Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness, I do not know why. I had fun with Palladiums other offerings. I liked reading the books, really liked Transdimensional Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For some reason, could not make it work at the table.

Dungeons & Dragons 3.0/3.5
It wasn't what D&D was for me. Lots of people loved it. Lots came back for it--that is awesome. It just wasn't what I wanted in D&D anymore.

Quote from: Benoist;418569Lone Wolf RPG - Huge fan of the Magnamund and Joe Dever's books, but the d20 game just doesn't do it for me. I would go about it in a completely different way. The background part of the game is really cool, but the mechanics leave me cold.

You know there is a new version out (also from Mongoose), whose rules are basically (as in exactly), the same as what was in the gamebooks, with a few extrapolations for tabletop play.  I ran a game, and it worked surprisingly well for such a minimal system.

There are three books out so far (Core Rules, a large adventure module, and a book of new classes), and a couple more books are scheduled to come out soon (a setting book for Sommerlund and a Bestiary, I believe).  Not sure what's planned for the line beyond that.

The book are around $20, so you may balk at paying that much for what is not much more than the rules from the gamebooks, but I don't regret getting it (although I only paid $13 through Amazon)

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. The rules extrapolated from the books are included in the French version of the game, which I also own (I own both the original English version and the French version of the game). That's actually a good point, since I was thinking of the pure d20 approach. I think that, if I were to run the Magnamund, I'd use something like OD&D, with basically the three core archetypes of the game, and all the groups and allegiances as color for the game. Magnakai disciplines, magic of the Dessi and all that would be added to the game as specific stuff you might develop, rather than classes onto their own.

D&D every edition.  I played it because too often it was all there was but the alignment system and the process of leveling just appall me.  Runequest saved my life as a Role-Playing Gamer.

D20.  This is D&D conquers the world.

Palladium.  I have managed to overlook ludicrous rules in all sorts of other systems but the Palladium trip-ups just bother me more.

nWoD.  Probably only because we house-ruled the shit out of oWoD until it worked for us and the new stuff essentially did not have space for a lot of our house rules.  It did not seem as worthy of an investment of time as the earlier game.

Over the Edge.  Interesting system, terribly annoying setting and flavor; and interesting doesn't necessarily mean fun.

GURPS.  Hero did it first and did it better.

Every superhero game that isn't Champions; Hero just allows a much closer match to how I imagine super humans working.

Delta Green.  Probably would have been fine as a supernatural conspiracy game emulating the feel of theX-Files.  Does not gibe with my sense of Lovecraftian terror at all.

Shadowrun.  Like Palladium it just seems too broken.  Also why mix urban fantasy and cyberpunk?  Neither one is so exhausted as a genre as to need cross-pollinization.

Traveller is one of my favorite games . . . when run by one or the other of two game masters I have ever known.  Nobody else can make it work for me.

Any edition of Gamma World after the second.

World of Synnabar.  Do I need to explain this one?

As a HK film fan I really, really liked the idea of Feng Shui. I was so convinced that I would like this that I bought not only the main book but also lots of additional stuff. And then I read it and it just didn't click. To this day I have read it several times and I still find it totally uninspiring. And I still cannot explain why. I think the setting is pretty awful but it's optional so that's no real explanation.

Earthdawn promised a game about legends, but it ended up being this strange Shadowrun-lookalike where the components didn't mesh well and the system felt cumbersome instead of legendary (whatever that means). Something was off; not entirely sure what, but I think one component was being too self-conscious and trying too hard to present the setting as something that made sense until it somehow lost its magic.

Anything using Masterbook. Just ugh. Love the settings for Indiana Jones, Necroscope, etc. but just bad implementation. Too gritty in a bad way. Might as well create 3 PC's at a time, because the first two are dead within the first five minutes.

Did I already say?

Anything point buy.

Quote from: Melan;419000Earthdawn promised a game about legends, but it ended up being this strange Shadowrun-lookalike where the components didn't mesh well and the system felt cumbersome instead of legendary (whatever that means). Something was off; not entirely sure what, but I think one component was being too self-conscious and trying too hard to present the setting as something that made sense until it somehow lost its magic.

We had a good time with it, but we banned PC magic users and very early on we left the official setting behind (literally- by sailing for the edge of the world in an airship). The step dice system was fun once you got the hang of it. That said, I tried to relearn it recently and just couldn't be bothered. I like the idea of things making sense, but the implemetation is, as you say, a little off; furthermore, fucking Barsaive is infused into every sentence in the book it seems, making it impossible for me  to get enough distance to do a homebrew.
So yeah, never again. If I want to play D&D, I'll just play D&D.

GURPS - For the same reason others have said - the system seems to somehow be clunky and bland yet bloated at the same time.  A lot of it is probably my extreme dislike for the dice mechanic combined with thinking about how many thousands of hours it would take for me to organize even the basics I'd need to run a campaign.

I seriously feel like it is a toolbox for creating your own Powered-By-GURPS game rather than any kind of game on its own.  I'd rather just build my own ruleset if I'm doing everything from scratch anyways.

Fudge - I'll never understand why this became such an internet darling - it's the dullest thing since white bread to me.  In play, I quickly understood that if you were good at things, you almost always succeeded while if you were bad at things, you almost always failed.

Hero - The game for people who thought GURPS was too light on rules.  I couldn't get past character creation, myself.  Another guy runs a game of it here, but even the crunchiest min/maxer in the group finds the system too complicated.

Mutants and Masterminds - Sure, its lighter and more focused than Gurps or Hero, but I still have the problem that I can spend hours stating up the same guy by interpreting powers slightly different ways that will get vastly different point totals - which makes me feel like character creation is more of a puzzle solving task than anything.  I also don't care for the "balancing" thing were they offset max offense/defense values.

Shadowrun - I'm a CP2020 guy.  I don't like fantasy in my sci-fi.

D20 Modern - What a dull and botched implementation of a decent concept.

Amber - I have the core book, and I think it's fantastic as a sourcebook. I have no interest at all in the actual game system. It just seems too "improvisational theater-troupe"-ish for my taste.

GURPS - After decades of buying the sourcebooks, my interest in the game itself hasn't budged an inch towards anything beyond apathy. It seems clunky and boring to me, and doesn't seem to fit any of the genres I like when it comes to RPGs. But man, those sourcebooks...the newer hardbacks - Space, Fantasy, Infinite Worlds - are brilliant.

TOON - I'm another one who could never see the appeal of playing out adventures in a Warner-Brothers-Looney-Tunes universe. I love those cartoons, but they're so rooted in the visuals and sound (especially the music by brilliant guys like Carl Stalling) that it makes no sense to me to try to play them out.

Rifts - Reminds me of Gamma World but without the fun. Yeah, I know plenty of people think it's fun.

Shadowrun. Like the setting fine; the game mechanics leave me bewildered and irritated.

Same with WEG Star Wars. Good use of the Lucasfilm photo archives, but the system was shit and the game's attitude was pompous as all hell.

D&D. Even back when it was the only game in town, I kind of had problems with it. I thought stuff like Vancian magic and XP for gold was lame. I've never hated it, but I've never had a D&D game that I thought was amazing. As soon as other games started surfacing I got away from D&D as fast as I could.

Quote from: Professort Zoot;418904D&D every edition.  I played it because too often it was all there was but the alignment system and the process of leveling just appall me.  Runequest saved my life as a Role-Playing Gamer.

I feel very much the same... I've played it, I've ran it... but I never really liked it. Classes and levels and alignments seemed stupid to me from the first time I ever rolled up a character. Once I found Runequest I never looked back (though I've since relaxed a bit and can enjoy the occasional OSR game).

QuoteDelta Green.  Probably would have been fine as a supernatural conspiracy game emulating the feel of theX-Files.  Does not gibe with my sense of Lovecraftian terror at all.

Yeah, I share that one too... I understand the genesis of it as a CoC variant... to give the PCs a reason for being together and staying together... to 'modernize' the mythos. But I think it went too far into the X-files direction. There's still fun stuff to read and cool bits to steal for other games.

My list of what didn't "click" for me, oh and these are all games that I've actually particiupated in as a player.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Played two to three sessions  with same group of guys when I was a teenagere. Never felt 'great' or fun to me. That group stopped meeting after a while for several reasons. (A year later I felt bad for the DM - his best friend died in the WHO Concert stampede tragedy. )

CHAMPIONS: I liked the character sketch space and body outlimners on the character sheets. Thew actual game itself felt clunky and never quite came alive for me. Never had an immersion moment with it.

Rolemaster/Fill-In-The-Blank Law: One of the worst campaigns I was ever in. The group and the DM had wanted for years to do what they called "The Evil campaign". I hated the character sheet (It makes GURPS look easy) The DM also didn't run the combat and spells consistently. HATED that game system. Oh yeah, they gave me a pre-generated fire mage for that game. One of these days I will kill that group off as a bunch of NPCs in a GURPS:Fantasy game.

Dungeons & Dragons 4/e : Recent campaign I played in last year. Again, pre-generated character. Too much of the mechanics of the current D&D rely on knoledge or experiencve with videogames and MMORPG shit. I could tell because all the players at the table that seemed to like - also talked too much about their various MMO games and how oit was nice that it was so similiar.  HATED that game system.  Too many times it felt like a board game and we were just pushing miniatures around. The few times it felt immersive or like a real Role-playing game - one or two other players made noises like they thought things were being slowed down too much.

- Ed C.