I, running a CoC campaign, had just gotten a new “Keeper’s Screen”, which had, on the side facing the players, a handy table of sanity costs. In a revision from earlier editions of the game, this table included not only sanity costs for unspeakable eldrich horrors (e.g., “See Lesser Mythos Creature: 1d4/1d20”) but also more mundane sanity taxing events (e.g., "Surprised by corpse of a friend or loved one: 1/1d6). One player took sudden umbrage at the inclusion of “Undergo severe torture: 1d12”.
Bob, loudly and disdainfully: “Do you mean to tell me, if I stuck my head in a bucket of acid, I’d lose sanity?!”
Civilization - rushing production of a military unit cost 4x the number of shields left for production. Rushing production of a nonmilitary unit cost 2x. Want that tank right away that costs 80 shields of production? Switch to a library, buy it at 2x cost, switch back to a tank, end the turn, and hooray, you’ve just been a corrupt defense contractor building your army with illegal funds.
In FROGGER, the frogs are as big, if not bigger, than the cars on the road. Likewise, the flies in the perfectly square lily pads on the other side of the river are really huge. Also, the cars on the road travel in alternating directions in each lane. Lastly, the cars and floating logs and turtles’ backs (which sink and resurface in perfect unison with one another) are able to warp through space and instantly re-appear just a few feet away from where they originated. Only the frogs are incapable of passing through this wormhole as it kills them upon entry.
In ASTEROIDS the rocks are all uniform in shape. Shooting them into smaller pieces will yield more uniformly-shaped rocks.
In LIFE, there is a very real danger of a carload of people, notably a family, can be wiped out by a gigantic flying spinner that has been set aloft by an overzealous god-like entity.
DC Heroes had a few rather bizarre rules oddities. I recall that Batman was incapable of being killed by dagger wounds…because of the way the damage table worked out.
The gadgetry rules were also rather strange. The amount of times you could use an item before it started to wear out was directly based on its most powerful ability score…so it was impossible to make a salad fork that would last more than a single use. Starships, however, could go for hundreds of uses before requiring maintenance. Weird stuff.
As for Call of Cthulhu…going bonkers was the fun part. Seriously, it was the only game I ever played where the players would scream and run away if the GM offered them magic items.
Of course, once you start delving into the ass end of gaming, you’ll find more cringeworthy stuff. There was this one game that came out about 10 years or so called Synnibar where one of the monsters was a flying grizzly bear with laser eye beams. It also had giant radioactive clams. No, it wasn’t deliberately trying to be funny (I think). That was also the same game that would typically make damage rolls like 10000d4 or 5000d6. I’m not making that part up either.
•The player seems to prefer holding slightly off to the side of his field of view, aiming diagonally at the player’s center of vision. The player never uses the “iron” sights, even on long arms…but still manages pretty good accuracy.
•Firing a rocket propelled grenade—or any other high-explosive weapon—at a wooden door never damages the door or the wall, and on top of that, either…
a. The door will protect any people on the other side so well, that they won’t even hear the explosion, or…
b. Upon opening or unlocking the undamaged door, the player will find piles of charred and broken furniture, and the corpses of people killed by the blast. The only other damage in the room will be a small smear of soot on the floor.
• Opponents never surrender, or are completely overcome by pain. Even when they’ve been shot ten times in the abdomen, they’ll hunch over in pain for a moment…then try and bring their weapon to bear again.
Yeah, I was amazed at the number of first-person shooters out there where you could snipe one guard… and the other guard standing next to him would just stand there, not noticing his buddy collapsing and falling to the ground.
It was kind of refreshing in “Return To Castle Wolfenstein” and “Half-Life” when they didn’t do that.
As to “Civilization II”… I just kept envisioning a diplomat standing on a stepladder, jumping up and down, with a bullhorn in one hand and a big wad of money in the other, shouting at a bomber crew overhead…
And (sigh) the thing about Call Of Cthulhu wasn’t that players could go insane. That is not only fairly realistic, but true to the literature on which the game is based. I just thought it was kind of funny when compared to OTHER roleplaying games:
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: First edition AD&D did include rules for insanity. On the other hand, they also included rules for arthritis, intestinal parasites, and the infamous Potion Miscibility Table. Still stands as perhaps the greatest single example of RPG Rules Overkill.
TRAVELLER: Did not include rules for insanity; apparently everyone is sane in the future, and stays that way, even if laser pistols haven’t been invented yet, so their space marines are trained to fight space combat with cutlasses and shotguns.
TOP SECRET: No, apparently international secret agents never go crazy either. They’re tough, too – it took an average of two grenade explosions at pointblank range to kill a player agent.
…and so on. More RPGs came out, and they never seemed to consider the possibility that players could go crazy.
…and then came “Call Of Cthulhu”… the game where, if a player runs the same character long enough, he pretty much WILL go crazy at some point…
From the first paragraph: “Contrary to my expectations, the World of Synnibarr did not suck all of the flesh off of my face, leaving behind only a screaming skull. It did not rape my other gaming products, leaving them pregnant with “neomods”, McCracken-speak for something as simple as a gaming module. It did not shoot twin streams of hydrochloric acid into my eyes, nor did it squat on my chest and stare at me when I was trying to sleep.”
Huh? I’ve done that many times in Half-Life. Provided you edge around a corner so that you can just nick someone without being seen, and you use the crossbow in stealth mode, you can pick off a group of ten soliders in the same room one at a time.
Ah, Half-Life, where:
The security guards stick with their trusty handguns, and never use any other weapon you come across- even the shotgun in the weapons locker a guard is manning.
Freeman is the only character that can climb a ladder, crawl through a duct, or jump over a six-inch high obstacle. Must be that HEV MkIV suit that makes the difference.
Freeman needed that suit because his job requred manning a console in a room a few meters from an unshielded high energy particle beam.
You have the most high-tech prosthetic body armor in the world, yet your built-in flashlight is only good for 90 seconds at a time.
You can shoot down an Apache helicopter or an Ospry VTOL with a 9mm handgun if you’re patient enough.
Oh, and oddly enough, the standard issue 9mm handguns work fine underwater. Maybe that’s why the security guards like them so much.
That old standby, the Miracle Healing Device. Extreme blood loss, multiple gunshot wounds, compound fractures and third-degree burns can be totally healed in a few seconds.
Except for the Hero Of The Story, all other scientists are milquetoasts, who will never ever attempt to fight back even in desperation.
If you sneak up quietly behind some soldiers, they will still be alerted the moment a thrown grenade leaves your hand. Must have an extremely loud pin.
Enemy soliders don’t seem to care that shooting into barrels and crates marked “Danger High Explosive” a few meters away might be risky- just so they nail you, dagnabit!
Most of the windows at Black Mesa were fitted with Transparent Neutronium, completely unbreakable even by rocket-propelled grenades! Luckily for you the project had budget shortfalls that forced the installation of regular glass in certain spots.
But it was still WAY ahead of its predecessors. I was utterly amazed when I finally clambered out of the top of that friggin’ mountain, settled myself into a comfortable shielded position, and began sniping those damn soldiers.
Only two of them had to die before it occurred to the others to start lobbing grenades in at me. I had NO idea they were that smart…
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG had some great rules on insanity. The original printing of the main rule book included homosexuality on the random roll table for insanities. One of the ways to get an insanity was severe head trauma. Thus, cracking someone’s skull with a baseball bat could turn them gay.
I guess they got complaints: I lost my rulebook and bought a new one. The rules were different: homosexuality wasn’t listed. But instead of reprinting the books, they’d gone through them and put a sticker with the revised rules over them. I peeled mine off immediately: blunt trauma induced homosexuality was just too good of a GM’s tool to throw away like that.
From most FPS: Spare amunition for whatever guns you use are always kept in stock in all villain’s lairs, even if none of them use that kind of gun, and even though all of the bad guys have guns that never run out of ammo. They are also always well stocked magic first aid kits that instantly heal any wound. None of the villains will ever make use of these kits, no badly how wounded they are. Even if they’ve got a kit somewhere on their person.
If you get involved in an extended gunfight with a guard, both of you firing hundreds of rounds, when you finally kill him you’ll find he only had fifteen or twenty rounds left. However, if you snipe the same guard before he even sees you, you’ll find he only has… fifteen or twenty rounds of ammunition. If you’re stealthy enough, you’ll find that most guards aren’t even issued a full clip of ammunition.
No matter how imposing the door to the control room/treasury/inner sanctumis, there will always be a way to unlock/circumvent/destroy it. However, most doors to bathrooms, broom closets, empty offices, etc. are completely indestructible and cannot be opened by any means. Luckily, there’s never anything important behind these doors.
And everything you said was so true.
