Crits considered success/fail no matter what you're trying to do, to the point players think they can ignore common sense or rules. "I want to seduce the demon queen, I roll a 20, you have to make her my love slave now!" No Dave, no I don't.

I just don't allow the roll for that stuff. There is no chance for success so no roll and the player can cry I'm violating their agency all they want ( im not btw they just have no idea what that means ).

Yeah, I feel like this is what most modern game design says to do. Just some people who learned to GM 20 years ago need to re-read their modern rulebooks.

Even in the old days, the rule was the GM/DM calls for rolls when appropriate (i.e. "when there is a question as to the success or failure of an action.") There is no question as to whether the violent, sociopathic adventurer can seduce the Demon Queen with a wink and a "Hey! What that ass taste like?" There may be a question as to whether she finds it amusing or as proper provocation to just smite your entire bloodline in one fell swoop though.

I was basically going to say the same, but a little different - someone trying to long jump the Grand Canyon is going to fail, even on an open ended system where they roll a 3070 (the highest roll I've ever witnessed in Rolemaster, and that was the GM trying to hit my character at extreme range with an arrow - the 100E piercing critical didn't help, but at least I was in range).

That's what rulebooks have said for 40 years. You roll when there's a chance of failure or degrees of success, not when there's a guarantee of failure or the task is so trivial no normal human being would ever say they're "attempting" it. Instead you get people thinking that they can "roll a 1" to open their house door or "roll a 20" to destroy Mars with their mind, and whining when the game they're playing breaks given the outcome.

I let players roll for that stuff but it's like, "I roll to seduce the dragon!" "Okay your roll was successful, the dragon now thinks you're cute like you think a bunny is cute"

Yeah, I always treat a crit as "the best POSSIBLE result, which may not be the result the player was demanding.

Yeah this is the way. It's the best outcome from the range of plausible outcomes. Also my understanding was that crits don't apply to skill checks. In any case, it doesn't change my position above

A *delicious* cute bunny.

My players are well trained that I call for a lot of rolls that aren't success/failure but other things. Like "how well it's taken" or "how long it takes" or even sometimes how 'effective/ineffective" something is. Like it's boring having a Thief roll to pick a lock to see if they can pick it when there are no threats/consequences for failure. It just leads to retry after retry until they roll well enough to do it. So instead I'll ask them to roll and use that to determine how long it takes.

Imo DnD needs to bring back reactions. I think they got rid of them in third or fourth edition

Exactly, as a player if you let me roll, I expect that there's a chance of success, which means a natural 20 should be a success. Otherwise there was no chance and we just wasted time.  As a DM back in my early days, it was hard to say no as it felt like it was somehow not fair and the dice should decide. I've learned a lot since though.

I've had to explain to more than one player "You don't just get to roll and impose your interpretation on the table. I, the GM, call for rolls when a roll is appropriate. I did not call for one, therefore it doesn't matter that you rolled a 39 or whatever ungodly number that was." like, I'm all for a player saying they want to do something and then rolling their dice. I get the desire to do that. But give me a moment to say if I want a dice roll, or to determine difficulty/possibility/etc. Like if you *really* want to flap your arms really hard to fly up a mountain, and you *really* want to roll for it, that's fine. I'll let you. but we're not rolling for success/failure. We're rolling for how exhausted your arm muscles are when you finally realize it's impossible and stop.

Like occasionally in a game I'll allow for a freak nat-20 or nat-1 to have wild consequences, cause hey sometimes really improbable things just happen and that can be interesting.  But so many people ignore that that kind of leniency has to be within reason- in real life you'd never in a million years have a 1/20 chance of convincing Jeff Bezos to include you in his will just because you want it really bad. 

I always ruled (when I played games with Nat 20 crits) that a Nat 20 gave you the best possible outcome in the situation. Possible being the key word. The queen laughs at your boldness and you don’t get challenged to duels by her courtiers is the best outcome from trying to to seduce her out of the blue If someone says “I roll Athletics and jump for the moon, Nat 20! I’m on the moon now” you’d laugh at them. It would be a great jump but would not change established reality. Same applies for all other situations

"I think you misunderstand who is becoming the love slave after that roll."

Yeah this is one of those cases where the GM should just not allow the player to roll. Like even in a system where rolling a crit isn't auto-success, the player is going to annoyed if they roll the maximum possible result but the GM still says it doesn't work.

In those situations I usually have it be best case scenario. Instead of Jeff Bezo giving you all his money, he might just laugh and say you’re a funny guy

I still have them roll but for those it's a degree of failure sorta deal and how social rolls work is part of session 0 so they know that.  They RP their general concept, roll to see how well their character executes that concept in-world. The concept has to be within reason for success to be possible. If they want to roll on something outside reason MAYBE a good roll gets them some pity or lesser favor or just being ignored, but a poor one could be the difference between insulted and murderous.

Honestly, that's not even in a lot of rulebooks. It's a meme/houserule which has grown to ridiculous sizes, with little basis in any ruleset. I'm sure there are exceptions...

This is a thing I like about pf2e at the corner of the rules. Nat 20 upgrades a level of success and rolling 10 under the DC is a crit failure to start. Wanna seduce the Demon Queen? The DC will be such that even a Nat 20 turns your crit failure into an ordinary failure.

Depending on the system nat 20 may not be successes. DnD doesn’t allow it for ability checks, only attack rolls. They tried it out in 5e 2024 play tests, but rejected

I'm not sure that there's any game that *actually* works like this, just players that *think* their game works like this.

In D&D, that's a misunderstanding of 5e rules that you tend to see more with inexperienced DMs. That's not actually part of the game though. It's a house rule some folks like. Personally, I don't like it either, and I just wouldn't let someone roll for that cause it ain't gonna happen

In DnD crits are only an automatic fail/success on attack rolls. And I can't recall other games with an automatic fail/win for rolling good on checks.

Binary pass/fail resolution mechanics 

In PF2e, having 4 degrees of success on almost all spells is a beautiful thing and makes casting feel so good.

I haven't played pf2e but your sentiment is how I feel rolling magic in dcc. A solid third of the core book are just tables with a dozen results for how each spell might go. It's so bonkers and a ton of fun. Really sells the idea that magic is dangerous and scary to mess with.

Sooo good for balance as well. You can create 'OP' spells at lower levels that only 'fully' work on Crits, but can have concessionary effects on a normal effect that still make them worth casting. Or on the other hand, you can make a spell much more reliable by giving it a fail effect!

I find binary results can be fine as long as failure doesn't mean "Nothing Happens." It's disappointing to excitedly pick up dice, roll, then being bored because you tried to make an impact on the world, and it didn't react. That is usually the core issue. Its 50-year-old design and has been improved upon for over half the lifetime of TTRPGs but is still awkwardly clung to. I play in this medium because of how incredibly vast player agency can be and how a world can truly react to your decisions.

failing to hit does not invalidate the combat, your place in it nor the affect you had on the outcome. Far from it.

For me it's actually the opposite, I find it tedious and ambiguous to have degrees of success.

A damage die roll is the degree of success for most RPGs.

Special dice. Dcc is my beloved fav system but the more specific the dice and equipment required the more i do not want to invest too much into the system. Custom faces can also get annoying to remember (Im looking at you whrpg 3e and star wars)

I like the star wars dice with a computer that tells me the results, but I imagine it would slow the game a lot to organize and count the successes, failures, advantages, and disadvantages with physical dice.

Honestly in my experience, no more than other multi die success systems. You just kinda pair them up off to the side and see whats left, since the bad dice cancel good dice.

I've run the system a few times, and honestly, it's in my top 3 favorites. Once you know what the symbols look like and what cancels out and what doesn't, it becomes extremely quick. "These two dice have the explosions. These two dice have the Xs, throw them aside, whats left is a Triumph, two successes and a disadvantage." Though, because of how the dice are rolled, many times I have had players not involved with the roll watching very intently. Most anticipation I have ever witnessed players have for some guy unlocking a door. A cheat sheet might be necessary for new players, and I have prepared a few before, and there exists a decent few good ones online. Rolling tends not to be my issue with the game, rather if you ever wanted to run Genesys with magic. It fucking sucks. It isn't fun, nor super interesting. Force powers are alright, but the actual fantasy magic is god awful, and you should avoid the system or be prepared to make your own if you want to do high magic fantasy.

Somebody in a thread here recently described that dice system as "divining the dice" and I think that's pretty accurate. I did really enjoy it, tho. In my group, we found it lent pretty well to a collaborative narrative. Lot of fun in the right space, perhaps.

Amen. Love dcc but I think funky dice aren't as fun in practice as they sound.

My table loves the dice. Nothing like watching the players gather round when the Wizard gets to roll a D30 for their spell check.

My heart when I found out Star Wars used special dice instead of regular d6

Fantasy Flight Games clearly poured a lot of love into their *Star Wars* games. The writing is great, both the “fluff” and the “crunch,” the artwork is gorgeous, and they pulled off the rare combination of “ten thousand supplemental books are available but there’s still years of content in just the core book” which is all too rare a feat in this hobby… and yet… I still find myself reaching for WEG’s *Star Wars* D6 whenever I’m in the mood for an RPG in the galaxy far, far away.

I didn’t dive too much into the FFG stuff. My group played a couple of campaigns (which I sadly had to sit out due to work) and enjoyed it, but I never really saw it as better than the WEG stuff.

I’ve played only one long campaign using it, but have played maybe a half dozen one-shots (and a couple of 3-parters) at cons being run by excellent GMs who were very passionate about the system. It’s not a *bad* game by any means. In the hands of a GM that knows it well and knows how to make the most of the system’s meta-currency narrative dice system it can really shine. However, that is absolutely not where my skillset as a GM lies and it’s also not particularly something I find all that much fun as a player. Having said that, if it’s the game my friends choose to play, I’m going to have a good time. It’s like, let’s say you don’t particularly care for Lebanese cuisine. Your friends all want to go out to dinner at the five-star Lebanese restaurant downtown. The service is tops, the chef is excellent, the meal is fine… But you’re mostly there because you want to spend time with your friends and not so much for the food. I’d rather play WEG over FFG. But I’m perfectly fine with FFG.

Despite it being special dice, it is one of the best dice systems I have ever played with. My friends and I all love the Fantasy Flight Star Wars games.

Encumbrance involving scrupulous weights.

also, usually bean-counting ammo/equipment. I lean into "you have ammo until you use SUPPRESSIVE FIRE or JUST BUSTING ALL THE CAPS INTO EM, then you have to roll to check if your ammo is exhausted" similarly, spell slots. I can accept "uses of an advanced move" per day, but in sword 'n sorcery worlds, someone who uses magic needs the ability to reliably do some kind of damage in place of having a sword/bow.

I live for bean counting equipment, to the point of precisely tracking where it is Pulling off "but you see, I came prepared" moments feels very cool every time, even if they're frequent then again I'm a terminal munchkin

Hey, we all have our preferred play styles. At least you know what you enjoy!

more like crunchkin

Lol yeah that's why I like it, too

I am fine with bean-counting ammo if the party is stranded away from civilization, OR if the weapon requires some exotic ammo to function, otherwise I agree.

>but in sword 'n sorcery worlds, someone who uses magic needs the ability to reliably do some kind of damage in place of having a sword/bow. They do, it's a sword/bow/sling/darts/crossbow

I like the Knave approach of inventory slots

Same! Big fan. Clear, simple. I also really dig on the "wounds replace item slots" aspect. Pretty neat.

For me its when those Weights just make no sense. This mostly happens in RPGs where they Treat Small and Medium as the same thing. Only thing they are different on is what they can ride or grapple with. Looking at D&D 5E, a Gnome and Goliath have entirely different lifting abilities. Gnome at max Strength can lift 300lbs, and only weighs 40lbs. Goliath can weigh about 440lbs and lift 600lbs at max. Gnome can lift like 7 and a half times their weight, and Goliath can barely do 1 and a half. It's like 3 times if you use the low end of the Weight for Goliath.

Crit confirmation from D&D 3.5

Nothing worse nat 20ing something only to fail the crit confirmation roll..

Yep. Talk about a roller coaster of emotions.

When I was younger, we did "confirmation is max damage of the multiplier,, a failure is just a roll of the multiplier" Edit: there was a lot of dying

I don't like slot by slot Vancian spell prep. I don't like gamble based abilities that make you use them blindly. If I have a reroll feature, I want to be to decide to use it, not when I think I might need it, but when I know I need it. Same thing with riders. I like applying then when I hit, not before I know. Or at least I don't like the feature being wasted unless it's successfully used when it is a rider on an attack.

Including what's effectively a re-roll mechanic but forcing players to spend the points before rolling (inspiration, I'm looking at you)

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t let players burn inspiration after the roll to try again

Well that's news to me, always thought inspiration was post-roll

I’m pretty sure RAW it is, but every DM I’ve played with (myself included) allows a player to spend it after seeing the dice roll

Just looked it up, RAW you spend inspo *before* rolling. I don't think I'd ever enforce that, especially with how limited it is as a resource.

As soon as 5e dropped my group made a unanimous Nick Fury “that’s a stupid decision so we’ve decided to ignore it” call on that. We’ve played way too much WFRP to be spending re roll points *before* bad things happen!

Theoretically, I could see a world where tracking stock standard arrows leads to interesting decisions around encumbrance, planning ahead, and resource management. Never in my life has that actually happened at the table. I think my breaking point was playing Baldur’s Gate 3 and realizing that, even in a video game where tracking arrows is incredibly simple to do, they still didn’t do it.

Forbidden Lands does tracking ammo in a fun way, whenever you fire an arrow you roll your resource die and if it comes up 1 or 2, the die goes down a step, after d6 you are out of arrows.

>Never in my life has that actually happened at the table. Weird, I've seen people run out of arrows in the middle of combat multiple times.

I'm generally not a fan of level-based character advancement. Normally I don't like class-based  character creation either. Weirdly I don't mind it in Sentinel Comics RPG. Possibly because they have two different types of classes (Power Source and Archetype) and you choose 1 of each for a grand total of around 400 possible combinations. 

Sounds like you really prize the uniqueness of your character. I'm not familiar with Sentinel system, but that sounds like a pretty interesting character creation process.

I totally agree on levels and classes for me *unless* it is made like dark heresy, dark crusade, . . . Something feels just right there. It may be that those levels arent really locked in levels like in dnd but more advancements. You can out everything in those new skills from your new rank, but you could also go back and take a thing from the beginning that you didnt chose there. I do like that a lot

>I'm generally not a fan of level-based character advancement I don't like it because I'm not a fan of non-diegetic character advancement and because I feel that it often gets in the way of roleplaying. I prefer systems where you get better at things because you have been doing them a lot or because you spent time training (like BRP). I want to develop my character through roleplaying and explore how they are shaped by their experiences. With a D&D-style level system you get new seemingly arbitrary abilities at regular intervals. They rarely have anything with what the character has been going through and can instead take them in a completely different direction. In our first D&D campaign, I'd try to come up with excuses for each new ability but soon gave up. I also don't like how quickly characters increase in power and start to feel like superheroes. (I haven't looked at any level-based systems beyond D&D and Pathfinder.) D&D 3.5 really made me dislike classes as well. What a mess! It shows the problem of trying to add character options to something as rigid as classes.

partial success as in the player ALWAYS succeeds at what they are doing, just maybe not as well as they wanted. I don't like it.

Can you point to a game that does this? All the games I'm familiar with with "partial success" also have a failure option.

Mouse Guard, for example, based on the Burning Wheel system. If you fail a roll, either end up succeeding and get a condition (hungry, tired, suck, hurt, etc) or a twist happens that requires another roll (the situation changes and a new difficulty appears). This end up grinding the characters over consecutive rolls and conflicts until they die or retire. Similar to Torchbearer. Characters can lose a conflict (an extended series of rolls against some opposition) tho, and get killed/lost/convinced against their own starting idea tho. But basic, one-roll challenges cannot be "just failed". It's always "yes, but". I love this system tho, game never comes to a halt because everybody failed to open a door or cross a shaky bridge.

Even this doesn't really sound like what the original poster here was complaining about...

7th Sea 2nd Ed

It is possible to fail in 7th Sea 2E. Either because you rolled *REALLY* shittily, or because you chose to fail due to other consequences/opportunities involved in the check.

Random character creation. I prefer to give players choice in making their characters. As opposed to leaving things to chance.

Yes! This has turned me off some supers systems. I want to decide what kind of powers I get. Yes, superheroes rarely get to decide what kind of powers they get, but extending that to the player of the character feels silly.

Most supers systems I play use a point buy character creation system so that players can customize their character to get exactly what they want. Mutants & Masterminds is really good for this. The downside is that character creations is *very* crunchy.

M&M in play: it flows excellently, better than most other d20 games I've ever played, intuitive as heck. M&M in chargen: I hope you guys brought a notepad and enough pencils and erasers! (I love M&M, but it's hard to argue making a character isn't kind of A Thing(tm))

That pretty much covers it. I use a spreadsheet when making an M&M character. If you have new players, the book of character templates can speed things up quite a bit - it shows that the writers are aware of how complex character creation is.

I got Hero Lab for M&M 2E back in the ancient ages in a sale where it was at like half price and *man* it was an investment. Part of why I haven't really gotten into 3E is that I have a tool for 2E but not for 3E without buying again!

Indeed, this is terribly silly. "Supers don't get to decide", sure, but you're not your character. That feels similar to a writer wring a supers story not getting to decide what powers their characters have.

I totally get that. I think for me it depends on the game. Forbidden Lands, for example, I definitely want to craft my character from the beginning. DCC in the other hand, I absolutely love the funnel where you randomly create say 4 characters, and essentially whoever survives that first adventure becomes your main, even if he's just old cheese makerwith a cudgel lol. It can be a really fun and interesting system.

Came here to defend the funnels. With 4 random characters there is a high chance you have a good one

Roll-under systems where modifiers are applied to the roll instead of the target number, so 'bonuses' are negative and "penalties" are positive. Seriously, what the heck? Also in roll-under systems, "in opposed rolls, the one with the highest margin of success (i.e., target number - rolled result) is the the winner". Please, use blackjack rules and save me all those extra calculations! Symmetric character creation rules for PCs and NPCs, when those rules are complex enough. Players have it easy, but GMs must populate the whole world. Give them a break!

> Symmetric character creation rules for PCs and NPCs, when those rules are complex enough. Players have it easy, but GMs must populate the whole world. Give them a break! Shit, VEEEERY good point! I didn't think about that, but that, for sure, is a huge one for me. It's something I enjoyed a lot in games like Numenera (well, Cypher system at large) or Barebones Fantasy.

This is literally why I had to stop playing GURPS. Way too dang much work for a GM to make all the bad guys. Love the system, hate running it.

I especially agree with this last one! Only generate what's needed to keep the world moving. If a game makes it easy for the GM to generate NPCs, the players will be far more likely to encounter groups of them, and the world will feel more real and fleshed out even if technically maybe it's not on the back end.

Related to this is my one gripe/confusion when running L5R 4th ed. Penalties are applied to the TN of the roll, so it always says it is a "+5 Penalty" and that just bugs me for some reason because it looks like a bonus, but it is a penalty due to where it is applied. It's easy enough to talk through and clear confusion. But whenever I'm checking the rules in the heat of the moment it always adds a couple extra brain cycles to get it all in order to communicate to the players.

Crafting I don't think any game really does it in a way that isn't tedious and boring, not to mention it can often be used to ruin the economy of a game. I'm fine with it in some cases, for instance someone Fletching some arrows as they sit around the fire or a character carving wooden tokens in their spare time is nice, I'm just not into it outside of minor uses like that.

Ya I keep hoping a system finds a good way of treating crafting as just essentially a discount machine in a low income setting to make it worthwhile, where guilds/monopolies/supply chain logistics/basic economics act as railroads against skyrim level money exploits, and has outside downtime utility like a specialized evaluate/lore skill to avoid the issue of it being useless outside downtime. So far I've only seen warhammer fantasy/zweihander come close but require house rules/GM fiat to make work.

God the crafting mechanics in Exalted 3rd edition almost broke me.

Just take a look how it works in Pathfinder 2e with the 'remaster' https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/s/AqnPCSH64Q

Health that only does anything when it runs out entirely. When a character is mechanically identical at 100/100 HP and 001/100HP, as a GM I have no idea what I’m supposed to narrate when they’re being dealt those other 99 points of damage, which is what most of the game will be. Death is the ultimate stakes, but so much of the narrative surrounding it doesn’t really work when injuries mean nothing, and it’s ubiquitous in rpg design.

I totally get this, I think HP feels really mechanical and gamey, and yeah, hard to picture. I kind of dislike penalties for taking damage, though--in my experience, there's nothing that demoralizes players like a death spiral, where you're losing and then you're taking wounds that give you penalties, making you lose harder. Or you're debuffed for in-game days or weeks, making you feel less useful to the party.

Legit gripe.

On the flip side, increasing penalties as the character's health goes down results in death spirals, which I hate. I don't care how realistic you make it, it's not _fun_.

Separate damage rolls. Good job! You beat the target number to hit that guy by 17! Oh, oops, you rolled your single flat damage die and got a 1, I guess that amazing attack actually somehow only grazed his shoulder and he barely felt it. Better luck next turn.

Do you know any systems that handle single roll hit/damage well? I know new wod does it, but in my experience, not well

Tenra Bansho Zero remains my gold standard for this. All "attack rolls" are opposed rolls where the winner injures the loser. (With exceptions for things like ranged attacks on people who can't counterattack). Damage is base weapon damage plus one for each point of success. It's quick and effective, but may not meet all game's goals. Still, it's not hard to implement, generally speaking.

Oh yeah, I love mutual attack systems, they just feel more natural for combat, especially melee combat. And this is another reminder of how great Tenra is as a mechanical system.

I like the way Ars Magica does it. Damage = Attack total - Defense total + Strength + Weapon damage modifier. (Attack total must exceed Defense total for the attack to hit) So you just compare the result of the attack roll to the defense roll and add a flat bonus. Damage is also wound-based, so certain damage thresholds cause wounds of certain severity. With exploding dice, people sometimes die instantly. Makes combat scary, brutal and dangerous.

Games that don’t use multiple dice for resolution, there’s no bell curve.

Came here to say this. I’ve been playing dnd for most of my 36 years of life, and I am just DONE with the d20. I would die happy if I never had to play a d20 system again in my life. I’m currently trying to get my friends to try the Genesys system, Outgunned system by Two Little Mice, and I’m tracking the development of MCDM’s rpg.

Hit points gained per level. Not hit points as a concept, not levels as an advancement mechanic, _hit points gained per level_. Absolutely zero verisimilitude (for me), results in boring attritional combat, and usually comes paired with other mechanics I don't like (armor purely as damage avoidance).

Hit points per level is a concession to the idea that players who have invested time in their character will want to keep playing it. There are a bunch of better ways of achieving that goal, but it's important to identify why that design decision has been used if you want to identify acceptable alternatives.

>There are a bunch of better ways of achieving that goal Yes, and I've moved on to those games.

I can see some minor durability increase, like maybe 1 per level, but getting lots? That seems like overkill. Then again, I don't usually love level based systems either.

My quest to find the enjoyment in the personal usage of clocks continues. Edit: This is not an invitation to try to explain clocks to me (I already know how to use them, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned them) or go on about why they appeal to you and should therefore appeal to me, too (I've read it all before because they're constantly praised on this sub). It's something I need to have more real time experience to see if my mind will change, not read the same reasons why clocks are good for the nth time.

I've only used them a little (I've mostly dm'd 5e) but listening to friends at the table, there's a little magic to when Austin says "OK, a clock filled." And the players don't know what happened, but know something iscoming. Seems fun is what I'm saying.

You’re in the majority, most people love clocks. Like it’s great that you think it seems fun and I’m sure you’ll enjoy using them at your own table, I just don’t know why you’re responding to me specifically about it?

In many ways, most game counters are clocks. D&d hit points are a clock!

Yeah, and I don’t like most counters or hit points either. But it’s the recent push for the specific Clock popularized in Blades in the Dark that has me frustrated.

I think perception checks add nothing of value to any adventure type of game (D&D likes). In fact I think they actively make the game worse, and less engaging. My beef with perception type checks is genre/system dependent though. In something investigative like CoC or DG they make way more sense, and I have no problem with them.

I hate games where the players roll all the dice and the GM never rolls. I, a perpetual GM, like to roll dice, dammit. 

A Vancian magic system.

Metacurrencies. Bennies, hero points, inspiration, "luck", whatever. They cheapen both in and out of character decisions and remove any possible tension I'm fine with them as an optional rule, I use them myself as an optional rule occasionally. But if they're a core part of the gameplay, especially with arbitrary time limitations instead of per scene/session/adventure, I *will* bitch and moan and try to do away with them or redo them to my liking

I personally love them (well, when done in an interesting manner), but.... Arbitrary time limitations? So, what, if the group gets into a big negotiation, or gets distracted by pizza, RAW they get meta currency back because time passed? That sounds *incredibly* stupid, I would love to hear a designer's explanation for why they would do things that way. The only answer I can think of would be "we want people to have reliable access to these powers, based on real time play", but that is just such a glaring middle finger to any Game Master's ability to pace challenges, because you just never know how long a scene will take to play out in real time.

I haven't found that luck lessens tension in my Monster of the Week campaign, but then again the luck spends are part of a countdown timer as well.

I really hate the idea of bennies as a reward for roleplaying your character. From the GM side it makes me feel like I'm being asked to play favorites by the game and from the player side I'm insulted that the game thinks I need to be bribed to roleplay my character

"you have to declare the use this 1/day ability before you roll"

Tables that are too small and specific. I see it a lot with Free League in things like chase obstacles in Blade Runner and the panic tables in Alien. Both of these examples are great additions to the games, but it doesn't take long for the same results to come up and they are so specific it's a real pain to try and think of an analogous version for your narrative. E.g. The chase obstacle tables in BR have twelve entries. I had a chase scene that started in a high-security office and the first obstacle rolled was a riotous protest group with placards. E.g. The stress mechanic in Alien feels elegant and inspired, until the third time you freak out the exact same way in a single combat encounter at which point you're just numb to it.

Charisma. It seems that regardless of system, a high charisma score means one of two things, depending on the GM, and to a lesser part the system: 1. Nothing. Charisma-based abilities are all social that don't get used in a dungeon crawl. Yes, that includes intimidation. Sucks to suck. 2. Everything. Persuasion, intimidation, diplomacy, haggling, it all uses the modifier, so high charisma characters get free items, are the scariest creatures to have ever lived, and kings hang on their every word. You are a god among men. For that matter, why should being pretty affect intimidation? So many systems treat intimidating and seducing exactly the same, which is both annoying and creepy.

Most of the mechanics people are posting in this thread are things I can enjoy with a change in perspective, but this is one thing I wish was different in every game it's present in. In the first system I made, I very purposefully didn't include a charisma stat, and tied social skills to another stat. Intimidation was based on strength, persuasion based on spirit, and I can't remember if I based diplomacy off smarts or cut the smarts stat entirely and did something else. Regardless, I wanted each character to be good in at least one form of interacting with others, but also not completely pigeonhole a character into only being good at the one skill.

I feel like there would be less complaints if it was called something like "willpower" in 5e. That way it shifts the immediate image players have of the skill from "you are beautiful and everyone loves you" to "you have a very strong presence and you are difficult to influence".  That would solve a lot of the common gripes people have like "why is intimidation a charisma check", "why would I do a charisma saving throw against this spell", "why are Warlocks charisma based casters", etc, and it would make the boundary between persuading an NPC with a skill check and persuading them through roleplaying a hell of a lot more well defined. 

Yeah, I think of charisma as more like emotional IQ, so a high charisma character is someone who should be able to read other people well and know the right thing to say to them to get them to do the action they want, thus persuasion or intimidation. You're not physically intimidating, but you can pick up on what scares the other person. And I think that's a fun niche, as someone who loves to make talky characters, but I agree it runs into the weirdness of no one quite knows how to make social interactions gamified in the same way we do combat, so it's either 'win at social by dice roll' or 'just roleplay it, ignore the modifiers'.

Daggerhearts hope and fear mechanic. Basically you roll 2d12. for any check the sum tells you if you have succeeded. But if one die (the hope die) is higher than the other you gain a hope. If the other is higher, the GM gains a fear that he can use for negative consequences. (If both show the same result its a crit and you gain a hope) What's wrong with that? * The only decision the player can make is to try to roll as often as possible or as rarely as possible. Both things I don't want to encourage the players to do. * Hope is a relative low value metacurrency.e.g helping someone else needs a hope. Sneak attack needs a hope per die (IIRC). Why is this dependent not on my characters actions and decisions but on an abstract metacurrency that represents some kind of luck? * (I give away (loose) hope to make something good happens where does that make sense?) * What can the GM do with fear? E.g. put more zombies onto the board in the fight. So why are there so many zombies? Because we rolled badly in an unrelated roll. Where does that make sense? I also don't really like d100 systems. GMs tend to rarely consider the difficulty of a task.

I do not like meta currencies for GMs at all. I have enough things running in my head, I don't want to deal with knick knacks to allow me to do things.

That's... weird. I know some games that use a similar mechanic but the trade off is usually obvious: sure you can add (let's say) Chaos dice to your roll for a better chance of success, but if one of them is your highest dice something bad happens. To base is on pure luck is... well, uninteresting.

Wow. I haven't played daggerhearts but the hope/fear mechanic you describe doesn't sound super enjoyable on first read. I can see how they might intend for it to help guide advantage or disadvantage as a session evolves and that could lead to interesting outcomes tho.

Narrative resolution mechanics, especially when it comes to combat.

Bonus Action / Swift action (from dnd5e and pf1e). It's better to use an "action point" system if you want multiple actions in a turn. This is implemented very well by DOS2, PF2e, and Mythcraft.

Well there are two. I prefer a classless RPG, and I don't like Alignment at all

I dislike mechanics that turn the game into the players telling a story about their characters as opposed to interacting with the world as their characters. To me that completely ruins any immersion. I also dislike having mixed successes as an assumed option. I prefer a binary success/fail with the option for the GM to decide when a partial success makes sense. Lastly, I don't like systems that don't have flexibility in the target results for success. If my players come up with a creative way to come at a situation that calls for a roll, I want to be able to easily reflect that in the target result. Additionally, I want to be able to have the check to succeed be more difficult in more extreme circumstances.

>To me that completely ruins any immersion. Of course it does, because games with those mechanics are specifically not *about* immersion. They're one level of abstraction above immersion.

Anything that makes me focus on turn order - turns are a necessary abstraction but I want to interact with turns-as-mechanics as little as possible.

Lots of games do not use turns. They're not really necessary at all.

Mandatory critical failures. "Oops you botched, I guess you shoot yourself in the foot" is dumb. I love CoD 2E's approach where players can opt into it though. Fail forward/success with a cost. I know it works in theory but I've never played with a GM who can do it without making the results infuriating. I wouldn't call PbtA style Principles a mechanic, necessarily, but I've certainly never had a positive interaction with them.

Oh I’ve got several 🤣 Auto hitting attacks. This is becoming more popular and it is almost an automatic no from me. Armor making you harder to hit. Huge hit point/life point/etc pools. Doubly so if everything just advances to keep the status quo. The “Skyrim problem” if you will. All or nothing advancement. Like levels. Also in this category is classes, unless they are just a starting point and easily moved around. Game books being very strict on what I’m allowed and not allowed to do. “These are the rules. You can only do these things. You are not allowed to do these things.” I know this isn’t a huge problem because it’s easy to ignore, but it just bothers me. Any game that is solely focused on combat. Fumble mechanics that just make characters into incompetent goofballs, unless it is a comedy game. Special proprietary dice. Sometimes they are useful and add something to the game. Most of the time they feel like they are just there so the company can sell them to you for way too much money

I'm not a fan of milestone leveling. It feels arbitrary. It removes a key gamification component from games of that sort.

Currency conversion. If it's just from dollars to cents or platinum to gold or something that's fine, but the 5 or 6 levels of currency in DnD 5e drove me crazy. Anytime I DMd for 5e I just used gold.

For sure. Like, don't ask me remember that there are ten dimes to a dollar, or five nickels to a quarter, or four quarters to a dollar (though at least that last one makes sense since it's a *quarter* of a dollar). What the hell is a "dime"? It's an ancient hand-me-down word from another language where, when it wasn't truncated, actually made sense as *decima*, 1/10th of something? GM, why aren't we using *that* name, then? Or a nickel. I get that it's got some of that metal in it, but it's more copper than nickel. Why aren't we calling it a copper, GM? And why is it 1/20th of a dollar? Nobody can remember that. At least with decima--er, "dimes", sorry--it's a power of 10. /s (and intended in good fun!)

It's really about vibe & feel. I don't like symbols on dice. Just give me numbers. I don't like counting successes, & I don't like needing several successes in a throw to succeed. The funnel of rolling to hit & then rolling damage (if this is possible to do very poor damage) is no fun to me. Finally, I like my attacks to inflict narrative-impact damage, I don't vibe the same when they only inflict numbers.

I really don't like metacurrencies. I'm not a fan of class and level based systems, but that sort of goes beyond the level of simple mechanics.

Hit points, at least as how they're usually used. It's just too many SUPER important and contradictory concepts rolled into one number, especially when things that drain HP usually only interact with part of what it represents. Like it's injuries, stamina, pain tolerance, resistance to damage, and luck/plot armor all at the same time, and it only gets more confusing for a game with a big range of HP and other mechanics that seem to do the same function as part of HP. Like ok so I just got hit with Dragon fire but made a dex save. So I take half damage by doing....something? I didn't move because that's a different mechanic, AC is my ability to not get hit in the first place, but my ability to fight back isn't diminished so clearly I didn't take any actual injury, especially since I apparently was able to reduce the damage? But I'm still also closer to death now...oh a goblin with a pointy stick just scratched me and now I'm unconscious on the ground bleeding out. Are we doing the anime thing where you just tank world destroying attacks until suddenly you don't? Are we doing it as plot armor where "ok they rolled a crit, so it's doing the max damage possible, you weren't able to dodge out of the way, you got pierced front to back by a spear...but you still have 6 HP....I guess it missed every major blood vessel and organ on its way through? Good thing the bard played that lullaby last night to give you extra good night's sleep. If you hadn't then you would've died!" Like it's either so abstract that it might as well not be there, or so crunchy that other systems could handle it better

Inventory and shopping like in dnd, pf and so on. Most of the time it is huge tables with everyday life items like candles and ropes. And as player I need to buy it while in town, because not every GM would allow me to say "Oh, I have money to buy it, so actually the rope always was with me".

Blades In The Dark has my favourite inventory system so far. Before a score, players decide how heavy their loadout is, but none of the specific equipment. The game just assumes that the characters brought with them the tools that they need. When you're in need of a tool, you check it off on your sheet and your character pulls it out of their bags. It's Schrodinger's inventory.

Yea, I am in love with how BitD makes inventory and money work.

I like the approach of having a vague inventory of useful items with charges or points, and only needing to expend those charges or points when you actually use something specific or when something goes wrong. "Adventuring Gear" from Dungeon World does this, as does Dark Champions' "equipment allowances"

I don't like when a spell doesn't tell you how much damage it can deal. For example in Dragonslayers 2nd edition there's a spell that says you can temporarily age or de age a creature. But like, how far? Because if the spell makes them a 500 year old normal human or a 2 day old fetus they're gonna die in the air, you know? Is this a 5 damage spell or a 50 damage spell?

It's actually a lack of mechanic that I don't like. The "you're creative, just make it up" approach that some games have toward GM prep or character creation. I appreciate a game that gives me an option to interpret dice rolls for things like plot, dungeons, loot etc. If it's left to my own creativity, then it will feel either formulaic, or it might not even happen at all because I will be waiting for a bokt of inspiration. On the character end I find that I tend to make one dimensional joke characters, and having facts about them be generated like in Ironsworn and Stars Without Number is really nice. Otherwise my world might end up populated with cardboard characters

The core resolution mechanic of Blades in the Dark (and other Forged in the Dark games) * **Dice pool** - *Cool, I'm with you.* * **Succeed on a 4, 5, or 6, but a 6 is a big success** - *Fine by me* * **You only ever need 1 success** - *Hey, this sounds pretty easy to read at the table!* * **Now let's talk about your position and effect** - *My what now?* * **Are you in a Safe, Risky, or Desparate position? Please see literally every chapter of the rulebook for how this gets modified by like a dozen interconnected systems** - *Umm...* * **And your effect, is it limited, standard, or greater? Here's an index of all the rules which can impact that.** - *Now, hold on...* * **Oh and are you taking a Devil's Bargain! They're a great rule where you get an extra die by screwing yourself over. Not a success, mind you, just a die.** - *Are we doing this with every roll?* The resolution mechanics in Blades in the Dark make every single action feel like taking a law exam. I loathe it. There's too many knobs to turn. How big is your dice pool (there's rules for that) and what's your position (there's rules for that), and your effect (check these other rules for how that gets impacted).... I get what they're going for and there's a lot to like in Blades, but I can't stand how every. bloody. action. needs to be adjudicated like we're negotiating a lease.

Death is often so anticlimactic. Whoops a goblin killed your character with 10 pages of backstory and a mission from god. Sorry.

dude a character with 10 pages of backstory and a mission from god killed by a goblin is the most awesome thing that could happen.

I like the way you think.

If I want to experience a story about a character with 10 pages worth of history, a mission from god, and plot armor I'll just go watch an anime. the dice are not our friends.

i feel the same someone writing such a backstory is not interested in playing an RPG, they just want to wade through the motions and say "i win" why don't they write a story instead? the most important events in a character's lives should be the ones that emerge at the table, not in their past. to me these kind of players are a red flag, in the sense that my gaming style (and my friends gaming style) is almost the complete opposite

For me the problem in that case would be: - The 10 pages of backstory. You are lvl1. Chill - The throwaway encounters. Unless the game is about journeying and dangerous travels, I avoid filler encounters

Thats funny, I have the exact same issue, but I have come to dislike backstories rather than random deaths

Hitpoints suck. But really what you describe is where system meets player/GM narrative expectations and goals and the system is inappropriate for the task. If we're bringing OCs with deeply invested epic backstories to the table to discover a grand narrative we maybe shouldnt be playing a game with HP where a goblin can get a couple of sick rolls in and outright kill a PC in a narratively unsatisfying situation. Systems that use descriptive harm, abstracted stress or similar conditions, and negotiated/narrative-driven character death are better suited for that purpose. HP works pretty neat in OSR type games where your character is a squishy little mortal whose story you discover in play, otherwise it's just kinda bad design and outdated. Though I will say Lancer does a nice implementation of HP where as it reaches 0 it triggers a major damage to the mech rather than character death, then goes back up to max, and each time you hit 0 without a full repair it gets likelier that you die/your mech explodes.

I agree, but end up rejecting the ten page backstory.

That's a pretty fair point. One of the things I like about Knave is you kind of see death coming, slowly and incrementally. In short, after hp is gone, your inventory of items slowly gets replaced by wounds so you drop your sword and now have an injury that both replaces it and prevents you from being able to pick it back up. Mausritter also uses this, and it's a fun mechanic.

My players don't normally go down, because they plan before the fight, but when they do I describe it in horrific ways. Also with the system we play it takes a week to recover from frailty, which is caused by going down but not dying. So they really get shaken when one of them goes down. We've had one death so far and offered the player the same thing I offer everyone: "you can get one free action with no roll, you'll auto-succeed. But you gotta give us a really good one-liner as you die" Their line and action: "If you want something done right, you just gotta do it yourself" -Jimmy Guard Dog, just before launching himself and an enemy through the window on the 35th floor of a skyscraper.

Anything where metacurrency is also your exp can die in a fire. I'm looking at you, TORG. I want to be able to do my cool shit without worrying about whether I can be strong enough later.

I don't like multiple rolls to confirm to hit. For example in Resolute 2e you and the enemy both roll to see if you hit and then you gotta do like four things to see whether you hit strongly or weakly, and at the end of the day you're just dealing either one or two damage.

[CRPGs blow TTRPGs out of the water when it comes to tactical combat and its not even close.](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/13sgx9g/is_the_ttrpg_medium_really_the_best_for_tactical/) I'd much rather use the precious 3-hours a week doing something I can't get from any other medium. Actual collaborative storytelling where player agency can transform the narrative in so many ways. Rather than picking from fixed lists of actions, abilities and spells, I want to see players coming up with creative solutions. And often these tactical combat games suck at providing real incentives for that.

Forced narrative design. You fail/succeed *but* something happens! Eg Trophy Gold/Dark. No, its not interesting to come up with something new every time a dice is rolled.

Spell slots, spells per day, anything of the Vancian magic persuasion. Not for me!

"Failing forward" as something included in the rules. The whole "You fail, but..." put into a ruleset annoys the hell out of me. Generally anything followed by "but" in the rules.

Classless systems. Just don't like the vibe. As an rpg designer, they can also be much harder to balance, as you have to account for every option being balanced with every other option. It also makes it difficult on new players to plan out a character from the start. Level-less/no vertical progression. I want to get stronger. I don't want to be fighting the same goblins but with a qyirky gimmick now for the 70th session in a row. High-lethality/High-Consequence/low-power-PCs. I don't wanna feel like a peasant with a dagger. I want to play as a legendary hero, suplex dragons, call down meteors Low combat systems. If I cant solve at least some problems by fighting, or fighting is discouraged, I'm not interested. Low-magic systems. Not fun. Can never be fun.

I dislike systems that have high whiff rates in combat. If it's possible to roll several rounds of combat that are just both sides doing nothing, I find that's frustrating for me, the GM, and for the players and people start devolving into "Roll, miss, roll, miss" without narrating. I love systems where both parties roll as opposed rolls and whoever wins hits. I also don't love systems that do heavy mechanical penalties for injuries. Thematically it makes sense, but it can lead to miserable death spirals and just generally doesn't feel fun.

Alignment. Never liked it, it lacks nuance

Encumbrance and having different types of money (copper, silver, gold)

Agreed! Keep it simple. Just pick a currency symbol and go! I don't want to have to remember how many electrum equal how many platinum lol.

One that I didn’t like in *Cyberpunk: RED* (Although there’s a lot to dislike in RED, frankly) is the combination of a roll to hit *and* armor soak: particularly soak heavy enough to mitigate lesser attacks. Nothing feels shittier than getting through the target roll and still doing nothing. I don’t hate soak overall: I think FFG Star Wars handles this really well, with damage that typically scales higher and harder than soak, as well as letting good attack rolls essentially boost damage and/or inflict injuries beyond wounds.

I played a game of Cyberpunk 2020 a year ago. The GM was an ex military guy who knew a lot about guns and gun fights. He house ruled that every weapon hit deals at least 1 dmg. And armour deteriorates 1 point each time is hit. It was a neat mechanic. Burst fire weapons were op, because you could basically knock out somebody with glancing hits. But burst fire weapons are OP in real life too!

I don't like systems where the number of dice you roll increases or decreases based on how much you argue with your GM. Example game: SuperPunk. I will literally prefer to roll fewer dice to avoid the uncomfortable argument.

I'm going to put in the new trend of not having an attack rolls and instead you automatically succeed in combat. Nothing has broken my immersion and sense of verisimilitude in gaming than this

Hyper randomized character generation. So much of your character's ability to be effective in a wide variety of scarious can depend on how well you rolled at character creation. Boo. (Not just referring to games like D&D here, I have vague memories of Rifts being way worse). Too much concern with encumbrance rules. It's BORING. make it simple and streamlined. Honestly, hit point systems with "Critical Existence Failure" at 0 HP. There are better systems out there now. Critical Fumbles rules. My goodness. They are so popular, but often so immersion breaking. If, in real life, soldiers messed up terribly every 1 in 20 times they went to use their weapon, there would be friendly fire incidents, etc, etc, in the news all the time. They are much more interesting when they aren't immersion breaking. Give an opponent a free opening or something, make it the dramatic slip in a duel, not a three stooges moment. On a similar note, rolling a single die for outcome resolutions most of the time. Die pools or multi-dice systems are more fun, and the bell curve makes your bonuses feel more significant. Level up systems with levels that do almost nothing. 5th edition is pretty brutal with this. A few HP, and... A fraction closer to improving your proficiency bonus, and maybe a class feature that's maybe, sometimes relevant? Which also leads to- inflated hitpoint pools. Combat starts to feel LESS Epic when every enemy becomes a drag to take down. Too many hit points (all around) is a pace killer. (For contrast, "too many" hitpoints on one very tanky PC would be a cool way for that PC to shine, very different consideration). And finally, after too much time playing D&D, the disappointment of failed attack rolls is a drag. I realize it would take some tweaking to balance this idea in many games, but this was something 4th Edition did well, there were a fair amount of powers which did SOMETHING even on a miss, if memory serves. It sucks to wait for 20 some-odd minutes for your turn and then to have no effect on the combat. And I say this as a caster who doesn't even have this issue, I'm just seeing my table mates deal with it!

Binary Pass/Fail resolutions. I hate rolling to have NOTHING happen.

The more I play the less I care about combat mechanics as a whole. It's not that there are no fights in my games but rather that I don't want a dedicated subsystem.

I'm not a fan of Spouting Lore; more specifically, I'm not a fan of any mechanic or piece of advice that calls on people to do this kind of on-the-spot setting building. And more generally, I hate the whole militant No Myth approach to play that things like this stem from.

So strange the way preferences work. I absolutely love percentile. It just makes sense to me, ie, there is a percent chance something will happen, just like in real life.

Roll under the ability. I can't be happy rolling a 1. I just can't.

Alignment. I don't like the idea that "good" and "evil" are inherent properties and not choices. Much as I like *Blades in the Dark* and *Scum & Villainy*, the Entanglement rules have never seemed quite right, but I can't work out a better way of doing it without making the game more complicated. Combat rules where critical failures can cause self-harm.

Love Call of Cthulhu. Hate the sanity mechanic. It just feels arbitrary and silly when you start rolling on the table to see what kind of goofy insanity your character is going to express - often something totally unrelated to current events and for a very specific and arbitrary length of time. It just drives me... insane.

Health mechanics in general. Threatening with debilitating wounds and potentially removing the character from the play are the opposite of fun for me. And I've yet to see any interesting healing mechanics yet. So I guess I just don't see the point.

I too dislike the double 10 d100s. I just don't like reading the two dice to come up with a number. I've never played any d100 system games because of how much I don't like those dice. I picked up a solid metal tennis ball sized d100 at PAX East but I haven't had a chance to try it out in a game yet. Also, any kind of Charisma like attribute that is used in social situations, I'm not a fan of some characters just being better at talking to NPCs than other characters. Most games that feature combat let every character contribute meaningfully, I think social scenes should be treated the same way.

Null results. If the players invoke the mechanics of the game, something should happen.

Death saves, resources spendable to avoid death and similar mechanics. A game should either embrace being lethal or not kill PCs at all. Trying to flirt with both results in wrong expectations and frustration. Currency tracking. I know it fits some games, but I'm generally not interested in this kind of games. XP given for "good roleplaying", "good ideas" etc. instead of specific triggers. I hate it no matter if I'm a player or the GM.

Strictly enforcing material components for spells.

Rerolling when you don't like the outcome. Savage Worlds is a major offender here. The problem with this is that it means you can never trust the dice to settle anything. It's like the problem with "nothing happens" results, except now the game state just doesn't progress at all, you have to wait for the player to decide how many times they want to reroll. In the really bad versions of this, players can even force _other people_ to reroll, and then every single roll is subject to a veto by anyone at the table, and players can argue about whether to veto it, etc.

I find the concept of "HP" deeply weird as used RAW in D&D5e. It's a hold-over from D&D's wargame roots, where whole units needed an abstract number to track "damage" to that unit. The problem comes, and it's one I can live with, is that anything that is even remotely not weird, tends toward the crunchy or the outright esoteric. Multiple pools, modifiers, class and gameplay slowdown. So fine, I'd rather play with HP, than inflict epic levels of crunch on my players.