Games I want to run:

[badmagic]

Legend of the 5 Rings. The Seven Clans plot and war against each other, while Fu Leng, the Abandoned One, waits to destroy them all.

Why I want to run it: First, I already promised I would. Second, the background is both seriously nifty and massively described online. If anyone wants to know something about the gameworld, they can look it up

Comments

[arashinomoui]

Smallville.: The superhero game that is about betrayal and in-party bickering.

Why I want to run it: My games seem to devolve to this eventually anyways.

Why I don't: I doubt I could find players willing to actually buy into the fact that to get new cool powers, they have to suffer first.

I'd love to do Dresden Files again, but I'm burnt out on high player buy-in required games.

[starfyrone]

find players willing to actually buy into the fact that to get new cool powers, they have to suffer first

oh wow. A group I have occasionally played with are all "if my character isn't suffering some sort of angst, I'm not having any fun." I've yet to hear of a game they've done that didn't turn into a soap opera, regardless of the GM or starting genre. High school superheroes who are gaining their powers one trauma at a time seems to be one of their favorite settings.

[squishydish]

Well, the GURPS system builds that in -- if you accept a major handicap, like Blind or One-legged or (pick a disease), then you get dozens of points you can spend on whatever skills you want. Suffering makes one great (in other areas)!
Although of course you could game that a little bit -- picking Paranoia could actually help you in some settings, although it cuts down on your ally relationships...

[arashinomoui]

Yeah, I realized there was a problem when we were playing Dresden, and most of players were resisting every Aspect related compel I threw at them with "I wouldn't do that."

My favorite? The person playing the naive, sheltered wizard resisting every compel to do something rash, and perhaps foolhardy, due to inexperience.

Now I'm running 13th Age where they (well a slightly different table make-up of people) are all agents of the emperor so they can be given missions with very defined goals and objectives.

[badmagic]

players were resisting every Aspect related compel I threw at them

I had that problem with 7th Sea's Hubris rules. The fix was to turn it around, so it's not "the GM can compel your char. to do X" but "If your PC does X, you get a Fate Point/Bennie/thing you can turn in for a free reroll." After that, people started looking for ways to trigger their disads.

[arashinomoui]

That's how Fate works, particularly Dresden Files where you get a Trouble aspect, ie, a giant fucking flag of "these are the problems for my character I find interesting to suffer."

If I compel that, or any other aspect, I offer a Fate point. If you want to resist the compel, you have to PAY a Fate point. Carrot and stick here, but players are supposed to buy into the suffer now have more power later schtick.

After a few similar incidents, I basically started excising the rules that they didn't seem to want to deal with, and then realized that wasn't the game I was enjoying.

[arashinomoui]

Sorry - a bit of a sore spot as gaming is one of my few critical out of my head hobbies, and with the draws on my time finding sufficient time to engage, and making the necessary deals is frustrating and aggravating.

[badmagic]

Yeah, I get it. 7th Sea worked the same way Fate does, and gave me the same problem. Seriously, I've found that if I dropped the stick, and told players to find their own carrots, they did.

[arashinomoui]

Yeah, tried that too. Put out a big bowl of points in the middle of the table and said, "Someone else does something that you find awesome at the table, give them a point; someone else suffers dramatically for the sake of the plot or just just sheer hilarity, give them a point" stealing the idea of fan mail there from Prime Time Adventures.

In the end, some systems are just a bad fit for the table. Fate to do well at the table requires players to want to engage with FP economy on some level. If you just want to use it to avoid plot, it won't work.

On the upside, my frustrations lead me to read a lot of interesting writers and editors looking for the best fit game for me and who I can usually get for players. :)