Quote from: Nexus;996364Real Real Men do it in Champions.

Quote from: David Johansen;996376Real Real Real Men do it in Rolemaster which has percentile stats.

Real Real Real Real Men don't need no stinkin' stats!

Quote from: David Johansen;996429To my mind, for historical games to feel historical they need magic.  The problem is that if you know there are no witches you won't panic and burn witches.  Most people were superstitious.  Players will not play that if you don't reward them points for it.  But if you tell them they fell off their horse because the old woman has the evil eye, they'll respond as if their characters believe in such things.  The tricky part is keeping it low key enough to be plausible while making it scary and troublesome, though crosses keeping away trolls and vampires also helps to push characters into the proper frame of mind.

2nd edition AD&D had a series of historical campaign splats (the 'green books') that played with this. There was magic, but the PCs weren't going to have it, and no fireballs or raise deads to be seen. I feel like AD&D is not the version of D&D to just excise magic without changing anything else, but I think they did a good job considering.

Quote from: Omega;996435How is being level drained hard to recover from? You can just continue levelling up? O, BX, A and 2e all had built in disparate PC levels after a point anyhow so someone being one two or three levels lower or higher was going to happen eventually?

Hard to get the level back through a restoration spell or similar effect. And that's the entire point. If the ruleset were just straight up 'you lost a level, nothing you can do, but there's xp through the next door,' I think people would have liked the system better than, 'you lost a level, but keep track of how many points it was, because you just might be able to get a spell that will undo the effect, but time's a tickin', better get a move on.'

Drow

Big Eyes Small Mouth

"Trenchcoats & Katanas" style Vampire: The Masquerade games

What do I like that 'everyone' hates?
Where do I begin?

Tracking time in oldschool D&D.

3.5 D&D with XPH, ToB, and MoI classes only, and all PHB classes banned.

Heavily houseruled 4E D&D.

Lets see....

- 4th Edition D&D (big shocker)

- Vampires, undead, were-creatures, unusual monsters and the like as playable characters. The typical human-centric with flighty elves and stubborn dwarves of Tolkien-esque D&D are fine but get stale.

- 4d6, drop the lowest method and arrange how you want. 3d6 in order has it's place, but it isn't the "norm" for us.

- Unofficial rules like Unearthed Arcana. I like the crunch.

- DMs who roll combat in the open and don't pull punches. Accomplishments are earned and if there's hand-holding going on, I'm out. TPKs are OK in my book, new characters are fun to roll up anyways.

- Widgets, powers, "features", resources for classes etc. I like options per-round that aren't strictly DM-fiat / DM-may-I

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;996411I like crunch. I violated my oath not to use the term "arming sword" in my weapon list and I'm happy about it.

As someone considering using "arming sword" in a weapon list, I'm interested in what prompted the oath in the first place.  Mind sharing?

Quote from: Willie the Duck;996320In comparison to what? 3d6 in order, or point buy/ array? Because I have seen a lot of people lately say something along the lines of 'does anyone roll stats anymore?'--although, to be fair, I can't tell if they are hating or just really don't believe anyone does it these days (which is insular, but not hate).

If you play a lot of like organized play I think the only option is point buy/array. So for a lot of folks that is the "other" games they see.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;996503As someone considering using "arming sword" in a weapon list, I'm interested in what prompted the oath in the first place.  Mind sharing?

It seemed like the whole world was content with "broadsword" for the knight's one-handed chop and thrust sword and I thought using arming sword (or spathe or Viking sword) would seem pedantic and, even more, be a term some of the players wouldn't "get." But I finally indulged myself. The people back in New Haven who play the game today and the people I play with online all know the terminology I use and I figure anyone who might buy the game is going to be pretty tolerant of that sort of thing. I haven't gone completely overboard. I really want better hand protection to mean something but I have refrained.

There could be many more swords on this weapons list https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxncnJlZmVyZW5jZXxneDo1ZDRkYWJiMjdjZDY5Yjg4 and, in fact, I think there should be but there isn't much utility in it.

Quote from: David Johansen;996429To my mind, for historical games to feel historical they need magic.  The problem is that if you know there are no witches you won't panic and burn witches.  Most people were superstitious.  Players will not play that if you don't reward them points for it.  But if you tell them they fell off their horse because the old woman has the evil eye, they'll respond as if their characters believe in such things.  The tricky part is keeping it low key enough to be plausible while making it scary and troublesome, though crosses keeping away trolls and vampires also helps to push characters into the proper frame of mind.

You are mistaking the need for magic with the need to the PCs to behave appropriately for the setting.

Quote from: DavetheLost;996448I have had the pleasure of running no magic historical games with players who weren't cut and dried told that there was no magic in the setting. Having read , and played, Cthulhu et al they were seeing magic and the supernatural in all sorts of things even though I knew they all had perfectly mundane explanations.

I remember that, it was called Scooby Doo!

Quote from: Dumarest;996413Amazingly it took me until now to realize that what I like and "everyone" seems to hate is straight historical RPGs, no fantasy elements, no magic, no fairies or vampires, no alternate universe...astonishingly unpopular from my perspective.

I avoid true historic settings for the same reason I avoid Forgotten Realms and other big name published settings: I don't want to deal with some blowhard who knows the setting better than me trying to correct me when I don't get something exactly right.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;9960733 d 6 in order six times.

In the modern era of the OSR, that's not at all 'hated'.

Quote from: Batman;996497- DMs who roll combat in the open and don't pull punches. Accomplishments are earned and if there's hand-holding going on, I'm out. TPKs are OK in my book, new characters are fun to roll up anyways.

Yeah, definitely that.


Also, for me, anime... I'm not sure why some channels rail against it so loudly.

I like some anime but find most self-declared anime fans seem to uncritically embrace a lot of shit and make excuses for the shittiness.

Quote from: Voros;997689I like some anime but find most self-declared anime fans seem to uncritically embrace a lot of shit and make excuses for the shittiness.

Love a lot of the artwork itself, hate most of the shows that make it over here. The ones I do like tend to rate high on my all-genres list though.

More on-topic: 4e, Planescape slang, point buy/set HP/etc., wizards who can heal, non-generic clerics, inclusive paladins, both extreme railroads & extreme sandboxes.

Hunter:The Reckoning