Pet Peeves in RPG gaming.

[WittyDroog]

Out of the entire scope of RPG gaming, what's the most frustrating aspects? Books with lack of index? Cheetos dust all over your table? Smoking while gaming?

My personal one is the use of laptops or cell phones. If your mom is dying I understand, but it's frustrating when you're not paying attention to the game because you're having textsex (true story). I know a lot of people prefer having laptops for their pirat- legally backed up copies of books, but I've found in practice most people constantly check their facebook and virtual farms and whatever. Even blocking the wifi still gets some players playing games or watching movie clips. I 86'd them from game night and things have been a lot better.

What are some of yours?

[Rob Lang]

[koipond]

Dudes playing the 'hot chick.'

I'm all for the exploration of a character and if that character crosses gender that's perfectly fine. For the love of Pete don't just throw a bunch of horrible stereotypes at me where you think that showing boobs equates with being a women.

[Jonathan Ridd]

Elves - when they are vastly superior to humans in nearly every respect. They are fine when they are vain, fragile, magical, artistic wise, quick, agile and aloof as a constrast to burly, hardy, beligerant, resourceful and outgoing men. But in settings where they are as strong, tough and fearless as men as men aswell it makes me want to puke.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

The two things I tend to dislike are mirco-rules (ie exception based gaming) and the need to pre-plan character advancement. The d20 system is the ur-example of both of these, or more specifically, the feat system.

The idea behind d20 was to simplify everything into "one mechanic to rule them all". However, each new feat is its own rule or change to the basic system. Suddenly you find the basic system for attacks of opportunity is changed either because a feet lets you ignore them, or get multiple ones.

A similar thing exists in Warhammer 40K and many of the generic rule sets inspired by it. Everything is simple until you need to look up the unit abilities to find the difference between fanatic, fearless, berserker, and shock-trooper.

Character creation takes long enough without needing to write a future history accounting for them actually surviving the first random encounter. However some feats have half a dozen prerequisites, so you find yourself needing to work backwards from what powers you think would be cool, and what you initially need.

The other problem is of course its quite possible to pick abilities that are sub-optimal, and the quality of the feats varies wildly. +2 on two skills is powerful for the first level or three, but is then overshadowed by normal advancement points, and other cool abilities. Or finding out you don't have the pre-requisites

One of the worst examples of this is the video-game Diablo 2, which is nigh impossible without consulting gamefqs.com due to the number of skills you can chose that end up completely obsolete. Sure having a bunch of skeletons to assist your necromancer is fine for the first two acts, but in the third, they die so quick you see it was a waste and golems were the way to go.

[maledictus]

Halflings. I hate Halflings. They make a great job in the books of Tolkien, but I just don't believe a tiny little person can defeat a dragon.

And beers. Alcoholic beverages and RPG don't mix. Never try at home.

[WittyDroog]

I'm told that my best DMing is when I'm drunk

[Rob Lang]

[WittyDroog]

It's like I'm playing Magic Unglued all over again.

[koipond]