Quote from: Ronin;717190I never thought about it like that. Fuck I wish the players would try that!:) An adventure or campaigned like that I think could be a blast. Kind of the Italian Job mixed with D&D.

Once we were wrapping up a campaign and two of my players pulled a robbery out of the blue, funniest thing ever. They were just walking down the street, then they wheeled and burst into a shop and held the place up.

"EVERYBODY FREEZE! THIS IS A ROBBERY!
GET THE CASH MAN!
YOU GET THE CASH, IM GETTING THE STUFF!
GIMME THE CASH RIGHT NOW!

OH MAN YOU KILLED HIM!!
SHIT WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW!!
MAN YOU KILLED HIM YOU KILLED HIM!!

WE'RE SCREWED MAN, WE'RE SCREWED!!
SHIT RUN MAN JUST GET OUT OF HERE!!
"

Best end to a campaign ever. I don't know if they planned it beforehand or just came up with it on the spot but it was roleplaying of legend, especially since their actual characters weren't too far off Conan and Waylander. Good times.

Quote from: Ronin;717190I never thought about it like that. Fuck I wish the players would try that!:) An adventure or campaigned like that I think could be a blast. Kind of the Italian Job mixed with D&D.

It usually went more like Fargo or Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;717036While I like the Star Wars universe just fine, I wish it wasn't always sucking all the air out of other science-fantasy settings through its mere existence. I also really wish it wasn't currently the top scifi rpg, leaving only the grimdark 40k as the consensus alternative.

Kinda wish there was a Mass Effect RPG instead of a Dragon Age one. I'm a big fan of the setting of those games and feels more free than Star Wars and its expanded universe bloat.

Exalted. most supers. Cthulhutech. those are the big ones. They set my teeth on edge. Would rather file taxes with itemization.

Others below just don't click with me. Not as irritating, but as joyless as bitter melon porridge. There's likely a few I'm missing:

Most NWoD doesn't grab me at all (Changeling the Lost is utterly amazing, though).

Golarion's Inner Sea Guide was such a hodgepodge of anachronistic XtremeCool that I have zero interest in everything else Golarion.

Eberron just looks like D&D's version of Capcom v. SNK to me. Total sensory overload, except all the sensory has to be described through words. Wannabe excitement; i'd rather go clubbing. Proto-Golarion.

Quote from: Kaz;717219Kinda wish there was a Mass Effect RPG instead of a Dragon Age one.

Yeah, too bad they've officially stated they're not going to do one.

Quote from: LordVreeg;717045All of them. Very early on, I was taught or got the idea that part of the job of GMing was the creation of the setting for the games to exist in.

Yeah, I had the same notion in my head.

Not that that stopped me from producing a fictional setting for pay, when the time came, but.

That being said, I have little use for -- as Steelpike puts it -- faux-medieval quasi-European vanilla fantasy settings, but not for the reason given ... it's because they don't think things through.  No matter, for instance, how much magic is out there, no matter how many wild orcs constantly ravage the countryside, there's always enough food to feed the impossibly giant cities, goods are fashioned as forsoothly as in every low-tech Hollywood movie, and the peasants are always tugging their forelocks.

Quote from: robiswrong;717186I dunno.

Totoro:  The RPG

All you need is a big-ass camphor tree...

Quote from: The Traveller;717208Once we were wrapping up a campaign and two of my players pulled a robbery out of the blue, funniest thing ever. They were just walking down the street, then they wheeled and burst into a shop and held the place up.

"EVERYBODY FREEZE! THIS IS A ROBBERY!
GET THE CASH MAN!
YOU GET THE CASH, IM GETTING THE STUFF!
GIMME THE CASH RIGHT NOW!

OH MAN YOU KILLED HIM!!
SHIT WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW!!
MAN YOU KILLED HIM YOU KILLED HIM!!

WE'RE SCREWED MAN, WE'RE SCREWED!!
SHIT RUN MAN JUST GET OUT OF HERE!!
"

Reminds me of the end of a Traveller campaign many moons ago; one of the guys was playing twins (yea, don't ask) and at what proved to be the climax of the adventure, his characters chased a terrorist onto a bus and, when he refused to surrender, opened fire.

With shotguns. On a crowded bus.

To this day, I casually remind him about how his characters are languishing on a Prison Planet.

Quote from: Werekoala;717277Reminds me of the end of a Traveller campaign many moons ago; one of the guys was playing twins (yea, don't ask) and at what proved to be the climax of the adventure, his characters chased a terrorist onto a bus and, when he refused to surrender, opened fire.

With shotguns. On a crowded bus.

To this day, I casually remind him about how his characters are languishing on a Prison Planet.

Haha, nasty! Ah I didn't explain that properly, it was the equivalent of two tenth level D&D characters hitting a corner shop for a (small) bag of silver. There weren't even any dice rolled, it was just the lads going mad, as in the actual players both started screaming and clutching one another, just completely ignored me and did their thing. Brilliant stuff.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;717183It's unfortunate that my post comes after Steerpike's because I respect his opinion and I don't want him to think I'm trying to troll or snark at him.  With that qualifier in place:  "weird" fantasy.  I've got no patience for carcosa, etc.  All are bad Lovecraft pastiches with heavy additions of the same shit that got laughed out of print from FATAL.

Lovecraftian themes used by people without any fucking clue what it even means.

I'd totally play in a "Magic Shop B&E" session!

I can't really think of settings that I wholly despise. I steer clear of Tolkien stuff, but just because I find it uninspiring. Though granted, I guess any setting can be good with the right mix of GM and willing players.

I don't really despise any setting, but there are some I won't be too enthusiastic to play in, and would most likely never run.

WoD in most (all?) versions. Gets too much into the angst side of things IMHO; from reading the old VtM book a long time ago and playing both VtM computer games, I got the impression that this was a game about vampires being all angsty about being vampires (or werewolves or whatever) and dealing much with the psychology of being a vampire (usually unwilling) and trying to stay human. Could be interesting to play in theory; but I don't dig the newer vampire culture too much, and this game tends to be too much steeped in it.

Most "property" settings with massive canon, such as Star Wars and Star Trek. Both could be very fun in theory to play in, BUT they give me an anxiety about violating their sacred texts and massive canon, especially as the GM. And especially with major fans of these shows in my group. That said I ran a Babylon Project (old Babylon 5 RPG with not-so-good rules) game in the late 1990's and it was FUN! Of course, we were 16-17 years old back then and didn't give a damn about canon (none of us - we also only watched the TV series and the TV movies, no novels here in Israel back then) and I could go over-the-top as much as I want and do whatever I want without the canonistas eating me alive. I also get the fear of stepping on the major NPC toes, and playing the famous important setting NPCs as GM felt weird even back then. Firefly is much easier to run IMHO since it has only a few episodes and a single movie so no mountains of canon to deal with.

Another problem with "property" settings is that things which look UBER-COOL on a screen might be difficult to convey to a tabletop RPG. Such as keeping Jedi flavour while not making them overpower anything in the setting. Or such as adjudicating Babylon 5 Telepath mind-scans, especially with rogue Telepaths (what do you gain by the scan? how to model it as it looks on screen?), or the full pulp flavour of Star Wars (do Stormtroopers miss in the RPGs as much as they do on-screen?). IMHO it's beasier to take a solid ruleset and build a setting around it so that it will work with its mechanics than try and force a setting on a mechanic.

Forgotten Realms is a bit to vanilla for my taste.

Faux-European Pseudo-Medieval games are pretty much what I play in D&D (as a player), and I do enjoy these games much, but I'm quite tired of these settings - been there, done that.

I have no problem with Carcosa's flavour. I do have a problem with what was done with that flavour, which is a bit too random and full of hopelessness. I prefer something more heroic and less random, even if it involves Lovecraft themes.

I love the flavour of the Shadowrun 1E-2E setting, but past 3E (and especially 4E and later), I sometimes feel it has lost its over-the-top, pink-Mohawk coolness and retro-1980's taste due to it being modernized to fit current technology. Also, all the uber-cool plots (bug spirits! Deus!) have been resolved and the replacements are not as fun IMHO. Plus the smartphones+everything-is-hackable of 4E+ makes the game much less manageable. Bring back the keyboard-sized cyberdecks, the wired Smartlinks and the Matrix dungeon-crawls! 4E rules are better in many respects, but the setting has, IMHO, lost its edge.

I can't think of any I outright despise but there are a bunch I'd rather do without.
Forgotten Realms is on that list... I don't know much about it but it just seems bland... like leftover casserole.

Quote from: golan2072;717952Most "property" settings with massive canon, such as Star Wars and Star Trek.

Totally! As much as I'd like to play something LIKE Star Wars or Star Trek or Dr. Who... having to deal with the guys who have obsessed over the trivia for years puts me right off. Even as a player I don't want those games because they can't seem to break out of the mold. Every Star Wars game I've been in has had a fucking Death Star show up at some point.
40K gets close to that with some folks I know... if some 40K dork like Blackhand showed up to a game I'd just walk.
It's best to just sand the names off and play them as 'something else'.

Quote from: Simlasa;718021It's best to just sand the names off and play them as 'something else'.

You may have to take a hard line with obsessive fans of the original material still. But at least they don't have the "real" setting to beat you over the head with.

Any setting that somehow assumes that you can take players--regardless of medium--steeped in D&D tropes and norms, and yet they will conform to the very different norms of the playable characters of this setting.  (e.g. trying to play something like Space Battleship Yamato 2199, where playable PCs are all military personnel aboard one capital ship under a single chain of command; that dog, far too often, does not hunt)  This is one of the reasons for why my copies of many military TRPGs stay on the shelf, especially the SF games (be they hard or soft on the S part).