Quote from: Ruprecht on January 03, 2025, 07:38:18 PM

Quote from: brettmb on January 03, 2025, 07:16:41 PMcomics

AD&D had a few comics, if I'm understanding your meaning of comics correctly.

It had cartoon art interspersed. AD&D never had actual comic book pages in the books that I can recall.

Quote from: Slambo on January 03, 2025, 09:13:42 PMOne thing i think is particular to me that ive seen a few times is if goblins are a player race and elves are not i tend to put it down. Im also wary if dwarves are there but not elves, but ill at least read further.

Shadow of the Demon Lord initially had both dwarves and goblin PCs but not elf PCs. When they later added elf PC rules, they were fey and really fucking non-human. Trust me, not having elves in the core book did not hurt this game.

One thing that I'll drop a game for in a hot minute is the "rotating GM" trick that Shadowrun Anarchy and Mechwarrior Destiny go with. Sure, they give you an option to not use it (at least in MWD), but the base game is built to support a very weird table dynamic.

Quote from: Dark on January 03, 2025, 09:41:42 PM

Quote from: Slambo on January 03, 2025, 09:13:42 PMOne thing i think is particular to me that ive seen a few times is if goblins are a player race and elves are not i tend to put it down. Im also wary if dwarves are there but not elves, but ill at least read further.

What game would have dwarves without elves or goblins without the other two? That's odd.

Goblins becoming popular races is mostly Pathfinders fault in my opinion. Runelords and arguing over killing baby goblins started it. If you're going to have a slightly less threatening monster race, at least use kobolds.

Iirc Synbaroum had dwarves and goblins but no elves and same with shadow of the demon lord. I dont know one with goblins but no Dwarves

Quote from: HappyDaze on January 03, 2025, 11:06:34 PM

Quote from: Slambo on January 03, 2025, 09:13:42 PMOne thing i think is particular to me that ive seen a few times is if goblins are a player race and elves are not i tend to put it down. Im also wary if dwarves are there but not elves, but ill at least read further.

Shadow of the Demon Lord initially had both dwarves and goblin PCs but not elf PCs. When they later added elf PC rules, they were fey and really fucking non-human. Trust me, not having elves in the core book did not hurt this game.

I didn't really like what i ready of it, but i didnt finish reading it. Its just a descision i don't like, especially with Goblins. I don't like goblins. I don't like Kobolds either, but that's mostly due to 5e and Pathfinder players specifically.

Proprietary Dice, or other equivalent "if I lose it, only this company can replace it" game resolution tools.

This will probably seem like a weird one, but if defending yourself from an attack uses up your action for that turn, I write off the system. If it just uses a reaction I still don't love it, but it can work in some games. I also strongly dislike any system where to-hit difficulty is independent of what you're actually trying to hit, though that one's not always an automatic disqualifier for me.

Special Dice can be a no-no for me, depending. If I can use a regular die but the special ones that come with it just make it easier to read, I'll take a look.

I haven't run into pronouns, but that would very likely make me pass.

I struggle with I guess Pundit would call them "Story games". They just don't make sense with my head and the rules explanations on games are terrible anymore.

One thing I do like is a solid example of play that shows off the mechanics. The James Bond RPG had a really good one that showed how it worked.

Convoluted dice mechanics. 

Why?  Novel ways to interpret dice rolls don't make it more fun.

Special dice or any special table top counters (3rd Edition Warhammer being an extreme example)

Complex and crunchy mechanics that require massive time and energy to learn and slow the game down. This is the main reason I left Warhammer 4th Edition and why I would never play a game like Pathfinder or 3.5

Personal taste - but I don't like a Tolkeinesque game (that version of elves, dwarfs, halflings).

A game that appears to take the 20th or 21st century social/ political world and reskin it with a Hollywood version of olde worlde. For me that breaks immersion. Some D&D products do this and the more crude versions of it put me off.

Bad AI art. And artwork that depicts player characters as sparkly students from a US campus in Hollywood costume. I prefer art which is darker, grittier and where the characters look lived in. I love the art of Alien RPG, Baptism of Fire, and some of the art of Warhammer 4th Edition (which varies). It's not a dealbreaker though. I'm not against playing a game with bad art that's really good. I'm just a lot less likely look at it in the first place.

I hate boilerplate apologism. Don't tell me about how your game won't do this or that or how it upholds something. Totally unnecessary. Tell me why your game is. Tell me what your game does. It's rules not values. I'll inject my own goddamn values, thank you very much.

Also a character sheet. Best have one of those in the book. It's one of the basic blueprints of your game and if you don't have one it suggests your game probably isn't fully cooked.

Aside the fact I nearly only like Low/Dark/Rustic Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery settings, excluding most of other games (with exceptions fortunately), I'd say:

- Intrusive lecturing of the consumer or obvious signalings (like pronouns, no human white males in the artworks, etc).
- Childish tendency to depreciate usual figures instead of being creative ("hey you see typical goblins? they are actually smart and friendly" "hey, you see typical hobbits? they are actually drunkards beating their children at night).
- Anti-consumers behaviors from the creators (may be bad Kickstarting practices, disdain for feedbacks, etc)
- Describing and illustrating a medfan world with 19th-21st references (typically a supposedly "medieval-ish" inn illustrated as a cosy 19th-ish/victorian-ish tearoom).
- Typical Northern American artworks (Marvel-ish / overload / ultra-clean / ultra-bright-smiles characters, etc)
- Gears artworks too obviously lacking functional credibility (like, how could this armor credibly protect its wearer or even being practical on the battlefield?!).
- Special / too numerous dice.
- Necessary gadgets aside books and character sheets (like necessary cards, tokens, again special dice, etc)
- Games where characters are basically super-heroes.
- Games with no clear artworks / aesthetic direction and borders, where you can be and see anything and it just ends-up looking like a ridiculous/creepy circus.

Ofc these points are not absolutely prohibitive by themselves, and I can "tolerate" some negative points in a game if they are very moderately intrusive and if I like it as a whole. But yeah, at the bottom line, DD5 is the perfect example of what I don't want to see.

Quote from: Omega on January 03, 2025, 07:30:16 PMTMNT gets a pass because it is based on a comic. And think there was only like one in the whole series of books. I'd have to dig out the set. Think was Road Hogs.

The main book has a Halloween comic, Guide to the Universe has one with the TCRI aliens/Utroms and a triceraton, Transdimensional TMNT has an excerpt from a comic but it's directly related to the Kirby artifact, nothing in Truckin' Turtles, Hollywood, or Road Hogs. So the first two books basically have some padding/filler, but they're actually interesting to read and provide an extremely good example of how you might want to play the game, honestly.

To answer the actual topic of the thread, as soon as I see some fucked up art that has no bearing on how the game presents itself, I instantly lose interest. The worst recent offender I can remember is The Hero's Journey 2nd edition. I was insanely disappointed by so many things with this game (that I kickstarted for the top tier), but some of the art...undermined the entire premise in my view. Just bad.

There are a few things which turn me off to any TTRPG:

1. Entirely self-referential and unique campaign worlds and settings. If I have to read 300 pages on your new made-up world with wizards and aliens, and that world has no real-world, historical analogy, I will get frustrated. The best things TSR ever produced were the Gazetteers, which created settings based on real-world historical example (Thyatis=Byzantium, Emirates of Ylaruam=early Islamic caliphates, etc.).

2. Lengthy and complex character creation. I should be able to roll up a PC within 20-30 minutes tops, and if it goes beyond that, it is evidence that the rest of the game will be a complicated mess.

3. Game designers and authors who are openly hostile and dismissive towards their would-be customers. Not simply making some political or ideological statements here and there, but sanctimonious, condescending behavior, spreading misinformation, and acting like a complete fool (Jeff Dee, Chris Pramas, Cam Banks, etc.) --if you hate me, I'm not going to buy your products. I won't even discuss them.

4. Games that have ideology injected directly into them. Stuff like pronouns on character sheets, chapters on LGBT representation, colonialism, etc. --again, I am playing a game, not attending a lecture on your pet political theories and agendas. And it doesn't have to be left-wing stuff--I wouldn't want to see a bunch of neocon propaganda in a game either.

5. Games that are long on presentation and gingerbread vs. actual good content.

Quote from: jeff37923 on January 03, 2025, 06:14:16 PMA kitchen sink approach to character creation - you have to use polyhedral dice, playing cards, and tarot cards all at the same time and then never use them again makes me pass.

Gimmick dice - if you need to buy a special set of dice just to play the game, I'll pass (looking at you, FFG Star Wars).

Weird dice mechanics - Alternity is the best example of this. That chart where you had to compare two different dice combos always made my eyeballs ache.

I recently visited my local game store and noticed the Genesys products on the shelf collecting dust. The store manager told me EDGE's prerogative seems to be directing everyone towards their app instead of actually providing the physical resources needed to play their game. Now to be fair, they inherited Fantasy Flight's poor decision, but at this point the studio would be better off starting over.

Oh i forgot something else that makes me bounce off games which is really bad copy editing. I can stomach a few typos or some grammar, but things like refering to rules that don't exist and refering to the wrong page numbers, etc.