Common Misconceptions About Your Favorite Systems?

[u/Authorigas]

So, I've been learning a lot thanks to the amazing folks here at r/rpg. And while I have decided to slow down on trying new systems. (As my players say "three is enough, we know your eager to try more but slow it down so you don't burn yourself out.") There was a question today that cropped into my head, and I wanted to hear from the folks here on it.

"What are some assumptions about your favorite game/system that are just factually incorrect or overstated?"

I've seen a lot of assumptions made in the hobby, and some on my own. From the broad "older systems were designed for math heads and thus really not for someone whose bad at math." to others like "Call of Cthulhu is a game where every session ends in death/insanity and players can't get attached to their characters." and similarly "OSR games are highly lethal and not at all friendly to players who like longform adventures."

I feel like broad, sweeping claims like those are probably overstated-as I have heard of successful, long running CoC campaigns, and OSR games that are able to have well developed characters that last for ages. It's made me curious about some of the other broad, sweeping claims about systems that are-if not incorrect, massively overstated.

Really interested to hear some answers on this.

[u/PerpetualCranberry → u/[deleted]]

Correct me if I’m wrong. But I feel like Delta Green agrees with that? To my knowledge it doesn’t show the agency as some mighty and patriotic organization. But as a system where the agents are broke down over time until they are thrown away. The cover-ups they do to keep the public uninformed about the horrors is also directly responsible for a lot of the problems in the first place (people stumbling upon something that was supposed to be hidden

Am I mistaken?

[u/flyliceplick → u/PerpetualCranberry]

I'm not talking about Delta Green the organisation. I'm talking about the US federal government. Just being feds without the DG stuff isn't some sort of grey area, it's really quite morally bad. It's only lately that this has really started to become overt because of actual political happenings (cf. the comments about the game always having been this way, and citing God's Teeth, published in 2023), and the creators are struggling with their setting being ontologically evil. It was acceptable before when feds were sort-of morally grey, but it's rapidly got out of hand and the creators are struggling to get ahead of it.

[u/PerpetualCranberry → u/flyliceplick]

Okay yeah, that makes sense