I get the general idea of pretty much all RPGs/Storygames, etc. The "Makes No Sense" part for me is usually about intelligibility.

So... "Darksword Adventures", one of the first RPGs I bought, because you could buy it in paperback in the Fantasy section of K-Mart. Now, I'd never (and still haven't) read the actual Darksword novels, so I think that combined with the strange presentation of the game, and (I strongly suspect) poor rules ended with middle-school me feeling both very intrigued and "This doesn't quite make sense".

Next up: "Immortal: The Invisible War" A very '90s RPG with a wacky system, setting, and a ton of unnecessarily obscure jargon to describe game terms.  Don't make me learn your obscure jargon, '90s game. I know your jargon uses some old-timey words, possibly in another language, possibly without you knowing what they actually mean. There was a brief period of pre-internet time where doing this was a hand-wavey means of implying depth or profundity, it seems.

Also: As a huge fan of White Wolf's "Street Fighter" RPG, I remember being intrigued by both "Weapons of the Gods" and "Legends of the Wulin", but I could never cut through all of the flowery language and fiction that suffocate what I assume are the rules in there somewhere. Basically, the game promised cool things, but wanted me to work too hard for me to push through. Maybe I'm lazy, or maybe they should learn how to be concise.

White Wolf's "Wraith: The Oblivion", I know it's not incomprehensible, but it falls more on that "What am I supposed to do?" side of things. I'm edging into talking about my tastes more than "Games That Make No Sense To Me" with that though. There are a lot of games that came out in the '90s that had these... "gamer settings" that required you to learn their special lingo and read their history/learn their invented cosmology, etc. that created a large barrier to entry/caring for me.

Quote from: itachi;1007541and traveller don't really have formal rules for the gm to follow.

Bwahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

:rolleyes:

Quote from: NeonAce;1007572Next up: "Immortal: The Invisible War" A very '90s RPG with a wacky system, setting, and a ton of unnecessarily obscure jargon to describe game terms.  Don't make me learn your obscure jargon, '90s game. I know your jargon uses some old-timey words, possibly in another language, possibly without you knowing what they actually mean. There was a brief period of pre-internet time where doing this was a hand-wavey means of implying depth or profundity, it seems.

To me, and there were a few games like this in the 90s, it's not a question of not getting what the authors were trying to do, but more a question of bad execution. Over-jargonised, badly organised, poorly researched and pretentious-but-conceptually-under-developed games were actually ten-a-penny in the aftermath of White Wolf's success in the decade. Immortal was just one of these. You could get some inspiration from reading parts of it, but it wasn't very playable for the reasons you cite.

QuoteWhite Wolf's "Wraith: The Oblivion", I know it's not incomprehensible, but it falls more on that "What am I supposed to do?" side of things. I'm edging into talking about my tastes more than "Games That Make No Sense To Me" with that though. There are a lot of games that came out in the '90s that had these... "gamer settings" that required you to learn their special lingo and read their history/learn their invented cosmology, etc. that created a large barrier to entry/caring for me.

Ironically, "What am I supposed to do?" is basically the premise of the game, in effect. You're dead, but caught in limbo that stops you moving on, literally clinging onto the fetters that link you back to your old life while your own dark side tries to push you towards Oblivion. It's an existential nightmare, that may well be difficult to 'get' for many people, although they can still respect it as a gaming concept. Good choice.

Quote from: willie the duckExcepting that there isn't FTL space travel, I've never considered cyberpunk to be 'more realistic' than other sci-fi. I consider it more of like the difference between low and high fantasy (which is to say it is hard to define and may be entirely subjective).

I've heard somewhere that cyberpunk is about projecting society's anxieties and fears. If that's the case being more realistic sounds reasonable, in the sense its something near us, that we know and care in some way. By that angle Shadowun really feels off.

Then again Shadowrun seem to have it's fair share of "projected anxieties" in the way megacorps abuse the population and environment, metahumans suffer racial prejudice, etc. Ironically, from my reading of it, it even managed to show more anxieties than the supposedly realistic game, Cyberpunk 2020, which always felt kinda to me artificial with it's focus in the glitz and "woohoo! We are cyberpunks!" ethos.

Champions, Hero system, Savage worlds.
Pretty much all those point buy systems seem too much like hard work and only those who obsessively know the rules will end up with far better characters than those who are vaguely familiar.

It just doesn't interest me at all.

Quote from: danskmacabre;1007613Champions, Hero system, Savage worlds.
Pretty much all those point buy systems seem too much like hard work and only those who obsessively know the rules will end up with far better characters than those who are vaguely familiar.

It just doesn't interest me at all.

I would say with all those games that one thing I don't really get any more, these days, is the need for generic, universal systems. I mean I get it, I suppose - having a one-size-fits-all system that you can hang any setting on - but they always leave me feeling unsatisfied in some way or another.

Quote from: NeonAce;1007572Also: As a huge fan of White Wolf's "Street Fighter" RPG, I remember being intrigued by both "Weapons of the Gods" and "Legends of the Wulin", but I could never cut through all of the flowery language and fiction that suffocate what I assume are the rules in there somewhere. Basically, the game promised cool things, but wanted me to work too hard for me to push through. Maybe I'm lazy, or maybe they should learn how to be concise.

Why not both;)?

Avalon Hill's "Magic Realm."  Incredibly lush production values, gorgeous components, and a boringly simple game play -- like, on the order of "Dungeon"*.  There are hints in the rules that there was supposed to be more, but to the best of my knowledge it never arrived.  Where is the game that these components go to?


*Dungeon is a perfectly fun game, but it never aspired to anything else

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1007967Avalon Hill's "Magic Realm."  Incredibly lush production values, gorgeous components, and a boringly simple game play -- like, on the order of "Dungeon"*.  There are hints in the rules that there was supposed to be more, but to the best of my knowledge it never arrived.  Where is the game that these components go to?

I think that's the first time I have heard anyone refer to Magic Realm as "simple."

Would be interesting to see Magic Realm get a more modern overhaul.  There's a lot of neat shit there that just didn't quite gel together for me.

It's not simply written, but the actual game play turned out to be disappointingly simple; wander around, bash things, take their stuff.

But the game is full of puzzling features.  Like the "enchanting" hexes.  Heavy, full color, two sided hexes.  They must have cost a mint to produce.  And if you enchant a hex, you get a small bonus to magic.

That's IT?  All that foofraw for a small bonus?

Quote from: NeonAce;1007572So... "Darksword Adventures", one of the first RPGs I bought, because you could buy it in paperback in the Fantasy section of K-Mart. Now, I'd never (and still haven't) read the actual Darksword novels, so I think that combined with the strange presentation of the game, and (I strongly suspect) poor rules ended with middle-school me feeling both very intrigued and "This doesn't quite make sense".
.

I had a GM in high school who ran that. He was a huge fan of the trilogy and I think that familiarity with the books was pretty helpful in making the sessions a success. I enjoyed it a lot. I still have no idea how much he was running it RAW (he was the kind of GM who didn't really place a premium on adhering strictly to the rules). It had a very unusual but flexible magic system as I recall. Again, no idea how strictly he was running the game but basically you could attempt all kinds of magic effects by describing what you were trying to do and he resolved how closely you achieve that with the rules in the book. The book was a paper back the size of a standard novel, so it was kind of an odd rulebook. I didn't read it, so just going by what we played at the table.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;1007621I would say with all those games that one thing I don't really get any more, these days, is the need for generic, universal systems. I mean I get it, I suppose - having a one-size-fits-all system that you can hang any setting on - but they always leave me feeling unsatisfied in some way or another.

I like the IDEA of it, but the reality, in my experience is you have a set of core rules, that's fine.
Then you have a separate book for each Genre/setting/whatever that often breaks or changes those rules.
Then you have to flip between the Core rules and the setting book to generate a character/find out how some mechanic works and so on.
It just seems to create more work.

Quote from: NeonAce;1007572So... "Darksword Adventures", one of the first RPGs I bought, because you could buy it in paperback in the Fantasy section of K-Mart. Now, I'd never (and still haven't) read the actual Darksword novels, so I think that combined with the strange presentation of the game, and (I strongly suspect) poor rules ended with middle-school me feeling both very intrigued and "This doesn't quite make sense".

I think I've tried reading that trilogy three times.  Only reading Darksword Adventures even tempted the second and third attempt.  75% of that book is like a Volo's Guide to the Forgotten Realms.  The last quarter is a rather odd, for the time, tacked on RPG.  I enjoyed the setting but thought it would take a fair amount of understanding on the players part to play as a RPG.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;1007552So how is 'fail forward' any different to a 'partial success' or a used in many older rpgs? A partial success means the character doesn't achieve what they set out to achieve, but still get some benefit to further their cause. A number of other games take into account the degrees of success as a narrative indicator towards how good or bad someone succeeded or failed. It's not new.

Traveller does have formal rules for a GM to follow, otherwise they wouldn't bother rolling up Worlds, Starmaps, Aliens, Encounters, etc. They'd just be making it all up and dictating to the players. They don't do that in any game I've ever played in - they follow the rules of collaborative creation.

There is no such thing as a 'Trad game', just games that some fans don't want to acknowledge for having original ideas.

The issue is not whether we like them or not - I've had plenty of sessions of PbtA style games to be able to experience and enjoy them. What I don't 'get', however, is why their fans regard them as being radically different to any game that has been played before. Its their self-identity that I don't get.

PbtA is just old style gaming, reworded to give it "indie" cred.

Quote from: 3rik;1008165PbtA is just old style gaming, reworded to give it "indie" cred.

Yeah, that's one possible way to look at it, for sure;).