Pet Peeves in RPG gaming.

[Rob Lang]

[madunkieg]

Generic rules sets. Rather, it's not the rules sets themselves I hate, but the belief that you can do anything with them and have it work out well. Really, if you think you can do everything well with GURPS (or Hero, or Savage Worlds, or whatever), you're not thinking hard enough.

How did this pet peeve come about? It was actually seduction rolls. Let's follow the logic. You seduce someone by adding together skill, talent and luck to overpower versus the target's resistance, usually some attribute and maybe a roll. If the target is resisting, isn't this sexual harrassment, not seduction? If seduction isn't a major issue in your story, then it's easy to overlook these quirks, but if it comes up a lot, I don't want to fight or dodge the rules every time.

Even the differences between combat and overcoming obstacles often inspires different mechanics (opposed tests vs. target numbers). This sort of thing is why the mathematical field of game theory has more than zero-sum games.

You want to make/play a generic action ruleset? Cool. Call it a generic action ruleset. Want to make/play a generic romance ruleset? Ditto. Sell me on the strengths of the rules. Don't try to sell me by claiming that it has no weaknesses. This applies, not only to game designers, but to people wanting me to join their games.

[Rob Lang]

I must admit I prefer tailored rulesets where rolling the dice feels like you're in the setting. Generic rulesets (especially Lite ones) are ok but they don't really feel like the system. A good example of a tailored ruleset is Dog Town (by the brothers Ridd, or Cold Blooded Games), where the rules allow tactical choices to be made throughout the long career of the mobsters from punk to crime lord.

[Thought]

I agree. Call it a design philosophy, but I'd tend to argue that the setting should be designed to the system and that the system should be designed to the setting. People tend not to market settings sans systems very often, I'm not sure why the opposite is more acceptable.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

The setting vs system debate has shown up on other threads. Its kind of a chicken and the egg scenario - Good mechanics are not going to be played if there isn't a good story to bring in players, but anyone can write a setting, while making an elegant system needs a bit more thought and experience. My personal stance is to go for broke on the story, since that tends to be more interesting than the many varied applications of numerated platonic solids.

Mr. Lang's post about art reminds me of another pet peeve - images without a sense of scale.

I'm a bit of a gun nut and can tell by sight the difference between A browning model 1910, a HP-35, and M1911 (vs an M1911A1 no less), and an Automag III. However, almost no books on guns have these specific weapons side by side to really give a sense of how much bigger or smaller they are in relation to one another, nor what they really look like in someones hands. Since all the technical drawings tend to cover a similar amount of the page, one could be under the impression that a PPK (.59 kg, 17.0cm length) and a Desert Eagle (2kg, 37.43 cm w/long barrel option) are the same size! Including something like a a DVD disk (12cm across) in the illustration makes all these numbers far more intelligible.

Now this is just guns, which compare roughly to the size of your hand. Describing buildings, ATVs, or space ships? Yes, there aren't many double Decker buses in space (or from what I've read, London either) but placing one next to your new shuttle is a great help! Take a look at the website for how to approach this issue.

[Rob Lang]

[koipond]

How about images that fit what you're talking about.

I used to riffle through old FASA books and go, "What the hell, that image isn't helpful at all!"

[Rob Lang]

Yeah, Koipond, I see that quite a lot. Stock images that have been dumped into a game and you're trying to work out why they are there.

[Sanglorian]

Talking about different sizes of guns reminds me of another pet peeve - too much information.

d20 Modern drove me mad with the vast and - to my mind - unnecessary array of guns. I'm playing a cinematic RPG; all I need are stats for a handgun, a machine gun, a shotgun, and so on.

I think knowing your audience is important, and for most RPGs the audience are not gun-knowledgeable nor do they want to be.

[Rob Lang]

*Rob quietly hides the Icar Equipment Index*