Pretty simple, what are a few of the game mechanics you dislike? Either purely out of personal distaste, or simply because a given mechanic fails to properly deliver on its design premise.

A few to start (specific examples to begin, then I get kinda vague):

1. Burning Wheel's "Range & Cover". Needlessly complex while also remaining bizarrely abstract, basically just difficult and obnoxious to use. Then again, BW as a system for me mostly falls under that description anyway.

2. "Use to advance" skill mechanics. BRP's system for this is probably the most elegant version of this sort of system I've seen, and I still think it's kludgy, awkward and unsatisfying.

3. Almost all dedicated chase mechanics. They virtually never feel exciting, usually it's some kind of "X successes before Y contested checks" and it always feel like gimmicky gamey bullshit that doesn't even plausibly try to take into account any surroundings, obstacles, etc. It ends up just coming off as extremely shallow and vague, pulling all the excitement out of both the chase and its outcome.

4. Built-in 'plot armor' / 'protag power' for Player Characters. This is mostly personal taste, even hit points tend to fall into this bucket for me (though I wouldn't say they're a "bad mechanic").

5. Dice pools. ORE-based games are the only exception to this for me. I hate them.

6. Mechanics in serious games that completely fight the tone of what they're supposed to be about. Most immediate thing that comes to mind is from the Fate Horror Toolkit where they advise making grim community-based survival scenarios scary and important by giving Players the option to kill off a friendly NPC back at camp instead of take a hit themselves from a zombie in the field ("perhaps a zombie baby crawls through a hole in the fence back at camp and bites the poor NPC while they're off guard!"), because it's 'dramatic and the type of thing that happens in that type of fiction' and it supposedly makes your resource gathering missions real nail-biters. Completely missing the point IMO, but then again Fate is mostly for writer-types anyway I guess.

7. Level-adjusted loot. I understand its purpose, I just think it's fucking dumb.

In the end pretty much ANY mechanic can end up having all the life sucked from it by bad design. Or just improper use.

Roll over? Roll under? Rolling dice at all! Not rolling dice at all? Rolling strange shaped dice? Not rolling strange shaped dice! Levels? No levels? HP? No HP? and so on ad nausium.

People have bitched about every one of those and so much more.

Here. I'll make for you a list of mechanics someone hasnt bitched about.

1:

And there you go.

Oh, and off topic. Great avatar pic. From the 74 movie and novel WHO? by Algis Budrys.

I have a deep-seated, irrational dislike of roll under mechanics.  But I'm aware that it is irrational.  In the right circumstances, I can put it aside sufficiently to enjoy a game that uses roll under, and in some cases even temporarily forget my dislike.  It's the kind of thing that builds slowly over time, similar to how some spicy food is not that strong on the first bit, but by 20 your mouth is on fire.

In general, mechanics that I dislike that much are avoided whenever possible, and thus I'm not around them enough for the dislike to turn into hatred.  That also doesn't give me much of an opportunity to develop an informed opinion on what might theoretically be wrong with them.

1. Hit Points. It's a weird abstraction that needs a lot of mechanics to begin to make sense and makes the any game they exist in a lot harder to balance.

2. Classes. Just having these adds a lot of needless clunk to your game and drastically limits characters options. Furthermore I don't appreciate the niche protection or thematics they provide.

3. D20/D100/etc. Any large dice resolution mechanic necessitates a bunch of rules to handle those mechanics or highly random games or games where you have to repeat actions enough that you average out results. All are not things I desire.

Let's see:
1. Systems that have escalating costs to advance a stat with XP (so that it costs more XP to go from 3 to 4 than from 2 to 3 in a stat) but flat costs at chargen (so that it costs the same to go from 3 to 4 in a stat as from 2 to 3). Horrible newbie trap that can fuck right off.

2. Stick you thumb in your ass and wait for your turn initiative that cycles around predictably. Encourages players to space out while waiting for their turn instead of working as a team.

3. Spending XP to get a temporary benefit.

4. Any mechanics that are easy to reskin.  That means that the fluff doesn't matter, only the narrow mechanical effect. If the fluff doesn't matter and the ability only has one narrow mechanical effect then you can't MacGyver it. MacGyvering you abilities is where so much of the fun of RPGing comes from.

5. Any mechanics that only work on NPCs, especially shitty social mechanics.

6. Anything about level approriate encounters.

Amber has the right amount of explicit mechanics for me, every other game has "too much". I'm being serious...the whole point of RPGs is being able to do anything within some simulated reality; when you start adding mechanics to explain how to do things, you imply limitations. Anything more than GM fiat is limiting, really, and I hate it.

That said, my favorite RPGs are d6 Star Wars and AD&D, so obviously I'm not too married to this notion. To respond in a way that more accurately answers the question, social mechanics are the absolute worst. I am done playing D&D 5th because I was sick of crap like "Okay, I rolled an 18 for Intimidation," with ZERO fucking exposition on what the character was doing. I can understand abstracting some things, but if you can't even give a few words about what your character is doing and just roll a bunch of dice instead, I have no interest at all. I'll play a boardgame if I want that.

1. Escalating hit points by level.
2. Instant video-game style healing, waking up, respawning crap. AKA - injuries don't matter, procedure does.
3. Picking things after resolution that take up more time vs. just picking something and doing it. Stunts (FAGE, Mythras) look like their cool. Every time I try to use something like that at my table, it causes long pauses of analysis paralysis or shopping-gasms.
4. Dramatically escalating numbers in general. Going to from 1 to 10 over the life of a campaign is one thing. Going from 5 - 157 is ridiculous. Not sure why the only thing that turns our cranks is higher numbers, but I'm looking for better/less-math-heavy solutions to character improvement.

Ability scores in every WotC-era D&D. Outside of a few cases the ability scores don't matter... only the ability modifiers do. The only reason WotC-era D&D keeps this clunky "(score-10) x 0.5 = modifier" is because the the scores provide a veneer of the system resembling TSR-era D&D scores on 3d6s; even when they dropped dice for arrays/point-buy and the actual score range before racial mods was limited to 8-18 (i.e. -1 to 4).

Most of the uses of the direct scores could just as easily be based on the ability modifier too if they'd wanted it to be, and the only reason the odd scores became feat prerequisites was just so odd scores wouldn't be completely useless.

Using the scores only to calculate a modifier is just needless extra complexity vs. using the modifier as the score directly (i.e Strength 4 instead of Strength 18).

Heck, even it was "Score = passive value; score-10 = modifier" it would be more sensible (i.e. STR 18 means +8 to STR checks and a DC of 18 for anyone targeting your STR score with their own action).

* * * *

Another one I'm not especially fond of are hit point rules that make a point of saying "hit points =/= meat" but then write every mechanic as if losing hit points were the same as suffering an actual injury (only otherwise unaffected save for hit point loss).

Falling damage is particularly obvious offender here where if hit points also equated to skill, fatigue and luck then being knocked off a 100' cliff wouldn't be 10d6 damage and your PC at the bottom of the cliff (where you should be a broken wreck) but are otherwise unharmed... it would be either you lose hit points based on how hard it would be to catch yourself before you fell (and end up clinging to the edge of the cliff by your fingers instead of down 100') or treated as actual meat points where you hit bottom and suffer severe and debilitating injuries if not outright death if you don't have some ability that allows you to reduce the physical injury somehow.

You could apply the same logic with pools of lava. Any mechanic where it treats a human being without some type of magic or superpower as actually falling into lava and not dying of horrible burns in moments is a ridiculous mechanic. I'll accept "spends hit points to NOT end up submerged in lava" or "instant death if you fall into lava", but not "you fall into the lava, lose 43 of your 105 hit points and climb out of the lava next turn just a bit singed."

Quote from: Brad;1063562Amber has the right amount of explicit mechanics for me, every other game has "too much".

Funny. I'd peg Amber as far too little. When I tried GMing it, I found myself mentally exhausted from all the judgement calls I was required to make. On the other hand, it really gave me an appreciation for using dice in games.

I'll nominate the SilCore system. The d6 just wasn't granular enough for my tastes, despite loving the Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles settings.

MDC. Exploding dice. Storyteller games. Narrative systems. Dice pools. Fate points. Feat trees. Multiple attacks per round. Balance mechanics. Challenge ratings. Prestige classes. Static initiative order. Stacking bonuses. Short rest long rest. Wound mechanics. Attribute damage. Abstract wealth systems ala d20. Jury is still out on 5e's rolling double dice with advantage but I'm pretty sure thats gonna be a no for me as well.

Dice pools. None of them model probabilities worth a damn.

The d20 system blows ass. See XP, leveling up, and Save Rolls.

GM metacurrency - the GM is god. They don't need to spend points to do things.

Classes and Levels - They were what was there when RPGs became a thing, but I personally find classes too limiting and levels too abstract.

Escalating HP - Kinda goes with levels, but I hate it enough to give it its own section. I get that in D&D, HP is supposed to be abstract "bad things don't happen yet" points, but goddammit it's stupid that at level 1 a 1d8 damage longsword can easily put you in the ground and at level 5 its hardly a threat.

Quote from: VincentTakeda;1063577MDC. Exploding dice. Storyteller games. Narrative systems. Dice pools. Fate points. Feat trees. Multiple attacks per round. Balance mechanics. Challenge ratings. Prestige classes. Static initiative order. Stacking bonuses. Short rest long rest. Wound mechanics. Attribute damage. Abstract wealth systems ala d20. Jury is still out on 5e's rolling double dice with advantage but I'm pretty sure thats gonna be a no for me as well.

You read my mind! I'd add character levels and stupid amounts of hit points to the list as well.

I'm okay with a short rest idea, if it's done right.

Quote from: RandyB;1063578Dice pools. None of them model probabilities worth a damn.

This.  I'd say 'diceless' or no randomizers but none of them are actually mechanics.