Are there any RPGs that you truly disliked the first time you tried them, but that for some reason over time you came to like them?

And what changed? Was it external reasons (the group you were in, the GM or other players, etc)?  Was it a growing appreciation of its qualities? Or was it changes you had as a gamer?

I bought the three core books for D&D 3.0 and read them, then sold them at a used book store because I thought it was overcomplicated for a game. I struggled with it while doing playtesting for d20 Traveller, and I was doing some solo gaming to test out the math on a rule and it just clicked. From there on it became more interesting and the gems that came out of the OGL were really innovative and it all just grew on me. There were still some craptastic parts, but it wasn't entirely the d20 system that made it craptastic.

TORG, when I first encountered it, I basically went 'what the fuck is this shit?'

A D20 die roll, which... you have to look up on a table, to derive the actual value? And it uses some funky log table for effect of values? Sometimes you reroll 10s, sometimes you reroll 10s and 20s, and reality storms, and...

I liked the setting, mostly, but 'in this cosm sailboats don't work. Except for some people.' Just real mental gymnastics.


I stuck with it because, well, the setting sounded gonzo fun, and my friends were playing it. We rolled up ... ourselves, literally sitting in the room we were sitting in, when the reality storm dropped on Pittsburgh.
And we ran around the guy's house, drawing water, turning things into weapons (I had a piece of bannister as a club for a long time), and then let's try to get over to Seth's house, because he has guns.

I couldn't figure out how to turn myself into an adventurer, so I decided... Faith! Now, at the time, I was drifting atheist-ward, but I had a pseudo semi-belief in the 'quiet God' who just sort of... did things behind the scenes. So I was a Paragon Faith believer in the unseen God.
(The quip was: There is no God, and Will is His prophet)

It was weirdly effective. Most of the group switched characters, this whole bit was a 'kicking the tires, get used to the game' phase, but a friend and I decided to keep playing adventure versions of ourselves.

(I still feel bad for the Muslim guy I tried to heal and inadvertently exploded, because the faith rules in Torg are wacky -- if you try to perform a miracle on someone of another faith, there is a backlash effect. And since I had lots of points in Faith and Focus and random NPC didn't... splort.)


ANYhoo... the fun of playing Adventure Will, the excitement of the other folks, and playing under a GM who REALLY knew the game, eventually allowed me to see some of the really REALLY clever design of Torg.

I still think Torg is one of the most singularly brilliantly designed games, ever, though I find the idea of running it very intimidating.

Rolemaster was a drag in my experience except with one GM who kept the game flowing. Just how much he used the rulesbooks I don't know.

I'm delighted to read of that Torg experience, since my own - as GM - started very enthusiastic but quickly cooled. I might appreciate it better today.

Heroes Unlimited is one I only very recently came to like - not as much as other comicbook-hero games, but now I would at least be glad to play.  Reading the handbook ultimately changed my view, and for years I kept getting turned off from that when I had barely begun. I was well used to  Siembieda's disjointed style, but the HU book somehow was too much.

Well, the whole OSR thing got me to try D&D again, after years of vowing I'd never go near it. If it had stayed on the 3.5/4e path it was on and if there'd been no OSR embracing original D&D/Basic and doing new and strange things with it I'd still be against it... but it helped that somewhere along the way I calmed down a lot about the whole class/level thing and HP being... various things.

I'm definitely favoring the low-crunch end of the pool... LotFP and DCC are pretty simple but I'd never want to run Pathfinder.

Quote from: Phillip;803063I'm delighted to read of that Torg experience, since my own - as GM - started very enthusiastic but quickly cooled. I might appreciate it better today.

Maybe. There's a lot to manage, and the game certainly has its flaws.

But, man, the way cards work, the way 'social guys' actually have something to DO...

And that stupid log table actually lets you do funky things.

Yeah, I liked the logs, etc., in DC Heroes. The cards in Torg were one of the things I recall finding irksome.

BRP. At first CoC bored me, the system felt flat, and it generally didn't inspire me. But the Big Gold Book came out and I bought it, and was impressed by the various options. I think I enjoy the Legend/Runequest 6 distro the best, but the system is so easy to modify, quick, and new players just seem to "get it" fast. It also fades away in game play. Super easy to GM.

Runequest/BRP.

Mostly as I couldn't stand the person who liked it and played it.
However after a while, I looked past that and actually tried it myself and liked it.
I didn't invite him to play tho!  
So he was a jerk, but had good taste in RPGs.

Without actually trying them, I dismissed Star Frontiers and Buck Rogers XXVc. Years later, when I gave them a fair go, they turned out to be pretty nifty.

Quote from: Phillip;803058Rolemaster was a drag in my experience except with one GM who kept the game flowing. Just how much he used the rulesbooks I don't know.

When I first bought Rolemaster I couldn't stand it.  There was so much and I came in with Rolemaster Standard System not first or second edition.  It later became my favorite game.  It accomplishes so much and makes so much out of what it does.

I went from a fan of small, light games to a fan of big complex ones because Rolemaster showed me how much all that detail can deliver.

TSR's Marvel Super Heroes. I first got it back when it was new. I was not impressed.  I only gave it a chance a few years ago after reading so many glowing reviews on this and other forums and ended up running what is probably my most successful campaign of all time with it.

I got a lot keener on 4e D&D over time as I realised that it wasn't really a 'D&D' type game at all. Once I understood what it was good at I found it worked really well.

When I started playing with it, I found the Palladium system a little hard to get. But now, with more experience with it and having read and played other systems, I find it quite easy to handle past the character creation.