I like a couple of games purely because of how they do the dice rolling.

Pocket Fantasy.  It's all 1D6.  If you're good, then you get advantage, aka you rerolls and keep the best one.  It also has opposed rolls like Palladium, but the game speeds up because the combat roll is a damage vs damage reduction roll.  If I roll low to the other guy's high roll, no damage done.  Simple.

Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool Edition.  Every stat and skill starts as 1D4, changing to 1D6, to 1D8, 1D10, and stopping at 1D12.  Every roll is a stat + skill, but often you get more dice from you race and class abilities.  Roll them, but you still only pick out the best two.  Simple.

Quote from: Brad on May 02, 2023, 04:44:45 PM
I really like Fantasy Wargaming because it is almost intentionally obtuse. It was written by a group Cambridge graduate students or something, and it shows. A collection of articles followed by a gaming system that appears to be vastly more complex than it truly is, I felt really accomplished when I finally figured it all out. There are the makings of an excellent game in FW, unfortunately it's burdened with the sort of language you'd read in a medieval history journal, not anything meant for mass mark consumption. I consider it to be the epitome of what you get when some smart people decide to tell you about something they've been working on, but have a complete lack of communication skills.

Ugh.  I got the science fiction book club edition.  When I finally got around to reading it and discovered there were mods based on your zodiac sign and the month of the year I decided it was actually a parody of an RPG.  I'm still boggled when I see people taking it seriously

And for me, the art style.  I used to buy every %^(% useless thing if I loved the art in the book.  Fortunately I've developed a tiny bit of discipline over the years and was able to resist a gorgeous card based story telling game a bit ago.  Small steps...

Quote from: S'mon on May 02, 2023, 03:21:05 AM
Cover art - the high fantasy Larry Elmore covers on BECMI D&D are a huge pull for me, even though the game at low level is still basically OD&D Fantasy Fucking Vietnam.

Yep. Elmore's stuff on the BECMI box sets, the cover of the third edition of Call of Cthulhu, and the cover art from the BattleTech Technical Readout 3025.

The cover art was the hook.

i can be a bigoted curmudgeon about anime. i hate when a player comes to the table thinking the game should resemble a "slice of life" anime and insists on trying to make it so, getting huffy and unfulfilled if they cannot star in some silly scene about struggling to bathe an animal companion or something.

eta
sorry missed the point; even if i am presented with things a player wants to include from what i might call anime sources, if the art from such can avoid spikey hair or improper proportions of eyes and such i can detach enough to make myself like it enough that it doesn't impede my flow or process.

I've got a group for my daughter and her friends. I'm running D&D 5th edition because they don't know any better.  Anyhow, a few sessions back they 'rescued' a big doggie who was tied to a run down house.  A big ol' mutt.  After a couple sessions they happened to finally bring him into combat with them after he save their asses the session before when they were getting the crap beat out of them after attacking a Grung village.  So anyhow, this session they took him with them into the ruined galley full of ghouls they were searching.  His hackles raised when the ghouls approached and he breathed fire on them.  The players just about fell off their chairs.  He's 1/4 hell hound on his mother's side.

Now I'm absolutely going to have to do a slice of life bit where they have to try and give him a bath.

.... because it ain't made by WoTC (3.0, 3.5, 4, 5e), of course.

The D&D Rules Cyclopedia is L1-godhood: what's not to like? It's the very essence of what D&D is.

The Arcanum 2e from Bard Games (1985) is everything AD&D should've been (armor as damage reduction, eight schools of non-Vancian magic, hybrid classes at L1, snap-easy combat system, backgrounds that actually matter and a Renown sub-system).

TSR's Marvel Super Heroes because of the Karma system, Power-Stunts and real™ Marvel art.

Villains and Vigilantes let you play yourself + it was Jeff Dee 

Quote from: David Johansen on May 17, 2023, 08:10:05 PM
I've got a group for my daughter and her friends. I'm running D&D 5th edition because they don't know any better.  Anyhow, a few sessions back they 'rescued' a big doggie who was tied to a run down house.  A big ol' mutt.  After a couple sessions they happened to finally bring him into combat with them after he save their asses the session before when they were getting the crap beat out of them after attacking a Grung village.  So anyhow, this session they took him with them into the ruined galley full of ghouls they were searching.  His hackles raised when the ghouls approached and he breathed fire on them.  The players just about fell off their chairs.  He's 1/4 hell hound on his mother's side.

Now I'm absolutely going to have to do a slice of life bit where they have to try and give him a bath.

don't do it bro as you may be forced to engage thereby with the grappling rules for whatever system you are running...once you start down the dark path fornever will ye see an end to unknown persons desperately trying to contact you about your cars extended warranty.

I buy stuff sometimes because I like the setting. Sometimes even though I know that no one in my group likes the setting.

John Carter, Conan, Star Trek, Dune ... all in 2d20, which I don't really understand.

Solomon Kane and Lankhmar got me to buy Savage Worlds. Not a big fan of SW, but it's better than 2d20.

I bought Twilight 2000 and Blade Runner and Alien by Free League because I love Free League, but my group dislikes scifi and military settings.

I own a lot of stuff we may never play.

How about this.   OSR games that don't use Armor Class. 

I've never been a fan of that mechanic.  The idea of armor making you harder to hit seems weird to me, especially as I came from Palladium Fantasy where armor provides additional hit points if a hit is only marginally successful.

Games like Swords and Six Siders (it's free so check it out), which treat armor as damage reduction, or Dragon Warriors, which use armor as a saving throw/penetration roll.

I'm older and wiser now, so I see the advantage to Armor Class to speed up gameplay.  Any time you roll dice in a game is also slowing it down.  AC keeps thing moving.  But, I still like games that don't use D&D Armor Class.

Character generation.  Yeah, I've probably created three or four characters for every one that gets a little table time.

Quote from: zircher on May 22, 2023, 12:10:15 PM
Character generation.  Yeah, I've probably created three or four characters for every one that gets a little table time.

ditto.

also i hope to lure old friends in just to see them again.

Quote from: finarvyn on May 18, 2023, 08:55:40 AMJohn Carter, Conan, Star Trek, Dune ... all in 2d20, which I don't really understand.

Ah, so you're the one responsible for keeping Modiphius afloat and helping them secure the licenses for all these IPs despite everyone hating the crap out of their game engine?

The art for me can make or break a sale. When I see amazing art, I'm sold. Shadows of esteren practically sold me on art alone, I got Conan 2d20 so I can have some sweet Boris Vallejo art, also I'm a guy I like sexy women in my fantasy games so I'm a sucker for cheesecake art too.

If the art is deliberately puritanical, woke or other bullshit I'm hard pressed to buy it even if the product is not. Often it's one of the first things I look at when flipping through a new book is the art. The absolute worst they can do with the art is that fucking photoshop image where they just take a photo of some staffer and run it through an ai or just alter the image to fit in the book and it ends up just looking stupid. Shadowrun 6e did this recently. Swade genre companions just ticked off endless diversity tick boxes and was entirely puritanical and is a runner up for worst art I've seen in a game in the last year

I got the Palladium TMNT RPG when it came out because I liked the Ninja Turtles. It is still one of my favorite games even though Palladium is definitely not my favorite system.

Then I got into the Robotech RPG for the same reason.

Maybe the dumbest reason I got into an RPG though is GURPS, because i was disgusted by 2e D&D, and thought that Classes and Levels were old fashioned. Boy did I learn how wrong I was, played GURPS for years and I can tell you with confidence that Classes and Levels are the best mechanic for an RPG. The clear character archetypes, clear progression with narrow options, and clear goals all lead to better games. The more options the worse an RPG is, and the harder it is on the GM.