Game Wish 18: Sticking Points

I'm running a week late here, this is last week's one, about Sticking Points.

Every player has sticking points. (Yes, you do. You may not have had your buttons pressed yet to know what they are, but you have them.). What are some things that are absolutely no-gos for you?

I can think of three:

First, games where I'm a severe disadvantage from not knowing the game system, and where the GM isn't prepared to take this into account when running the game. This is one of the root causes of my undying hatred of Deadlands. Much of my gaming nowadays is one-shot convention-style games, meaning I'm often faced with an unfamiliar system. When this is the case, I either want a simple transparent system, or a GM that's willing to translate my description of what my character is trying to do into game mechanics. I've had a bad experience, being handed a martial artist character that could not be played effectively without my understanding of how the martial arts game mechanics worked, which of course the GM didn't tell me until after my character had been beaten unconscious.

Secondly, games that consist of nothing but combat and die rolling. I played many years of AD&D; been there, done that.

Finally, immature and disruptive players. Reading some horror stories from other WISH-ers makes me glad I didn't discover gaming until my 20s, and so avoided the dorky munchkin years: I've suffered very few of the problems other people have documented. However, I did have one problem player right at the beginning of my career as an on-line GM, when I had to expel a player-killer from the game. Since then I've successfully avoided playing with jerks.