GTRT Ep 21: System Turnoffs, Fantasy Talk, and Mad Max

FandibleFeatured5 Geeks. One Roundish Table. In the week’s Geeky Topics Round Table, we talk about our game system turnoff’s, our recent forays into fantasy games, and the recent Mad Max Fury Road controversy.


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6 comments on “GTRT Ep 21: System Turnoffs, Fantasy Talk, and Mad Max

  1. Mawdrigen says:

    *sips brandy, cackles maniacally, wonders where the bloody cats got to…*

  2. Dan says:

    For Billy, Wizards released an article a few weeks ago about modifying classes and a spell-less Ranger was on the list. You can find it here http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/modifying-classes

  3. foolsmask says:

    I’m intrigued by the dislike for games where the GM doesn’t roll dice. I have a very different opinion of the Apocalypse World Engine and find the idea of it very compelling. I haven’t ever actually played it because my group has mostly been D&D players afraid or unwilling to try anything new except Call of Cthulhu.

    I would think that freeing the GM from needing to roll dice and do all the calculations would free them to tell a more descriptive story. I feel like that would be the case for me at least, and what Apocalypse World designers where hoping to achieve. Of course every player has their own style. What Apocalypse World seems to do is eliminate the (arguably) tedious step of the GM needing to take an action. Players can control the flow more with this method and keep the action rolling. Specifically with Apocalypse World, the fail, succeess, or greater success results give the player and GM wider arrays of options in the story telling. With D&D (and all the games like it) its is pass/fail. The only difference is the target number shifts around a lot more with D&D and its ilk. You mentioned liking Atomic Robo (and at least tangentially Fate because Robo is based on that game). In that game you can basically get the same situation. The GM sets a difficulty for a task and a player rolls to beat it. The difference here is that there is not partial success, only full success or success with a bonus for high rolls. Of course the GM can roll dice in Robo as well but all that does is set the difficulty randomly, opposed by the arbitrary selection of the number done in all other circumstances.

    Anyway, I’m not saying you guys are wrong, its a flavor choice really. I am not bothered by the GM not rolling dice. And I would be up for playing any of the game mentioned in my comment.

  4. Barsher D Barsher says:

    Don’t get us wrong, Foolmask. Nothing is worse than having the dice rolls ruin the storyteller’s capability. If a game is too complicated with the math, then it too isn’t something we’re interested in. However, as you said, it is just a personal preference when it comes to games where the GM doesn’t roll.

    When the GM rolls, I view it not as ‘pass/fail’. I view it as ‘Critically fail, fail, success, critical success’ so there is some more diversity of it all. But I think the main point for me – and again, this is just preference – is the roll itself. I just am not a fan of my roll causing me damage. And maybe that’s because I grew up for years playing it old school where my roll could miss or hit or critically miss or hit – but my rolls never damaged me. They might have put me in a position to get hurt, but I didn’t roll it.

    Again! This is just a preference and nothing more. We actually said Apocalypse World was fun and we could see it as a perfect con game but it just wasn’t something I was feeling whenever we tried it.

    Thanks for your well thought out comment! I hope you end up getting to play Apocalypse World!

  5. Barsher D Barsher says:

    Dan! That is an amazing link. Thank you! Angela thanks you!

  6. Syren says:

    Time for a GTRT superpost.

    Out of all the nitpicks you guys have I am a pretty huge fan of having the background economy of second chances or other things. I also like that to be tied to luck in some way, and there are some games where I can accept its absence but otherwise it is a tough sell when I look at the dice and they are just laughing at me and I have nothing to shut them up with.

    I only have one real system turnoff, and that is the presence of something in a system with no ACTUAL mechanics present to use it. I felt it hard in Exalted when I made an Eclipse Caste economist, and there was an unusually low amount of things that my skills of Socialize and Bureucracy could actually DO. So I spent like 90% of this game having to deal with having a huge part of my character narratively being almost completely absent. I can not stand it because it took all the energy I had to push myself back into the limelight with all the others even though I was shit at combat(well as much as a Solar can be).

    Something super swingy that I’d hate to call a system turnoff since a huge part of it is the GM and people you are playing with. But when a game doesn’t seem to facilitate having a non-combat centric narrative I get bored.

    I’ll note David that as far as Mad Max goes, Max himself is habitually asocial and never had a huge speaking role. He isn’t a talker, he’s a doer. Everyone else talks around him, even in the first first movie where he was honestly the only notable character other than his dog. His dog had more lines.

    That being said I still haven’t been able to watch Fury Road yet, but if I were to feminize a film it’d be Robocop, to see if an android can identify as a woman.

    I’m a fan of the gay agenda, with all his horrible love life perhaps we will get Die Hard first.

    Also to note it isn’t like the Captain America post first one movies aren’t also Black Widow movies. Her part was practically as huge if not moreso than his own. Because Cap needs to lead people.

    The Mario Bros was not as awful as I remember, I just had to completely remove my Mario knowledge and realize it was just a strange cyberpunk movie.

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