A system, or setting, where you liked everything about it, except for one thing, and that one detail was enough to ruin it for you.

Go. And explain why.

World of Darkness. I try so hard to like it. I do. I want to like it. I want to join in and play these games, but there is something about it that doesn't sit right.

Let me try and explain: It takes itself too seriously.

Is that a thing? The tone.

"The God Machine" is a derivative mix of Kult and The Matrix. It tries to reinvent itself post-Old/Classic World of Darkness, but it is still too damn serious. I digress.

It takes itself too seriously and for some strange reason there are these codified statistics that might be a good idea for some, but for me I cannot understand why they are in the game. Perhaps that comes down to a writing style/rulebook thing? I don't even like the writing style and rulebook structure, so that's three things.

But it's the serious nature of the WoD.

High production values, big fan-base with lots of buy in. Me? I am left cold because I cannot take it seriously. It pushes too hard. It's just too "edgy teenager from the 90s" still doing what it does 20 years down the road.

I just can't go there.

After saying all that, I do like some of it. I like some of the ideas. I like that it is a success, that the PDFs have groovy links to other chapters in them, the digital delivery is great. I like that you can be a normal human investigator, or maybe a monster. But the tone ruins it.

In Shadowrun, it is the rules. The setting, especially the old-school Shadowrun setting (2049-2055), is ULTRACOOL. But the rules are over-complex, and are VERY difficult to convey to new players who are amazed by the setting and want to play (such as my ex-fiancée when I introduced her to RPGs several years ago).

I do actually hate the Vampire: the Requiem for one single thing. And it's so small you could just tell me to ignore it, but I really can't.

Thing is, I'm not sure how anyone can play VtR.

The thing that's bothering me is the nature of the vampiric Requiem. Aparently, after one becomes a vampire, one can never again experience anything new or have a fresh emotion. If you feel anything at all, it's just a murky flashback to a time you experienced a similar emotion back when you were alive.

Um.

That's not a character I can play. That's not a character, period. That's a fading ECHO of a character. It's like one of those chinese ghosts that are composed of two souls, and the bit that's the person leaves. There's no horror because there's nothing capable of being horrified. Hell, any horror you might feel has nothing to do with the actual situation you're in, since it's just a vague memory of being afraid while you were alive, so the fact that you're a vampire can never be horrific since your living self naturally has no memory of being horrified that he or she was a vampire.

So how the hell are you supposed to roleplay something like that? Do VtR players simply ignore this bit and make characters who are actual persons?

TL;DR
how do i play character who can never never have a new experience

Quote from: golan2072;746537In Shadowrun, it is the rules. The setting, especially the old-school Shadowrun setting (2049-2055), is ULTRACOOL. But the rules are over-complex, and are VERY difficult to convey to new players who are amazed by the setting and want to play (such as my ex-fiancée when I introduced her to RPGs several years ago).

It's a simple dice pool system. Roll a number of dice equal to your skill or attribute vs a target number.

Yeah, there are some little details, but the basics are quite simple

Skills in D&D.

I understand perfectly well what Gygax was trying to accomplish with thief skills, especially when every new thing had its own fiddly subsystem anyway, but I wish he'd thought of some other way to do it.

Because, while skill systems can be OK, later D&D editions with their "skills and levels" is the worst of both worlds.  Am I competent because I'm a 10th level fighter, or am I a boob because I don't have "Ride Horse"?

Not to mention the infinite granularity of skills so you have such luminary choices as "Use Rope" in a pre-industrial society, coupled with brain-dead referees who interpret the rules to mean that if you don't have "Use Rope" you can't even tie your horse to a tree or tie your shoes, and that if you don't have the "Run" skill the five year old child has to roll every turn to see if they fall and hurt themselves while playing "tag".

Political overtones.  In any RPG.  Yeah, yeah I get it - the bright and noble leader and enlightened goodfolk are are suspiciously a lot like Obama and #Occupy, and the evil cyborg death machine and his brainless minions are like Bush and Republicans, and their propaganda system is a veiled jab at fox news.

Fuck you

Regardless of system, of how it's tilted, it's an instant turn-off unless it's taking jabs at everyone (Paranoia, Underground)

I will throw your shit away if I see that in it, or if I make the mistake in playing it either quit or flip the script insofar as the GM doesn't think I'm griefing.

When Jackie Chan takes "Use Rope" it's as a weapon proficiency.

In Rolemaster Standard System, Race and Training Packages get cheaper the more expensive they are.  There's a sliding scale where the bigger a package gets the bigger the discount is.

I get that they were trying to wedge high elves into the same character creation system as hobbits.  But the problem is that said high elves are like level one thousand and one.  They've been around since just after creation.  They've been to the undying lands and learned the arts at the hands of the Valar.  They've rebelled and returned to Middle Earth to make war on a fallen god and survived the price of that victory.  Hobbits haven't.

Similarly a special forces trooper is better than a raw recruit because of years of experience and training.  Not because it's easier to learn all that stuff because being a special forces trooper is in and of itself makes it easier to learn.  Heck by this standard Superman might be built on as many points as Robin.

Quote from: Axiomatic;746543So how the hell are you supposed to roleplay something like that? Do VtR players simply ignore this bit and make characters who are actual persons?

Pretty much. And in Blood and Smoke - which is essentially Requiem 2nd Edition - that setting feature got taken out. I think Onyx Path realised how it was something which would either wreck play or never actually be used in play.

Quote from: thedungeondelverPolitical overtones. In any RPG. Yeah, yeah I get it - the bright and noble leader and enlightened goodfolk are are suspiciously a lot like Obama and #Occupy, and the evil cyborg death machine and his brainless minions are like Bush and Republicans, and their propaganda system is a veiled jab at fox news.

Interesting - can you give some examples??  I've just never encountered anything that gauchely allegorical, so I'm curious!

Quote from: Warthur;746599Pretty much. And in Blood and Smoke - which is essentially Requiem 2nd Edition - that setting feature got taken out. I think Onyx Path realised how it was something which would either wreck play or never actually be used in play.

I could never quite get it why those five covenants would work together and not be at full war. I guess the covenants are more functioning like the clans from the Masquerade. But to me it seems like the Anarchs and the Camarilla with a bunch of religious groups are all working together in one city. It doesn't make any sense to me. They hate each other, but still they form coalitions and share the city positions (Prince, Sheriff, Senechal) amongst each other.

Plus some of those splats are just pure evil. Especially the Lancea Sanctum in the first edition. It has "burn the witch" written all over it. I find those guys just plain annoying. Being worried about unwanted embraces not out of practical reasons, but simply because it's against the will of God. Pffff! :rolleyes:

What completely ruins a setting for me is when the "canon lawyers" completely take it over.  It becomes almost next to impossible to use such settings without being a canon "expert" yourself.

Examples of such settings:

- Star Wars Expanded Universe
- prime Star Trek before the 2009 reboot (whether tv + movies, or the "novelverse")
- Forgotten Realms

New World of Darkness all the way.  This is what happens when you let freelancers run amok.  You get inconsistency after inconsistency.  Plus none of it makes any sense at all.  Especially Mage: The Awakening.  That game is truly stupid.

Absolutely love Monte Cook's Numenera, except that the GM doesn't roll any dice. I am usually the GM for my D&D group, and half of the fun for me is rolling dice.

Quote from: Steerpike;746607Interesting - can you give some examples??  I've just never encountered anything that gauchely allegorical, so I'm curious!

Blue Rose establishes its "Xians=evil" shtick right out of the box, and stew up the pan/poly/lbgtwtfomgbbq/trans factions as defenders of all that is Right and Pure - its so sickening I could swear Colleen Doran wrote it...

What I've read of eclipse phase establishes a pretty similar tone regarding politics with what I've read thus far...