ship go out to dungeon crawl the damn thing.

It's the Star Trek model. Plus, this is 40k, where authority equals arsekicking.

Anyway.

"Cheesecake" art (Which is a stupid term anyway) turns me off ("Free cheesecake with every book", though, would sell me on more RPG books). I'm not averse to it in general, but it's an easy and boring art choice, that betrays a lack of imagination and tells me nothing useful about the setting (And no, I don't need to be informed that sexy people exist in the setting, I can safely assume that, thanks).
If the authors are lacking in imagination when it comes to the art direction, if they can't think of anything they want drawn in their game beyond yet another pinup pic, they're probably lacking imagination in other parts of their game, too.

Quote from: Ladybird;746800It's the Star Trek model.

Yeah, that's what people usually tells me. I guess it's not a model that works for me since I don't like Star Trek.

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Still, doing a quick search on Google it seems that the Star Trek ship had a crew around 200 to 400 people. With that crew size I guess it could be possible for the 10 most important members of the crew to go to land, but in Rogue Trader scale (where you may command fleets of four or more city-cizedships with a combined crew of 200.000 or more, and capable of obliterate entire continents from space), it stills feels weird to me. But I guess that maybe I'm not the target audience for the game, I prefer Dark Heresy a lot more for gaming in the 40k universe (although I still have the problem with the system :S).

[edit]
It was also disappointing that RT didn't have much support regarding your Dynasty and how to manage yourf multi-planetary empire. Maybe it has a supplement for that now, though, I haven't checked the FFG in ages.

Quote from: Ladybird;746800"Cheesecake" art (Which is a stupid term anyway) turns me off ("Free cheesecake with every book", though, would sell me on more RPG books).

Any at all or predominately "cheesecake" art?

Quote from: Maese Mateo;746801Yeah, that's what people usually tells me. I guess it's not a model that works for me since I don't like Star Trek.

Understandable. It's not "realistic". Hell I've heard people put off by it in Star Treck. IIRC, Prime Directive's  Prime Teams were a direct attempt ot address the issue.

I can usually buy into it as a concession to playability because (IME) most players don't like portraying anything less than the tippity top of the command chain or totally independent characters. And personally I'm not big on troupe play. I usually prefer having one character to focus on.

On that note, any game book where the author spends more time trashing other games than talking up their own turns me right off.

Quote from: Nexus;746829On that note, any game book where the author spends more time trashing other games than talking up their own turns me right off.

Good point. Any trashing of any other game style turns me off. This includes "D&D sucks in this or this or that way and we fixed it" or "realized its promise" (FUCK YOU: PEOPLE individually realize the game's promise, not YOU, game designer assfuck). This does not include drawing a contrast between what your product offers and what others in your opinion don't, but there's a fine line between doing this in an helpful, straightforward way and going on a rant about how these other products you're comparing yourself to suck to Hell and back. I certainly wouldn't ever make any of our products some sort of stage for a "Dragonlance Sucks!" rant or some such.

The product needs to speak for itself.