"So what DO you like, you old asshole?" (for Spinachcat)

I've stated often I'll play almost anything, but it's hard to get me to buy. SC asked me to start a separate thread.



I like lots of different settings and genres; my love for OD&D did not influence my decision to buy WEG Star Wars d20, frex, because they're different games.



Also, I got into this in the pre D&D years of "Tell me what you want to do, I'll tell you what dice to roll and what happens." That's still how I like to play.



OD&D continues to be my go to "generic fantasy" game. I'd use Pendragon for an Arthurian game, because, well, Pendragon; I love Malory almost as much as Greg Stafford does, and the whole "traits and passions" thing is genius for that.



A friend refs The Fantasy Trip and I have fun, but I'd never buy it even if it were available, and I'd never run it.



I bought Fantasy Hero in the mid 80s and both ran it and played it a while. It has one really huge thing I like in that you can use skill points in so many different ways; combat is a lot of fun in that game.



However, making characters is a fucking nightmare, and designing shit for your world is too; rather than just saying "AC 3 5+2 HD 1-8 dam plus blah blah blah special attack" it takes a lot of work. And magic makes it even worse.



Mostly, though, I grew disenchanted because I reached the point where combat took TOO long. I don't want to spend half an hour, or even fifteen minutes, killing a dozen goblins. FH is great for one on one fights with major opponents, but doesn't work for other kinds. Since I want to play an exploration game where you can encounter things randomly, this is a problem



Fantasy Trip suffers from much the same problem, with the addition of the maps and counters.



I have reached the point where I don't WANT the combat to be the most important part of the game. OD&D gets most combats over in a matter of a few minutes... even pretty big opponents don't take that long. And that's what I want these days. When the Fantasy Trip combat map comes out and the counters start getting put down, I just groan any more.



I bought Champions because it was the first superhero game that really worked well, and somebody locally was very enthusiastic about running it. We played for over ten years. Again, I've reached the point of feeling like it's too complicated. I'll play if somebody creates a character for me, but frankly I can't be arsed to do all that work.



I bought Atlantis: The Second Age because I love the idea of Atlantis. If I'd realized it was just another sword & sorcery setting I wouldn't have bothered. I wanted lost cities beneath the waves an' shit.



I bought "High Medieval," but found the tone of the writing so annoying I gave up after five or six pages.



Setting matters to me a lot more than ruleset, which is why I haven't bought any newer editions of D&D since AD&D 1st ed. I didn't even buy the Fiend Folio because I figured "if I need more monsters I can just make them up."



I'm a huge Star Wars fan so I bought WEG's SW d 6. I loved the first edition and think the second edition revised was full of bad ideas.



I bought SW d 20 because again, somebody was running it, and you really can't play that game without the rules, unless you have a really good referee. I bought a bunch of shit for it and finally got tired of the rules bloat. I bought SW SAGA because it looked like another game was going to start up again, but never did.



I bought pretty much everything FASA ever did for Star Trek. I loved that game.



I'm a firm believer in "This game is fun for me, why should I give you money for your version of Star Trek/Star Wars/Generic Fantasy/Superheroes/etc." And frankly, most game companies do a really really shit job of selling their products. "It's New! And it's a Game!" really doesn't do it for me.

"So what DO you like, you old asshole?" (for Spinachcat)