 John the OFM  | 02 Sep 2025 2:21 p.m. PST |
I'm not making any rules for this Poll, since any will likely be ignored. 😄
So, interpret and post as you wish. I dislike having to draw specific cards to allow you, or your unit, to perform a specific task. Specifically "change formation", "charge", "fire a volley", "reload", and so on. Any competent officer, sergeant, unit commander should know what to do. |
 Herkybird | 02 Sep 2025 2:56 p.m. PST |
I dislike having units fail to activate for no apparent reason!, and the reasons John the OFM states also. |
| The Nigerian Lead Minister | 02 Sep 2025 3:05 p.m. PST |
I don't like changing dice sizes up or down. Keep one die (they can be different) and modify it with plus one or whatever, don't make it a different size. |
 Dal Gavan | 02 Sep 2025 3:24 p.m. PST |
+1 TNLM. Throwing a D6 for morale, a D10 for fire, a D4 for close combat, a D8 for fatigue, a D20 for activation, a D174 for spotting, a D3 to see if an engine stalls, etc, etc. Stick to one- at most two- types of dice and perhaps change how many are rolled, and you'll get the same effect. |
| 14Bore | 02 Sep 2025 3:27 p.m. PST |
Actually seems units don't move on battlefields a lot. Officers don't want to, orders get delayed. Troops get sent to wrong direction. For me I Go, You go, but every unit moving at once doesn't seem possible on a game board. |
| JMcCarroll | 02 Sep 2025 3:30 p.m. PST |
Specialty dice.
Battle boards that allow you to do something you couldn't do even if you had a tardis!
Strange thing is I do play Saga. Go figure? |
| myxemail | 02 Sep 2025 3:42 p.m. PST |
I agree with John's assessment of using action cards in a game. On top of that, I dislike rolling saving throws or defense dice. I get that the game mechanic is there to keep players engaged, but I feel that it slows down the game |
| Eumelus | 02 Sep 2025 3:51 p.m. PST |
I dislike any real-world test of eyesight or dexterity: guessing how many inches between the toys in order to gauge the real-world fall of shot, determining the success of a parachute assault by how clever one is at dropping paper chits onto the table, shooting a dart-gun at a target to determine in-game accuracy, etc. If I wanted to play paintball or billiards I would do so. |
| evilgong | 02 Sep 2025 5:17 p.m. PST |
Eumelus +1, one of my wargame mates was legally blind and another close to it. (An my eyes are pretty crap these days). My peeve is rules without command friction – any set where you can move stuff at will, limited only by your imagination are usually not worth playing. |
| Oberlindes Sol LIC | 02 Sep 2025 5:37 p.m. PST |
Game systems with too many unique symbols to memorize. It seems to me that Saga is the games I've most recently encountered with this issue. |
| Grattan54 | 02 Sep 2025 6:29 p.m. PST |
The use of cards for random events ect. Can't stand it. Just let me play the frick'n game. |
| VonTed | 02 Sep 2025 6:50 p.m. PST |
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| rustymusket | 02 Sep 2025 6:54 p.m. PST |
Cards, casualty caps, more than 1 or 2 modifiers to a die roll. |
| smithsco | 02 Sep 2025 7:17 p.m. PST |
Pips/activation points/ADCs that can severely limit your options for no reason. I should struggle with command if my troops are pinned or falling back, not when I have the enemy in a crossfire and am annihilating them |
 gamertom | 02 Sep 2025 7:58 p.m. PST |
Placing "order" markers next to units and then flipping them over to reveal what the unit is doing. |
| Stryderg | 02 Sep 2025 8:22 p.m. PST |
Drawing cards for unit activation, just strikes me as wrong. |
 Parzival | 02 Sep 2025 8:41 p.m. PST |
Don't like playing card activations, either. The only game it works for is Savage Worlds: Deadlands, because a poker deck fits the Wild West. Otherwise it takes me out of the game. (Also, it's not actually random without waaaaay more shuffling than most people bother to do. According to researchers, a 52 card deck needs to be shuffled 11 to 15 times to produce a truly mixed and unpredictable pattern.) I also don't like games where only a limited number of units are likely to (or will) activate. Usually winds up with the same dang units moving and all the rest imaginarily twiddling their imaginary thumbs. Finally, anything that winds up with base labels and/or status markers, etc., littering the tabletop and thus detracting from the look of the game. Nothing breaks verisimilitude like a chunk of colored card-board with numbers and words on it. |
| Fitzovich | 02 Sep 2025 9:59 p.m. PST |
Specialty dice, status markers, some styles of card activation. All that adds up to the game mechanics of Fistful of Lead which is just a cumbersome system with far too many accessories needed to play. |
| Martin Rapier | 02 Sep 2025 11:34 p.m. PST |
Long, long lists of dice modifiers send me to sleep. I dont like it when sometimes low rolls are good and sometimes high rolls are good. Anything which involves buckets of dice is inherently slow as they are all laboriously counted out. Saving throws are almost as bad. Anything which involves micro geometry. Personally I rather like rules which produce command friction, although clearly from the posts above, many people don't. As Patton observed, giving orders is easy but getting them obeyed is hard. Something that anyone who has tried managing a large team would heartily agree with. I claim no great consistency in this though, as none of my recent rules have command restrictions at all, they rely instead on the far more amusing antics of multiple players. |
| John the OFM | 02 Sep 2025 11:42 p.m. PST |
Indecision and ineptitude should be what handicaps the players. Not the rules. |
| bobspruster | 03 Sep 2025 1:06 a.m. PST |
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| korsun0 | 03 Sep 2025 2:31 a.m. PST |
Card or dice activation. An elite unit about to be charged needs dx score to do what it's trained to do?  … |
 Old Contemptible | 03 Sep 2025 3:17 a.m. PST |
ADCs, written orders or any rule that says I can't talk to a teammate standing right next to me. That's part of the fun. Activation rolls except in specific scenarios. Grids of any kind. Rolling to see what happened to my unit before I have moved, like in F&F and AOE. Complicated cards with a bunch of symbols that I have to refer to the rules to translate the hieroglyphics, while everyone else is standing around waiting. Brigades that can do a summersault, a high jump and all kinds of gymnastic moves and go from my front to my flank in one turn. Passing right in front of me to get on my flank and I have no opportunity fire or squat to do about it. Disruption Points! I hate them. I spend the entire game trying to remove them. Rules that have too many detailed and weird rolls like "horse casualties" or where exactly was my officer wounded. So now I have to keep track of my horses. Not allowing pre-measuring. I have people under my command that can accurately estimate the range. Overly detailed command rules. |
| John the OFM | 03 Sep 2025 3:33 a.m. PST |
Roughly a dozen morale grades, with the unit's basic competence being factored into the die roll. A Guard unit would be 3% more likely to hit a target than an Elite unit? And this in a period when an army would barely practice with firearms. Maybe once a year to make sure they knew how to load. |
| robert piepenbrink | 03 Sep 2025 3:39 a.m. PST |
Unit strength/history rosters, followed closely by commander ratings. Maintaining records is work, not fun. Neither is "today you take the place of an idiot, so you must be an idiot" fun. It's also a poor representation of what bad commanders get wrong. (I'll believe the whole "it's not you: it's the staff" routine when they stop rating individual generals.) Following that, activation rolls. So I drive two hours each way in order NOT to take part in a game? Events cards go in fourth place--an annoyance, but not always a game stopper. |
| goibinu | 03 Sep 2025 3:41 a.m. PST |
If I'm reading through a set of rules and see the words 'card deck' I immediately put them down. Tons of 'detailed factors' does not equal 'realistic'. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. It's not the 1980s anymore. PIPS or equivalent activation systems have their place. That place is in DBA type games, nowhere else. |
| Old Contemptible | 03 Sep 2025 3:47 a.m. PST |
Thank you. Yes, keeping track of pips. My unit has so many pips to spend each turn. I have ten or more units, I tend to forget, people get upset. Not a fan. |
| Alakamassa | 03 Sep 2025 5:24 a.m. PST |
Game like DBA that require micro measurements of space between bases. |
| OSCS74 | 03 Sep 2025 6:12 a.m. PST |
Eumelus +1 guessing ranges |
| John the OFM | 03 Sep 2025 7:58 a.m. PST |
Carrying your musket being unloaded into the next turn. |
| John the OFM | 03 Sep 2025 8:05 a.m. PST |
Neither is "today you take the place of an idiot, so you must be an idiot" fun. Yes, preach it. I'm here to do better than Marshal von Umlaut. I'm not here to "simulate" his ineptitude or cowardice. Nor should I be automatically superior to Darius, merely because my figure is painted as Alexander. |
| John the OFM | 03 Sep 2025 8:05 a.m. PST |
+2 for being French.
+1 for being British. |
 Saber6  | 03 Sep 2025 12:27 p.m. PST |
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| robert piepenbrink | 03 Sep 2025 1:18 p.m. PST |
You know, sometimes it's not the single rule or mechanism, but the combination. I'm perfectly OK with games in which the unit with an advantage rolls bigger dice, the game in which it rolls more dice, or the game in which it has a better "to hit" number on the dice. But I think rulesmiths should try to use only one of these per set of rules. There's an old vampire movie in which the vet is telling the newbie engineer that he wants controls labelled. The newbie says "well, you can figure it out" and the vet says "I don't want to figure it out: I want to know." I'm with that vet. I don't want to figure it out. I don't want to look it up. I want to know. Lots of rules want me to look it up and then figure it out, which is even worse. |
| John the OFM | 03 Sep 2025 1:27 p.m. PST |
I was "running" the hot new thing game, having seen someone else run it the week before. I had a bunch of NW Frontier figures that needed exercise. So, I decided to do some hit Pathan on Gurkha action.
In the "list" in the back, it gave Pathans "Warband" status. I had run across Warband while reading the rules. Plus, all characteristics were summarized on page 43. 👍 Units are parceled out. Pathans are ready to be Wily Johnnie Pathan, and the player asks "Okay. What does Warband do?"
I went to page 43… Nothing. Then I feverishly scanned the book looking for Warband that I had seen before. Nope. I found it 3 days later. To put this into a gripe for the Poll:
"Important rules that are scattered illogically in the rule book." Like Angry Bears in the Siege rule section. 🙄 |
| Dal Gavan | 03 Sep 2025 3:10 p.m. PST |
"Important rules that are scattered illogically in the rule book." A rules book without an index is a major pain, but it's not a rules mechanism. It just stops you from finding the mechanisms easily, if ever.  |
| John the OFM | 03 Sep 2025 4:42 p.m. PST |
I'm not making any rules for this Poll, since any will likely be ignored. 😄 Quoting me self. First sentence in MY Thread. 😄 It's like the term "blinds" in rules by another company. Naming no names. 🙄
They use the term in one set of rules that I bought, but darned if I could find the definition in that book. I complained about it a while back, on TMP, and was told that it would not have been a problem if I had read their other rules. So, it's my fault that I'm not in that cult? 🤷 "Important rules that are not defined in the rule book." |
| Frederick | 03 Sep 2025 4:46 p.m. PST |
Random activation seems silly – while What A Tanker is fun, I think a tank gunner would know to re-load after they fire |
| Dal Gavan | 03 Sep 2025 5:35 p.m. PST |
I'm not making any rules for this Poll, since any will likely be ignored. 😄
Quoting me self. First sentence in MY Thread. 😄
I'm ignoring the rule about no rules, mate. |
 Doctor X | 03 Sep 2025 9:08 p.m. PST |
I think we've done this poll multiple times but here goes… IGO/UGO as it tends to lead to very predictable results. The odds for success can often be calculated ahead of the activity. This all leads to a very boring game in my opinion. Some gamers (the 30,000' Generals) need to know every detail and odds of success before moving or rolling. Special dice are just plain lame and always strike me as more of a money grab than something essential to the game. Writing or placing order chits. So painful. |
| David Manley | 04 Sep 2025 12:00 a.m. PST |
Range estimation in naval games where, in rea life, ships were equipped with effective range finders and radar fire control |
| John the OFM | 04 Sep 2025 4:22 a.m. PST |
I agree in general about range estimation. I would even extend that to land, where a game will not allow premeasuring. The lads in the battle usually had a pretty good idea of how far away the Bad Guys are. "Not allowing pre measuring." |
