Are any RPG's worth playing?

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

Heaven's Thunder Hammer
Master
Posts: 225
Joined: Sun May 25, 2014 4:01 am

Are any RPG's worth playing?

Post by Heaven's Thunder Hammer »

Honest question. I wonder some days. It seems that it's impossible for a game not to be created without somehow forgetting basic math, not doing the play testing, or serious fluff<-->mechanic mismatches.

Thoughts?
Whiysper
Master
Posts: 182
Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 10:43 am

Post by Whiysper »

Shadowrun 4, D&D 3.x, Homebrew you're happy with.

If you know where the failure points of a given system are, you can patch them to your satisfaction, or just avoid them. No system is perfect, but many are worth playing with a good group.
User avatar
Leress
Prince
Posts: 2770
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Leress »

EABAnywhere.
Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!
Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!
Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.
I want him to tongue-punch my box.
]
The divine in me says the divine in you should go fuck itself.
User avatar
phlapjackage
Knight-Baron
Posts: 661
Joined: Thu May 24, 2012 8:29 am

Post by phlapjackage »

Earthdawn
Koumei: and if I wanted that, I'd take some mescaline and run into the park after watching a documentary about wasps.
PhoneLobster: DM : Mr Monkey doesn't like it. Eldritch : Mr Monkey can do what he is god damn told.
MGuy: The point is to normalize 'my' point of view. How the fuck do you think civil rights occurred? You think things got this way because people sat down and fucking waited for public opinion to change?
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

No. They’re all trash. It is impossible to have fun with imperfect games.
Blade
Knight-Baron
Posts: 663
Joined: Wed Sep 14, 2011 2:42 pm
Location: France

Post by Blade »

It's not just the game: people are also imperfect. It's impossible to play with a GM and players who aren't flawed in a way or another.
User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

Munchausen and Fate Core are all you need for imagination
User avatar
Foxwarrior
Duke
Posts: 1626
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 8:54 am
Location: RPG City, USA

Post by Foxwarrior »

Oh man, that's a great idea: A game where the developers actually forgot basic math, and you have to read the whole book and think carefully about what they said to even determine what they mean by "add".
User avatar
JigokuBosatsu
Prince
Posts: 2549
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2010 10:36 pm
Location: The Portlands, OR
Contact:

Post by JigokuBosatsu »

Encounter Critical
Omegonthesane wrote:a glass armonica which causes a target city to have horrific nightmares that prevent sleep
JigokuBosatsu wrote:so a regular glass armonica?
You can buy my books, yes you can. Out of print and retired, sorry.
User avatar
Kaelik
ArchDemon of Rage
Posts: 14757
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Kaelik »

Foxwarrior wrote:Oh man, that's a great idea: A game where the developers actually forgot basic math, and you have to read the whole book and think carefully about what they said to even determine what they mean by "add".
Better idea, he should play Gempunks.
DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?
The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.

That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
User avatar
Chamomile
Prince
Posts: 4632
Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 10:45 am

Post by Chamomile »

RPGs are hundreds of pages long, with most of that filled with new mechanics and concepts. Even if they are only slight iterations on what came before, each and every paragraph, table, and diagram in an RPG represents several different places to make a mistake. An absolutely flawless RPG is practically impossible except as a minimalist one-page kind of deal. That's a valid way to make an RPG and all and if that's a designer's goal and they accomplish it, then they have succeeded, but it's not a popular way to make or play an RPG.

So, I guess if your standards for play are "literally flawless," then you're pretty much limited to minimalist projects that can't sustain more than a one-shot.
User avatar
DrPraetor
Duke
Posts: 1289
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:17 pm

Post by DrPraetor »

The three games worth playing are ( http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=457603#457603 ) : Spulturatorah, Rifts and Call of Cthulhu.

More seriously, in addition to Shadowrun 4 and D&D 3:

GURPS usually does work, so does Champions; both have serious problems but not generally basic math failure.

Feng Shui 1 is pretty good (the sequel is worse in almost every way, which was a bitter disappointment).

Various rules lites work well for their niche: Toon and I Kill Puppies for Satan are fine, Tales from the Floating Vagabond has a great attitude but manages to mess up the basic math despite being essentially the same game as Toon by having you roll lots of polyhedral dice. There are dozens more, depending on what you want to do, which tend to be worse the more gimmicks they try to inflict on the mechanics.

"It matters more who you play with and that you have fun ideas and chemistry" is a piss-poor excuse for bad game design, but it's still true. So bad games are worth playing with good friends, but again, this isn't an excuse for the game itself to be bad.
Chaosium rules are made of unicorn pubic hair and cancer. --AncientH
When you talk, all I can hear is "DunningKruger" over and over again like you were a god damn Pokemon. --Username17
Fuck off with the pony murder shit. --Grek
User avatar
Leress
Prince
Posts: 2770
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Leress »

Chamomile wrote:
So, I guess if your standards for play are "literally flawless," then you're pretty much limited to minimalist projects that can't sustain more than a one-shot.
EABAnywhere is only 8 pages.
Koumei wrote:I'm just glad that Jill Stein stayed true to her homeopathic principles by trying to win with .2% of the vote. She just hasn't diluted it enough!
Koumei wrote:I am disappointed in Santorum: he should carry his dead election campaign to term!
Just a heads up... Your post is pregnant... When you miss that many periods it's just a given.
I want him to tongue-punch my box.
]
The divine in me says the divine in you should go fuck itself.
User avatar
deaddmwalking
Prince
Posts: 3459
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 11:33 am

Post by deaddmwalking »

RPGs: because you can't masturbate ALL the time.
-This space intentionally left blank
jt
Knight
Posts: 339
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 5:41 pm

Post by jt »

If someone made an RPG that was actually good, how would you find out about it?

Consider how many games are being published on DriveThruRPG, that some awful games have rabid fandoms, and that every popular RPG has someone saying it sucks for reasons that are factually wrong.
User avatar
Foxwarrior
Duke
Posts: 1626
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 8:54 am
Location: RPG City, USA

Post by Foxwarrior »

You just commit thirty hours to skim thirty RPGs for an hour each, then you can pick out the handful that maybe showed some promise. Once you've found one that looks good, all you have to do is persuade your friends to commit to reading it too, so you can find out if it works in practice.
Kaelik wrote:Better idea, he should play Gempunks
Or that, but what sort of madman would play a denner RPG.
Last edited by Foxwarrior on Fri Mar 29, 2019 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
WiserOdin032402
Master
Posts: 175
Joined: Wed Dec 13, 2017 5:43 pm

Post by WiserOdin032402 »

For published games, if you want a low fantasy RPG and don't mind the setting of Conan the Barbarian, then Conan d20 2e is pretty good fun. Got a lot of interesting published material, some of it is very experimental and super jank.

If you don't mind insanity I recommend TOME D&D 3.5, which is like D&D 3.5 but it's free and attempts to make high level playable.
Longes wrote:My favorite combination is Cyberpunk + Lovecraftian Horror. Because it is really easy to portray megacorporations as eldritch entities: they exist for nothing but generation of profit for the good of no one but the corporation itself, they speak through interchangeable prophets-CEOs, send their cultists-wageslaves to do their dark bidding, and slowly and uncaringly grind life after life that ends in their path, not caring because they are far removed from human morality.
DSMatticus wrote:Poe's law is fucking dead. Satire is truth and truth is satire. Reality is being performed in front of a live studio audience and they're fucking hating it. I'm having Cats flashbacks except now the cats have always been at war with Eurasia. What the fuck is even real? Am I real? Is Obama real? Am I Obama? I don't fucking know, man.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

The Internet has lowered the bar a lot, but for me the biggest factor in whether a game interests me is whether I can find other players.

I'm interested in trying out the Torchbearer and Mouseguard RPGs, but there's no point. I'd have to do a lot of work just to get a group together and even if I did, there's no guarantee that they or I would like to do it long-term. And I live in a major city.

I've still put literal hundreds of hours into playing 5E D&D and Pathfinder and that's only because I can actually play those games.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
User avatar
JigokuBosatsu
Prince
Posts: 2549
Joined: Tue Aug 10, 2010 10:36 pm
Location: The Portlands, OR
Contact:

Post by JigokuBosatsu »

WiserOdin032402 wrote: I recommend TOME D&D 3.5
Are you saying you are recommending Tome to those of us in this thread, or are you saying you recommend Tome in general when people ask about good RPGs?
Omegonthesane wrote:a glass armonica which causes a target city to have horrific nightmares that prevent sleep
JigokuBosatsu wrote:so a regular glass armonica?
You can buy my books, yes you can. Out of print and retired, sorry.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

The OP has had an account for 5 years. Obviously they’re aware of Tome and other good rpgs. This is a troll thread and should be treated as such.
Mord
Knight-Baron
Posts: 565
Joined: Thu Apr 24, 2014 12:25 am

Post by Mord »

I've heard good things about an RPG from the early 2000s called "Deus Ex." Really solid mechanics, good integration of gameplay and setting. I never noticed any math being egregiously wrong either. You should check it out. Later editions weren't received as well, and a new company bought the IP in the last few years, so a lot of people still hold up the first edition as the gold standard.
User avatar
Foxwarrior
Duke
Posts: 1626
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 8:54 am
Location: RPG City, USA

Post by Foxwarrior »

Well, floating point operations are not technically correct, so really Deus Ex is worse at basic math than the games with terrible balancing are.
User avatar
deaddmwalking
Prince
Posts: 3459
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 11:33 am

Post by deaddmwalking »

Foxwarrior wrote:Well, floating point operations are not technically correct, so really Deus Ex is worse at basic math than the games with terrible balancing are.
If I'm parsing this correctly, you're saying a game with 2.5 divided by 2 is 'not technically correct'.

I can see why using binary integers (2, 1, etc.) is better, but not seeing how the other is wrong.
User avatar
Foxwarrior
Duke
Posts: 1626
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 8:54 am
Location: RPG City, USA

Post by Foxwarrior »

User avatar
deaddmwalking
Prince
Posts: 3459
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 11:33 am

Post by deaddmwalking »

I'm really curious to see the math in Deus Ex now.

Floating Point Numbers can't represent irrational or non-terminating rational numbers doesn't necessarily mean that any of the operations within the game are wrong... It does mean that if you're multiplying something by PI you're going to be approximating; but you'd do that if you weren't using Floating Point Numbers and it isn't wrong just because it isn't precise.
-This space intentionally left blank
Post Reply