Tabletop gaming guilty pleasures: what are yours?

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 11:47 am

My name is tussock, and I write too many house rules.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 1:00 pm

Shadowrun.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 2:04 pm

silva wrote:Shadowrun.

Why? 4th edition is one of the better systems on the market. I mean, yes, 5th edition is ran by crazy chimps with dvorak typewriters, but still.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 2:35 pm

silva is convinced that Shadowrun is one of the worst games in the universe. Either that or he just says it in order to anger Frank and AH. Because of bears.

Remember, with silva, it all boils down to bears. All the time. All the way down.

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 2:51 pm

Pathfinder Goblins. I find their writing taboo fluff hilarious and want to play a PF Goblin Wizard.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 2:55 pm

Longes wrote:
silva wrote:Shadowrun.
Why?

silva

Anywho. I dunno if I have any guilty pleasures. I've played horrible things, but don't feel particularly guilty over any particular games. Now I've done things in game that are guilty pleasures.

I sometimes have put in very little effort to the character name/alignment-fluff, or on the other pole, extremely convoluted and overblown backstories. Most of this is from 15+ years ago and only a slice of things I've played mind you.

In Call of Cthulhu created a character who was over 100 years old since I got extra points for being old. Didn't use the points for anything useful. I believe it was a 106 year old frenchman named "Male".

For DnD a monk that I made was named on the fly "America's Favorite Cookie" because a pack of oreos was on the table when I was looking for inspiration. Everyone just called him Cookie and he was eaten by ghouls the first session. Or a series of halfling characters named Inadeqate Strength, Adequate Strength, Unreasonable Strength.

For Unknown Armies a character whose rage stimulus and fear stimulus were not being Callous enough. I think his name may have been Callous as well.

For GURPS creating a Were-Stag so that I would have crazy high strength (stags had near top strength bonus, and were cheaper than other options) and also could ignore rations by eating grass or whatever deer ate. Character was Ferrero Rocher III (named after chocolates on the table, and the 3rd because he I planned on playing his ancestors at some point. Ferrero Rocher the first was a Wraith). On the character sheet I just put the candy-sticker for his name. Sadly I was one of the least ridiculous characters in that game (invisible/intangible ninja, indestructible tomas who could eat a castle gate, and others).

I've moved on to requiring some sort of wordplay or reference being in character names now instead.

My current Earthdawn character is named Machu Pikachu.
In LoFP, Roger Le Main (leader and sole member of the Invisible Hand).

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 2:59 pm

Come on Longes, everybody knows the only thing SR has that can be considered best at something is its setting (and even that is arguable nowadays), because its rules are a cpnvoluted schizophrenic mess no matter the edition.

player: "What? So we are gonna play in this awesome cyberpunk-fantasy world with awesome neuromancer-like hacking, crazy vehicle chases, and fast and furious combat !?? "

GM: "huh.. more or less... You see, the hacking is such an unecessarily complex mess that borders the unplayable, and chasing and combat are slow as fuck and neither fast nor furious.

player: "..."

GM: "Dont worry,.the setting is cool though, we could use the 15% of functional rules there is and LARP the hell out of everything else........ trust me, everybody does this".

animea90 · Post by **animea90** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 3:08 pm

Longes wrote:Exalted.
The system is a horrible piece of shit that breaks if you look at it funny, and the setting is a patchwork of strange stuff with elder problem on steroids. But I'm still in an Exalted campaign, and the powers it gives to certain splats are interesting.

Exalted has two things going for it

1 it completely admits that muggles are terrible and anybody who is anybody has magic powers

2. The lore has a lot of good built in plot hooks for a sandbox game

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 4:15 pm

tussock wrote:My name is tussock, and I write too many house rules.

That's weaksauce. Post a real guilty RPG pleasure or don't post at all.

duo31 · Post by **duo31** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 5:31 pm

Trying to make workable Monk characters in 3.x that may or may not be actual monks.

Also, making a Silly Dilettante Fighting man, who has no more than 2 levels in any base class and no more than 1 level in any prestige class. Yet has crazy high saves and lots of defensive abilities. Think Elan from OotS with the survivability of John McClane.

-duo

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 5:38 pm

I love institutionalized randomness that monkeys with your character. Like "You drank from this fountain, so roll on this chart. Maybe you'll get a stat boost, maybe your hair will turn purple, maybe your soul will be swapped with your Familiar." kinda stuff. Or the Deck of Many Things. I know this stuff is really bad for the game, but I really enjoy it anyway. I suspect that it's because I came in during Second Edition and I have a tiny grognard living inside me somewhere.

Post by **fbmf** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 5:40 pm

Desdan wrote:I know this stuff is really bad for the game, but I really enjoy it anyway. I suspect that it's because I came in during Second Edition and I have a tiny grognard living inside me somewhere.

It isn't just me, then?

Game On,
fbmf

Desdan_Mervolam · Post by **Desdan_Mervolam** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 5:43 pm

Mofo, you can be the tiny grognard living in my soul anytime.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 5:49 pm

animea90 wrote:2. The lore has a lot of good built in plot hooks for a sandbox game

Yes, and no. Pretty much every interesting place is in the constant "Fuck PCs" mode, and there are essence 10 elder exalts everywhere. You want to play in Chiaroscuro? Fuck you, Tamuz is the boss. You want to play in Lookshy? Fuck you, you are under constant surveilance and elder dragonbloods will wreck your shit the moment you try something. You want to play in Nexus? Emissary is a nebulous "You lose" entity. And so on, and so forth.
Yes, you can play in those places. But the moment you try to play something other than lvl1 dnd adventures, elder magical dick will be jammed into you.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 5:52 pm

Desdan_Mervolam wrote:I love institutionalized randomness that monkeys with your character. Like "You drank from this fountain, so roll on this chart. Maybe you'll get a stat boost, maybe your hair will turn purple, maybe your soul will be swapped with your Familiar." kinda stuff. Or the Deck of Many Things. I know this stuff is really bad for the game, but I really enjoy it anyway. I suspect that it's because I came in during Second Edition and I have a tiny grognard living inside me somewhere.

Yup, love this kind of thing too.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 6:11 pm

First, my guilty pleasure has to be RIFTs -- although a fair bit of that is nostalgia in my case.

Likewise I have an unhealthy fondness for older editions of Rolemaster, which was my classic fantasy RPG go to back in the days before 3e D&D dropped.

And now on to argumentation:

Longes wrote:
silva wrote:Shadowrun.
Why? 4th edition is one of the better systems on the market.

SR4 has decent core resolution and they did their dicepool math, but good grief:

Chargen is using points to buy various other pools of points to buy what you want. Aside from when you spend points to get coupons to buy other pools of points for less - which sometimes you go back and do retroactively so that you can refigger if your costs were cheaper. It's like they went out of their way to get all the bad points of both point buy and class based chargen, and then added complexity on top for no good reason.
Melee and firearms combat have multiple meaningful differences in resolution systems, because raelizm in the scene with an elf cyborg shooting a troll goon swinging a magic sword is way more important than standardization or player learning curves.
There are skills which do everything other skills do PLUS MORE...at the same cost.
Mages are the counter to other mages. So if you don't have a mage, you get pwned in any mission that isn't a striagt up firefight. This isn't as bad as D&D's quadratic wizards, but it is the same damn problem.
The existence of the Matrix. Hey, let's have a mini-dungeon with unique rules subset that only 2 classes can interact with. That's great for a co-operative game, right?
The rules for the Matrix. Yeah, on top of the concept being detrimental to a group activity, the actual rules devolve into infinite loops as soon as somebody thinks like a hacker actually would.
Linear build costs at chargen. Triangular (or worse) advancement costs.
Venn diagram overlaps and doesn't overlap at same racist time.

silva · Post by **silva** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 6:41 pm

Ancient History wrote:I maintain a certain fondness for Call of Cthulhu, in its variations and differen incarnations. As silly as it is. As terrible as the books are. As much of a complete fucking mess it is. As horrible as Chaosium is and always with. It's the Mythos. And there's nothing else that quite scratches that itch.

Why do you think that ? I agree nowadays Chaosium is crap but in the day it was a damn hot publisher with such critically louded and groundbraking stuff as Runequest, Pendragon, Elric/Stormbringer, Thieves World, Prince Valiant, Cults of Prax, Griffin Mountain, Trollpack, Masks of Nyarlathothep, etc.

icyshadowlord · Post by **icyshadowlord** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 7:45 pm

Do monster girls count?

Actually, does playing GURPS count?

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Aug 10, 2014 8:04 pm

I care more about making memorable characters than making characters that are powerful. I min-max until I hit "good enough" then stop.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 8:08 pm

Longes wrote:
animea90 wrote:2. The lore has a lot of good built in plot hooks for a sandbox game
Yes, and no. Pretty much every interesting place is in the constant "Fuck PCs" mode, and there are essence 10 elder exalts everywhere. You want to play in Chiaroscuro? Fuck you, Tamuz is the boss. You want to play in Lookshy? Fuck you, you are under constant surveilance and elder dragonbloods will wreck your shit the moment you try something. You want to play in Nexus? Emissary is a nebulous "You lose" entity. And so on, and so forth.
Yes, you can play in those places. But the moment you try to play something other than lvl1 dnd adventures, elder magical dick will be jammed into you.

But unless you're trying to jam your dick in their ear, they have way better things to do than to mess with you for funsies. Also, any problems which can be solved by punching aren't problems in Exalted.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 9:15 pm

fectin wrote:But unless you're trying to jam your dick in their ear, they have way better things to do than to mess with you for funsies. Also, any problems which can be solved by punching aren't problems in Exalted.

I'm probably being Poe's Law'd here, but, the first statement is laughably untrue. Especially considering that certain factions consider your mere existence as you pissing in their cheerios.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 9:23 pm

fectin wrote:
Longes wrote:
animea90 wrote:2. The lore has a lot of good built in plot hooks for a sandbox game
Yes, and no. Pretty much every interesting place is in the constant "Fuck PCs" mode, and there are essence 10 elder exalts everywhere. You want to play in Chiaroscuro? Fuck you, Tamuz is the boss. You want to play in Lookshy? Fuck you, you are under constant surveilance and elder dragonbloods will wreck your shit the moment you try something. You want to play in Nexus? Emissary is a nebulous "You lose" entity. And so on, and so forth.
Yes, you can play in those places. But the moment you try to play something other than lvl1 dnd adventures, elder magical dick will be jammed into you.
But unless you're trying to jam your dick in their ear, they have way better things to do than to mess with you for funsies. Also, any problems which can be solved by punching aren't problems in Exalted.

Majority of sidereals and dragonbloods and common folk religiously hate your solar ass, and will kill you on sight. Lunars are crazy barbarian douchebags, and lunar elders are the worst of them all. Deathlords and abyssals actively hate you, and will either try to manipulate you, or kill you to prevent your meddling. Yozi hate you for what your past incarnations did, and loyal Infernals will do what the abyssals do. Golden factions sidereals will try to manipulate you into doing their bidding, and try to kill you if you don't get brainwashed well enough.

TL;DR: Even newborn solars are powerful enough to be considered important by various factions. The problem is that while you can mess up plans of those factions, you don't stand a chance against leaders of those factions.

souran · Post by **souran** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 11:10 pm

I like exalted as a guilty pleasure too. The rules have proven to me over and over that its broken as fuck and simply unplayable with a group of larger than 3 PCs (Although I tend to find this true of ANY white wolf game, 3 players and DM seems to be the magic number for WW)

There are lots of cool setting ideas, powers, back story and places in Exalted. Sadly, the best incarnation of EVERYTHING in the whole game is the version with the least amount of detail attached because every time somebody added detail to any place, type of people, exalt, or ANYTHING they tended to make it to horrible to even contemplate using.

Yes, its a game that basically requires the GM to save it both in the rules AND in the setting. However, the core idea, the pitch level version of exalted is so awesome that I have never had players turn down the opportunity to play.

My other guilty pleasure is 4E. I really do feel like there is not another rpg that is even close to how much fun it is to push the miniatures around with as that game. Even with hit point bloat and whatnot the combat is really fun. It has a shitload of problems in other areas. It maybe should not have been published as D&D. Having played a crapload of it I don't think its a particularlly great "weekly game" type rpg. However, If it had been published back in 1998 when I was starting High School and I was playing warhammer or D&D every day it would have been amazing.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Sun Aug 10, 2014 11:53 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I care more about making memorable characters than making characters that are powerful. I min-max until I hit "good enough" then stop.

How's that a guilty pleasure? That's doing it right.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Mon Aug 11, 2014 12:35 am

And here I thought I was going to find here all kind of juicy gossip like Lago playing Ponyfinder on weekends or K working with Shadzar on FATAL 2.0: The Definitive Edition.

I'm not sure I have any "guilty pleasures" as long ago I decided I was no longer putting up with crap games.

If I like the game setting of a bad game, I keep the setting and use a system that works instead.