Quote from: Simlasa;718021Totally! 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'.

The same goes, unfortunately, to the Official Traveller Universe, which is a nice setting with many good ideas. However, 37 years of canon, some of it obscure, and some fans are very opinionated about it, deter me from running it. Also, the Classic Age and Megatraveller have, to a degree, written themselves into a corner with too much canon and a too large Imperium. The most playable version of this setting is Traveller: New Era and its TNE: 1248 variant, in both cases I can respond to any grognardly claim: "the Virus destroyed that!".

Better build your on universe (as I did - Outer Veil).

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;718173Any 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).

I've been in some military games and as long as the players grok the genre, they could be a blast. But if your players want D&D-style adventuring, they'd better be running a Free Trader or a decommissioned Scout/Courier with no authority figures around.

Quote from: golan2072;718218

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;718173Any 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).

I've been in some military games and as long as the players grok the genre, they could be a blast. But if your players want D&D-style adventuring, they'd better be running a Free Trader or a decommissioned Scout/Courier with no authority figures around.

I've run into the same problem with just about every military-squad, chain-of-command game I've ever run or played. Players around here don't take too well to having to follow orders, least of all from other PC.

Things are peaceful as long as everyone's at the same rank, but the second someone gets a promotion, everything crumbles to shit.

Quote from: The Butcher;718221I've run into a lot of problems with just about every military-squad, chain-of-command game I've ever run or played. Players around here don't take too well to having to follow orders, least of all from other PC.

Things are peaceful as long as everyone's at the same rank, but the second someone gets a promotion, everything crumbles to shit.

Yeah my experiences are similar. Even in fantasy games where one PC is of a higher social status than other players and then tries to act on that, it never goes well, although I have to say that's pretty rare.

Quote from: Steerpike;717176Mystara gets a pass because of the Hollow World angle.

I quite liked the original Grand Duchy of Karameikos Gazetteer's Byzantine-empire-invades-the-Balkans setting.  It's not explicit about it, and I can see how it wouldn't stand out amongst the generic faux-Medieval-pastiche zeitgeist, but I liked it a lot.  Allston smuggled in a lot of real historical aspects that fantasy settings at the time tended to shy away from.

I guess I do avoid any settings that seem like they'll lead to too much grousing about the details. 'Modern Day' and 'hard' scifi can also suffer at the hands of the bean counters, gun nuts and armchair physicists.
"No, there's no loading dock like that at the Denver airport, I've been there"
"They got the stats for the Walther PPK all wrong!"

Then again, I've even been told that the accent I gave an elf NPC was wrong because, "Elves don't sound like that!"... and our Deadlands campaign had a lot of arguing about 'historical accuracy'.

I've had all that player bickering about setting fidelity. After hearing a bit of their reasoning -- and debating internally whether that would be good for my game -- I ask them to hold their peace. If it continues I just shut it down with the tried and true "not in my campaign."

My game, my setting; any and all questions are answered by me, including alignment, the Truth of religions, how alien world physics works, what canon is relevant, etc. Player expertise and opinions are welcome to assist undecided or poorly known areas, but the judgment ultimately falls to me. Hate backseat driving; hate backseat GMing.

I've got to say, 40k, played the game once at a comic book shop and all my nicely painted Marines and their scratch built APC carrier got slaughtered by a group of alien Marines with invisibility, and teleportation gear, I fielded my unit and removed it from play about a few minutes later, first and last ass kicking in 40k, too many complex rules and buying all the forces to field just turned me off, then not even getting a shot off at the enemy before being taken out, yeah too much fun for me, hell that's like real life battle, believe me that's not any fun either, just too much to remember for a new player I think, me, I will pass on 40k.

What RPG/wargaming setting do you not buy or engage with?
For RPG's, almost all of them. Almost always would rather make or play in a homebrew setting than a published setting.
I agree with your 40K reaction - for me, it's too silly - Orks in spaaace? Space Marines (tm) in silly armor with no helmets? It's a cartoon and amusing to look at someone's painted army or briefly look at, but I'm not interested in spending much time with it.
Most stratified RPG settings (e.g. D&D) also don't work for me because of the huge power curves in level progression and monsters and all the high-powered spells and immunities and stuff. I can't fathom how a world could stay stable with all that, or how the power dynamics would work out, or be able to figure out what the powers that be are, and when I have tried, I get hugely disappointed by how the different power levels mean lower-level things can just get totally wiped out with ease, so I don't want to put energy into them, etc etc. Besides I like it to remain interesting to have typical fighters with ordinary equipment fighting where the interesting bit is the terrain and tactics, not the magic and monsters who can't be hurt except with Cold attacks, or whatever.

For wargames, I'm willing to try most things, but I'm not particularly into ACW or Napoleonics, or modern stuff.

What setting sits there and makes you go: nope.
Most of them, but especially Shadowrun, "cool modern vampire" and "toon" settings. Walking-mechs-are-the-ultimate-weapon settings (e.g. Battletech).

Quote from: Catelf.... or why not mix D&D and CoC?

Count me curious. Does such a setting exist? I know there is one for videogames - Darkest Dungeon - and it's delicious. But I'd love getting such a game for tabletop.

Quote from: therealjcm;717079Any fantasy setting with magic item shops.

Sooner or later the players have the following realization: Hey guys, why are we raiding these dangerous dungeons, lets break into magic item shops!

Amen to that!

Eberron. Everything in Rifts. Zombie apocalypse shit. Any setting where you have to play a teen. The Underdark. The Planes. Krynn. The Shannara World, as depicted in the TV show. Hell, all of them, I guess (I do like THe Known World, though, as screwed up as it is).

I dont hate any settings but I find "realistic" zero magic settings dull, and vanilla high magic settings like FR too magic shoppe/"kitchen sink"/gonzo-ish

Over time I've come to like settings with a strong theme. Dark sun. Planescape. 40K. Shadowrun.

Quote from: Itachi;965132Count me curious. Does such a setting exist? I know there is one for videogames - Darkest Dungeon - and it's delicious. But I'd love getting such a game for tabletop.

Well, it's not Cthulhu-mythos, but if you run D&D with Cults of Chaos (whether in the Dark Albion setting or otherwise), you could get that kind of thing.

The Cthulhu Mythos.