I got into traveller with gurps a few years ago (Wish I hadn't, but too late now) and recently I've been looking into other incarnations of the big T. I just found out that in CT or OT, however you want to call it, armor only affected your chance of being hit but did not reduce damage when you got hit.

Man, I hate that mechanic! it may work with crude primitive melee weapons, but in hi tech games there are a lot of weapons that just don't work right with that type of mechanic.

Explosive weapons, for example. Weapons that fire an explosive round that detonantes if you hit a solid target with it. You need to know if the weapon hits before you can determine whether it explodes or not. Even if it doesn't harm a ridicously armored target the blast may injure people around him, so saying that the shot missed due to his armor just isn't right for that type of weapon.

I'm not too lazy to roll to hit, THEN roll for damage and see if I penetrated armor or not, so I really just hate that kind o mechanic and am glad that later versions of traveller dropped it.

As said earlier, I didn't like the mechanic in Stargate SG1 where a critical hit wasn't a critical hit unless someone spent points to activate it. Also the idea of shotguns having a recoil of "1" in gurps 4e doesn't sit too well with me, as it means a shotgun has no effective recoil, the same as a laser. I have fired a shotgun and they do have recoil.

So what mechanics do you hate?

The "Rule of 1" in old World of Darkness games.  I can think of few rules that inspire such sheer loathing in me as that one.

I hate Spell Slots, and fire and forget Magic.

Dice pools where both the number of successes required and the target number for succeses is valid to change.

Dice pools where you have to add 10+ euclidean random number generators...

And on a more specific note: Wussified 3E spells with no side-effects. Teleport, polymorph and haste are too easy now.

Freeform point buy. Players spend forever doing niggly point buy, make unrealistic sacrifices to get that one skill rank they are looking for, and no correlation between their abilities is enforced.

Dice pools with any fidgety little rules like a special dice or rerolling on certain numbers, or any dice pool with a changing target number.

Diceless of any stripe.

In 3E/3.5 grappling and turning undead both drive me nuckin' futz.

Freeform point buy seems more trouble than its worth these days.

I like class-and-level.  I also like skill systems.  Class-and-level games with skill systems can be a big pain in the ass.

I also HAAAAATE 3d6 as the Main Mechanic for Gurps with criticals on un-rounded numbers. It makes the game feel all fidgety and loose (I don't know if they changed this in 4th edition or not...)

Just about any dice pool system that's not a simple "roll, keep high" mechanic.  Even with fixed TNs, I couldn't stand the system for Adventure! and breathed a sigh of relief when that game ended.

Just about any similar skill/skill web mechanic I've encountered.  I like the idea, but never the execution.

WRT the OP, I have a slightly different beef with Classic Trav: the damage system.  Assigning each die of damage to a random physical attribute is a pain in the ass.  And it's not consistently applied to, e.g., combat with animals; animals do a fixed amount of damage, but how is the damage split up?  It was no biggie to do house rules, but damn, it wasn't even addressed when the game's second edition was issued (and there were some big changes in other areas of the rules).  The problem is that I like what they were going for, so I didn't want to convert everything to simple hit points.

Conspiracy X version 1.0

+1Df is bad (raised the difficulty of the task), but +2t (raises the TN you have to roll under) is good.

Make you mind up adding things should be good or bad not both.

I hate the Wild Die in D6 with a fiery passion.  Every time I have ever seen it used in play it has been an excuse for the GM to do silly, crazy shit that fucks over the character and spoils the mood.

the term "Bennies" from Savage World turned me off of the entire game.  seriously.  no, seriously.  also that stupid jester skull thing.  christ.

also, the thing that gets on my nerves more often that not is inconsistent dice-related rules.  if rolling high is good in combat, then don't fucking change that for skills, or don't suddenly make rolling EQUAL TO something even BETTER than rolling HIGH or LOW or WHATEVER!  (yes i'm staring at you, MRQ.)

Has anyone ever played Children of the Sun?  No?  I rest my case.  

Count me in for despising dice pools (at least any where you have to count "successes"); and freeform point-buy systems.

RPGPundit

When you make a dice roll you should immediately know if it was a success or not.  You shouldn't have to do any accounting or math first and then have the success / failure moment.  d20+2 is ok.  d20+2+3+1+1 then look something up... then look something else up... +2...

That seems like a lot less fun to me.

Quote from: VellorianHas anyone ever played Children of the Sun?  No?  I rest my case.  

I did. Under a GM for a playtest review. I was excited about the setting. After playing the rules, I was no longer excited about the game at all.


Specific Mechanics that I hate? In general any mechanic where the chance of failure is high for plain ol ordinary things, unless your PC is optimized for that one plain ordinary thing.