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06:57, 29th March 2024 (GMT+0)

Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

Posted by face-hits-ground
Eggy
member, 541 posts
Thu 9 Apr 2015
at 23:11
  • msg #8

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I collect dice and shoes. I like it when they match.
face-hits-ground
member, 7 posts
Thu 9 Apr 2015
at 23:22
  • msg #9

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

In reply to Eggy (msg # 8):

Oooo. I like that. I might have to borrow that move.
Crazy-Ivan
member, 616 posts
Calculus is better than
Integral e to the x
Thu 9 Apr 2015
at 23:33
  • msg #10

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

On RPOL, I am a big fan of games where it feels like we're a communal story.  I'm definitely a fan of dice-rolling, tactics, and optimization, but in general I prefer there be a strong story and well-created characters crafted around the crunch.  I think that's part of the strength of the message-board medium over an in-person game; since it's all anonymous, nobody gets stage-fright, and it's much, *much* easier to stay in-character during the game threads.
Eggy
member, 542 posts
Thu 9 Apr 2015
at 23:37
  • msg #11

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

In reply to face-hits-ground (msg # 9):

Enjoy! Happy hunting! ^_^
spectre
member, 788 posts
Myriad paths fell
away from that moment....
Thu 9 Apr 2015
at 23:47
  • msg #12

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I also dislike the run of the mill vanilla monster types and themes. For instance, why are there dungeons in the middle of the country side? These things make no sense, so I come up with some interesting justifications for settings, fleshing out some interesting races and tropes as you mentioned.

An interesting variation that I've seen was the Dragon Age world, where elves are second class citizens and slaves, that's pretty unique. I also like interesting organizations and guilds-styled organizations.
Mrrshann618
member, 41 posts
Thu 9 Apr 2015
at 23:50
  • msg #13

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

Have to say I like the games where you simply CANNOT kill everything.
Call of Cthulhu comes to mind.

I tend to enjoy the gritty Sci-fi (Aliens/Firefly over Star Trek)

Fantasy is way overdone. The only game world I even came close to enjoying was Ravenloft, however the D20 games I just simply can not stand. Call me old but the new ones just "feel" like they are MMORPG's in book form.
Eco Cola
member, 314 posts
Thu 9 Apr 2015
at 23:59
  • msg #14

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I also enjoy gritty games with semi-regular PC death, against any enemy that can kill you, be it a mighty lich or a goblin with a dagger.


As for setting: I am very fond of Post Apocalypse over the top kind of Gonzo (Gamma world, The Mutant Epoch, etc.) but also enjoy your standard high fantasy (though i prefer using historical accuracy in them, since i am a history major)
face-hits-ground
member, 8 posts
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 00:34
  • msg #15

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

So, it's pretty clear we all like to put a weird spin on the classic tropes. Which is awesome because I so rarely see it done and a lot of you have posted some pretty neat ideas.

What about genres?

What's the craziest genre mash up or tweak that you've seen that actually turned out pretty darn awesome?

Me, personally, I like to mix wild west with my fantasy. Shoot outs against undead gunfighters, train robberies interrupted by a young dragon looking to bolster its horde, poker games against illusionists and mind readers, dungeon delving into Mayan and Egyptian-esque ruins of the old world. It started out as a joke between me and some friends but, after trying it, I fell in love.
icosahedron152
member, 452 posts
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 05:57
  • msg #16

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I like something that's believable. That's maybe why Fantasy rates fairly low (but not zero) in my preferences. If I'm doing magic it has to be something that doesn't totally stick two fingers up to the laws of physics. I can go with Invisibility and Charm Other, but Create Food and Drink out of thin air? No thanks. Oh, and what does the Purple Dragon, apparently living for centuries in Room 101 of the Death Druid's Dungeon, do with all its dung?

My sci-fi has to be believable, too. I much prefer Traveller over Star Wars (gotta love my black with red spots Traveller dice), however, I find slower-than-light and spin-gravity to be too restrictive.

I don't really like mixing genres - one of my pet hates is science-fantasy. If you have all that tech, why the fruit would you carry (and spend half your life learning to use) a sharpened metal stick? It's just not believable.

A game has to have a story, whether it's devised by the GM or the players, there needs to be some form of plot or it becomes a pointless dice-rolling exercise. My preference is for a GM-directed sandbox - the GM provides a universe and a few plot hooks and the players, like people in the real world, decide what to do and where to go.

In my games (and games I like to play in), if PCs are sensible, they'll usually survive. Death is a result of stupidity, self-sacrifice, not reading the warning signs, or a gamble gone wrong, rather than a fluke dice roll. If three of you take on a biker gang in a back alley the results are... believable.

I've played Fantasy and Sci-fi in the past (and will in the future) but my current taste is setting the PCs against a real or alternate historical background with characters in the mould of Ivanhoe, D'Artagnan and Flashman.
DarkwindStriker
member, 624 posts
Better known in many
places as Gatewalker.
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 06:21
  • msg #17

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I enjoy science-fantasy, especially if you get all Tome of Battle with the martial skills to justify why swords are still viable(and even better sometimes) when you have guns and energy weapons over there. Believable doesn't matter, Rule of Cool carries the day for style for me.

So, uh, basically icosahedron and I should *never* play a game together I guess~

Honestly my setting/style preferences could be described as anime/video game-ish. Give me Wild ARMs or Blazblue as a setting to play with over LotR or Forgotten Realms. I can certainly enjoy stories set in less bombastic settings, since I do care about substance as well as style, but given an option I prefer my over-the-top flashy attacks, mid battle monologues and impractically awesome weapons.

Of course I can also take characters and settings like this dead serious, which helps...so long as the character motivations and actions are believable. That's the one thing I do like a dose of realism to. I can freely suspend disbelief for fireballs, parrying bullets with a butterknife and surviving explosions that level city blocks, but have characters start acting in ways that just make no sense or are inconsistent and you lose me.

As for dice...uh, I have a huge dice collection and will use different dice sets for different chars. My wife does the same thing, and if we're handling multiple chars it's standard procedure to reroll with the correct dice if we accidentally use the wrong ones. This has both saved us from what would have been botches...and made us cry as we rerolled that natural 20 because it was the wrong die set.
facemaker329
member, 6628 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 06:38
  • msg #18

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

My preferences?  It all comes down to a weird kind of alchemical formula, I guess...

Like, I really enjoy Star Wars.  But not the D20 rules, my old gaming group tried changing over to D20 because the GM liked the way those rules handled more advanced characters (and when you've been playing the same characters for a decade...yeah...)  But it totally killed the pace of the game.  We played four or five sessions...and then stopped.  Completely.  It killed the game.

I also enjoy Shadowrun...but only with the right kind of GM, and the right kind of story.  I really enjoy a couple of my friends' home-brewed systems and worlds...but only when they are the ones running the game.  I've tried playing both with someone else running the game, using their rules...and it lost all the magic for me.

My favorite RPOL games are sci-fi/space opera (one's a Star Wars game, the other's a not-so-distant-future timeline).  I've recently been introduced to Scion, and I've been enjoying it...but again, I'm in two games, and I can very easily see how someone else running it, or trying to play in a less familiar pantheon, or any one of a dozen other factors, would make the game not fun for me.

I do role-playing as a kind of social exercise...I've always done role-playing the way some of my friends do poker nights or bridge...the game is there as an excuse to hang out with people.  If I'm in the game with the right people, it doesn't matter much what the game is.  And if I'm in the game with the wrong people, I could be playing my favorite character in my friend's Star Wars game all over again...and it would kill the fun for me.
truemane
member, 1968 posts
Firing magic missles at
the darkness!
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 12:41
  • msg #19

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 18):

You and I park our cars in the same garage, good sir. There are lots of things I love, but only under certain circumstances. It is, indeed, an alchemical formula.

I guess what I like best is games with a clear focus. I enjoy hack-and-slash loot-grabbing green-fang-people-killing dice-rolling dungeon crawls, so long as that's how the game is billed and everyone involved is having fun. But only if the GM is good at moving things along and the players have good chemistry and the power level is neither too low nor too high.

And I also enjoy deep immersion personal conflict based games, but with most of the caveats above.

I like system games and freeform games. Like colours on a palette, they each have their place and they each offer different, but equally satisfying, experiences.

I'm a big fan of post-apoc games. But the thing I really enjoy about them is dealing with the micro-societies that grow and develop after everything gets washed away.

The things I don't like are sandboxes (especially with location based threads). I've never played in a sandbox that I've enjoyed. I find that, in the absence of a strong spine, sandboxes trend to disintegrate into small groups of characters having increasingly inane conversations while we wait for something to happen.

And I also don't like games where the GM has the story laid out before the characters get made (except for D&D-type modules, that's different). Nothing bothers me more than going through chargen and putting all the pieces in place for my character and then having the story take them out of that and go in a different direction.
Waxahachie
member, 127 posts
The horn that wakes
the sleepers
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 14:59
  • msg #20

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

As a narrativist, I prefer simple, rules light systems that are easy to navigate as a GM and player. I like something that gives a good framework for decision making without the need to account for every possible eventuality.

I've mainly run and played Deadlands (Classic and Reloaded both), Call of Cthulhu, and A Song of Ice and Fire games. I'll dabble in a little freeform here and there. I'm open to more settings, just haven't come across the right opportunities.

I also prefer to play in games with players that are strong writers.
CosmicGamer
member, 97 posts
Traveller RPG (Mongoose)
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 17:44
  • msg #21

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

Eggy:
I collect dice and shoes. I like it when they match.
I like my dice not to match.  Especially for 2d10 percentile rolling.
icosahedron152
member, 453 posts
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 19:55
  • msg #22

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I'm sure it isn't, Trumane, but this comes across as self-contradictory:

truemane:
The things I don't like are sandboxes (especially with location based threads). I've never played in a sandbox that I've enjoyed. I find that, in the absence of a strong spine, sandboxes trend to disintegrate into small groups of characters having increasingly inane conversations while we wait for something to happen.

And I also don't like games where the GM has the story laid out before the characters get made (except for D&D-type modules, that's different). Nothing bothers me more than going through chargen and putting all the pieces in place for my character and then having the story take them out of that and go in a different direction.

On the one hand you don't like sandboxes where the GM steps back and leaves the plot to the players, but on the other, you don't want the GM to have a strong, prepared plot...

DarkwindStriker:
So, uh, basically icosahedron and I should *never* play a game together I guess~

Perhaps not, but I never say never. How boring life would be if we never stepped outside the box. Sometimes something zany will attract my attention. :)
I'm more interested in finding kindred spirits than scratching names out forever.
DarkwindStriker
member, 625 posts
Better known in many
places as Gatewalker.
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 20:08
  • msg #23

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I was more just amused that by the time I got around to posting...the person one post ahead of me was my opposite in nearly every taste~

Back on topic now...

Re: Sandboxes - yeah, I've yet to be in a sandbox game where I had any real fun. The closest to it was when I played the right hand dude of another PC, so he got to call the direction and I helped figure out how to accomplish the goals. I do enough plot direction when I'm GMing(which is most of the time) that I'm not too great on having to drive the plot myself when I'm playing.

I've seen some good...kinda structured sandboxy games, I suppose? Where there is a Goal or Overarching Plot Point that is made very clear up front in the game's description. And the process of how to get there is left up to the PCs, but there's still a clear direction to go in. I worked out fairly well in those. But when a game goes "here's a setting. Now figure out what you want to do it in" I go "uhhhhhh....." and largely do nothing.

On the flipside...well I'm fine with jumping on the Plotline Express Railways, especially in quest type stories. So long as PC actions and decisions do matter and it's not full on "no deviation from the script allowed" then I'm cool with it.
Karimgpr
member, 4 posts
Age:30,Gender:M
Fri 10 Apr 2015
at 21:08
  • msg #24

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I like the DnD/Pathfinder setting. Lots of races, a 'skyrim type' setting (yeah im a noob),magic, warriors, mystics and monsters. And its a very malleable setting. You can do plently of things with it. The DnD 5e rules are quite simple and elegant. Pathfinder is more complicated but everything is thankfully available online for quick and easy reference.

I like the Shadowrun setting even more but the system is scary.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the user at 21:09, Fri 10 Apr 2015.
banjo_buddy
member, 44 posts
tech writer
family man
Sat 11 Apr 2015
at 00:19
  • msg #25

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

Superheroes.

I love'em.

Not unconditionally, but I will take plain vanilla over angst-tortured dark post-apocalyptic antiheroes clad in black leather. I loves me some angst (soap opera is half of modern superheroes, and I loves to turn the angst-meter high) but in the end, I have this be
If that they are superheroes, not just super. If that means being reactive rather than proactive, so be it.
Aslanii76
member, 38 posts
Sat 11 Apr 2015
at 02:01
  • msg #26

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

On a lark, I combined the old Palladium TMNT with Ninjas & Superspies to create near future mayhem.  This group soon annoyed everyone, even the soviet KGB bears was after them. They visited an abandoned ship which had a cargo of black stone in a ripped open cargo container and a beautifully wrapped exotic sword.  Doctor Goody-Two shoes touched the stone and failed 3 saving throws, the stone's effect began to change him into chaotic neutral as the campaign moved along ...  A secret bio-tech firm was designing flying dragons.  Exotic ninja assassins could "death touch" you with a phone call.  Psionic twins beat the stuffing out of them in the underground executive parking garage.  Colonel Sanders and the KFC franchise was actually a front for the really good guys ...  Giant robots, flying monkeys with Uzi's and grenades, Chinese tongs, Skytel, offensive driving, drinking binges, multi-story battles between them with security coming up and Russian Spetnatz coming down from the roof, bootlicking assistants, copious automatic weapons and explosives ...  It was insanity unleashed !!

I need to work on the prequel ...
icosahedron152
member, 454 posts
Sat 11 Apr 2015
at 02:53
  • msg #27

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

@DarkwindStriker:
Our differences are what make us interesting. :)
I agree with you that an all-out sandbox rarely works - unless the players get together and come up with an overarching plot OOC before they start playing.

@Aslanii76:
Hmm, there's zany, and then there's zany...
shady joker
member, 1609 posts
Sat 11 Apr 2015
at 04:26
  • msg #28

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I hate Horror and love Comedy. It is hard to do horror and even harder to do on a forum. I also like games that have a twist. Like the Savage Worlds products. Each of their settings has a twist on the classic genre.
C-h Freese
member, 169 posts
Survive - Love - Live
Sat 11 Apr 2015
at 04:48
  • msg #29

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

I like Swords and Sorcery, where the heroes may not be Superheroes but they can work up to that. Where the the starting player is not just one Joe Shmo but the neighborhood hero.  As different from the neighbors as as Superhero; Archmage, Ranger lord, or Grand master of Flowers is to a mundane royal advisor.

I dislike critical hit death of heroes, but damage to abilities that makes the heroes life difficult.  I like liking assets to groups and allies, whether useful loans of equipment, or minimum living standards for those who honor certain groups codes.

Making group travel difficult while different races, and possibly classes have special back door methods to travel, that they can only share when the group or party has a high enough reputation.
Randomosity
member, 5 posts
"For neither do men live
or die in vain."
Sat 11 Apr 2015
at 05:39
  • msg #30

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

In terms of style, I tend to gravitate toward the more cooperative stories in which players decide how they want to go about the roleplay first while making any decisions regarding their characters via consensus. I've seen this backfire when the players were either not on the same page or had opposite interests (or even clashing personalities), but when players do manage to work through something, the result is better understanding between them.

On the other hand, I enjoy challenges. Throwing in some simple dice use and maybe even a system of combat could hold my attention. Alternatively, starting with a semi-basic character (usually one who lacks power of some sort and has few connections) and developing them into someone of major importance to the story and/or setting tends to be quite fun.

Although I don't have anything against 'magic', I've never fully understood the idea of throwing physics 'out the window'. That's why I tend to stay away from roleplays involving so-called 'anime physics' and the Rule of Cool. I'll play video games that are absurd with physics, but while writing, I (perhaps ironically) have more ideas while following most of the known laws of physics. However, don't count on me being completely realistic; I failed Physics 101 in 5th grade.
icosahedron152
member, 455 posts
Sat 11 Apr 2015
at 06:45
  • msg #31

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

In reply to Randomosity (msg # 30):

Nice to know there's at least one bird of my feather out there. :)
DarkLightHitomi
member, 887 posts
Sat 11 Apr 2015
at 06:57
  • msg #32

Re: Specific tastes in gaming. We all have them, what's yours?

Hmm, Fallout Equestria is probably my favorite setting (not including my own of course).

Other than that, I have a simple saying, the GM is the game.

I can enjoy a game if the GM is good. A bad, or even a not good GM can make things less than enjoyable. (kinda wish I was good at running PBP but...).

I do prefer when my actual knowledge isn't completely opposite of what happens in the game. For example, I can fight quite well in real life, but yet a level 20 fighter is incapable of doing things I can do in real life, when no one in real life is more than a level 5. That is messed up and beyond irritating.

I am unusual in that I don't think every PC ever needs to be super epic awesome best of the best people.

I have lots of dice and find that some of my dice like rolling for some things, but not other things.

I like plausible (a better term than realistic in my opinion).

I find it easier to play fantasy where my real life experience is less likely to get in the way.

I like it when a game isn't particularly lethal, but yet, charging into an encounter is just as stupid a tactic as in real life, and that some encounters can only be survived by smooth talking, or running away faster than your buddy. :)
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