Most overdone concepts in RPGs?

[Andrew Morris]

What have you seen a million times in different RPGs? What makes you want to scream/sigh/smack the designer every time you see it?

Personally, I can't think of any, since my brain is a bit fried at the moment. I can't wait to see what  you all come up with, though.

[Bankuei]

Ugh...

-Splats
-Races
-Angst
-Hair, Weight, Height, Eye Color(the driver's license stats)
-PCs with no families, no friends
-Skill lists
-Power/Spell lists
-Hit points/wound levels, whatever
-ENCUMBERANCE, for the LOVE OF GOD, no more!!!!
-Geisha warriors, Voodoo Negros
- All mages are underfed with the strength of Mr. Burns
-"The World is coming to an end, and only you can..."
-"The World isn't what it seems, but you know the truth..."
- The Impossible Thing before Breakfast
- Cheat and lie to your players, but trust them not to do the same to you
-"Must...fill...whole character sheet... with lines, lines, lines!"
- Rules for Surprise
- Rules for how fast you can move
- Rules for how far you can see
- Completely crapass artwork, also scanned by a half blind mutant on crack
- Information and rules cleverly hidden behind a series of horrible layouts, each one more diabolical than the last
- Information on how many people live in a country, what its exports/imports are, climate, etc. with nothing on actual culture
- "This game can do everything!"
- "...and what it can't do, ignore the rules!"
- Warnings against running through the sewers because you're stupid
- Experience Points for JUST SHOWING UP.
- Reward rules that amount to "Give more if they did a good job"  What is a good job?
- The expectation that people need to play for 3 years to get a halfway cool character

And the list goes on and on and on...

Chris

[Ben Lehman]

Wanton slaughter of "lesser people" for recreational purposes.

yrs--
--Ben

[beingfrank]

PCs who have to be absolute psychos or sociopaths for the game to function at all, let alone run well.

[Frank T]

GM secrets, by all means. "There is so much interesting stuff going on, but I won't tell you. I won't even tell you after play, because I might use it next year, or the year after that." The fuck!!

[herrmess]

Well now...

- Rules for poison, disease, gangrene and worse.
- Equipment charts. (While fine for colour, the cost/weight/size specifics just give me the creeps.)
- Starting wealth.
- Play is only fun as a "party".
- Metaplot, especially "canon" metaplot with an uber-cool backstory and guaranteed to have even cooler *future* developments that have nothing to do with the characters you're playing.
- Additionally, the NPCs/magical items are so totally cool that they cannot be built using the system. Let's face it, YOUR game can NEVER achieve the grandness of the published setting.
- "The classes/races/whatnot are perfectly balanced..."
- "This game aims at maximal realism..."
- Must... use... a weird and unique type of die.
- Must... use... a d20.
- Must... have... a new name for: GM/PC.
- Must... have... a new name for: Magic and the various users of magic.
- "New" fantasy races that are NOT called elves/dwarves but that look and behave at least 80% like the D&D elven/dwarven stereotype. Something like hair color is a major factor in distinguishing them from their D&D prototypes.
- You wake up one morning/evening and WHAM! you're "chosen" and given uber-powers for no obvious reason whatsoever. The rules however don't support dealing with this peculiar transformation in any way except for supplying mechanics on how to USE said uber-powers.
- Character sheets have the player's name on them.

Wow, that was... liberating.

MarK.

[Victor Gijsbers]

- The claim that the GM has the last say in everything.
- Punishments for players that do not guess correctly what the GM has in mind.
- Task-resolution.

[joshua neff]

-Geisha warriors, Voodoo Negros

Oh, man, I want to write that game now.

[pete_darby]

"The Party" - Grrr.
"The Gm does one thing, everyone else does another" - actually, in the TSR Saga system where this is mechanically true, quite fun. But as an unchallenged assumption, grr.
"roll to hit" grr
"combat system" grr
"If you don't play essentially D&D with cosmetic changes, you're not roleplaying". Grrr grr grr.

[Lxndr]

[*]"Magic isn't something you learn, it's something you're born to."  Especially with the associated "and yet we're not gonna lord it over you" kind of attitude that you'd think would come naturally among humans.
[*]"Magic requires a lifetime commitment and academic study to the exclusion of all else."
[*]The two of those previous ideas expressed together is geometrically worse.
[*]Interior artwork, in general, but generally an overabundance of it.  Hardcovers too.
[*]an unconscionable avoidance of PvP conflicts, and the full-fledged embrace of the whole "party" mentality
[*]Strange and Bizarre Capitalization
[*]XP/character reward given out seemingly unrelated to character or player action, especially that given out at the end of a session.
[/list:u]

I'm guilty of "must have a new name for GM/PC" (croupier in Fastlane) and, in a weird way, "must use a weird and unique type of die" (Fastlane's roulette wheel... but then again, it has a six sided die alternative)

Herrmess:  I understand most of your comments, but what's wrong with using weird/unique dice, or d20s in particular?

[Andy Kitkowski]

"Spread X points around your stats/skills/etc to make your character".  

It never bothered me until I saw a bunch of Japanese RPGs where this wasn't the case- In the most spectacularly built ones, you literally just choose "3 classes", and that defines all your stats, skills, starting equipment, and special abilities. You trade dicking around on minutia for ease of getting into play quickly.

Ex: In TSOY, If I were making a "20 Advance Character", just like a 20th level character in D&D I'd still need to take XP/advances and turn them into spurts of growth in abilities, pools, etc.  In the game Alshard (a popular Japanese RPG, made by a brilliant designer (same guy as Tenra Bansho)), a 20th level character can be made just as quickly as a 1st level character (note: Within about two minutes.   Seriously.), and yet still be moderately customized.

It's really stricken me as a blind spot in Western RPG design. Particularly, in games like Blue Rose, which for its intended purposes really didn't need all that choice and character configuration. It should have been a "pick-and-go" game.

-Andy

[Andrew Morris]

[*]Strange and Bizarre Capitalization[/list:u]

Ooh, good one.

[Ben Lehman]

It's really stricken me as a blind spot in Western RPG design. Particularly, in games like Blue Rose, which for its intended purposes really didn't need all that choice and character configuration. It should have been a "pick-and-go" game.

I am, at this point, totally unsatisfied with character creation that last longer than five minutes.  Any moment of my time spent making a character is a moment of time where I'm *not playing the game*

yrs--
--Ben

[pete_darby]

Andy: obsessive detail, fiddling around... oh god yes, I detest it.*

Real Soon Now I'll get to finishing a review of Pie Shop. It certainly has attitude, but character creation: strange numbers of points, skills lists, default skills, blah, blah, blah... for a supposedly shocking game of being a serial killer. Yeah, nothing conveys alienation and psychotic thought processes than deciding whether to put two or three points in driving. It's all gamer wank, it gets in the way of psychological horror.

It may be the first kpfs heartbreaker.

edit: *When it's not a positive feature of the system, as in Hero / Champions...

[Jason L Blair]

It never bothered me until I saw a bunch of Japanese RPGs where this wasn't the case- In the most spectacularly built ones, you literally just choose "3 classes", and that defines all your stats, skills, starting equipment, and special abilities. You trade dicking around on minutia for ease of getting into play quickly.
-Andy

Andy:

Any websites (in English) where I can read more about this?