There are as many preferences as there are players of course, but for myself it would have to be playability, that is ease of use and smooth action sequences with as little book referencing as possible, and realism. In certain other parts of the web that word would cause a round of the vapours and cries of "verisimilitude", but you know what I mean.

I'd always prioritise playability over realism, since we're here to play, but even taking that into account you can still get a very realistic system, closely mimicking the approximate likely real world results.

This is important because it gives players something they can immediately relate to (no matter what game you are playing players still live in the real world), it gives them a handle to help with character identification and immersion, and it can be readily applied to any milieu.

One quick test, I look at a system and ask, how would this work in a middle ages high fantasy setting, a modern day espionage setting, and a far future sci fi setting.

If it looks like the whole thing would need to be gutted in order to be used in one or two of these three, that's a no-no for me. I can expect wild results like being able to leap out of a plane without a parachute, picking yourself out of the crater in the pavement, and heading off down the pub, or being able to take a double load of buckshot right in the face at close range apparently because sneering turns your skin to kevlar if you're a vampire. This jars for me, it breaks the feel of the game.

Even games which are deliberately going for that can break disbelief, superhero games for example, unless your hero has a specific "sneer off triple aught" power or is otherwise immune to kinetic energy, the default shouldn't be that much different to a normal human being. But some people go for that, and why not I guess, I'm not strident on it, just musing.

This hobby is the very definition of flights of fancy, but suspension of disbelief is an important part of any game, and indeed any fictional entertainment media, making the job easier for the GM and the game more enjoyable for players.

Take the very simple low budget smash hit "Paranormal Activity", maybe you didn't like it but you can't argue with the earnings. That worked so well because people could imagine it being real, they immediately identified with and believed in the world displayed and so the supernatural became that much more potent.

So what do you like in a system, whats the first major thing that turns you on or off a game?

Quote from: The Traveller;548805One quick test, I look at a system and ask, how would this work in a middle ages high fantasy setting, a modern day espionage setting, and a far future sci fi setting.

These comparisons only work when evaluating universal systems. If the system in question is written for a single genre, then how it applies to other generes isn't a fair comparison.

I like good old TSR D&D but if it had to pass the modern/sci-fi test it would fail.

Single genre games I would compare against other games of its type.

I have three rather simple requirements.

The first is that the combat system must be fun to play of and by itself in pure game mode (no campaign, no role-play, no storyline or anything else but the pure game). I see no reason to play a game that isn't fun.

The second is a foundation of realism strong enough that I'm not put in the position of ever saying, "nah, that couldn't happen".

The third is support for the the desired genre, be it high fantasy or whatever.

I dont think you have to prioritize. Especially if you are talking playability and realism. For me it is important for those two things to both be equally important features of the design. I absolutely must have a game that is believable (daily and encounter powers aren't going to work for me on believability grounds) but it also has to be playable. This tends to keep me somewhere in a middle zone I suppose. I tend to avoid overly engineered attempts to simulate reality but also take no enjoyment in rpgs that are gamey or play like board games.

It must spark my imagination in some way.

Quote from: The Traveller;548805So what do you like in a system, whats the first major thing that turns you on or off a game?

For me, it's "Does this game do what it claims to do".  I own and have played games all from over the spectrum, but one thing I can't stand is when a game says it does something and its mechanics utterly fail to support that.

Off hand, if a game says it's about, say, realistic investigation of mysteries, then I expect the rules to produce a lot of dead ends, the occasional mystery that just goes unsolved forever, cases that break largely due to luck or a random tip, cases that break almost immediately and are wrapped up in a day, etc., etc.

If on the other hand a game says it's about mimicking a particular type of mystery fiction, then I expect the mechanics to produce the kind of tropes that show up in the source fiction, like amazing leaps of deductive logic, the detective always solves the case with a dramatic confrontation at the end, there are no red herrings, etc., etc.

(Alternately, just to get my personal bete noir in here, if your superhero game claims that I can easily make any superpower from any comic using it, I had better not be able to pull out three well-known iconic superheroes that your system can't without falling over and hurting itself).

Quote from: Drohem;548820It must spark my imagination in some way.

This.

Generally combat tends to be a mini-game of resource management that grinds it down for me, so if the combat has too many fiddly bits with spending or losing points, tracking times per day, or checking things off a list, it's an immediate turn-off.

Quote from: Drohem;548820It must spark my imagination in some way.

That's a good starting point.

Quote from: Benoist;548857That's a good starting point.

For me: from this all else flows.

Quote from: Benoist;548857That's a good starting point.

I agree.  For me, RPGs are about the imagination, and if a game system doesn't spark that in me, I'm not going to enjoy playing it.  From my perspective, without imagination the game becomes more of an activity, kind of like Farmville.

Quote from: Drohem;548860For me: from this all else flows.

Yeah I can see how: then that means you want room to 'breathe' as a player or GM, you want functionality and a way to get to grasp the system, maybe make it your own and tweak and add stuff where needed, house rule the shit out of it. It makes sense.

Quote from: Benoist;548864Yeah I can see how: then that means you want room to 'breathe' as a player or GM, you want functionality and a way to get to grasp the system, maybe make it your own and tweak and add stuff where needed, house rule the shit out of it. It makes sense.

Yeah, and to add:  these days I just need either the setting or system to spark my imagination.  If the setting grabs me, then I can probably find a good number of systems to marry to the setting if the original system doesn't grab me.  On the flip side, if the game system sparks my imagination, then I can probably find a number of setting (either published, fan made, or my own) to marry to the original system.

For me it's:

Ease of use.
Doesn't break suspension of disbelief.
Forces players to make interesting decisions.
Allows many outcomes.
Has miscellaneous cool/fun bits.

In no particular order. If the game is totally lacking on any one front it's a dealbreaker. Being really good at one thing isn't enough to save a game if everything else is bad.

I've got minor preferences too. I like when games have easily extensible mechanics (like D20 roll high for everything), so that they can handle stuff outside what they were made for. And I dislike long-term resource management as the core of the game. And I like the character creation as minigame thing. But all that's secondary to the five above.

What's my priority in a game system? Not to suck up water.

No wait, that is The Law.

My priority is high variety from low effort. Stuff that focuses too heavily on the system itself is right out. Stuff that requires a lot of support material is also out.

Also a high priority for a system: can I play D&D with it? Somebody -- I forget who -- once defined an RPG as "something you could play D&D with". It's not as high a priority as "High variety, low effort" because it's not as narrow. There are lots of game systems I could play D&D with, but not all of them have high variety, and some that do require too much effort.

Quote from: talysman;548890Also a high priority for a system: can I play D&D with it? Somebody -- I forget who -- once defined an RPG as "something you could play D&D with". It's not as high a priority as "High variety, low effort" because it's not as narrow. There are lots of game systems I could play D&D with, but not all of them have high variety, and some that do require too much effort.

It's a pity you've fogotten who, because I think it's a very common mindset- especially on this board which is very tunneled-vision along the lines that only D&D is a RPG.