Role-Playing Games crush of shame poll

"What have you wasted years of your life on?"

Me, this poll.

Fuck playability, the best is 'Paranoia', concept-wise.

Cyberpunk 2020 was the we played most, back in my teens when I still did RPGs.

Paranoia was funny, but I only got into it a short time before I "grew" out of RPGs, so my experience with it was limited. It's hard to imagine Paranoia making much sense for people who haven't done a lot of RPGs before though, because the whole thing was a like a satire of typical games.

It took me about six months to learn the ins and outs of MERP, even making my own maps. Never got to actually play it though.

the only rpg's i played we made ourselves. they were great, just big pen drawn maps of castles on huge grey scrapbook paper that we'd explore and fight on. coool times.

I only ever knew 3 other people who wanted to play these and no one actually wanted to be the DM, so I never got into these until they started coming out on computer.

yeah that was my problem with MERP, i was DM but no players!!

IF ONLY WE HAD HAD THE INTERNETS, IT COULD HAVE ALL BEEN DIFFERENT

You can play RPGs via Internet?!

How does that work?

Oh God! I played more of those than I want to think about. Let me tell you about how hardcore an RPG nut I was; the first RPG I played was MERP. Luckily for my sanity I haven't so much as looked at a set of dice since the early 90s.

I think I actually tried to impress gurls by telling them I had a die that was, wait for it, 20 SIDED!

Hey baby, would you believe the sides of my die!

You can throw it if you treat it carefully.

Some of my wife's friends in LA still play RPGs every week - they're in their late 30s. I dabbled with some recreational role-playing in my teens - Warhammer mostly, and Rolemaster which isn't in this poll, probably because it's shite.

Warhammer's still going strong isn't it? We still have a major store in our town center that's always full of customers.

I thought Warhammer was one of those miniature figure games, not a RPG?

The Games Workshop on Oxford St is still going, but seems like a lot of them have been closing down recently - at least I think the Enfield one's gone now, but that might have been due to the redevelopment of the town centre that was going on last time I had cause to go there.

Warhammer Fantasty Roleplay. I did that one.

Shit you're right Colonel Rolemaster isn' here. That's 20-sided balls.

Games Workshop, that's the one we have yes.

but where is Over The Edge? This is the game with which I hope to waste most time in my next decade.

So there's a role play version of Warhammer? Because the one I've seen people play is some sort of strategy game with lots of plastic guys.

I wandered into the Cambridge branch of GW with my bro a couple of years ago. It was like going up to stare at a horrific car crash. An employee sidled up to us and tried to entice us into playing instore.
We quickly made excuses and left, our hearts beating frantically.

I thought Warhammer was one of those miniature figure games, not a RPG?

there is a spinoff RPG of it. I think that the game itself is seen as a rubbish D&D knock off, but it has some very good stuff written for it - people say that the Enemy Within (or whatever it is called) is one of the best RPG campaigns ever written. Though people say many things. And actually, said people might well have been old friends and quaffing partners of mine who had acquired the rights to said campaign.

Warhammer Roleplay's world was quite interesting, a double of Europe circa 1600. I learnt a lot about real history reading the rulebook of that.

Warhammer released a pen and paper RPG some years ago.

THAT SAID, ANYONE WHO DOESN'T PICK UNKNOWN ARMIES... HAS NOT READ UNKNOWN ARMIES. Every one of you would LOVE LOVE LOVE this game. xxxxxp

man i would've posted that so much earlier if it had gone through and not been xposted once, whichi could not tell due to the long-ass poll

I used to play the miniature figures version of Warhammer - I had a Skaven army no less. I only played the RPG version a couple of times when I was 12/13.

Call of Cthulhu, all the way. Easily the most well-written adventure modules of any RPG I played. Shouts out to Ars Magica as well, though I only got into that at tail-end of my roleplaying days, so didn't actually play it all that much.

Haha i've only just noticed now how badly i fucked up the date for this poll. Roffleeee!!

I swear I put march 25th 2008! Wtf!

GURPS 4EVA

Warhammer was pretty well-concived, background-wise. It was much grittier, bloodier and darker than your D&D worlds, and the tech level was more rennaissance than medieval.

I don't know why they never did a Warhammer 40K RPG.

OTHER GAMES I HAVE OPINIONS ON

all flesh must be eaten -- fucking zombie killing action at its FINEST

buffy rpg -- i don't much care for buffy, but this game is perfectly made so that every game plays out like a tv episode, and shitty characters (a la xander) get like "shitty character points" that allow them luck at dumb times

changeling -- my gf and some kids at school LOVED this, i heard it was good, but meh, fairies

deadlands -- psych vs wild west FITE!

dungeons and dragons -- i've played 1e, 2e, 3e, 3.5e, fogotten realms, eberron, planescape, ravenloft, oriental adventures, greyhawk, and countless "created" worlds. man i am a nerd.

dying earth -- i heard this game is WAY cool but never read it

exalted -- ONE OF THE BEST. imagine "dynasty warriors" only less, uh, based on chinese myth, and more like YOU ARE TOTALLY BADASS AND SHOOT/CUT SHIT and you don't even need to be named Lu Bu!

call of cthulhu -- a classic. if you don't know about this EDUCATE YRSELF FOOL

shadowrun -- everything johnny mnemonic shoulda been and more.

gurps -- everyhing to everyone i suppose.

heavy gear -- one of THE best games of al time. dream pod 9 is awesome. it's mecha space combat, but pre-leaving our solar system.

mekton -- the first game i ever run. not that good, but kinda fun... it covers both in-mecha and out-of-mecha combat

paranoia -- classic, your enemies are your friends and your friends are your enemies and everything is topsy turvy and surreal and hilarious.

pokethulhu -- i've never heard of this but it sounds DOPE

tribe 8 -- post-apocalyptic magic tribal montreal by dream pod 9 -- what's not to like?!?!

wraith -- the gothiest of white wolf games but in a totally awesome way. and i don't evne dig the goth thing. check it out.

UNKNOWN ARMIES -- I know I already said this game, but PLEASE, read the book if you read ONE RPG book in the next year. you will LOVE it.
and an unmentioned game above...

delta green -- call of cthulhu, but like modern day detectives kinda. it's been a while, i forget.

Does Arianne count as a role playing game?

oh my god iforgot jovian chronicles AND i mixed it up w/ heavy gear!

JOVIAN CHR's is the one still in our solar system, HEAVY GEAR is on other planet(s)!

Cyberpunk 2020 - spent the entire winter of my 10th grade playing this weekly

Earthdawn - spent two whole summers playing this probably 2x or 3x a week

Gamma World - first roleplaying game i ever played, on the bus in 1st/2nd/3rd grade

Kult - never played but one of the only RPGs i still look at

Mage - we tried to play this probably 100x and it never really worked.

Rifts - all of 7th, 8th and 9th grade

Skyrealms of Jorune - own it, never played it. probably the best written book and most exciting setting i can think of, but i didn't find a copy until college when roleplaying w/ my friends wasn't happening anymore.

Star Frontiers - 4th, 5th, 6th grade. my first RPG! still one of the best settings ever, i think, in that you can plausibly use just about ANY silver-age sci-fi paperback for inspiration.

Star Wars - it was really really fun at first (summer of 9th grade) but it gets sort of repetitive, also suffers from not being able to top the movies

Vampire - we played this lots in 10th and 11th grade. i never really liked it.

i basically spent every saturday or sunday in 9th, 10th and 11th grade playing roleplaying games from 9 am to 7 or 8 pm. we were pretty hardcore gamers.

Call of Cthulhu, easily. Just make sure it's not the d20 version.

we also played a lot of tabletop warhammer 40k.

i can say that we *tried* about 3 or 4 times as many games as i listed but the ones above are the ones that stuck.

Rifts had a fun backgound (and great artwork!) but was kind of cumbersome to play, what with all that mega-damage bullshit. I ostensibly ran a game of it, but we never played much - it was mainly so I had an excuse to buy a load of the sourcebooks and read them as I would trashy SF novels.

I'd also like to draw attention to

TS: GURPS VS. D20

unfortunately from the dark ages pre-polling.

did anyone here play Boot Hill? When we were playing TSR games, usually D&D but sometimes Star Frontiers, we'd see the ads for Boot Hill, and wonder who would think a Wild West RPG would be a good idea. So I'm curious if it was any fun.

It was fantasy wild west with orcs and shit wasn't it?

no, that was deadlands. boot hill was straight spaghetti western RPG.

and yes, it was fun.

- it had detailed rules on single action vs double action pistols (single action faster in a quickdraw but slower on the 2nd shot, also more accurate because the hammer action throws off your aim)

- it was very deadly. you could get shot maybe twice w/ a .22 and once with anything else. there was a lot of melee combat w/ knives and saps and tomahawks too.

- when you got killed, you would roll on a table to tell you when to die. you could have anywhere from a half hour to a week to stagger around, beg for water, make speeches, say goodbye to your horse, and go for revenge. during this time you are more or less invincible.

wow that sounds pretty awesome!

it was awesome the first three or four times but the setting didn't allow for a whole lot of plots. we basically did a few takes on "fistful of dollars", "treasure of the sierra madre", "el topo" and train robbery plots.

gangbusters had a lot more replay value, possibly because the 1920s is a little more fleshed-out of a setting than "the wild west".

If I'd GMed a wild west RPG I would've ran a campaign completely ripped off Moebius' Blueberry comics.

i basically spent every saturday or sunday in 9th, 10th and 11th grade playing roleplaying games from 9 am to 7 or 8 pm. we were pretty hardcore gamers.

This was basically me, until I stoped in grade 11, but then after high school i started again with a much less serious and more hilarious group of gamers, it was great fun (although that mas more like noon to 10pm, and even then we didn't actually START until like... 4pm, and there was a big dinner break... mostly it was an excuse to hang out)

Hey, no mention of superhero game Champions? my character in that was SPARTACUS, hero of the workers.

I think we should all reminisce about our favourite RPG characters.

I bought a fuck load of the middle earth ccg in early pandemic. I’m a horrible hoarder.

when I'm really stressed out I hit up my complete PDF collection of Dragon magazine, works a treat

I have very limited experience with RPGs and in general, I don't think they're my thing. However, this morning I just learned about the existence of two Carly Rae Jepsen-inspired games:

https://boyproblems.itch.io/boy-problems

https://boyproblems.itch.io/black-heart

Figured someone on ilx might be interested.

Thinking of setting my next campaign in Harn.

how the hell have I never heard of that before

i figured you'd be a HARNIAC.

the system is kinda rolemaster/runequest-ish, and i would just continue to play Basic D&D prob, but the setting books and expansive and detailed and dope.

yeah that's an interesting idea, provide setting but not mechanics

honestly the idea of just buying pre-developed low-magic city settings is very appealing to me. cuz it's a lot of work to do yourself.

;)

Harn is a name I've seen since high school and never actually read any of the materials.

I want someone to run Blades in the Dark for me.

i was running a star frontiers campaign during the pandemic for some other crusty old roleplayers. they didn’t like the rules so we switched to the “scum and villainy” ruleset for awhile. it was okay but personally i didn’t like it. too much negotiation, too much game balance.

they kept complaining about failing their 2nd level 20% chance of success skill checks. i tried to explain that’s a feature, not a bug. what’s the fun of being able to arbitrarily pass any skill check by just to electing to deal with some vague future consequence, excuse me “complication”, that your long suffering gm is on the hook to implement? damn i ain’t got time for that shit, i just want to roll some dice and grief the PCs, tomb of annihilation style. sorry, that hex turned out to be the maw of a sandworm!!!

guess there’s crusty, and then there’s crusty

btw scum & villainy is the sci fi version of blades in the dark, meant to approximate something like firefly, babylon 5, the mandalorian, etc

also i meant tomb of horrors, annihilation was the 5e remake

I think that Blades In The Dark looks pretty great, and i have slight interest from a few in my Call of Cthulhu group. I love heist fiction and urban fantasy so it SHOULD be perfect for me. I'd love to have someone else run it for me too tbh.

what’s the fun of being able to arbitrarily pass any skill check by just to electing to deal with some vague future consequence, excuse me “complication”, that your long suffering gm is on the hook to implement?

Is this referring to the Devil's Bargain mechanic?

A lot of rpgs from the last 10+ years seem to be trying to solve issues of older games having to do with player agency, mostly by spreading some (or all) of the gm's authority to the players. Hence the negotiation. I haven't played Blades or S&V yet so I don't know exactly if I would like them, but I find that traditional style rpgs can be a little static - combat should be awesome and sometimes it's just dire.

I like the way the 7th edition of Call of Cthulhu dealt with player agency. Optional rules wherein a PC has a luck stat that he or she can spend to shift a failed roll to a successful one. The more they spend, the harder it become to pass a luck roll. They also have an optional rule so that a PC can attempt a roll a second time, if it can narratively justified, but at the risk of some immediate consequences if they fail. I think it works for CoC, but I think that in a fantasy game it would just be another example of player power creep.

that’s one of the mechanics, yes, but you can also just “give yourself stress”, or “spend a gambit” or “take an assist” etc. yes the gm has final say on all this but it just seemed absurdly slanted toward player success … until one day the player just piles on too much stress, succeeds too many times, and flames out in a blaze of glory? i guess this makes sense if you want your roleplaying game to approximate the narrative arc of a tv show (at least i think so; i don’t watch tv really)

i understand the idea of pushing toward agency. i just think it’s a bad definition of agency. imo having agency is not the same as feeling powerful or being guaranteed success

xp to pbkr

i mean feel free to ignore me, i’m going to argue against anything not explicitly grognardian just for the sake of being grognardian. i

xp to ian.

That's interesting. There is definitely a strain of modern rpg thought that players shouldn't die unless they do something incredibly dumb or they agree to the death. Call of Cthulhu strikes me as one game that would be diametrically opposed to that type of player agency and/or power creep.

Have you ever played Cthulhu Dark?

I like some things I've seen in Trophy Gold/Trophy Dark - they are a super-light hack/mashup of Blades and Cthulhu Dark aiming at the midpoint of Call of Cthulhu and OD&D - desperate indebted treasure hunters on doomed expeditions for gold. You have one basic stat, Ruin, that serves as both HP and Sanity and your character is out of play if you get to 6. You can always choose to reroll dice if you fail but it makes it more likely to add to your Ruin. It is some vibe.

lol, tlg, I just heard that term for the first time last week. I think you're right that there has been a lot of influence of tv/film on modern rpg design. I'm pretty open to players having the ability to really push the narrative - it also in theory relieves some of the burden on the gm. Ultimately you want the dice to decide fate, though.

that got cut off, was saying i’m well aware that these new school narrative driven games have a ton of fans, probably a lot more than the crusty deep kvlt osr stuff does

i like the idea of “rulings not rolls”. ask lots of questions, be as specific as possible (both gm and players should do this). as a gm, don’t call for rolls unless it is both interesting necessary. as a player, don’t roll unless you are ready to accept the will of crom!

I might just need (and need to be) a better GM.

PBKR, re; Call of Cthulhu -- the thing that I think makes the luck mechanic and the pushed roll mechanic work is that there's a clear and obvious trade-off; spend luck now to reduce your score and fail your luck roll later, or not have it when you need to spend it etc; with pushing the rolls, the negative consequences are immediate. so as the GM you don't have to track any meta stuff or balance any kind of consequence-debt. it's pretty clean. and they're optional rules. we have been playing a longterm campaign and it's been helpful in preventing a few player deaths, but if you fail your roll by enough you're still pretty much just fucked. we had one PC get shot in the back by another PC who fumbled her roll; another PC was backhanded by a cultist but ended up cracking her skull on the fireplace. whoops.

in general, i also am more into rulings not rules, which is why i play B/X -- virtually impossible to be a rules lawyer in a game like that. much less DM overhead, too, and the d6 sub-systems are flexible and easily adaptable ime. or just tell the player no. or yes. or whatever you want.

I get it - it's an ideal approach with the right group.

I was listening to a podcast interview with Steve Jackson today and he mentioned Empire of the Petal Throne, what a great game it is, and what a terrible person Barker is. I hadn't thought of that game in a long time and didn't know any of this.

In high school, I played Traveller a lot more than D&D or any other RPG. I loved the look of the Traveller black books and the system lent itself to easily improvise and make stuff up within its framework. I got into GURPS a bit later on, but most of the folks I was gaming with then decided that Rolemaster was where it was at and the complexity wore me out.

I’ve always wanted to play traveler, but I’d like to play the original version most I think. I haven’t looked into the specifics of the different editions, but I’d wager the earliest is proby simplest? The setting seems cool too. And I’ve never played an SF rpg besides Star Wars d6; and I’d like to play some kind of rpg 4x game, without it being tied to a property.

GURPS probably my most played rpg. Had a really crazy GURPS Wild Cards campaign for a while with a lot PvP action based on the gang war in Wild Cards V. My favorite PC death involved superspeed plus piano wire.

It would be way to heavy for me these days.

The GURPS Traveller was pretty good, actually. It fleshed out the game universe a lot more than the original did.

Marc Miller wrote a novel, Agent of the Imperium, which I remember as being readable.

For me, Jackson's high water mark was probably Car Wars. I spent so many hours playing that with a couple of friends. What delightful mayhem.

Car Wars, damn right.

As an early-adolescent AD&D player I remember being intimidated by the complexity of the Traveller rulebook.

Books. The original box came with three and then there were many, many additional volumes.

I never got a good sense of the game world, though, until the GURPS version.

I used to run an OG Traveller game but it was in the early 80s so my memory is shot

I’m curious how many people, like me, used to love reading the manuals, but very rarely (if ever!) played the actual games.

It me. The number of hours I've spent playing actual (non-video game) RPGs probably doesn't exceed a couple dozen, but I love a lot of the peripheral stuff. Reading manuals, creating characters, etc. Like I bought the new Marvel RPG playtest rulebook (and will probably buy the manuals for the actual game as they're released) but the chances of me ever actually playing it are next to nil.

Whenever I've actually played live role playing games, it's always (essentially) functioned as a live text adventure - players will talk about what their character are doing and want to do, and how that's affected by their stats, but I've never played in games where the PCs "act" in character.

My last games, which were basically every weekend on Zoom through the 2020 parts of the pandemic, featured a lot of mugging and silly voices from our DM (which was great!) but us players didn't do much of that.

Anyway I wonder how much that experience is typical. Like, ideally for the games to work (in my head), you need a DM who's part MC and part psychotherapist, and players who are mostly at the theatre kid end of the spectrum. But that seems... hard

(Obviously the correct answer is "play how you enjoy playing!" but I wonder how common PC "acting" vs. "not acting" is)

In my experience it's a rare group that acts in character.

I have literally 2 silly voices that I use sometimes but mostly it’s just me.

i think there is a spectrum. there are definitely game systems heavily geared toward “roleplay”, ie amateur improv drama. i think maybe the early white wolf games (vampire 1e etc) were the first to really heavily push that vibe, though the work of tracy hickman etc in ad&d 2e also pushed that angle. i understand there was certainly there was not a lot of it in the 70s, where gamers leaned more toward approaching rpgs as persistent small party wargames (think gloomhaven) with a very high degree of personalization

in my 35-40 years of roleplaying i’ve experienced the whole gamut, lately though i’ve come around to a viewpoint espoused by some of my favorite grognard bloggers, which is that roleplaying is not improv. if you want to talk in funny voices and act out dramatic situations, why not just do improv drama with no dice? (which tbf is what a lot of roleplay geared indie rpgs are: diceless, with card mechanics along the lines of oblique strategies)

in my own groups (one of which has been playing together since middle school) we’ve pretty much dropped the “acting in character” aspect, mainly because it’s a lot of pressure to generate dialogue and stay in a consistent voice. i’ll just say “the inkeeper tells you this” and they’ll tell me how they respond, etc. allows me to concentrate on the information getting across correctly + gameplay running smoothly. however everyone still “plays in character” and our pcs and npcs are no more generic than before

we reserve dialogue and voices for catchphrases and exclamations at dramatically appropriate moments, and it has become a highlight of our sessions. we usually shoot for straightfaced but also goofily iconic, in the mode of a thundarr or jonny quest cartoon, or maybe “are you a bad enough dude to save the president” video game dialogue

i will say one thing i appreciate about my crew of cranky old dudes is how bone dry everyone’s sense of humor is. whenever i run a game at “open rpg night” my local shop i am appalled at the ghastly levels of “gamer humor” on display

re: steve jackson games i definitely have an appreciation for them. i somehow tricked myself into buying a
copy of ogre designer’s edition (26” x 21” x 8”, weighs 28 lbs). i have a 90s copy of illuminati card game. currently shopping for a “deluxe edition” of 80s car wars (some of the best box art ever). i also have a copy of gurps illuminati, which makes an excellent sourcebook for white wolf’s mage, over the edge and kult. someday i’ll probably pick up some of the generic sci fi geared supplements; their supplements have always been incredibly well-researched

as much as i like steve jackson games, i have to say gurps system is pure simulationist trash. just like ogre and illuminati, you constantly have to keep track of a million little + and - modifiers; most of the time these balance out to a small advantage one way or another, or zero, and could just as easily be handled by a gm deciding who is better or worse off in the situation. also the points based trait-buying character creation system lends itself to decision paralysis, and instead of balanced characters you just get players min/maxing

i know these flaws are hardly unique to gurps, in fact i think of them as being hallmarks of late 80s / early 90s game design (looking at you palladium, chaosium, r talsorian, etc) but gurps is by far the worst offender imo

how did we get more than 50 options for this poll?

bloody hell what is "gamer humour" (i am sure i don't want to know, but...)

ummmm just stereotypical nerdery, really

I can pinpoint the exact session I started acting in character.

One of the people in our CoC group was, frankly, a complete prick. Thinks he's wacky, is as straight down the line as possible (and it came as no surprise when his gf left him for another of the group which pretty much ended it). Always played ex-army officers, never actually *did* anything, just followed the party and sometimes shot at things. Added nothing and might as well have been an NPC.

So I played a big blousy Hyacinth Bouquet type who at the hint of any danger would hide behind him and shout "Save me captain!".

I was Keeper on the next story we played and killed all the characters due to their procrastination.

that sounds true t

that sounds true to the spirit of the game

LMAO Aldo I love it.

I think my least favorite kind of RPG humor is “lol all bards are horny I roll to seduce the owlbear”