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RPG Deal Breakers
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What are you deal breakers when you are reading/ playing a new RPG? You may love almost everything about a game but it has one thing you find unacceptable. Maybe some aspect of it is just too much work to be worthwhile for you. Or maybe it isn't rational at all, you know you shouldn't mind it but your instincts cry out "No!"

I've read ~120 different games, mostly in the fantasy genre, and of those Wildsea and Heart: The City Beneath are the two I've been most impressed by. I love almost everything about them, they practically feel like they were written for me, they have been huge influences on my WIP. But I have no enthusiasm to run them, because the GM doesn't get to roll dice, and I love rolling dice.

I still have my first set of polyhedral dice which came in the D&D Black Box when I was 10, but I haven't rolled them in 25 years. The last time I did as a GM I permanently crippled a PC with one attack (Combat & Tactics crit tables) and since then I've been too afraid to use them, though the temptation is strong. Understand, I would use these dice from a desire to do good. But through my GMing, they would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine.

Let's try to remember that everyone likes and dislike different things, and for different reasons, so let's not shame anyone for that.

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Anything overly hamfisted about the "Right way to play" or "This game is for X players only" snark.

Example. VtM5E Sabbat book, flat out says "This is only for NPCs." As if they feel that players can't handle the more messed up in your face elements of the Sabbat. Honestly playing Sabbat was some of the more fun moments I had because you got to be a monster. Not an emo Twilight rip off as most people that play the Toreadors or Ventrue try to act.

I really dislike game devs insisiting that playing anything EVIL is wrong and you shouldnt want to do it. Everyone I game with is at least 25 and we all know right from wrong and real from fake. I dont need some judgemental writer to think its wrong to be a bad guy for once.

"For player X only" queue the downvotes. Maybe not the right wording but best way i can think tl say it. Example Monsterhearts has a "this is a game that challenges the heteronormitive idea of society." Written right in the first 3 pages. And even as a very Bi gay leaning man it makes my eyes roll so far back im looking into my skull.

Or Queerz, or Thristy Sword Lesbians, theres no nuance to it, just gives the vibes of "IF YOU AREN'T GAY YOU CANT PLAY THIS!" and its a very big turn off for me.

TSL still feels like a rough draft name that I cant take seriously. And Im sure if i had the best DM to run it for me I might love the game. But I just cant sit down and read it.

Id feel the same way if a game said "this is only for REAL MEN who like BIG GUNS AND HOT WOMEN WITH BIGGER TITS!" No shade to the Dudes of Legend for WOD though, great dumb book.

Or ugly artwork. Eat the Reich and Astate are the two best examples I can think of. Just really off putting and makes me not care to really play them. Though I love Astate world building and vibes, the weird 3d art is just....weird.

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I don't believe "most" people running RPGs use miniatures - I think that's actually a fairly small minority.

Not an unbiased sample, but in our town's main RPG club, with like 20-40 people playing each week over a couple of years, only a few tables have ever brought out the miniatures, and it's kind of an event when they do.

Edit: From looking at past times people have asked about theatre of mind vs battle maps, it might actually be more like 50/50 more generally - online play and D&D might be major components there.

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5 months ago