I have seen a lot of people complain how they loved such and such a game system until a particular supplement was released for it that they claim "ruined" the game for them.

Examples include:
"I used to enjoy AD&D 2e until the Players Option books came out."
"GURPS was great until they released the Compendia"
"I loved D&D 3.x untill they started coming out with all the splat books"
"There are so many books for that game that it is now unplayable"

I must admit that I don't understand this mentality at all, at least not coming from a GM. If you enjoy the core rules, and you dislike a rules supplement so much that it "ruins" the game, then simply don't use it. Rules bloat? Just limit what books you are using, or allowing the players to use in any given game. That is why they are called rules supplements, they are OPTIONAL supplemental packages of rules you can choose to use or ignore. If they were "mandatory" rules additions (not that anything is mandatory with RPGs with a little house-ruling) they would be called rules erratta, core books or rules patches, not supplements.

From a players prospective, I can appreciate the complaint a little more since you can't control what the other players can and can't use, but you can still limit yourself to a few rulebooks without becoming vastly underpowered in most decentgame systems.

Anyway, I thought I'd ask if anyone here had any experience with or insight into these kinds of complaints about a game.

I have never had this problem, since I can happily ignore any supplement I don't care for.

I do get, however, that some folk feel the need to incorporate all supplements into a game while some players will implicitly assume that supplements are being incorporated, so I can understand the problem.

I'm also in the "don't use it if you don't like it" crowd.

In fairness, Maximum Metal did fuck up one's chances of getting a noir-style CP2020 game unless you had a regular group already who liked that sort of thing. So, you know, it didn't ruin my day, but it was bad for many others.

And the Skills and Powers stuff was great until you figured out how it works. Like my 1st level cleric with fighter THAC0 who was only allowed to use a longsword (oh noez!) and regenerated like a troll.

Once those books hit the market, they changed the tone of what you meant when you said, f'rex, "Let's play some Second Edition!" Sure, a given GM may always choose to ignore it, or even a given group, but the more varied your gaming groups the more likely a bad sourcebook (or just one not to your taste) was to wreck your drinking water.

Yeah ... like Ape says, it can drift the perceived meaning of the broader term.  Mostly, though, I find that's just a communication issue.  Like, when I run or play Amber I say "I only believe in the first five Amber books ... all the Merlin stuff, not so much," and people generally understand what I'm talking about.

If you have enough self-knowledge to say "This supplement ruined the game for me!" then you have enough self-knowledge to know that you need to be explicit about not wanting that supplement included.  If all you lack is the chutzpah to make your desires known then my sympathy ... well, I have sympathy, but it's limited.

I think most people who say "I like X until Y came out" are perfectly happy to jettison Y and everything that came after it and keep playing X. A lot of the time, what they're saying is that they no longer support the direction which the publishers are taking X in; that supplement Y is a step in the wrong direction, a path which the publishers are taking the game down wiht they are not willing to follow.

So they keep playing X with their old rulebooks and stop buying supplements, which kind of sucks for the publishers.

I really liked Exalted until Exalted 2e introduced crunch-fest.

 - Ian

Ok, I think this also extends to content in games and those that create them. For instance Nox has a noisome hatred for many of the folks behing GURPS and some of the content. He recognizes that he likes the game anyway and proceeds to find a way to enjoy it nonetheless.

I admire that in him. I hold him up as the model for this idea of just ejecting the material you dislike, or modifying it, or finding a justification for using the stuff you like.

I'll further admit that at times I find it rather difficult. Though I've never regretted just gritting my teeth and grinding things out to get to the good stuff.

Edit: *sigh* maybe Nox isn't as good at the above then I give him credit for...

Edit: well, I'll just say that I think Nox is an idiot to have more respect for the KKK than hollywood, not to mention other possibly worse things he's had to say..

Mage, until Mage Revised.

Quote from: WarthurI think most people who say "I like X until Y came out" are perfectly happy to jettison Y and everything that came after it and keep playing X. A lot of the time, what they're saying is that they no longer support the direction which the publishers are taking X in; that supplement Y is a step in the wrong direction, a path which the publishers are taking the game down wiht they are not willing to follow.

So they keep playing X with their old rulebooks and stop buying supplements, which kind of sucks for the publishers.

Right.  I have no idea why someone would take that statement any other way.

Quote from: Ian NobleI really liked Exalted until Exalted 2e introduced crunch-fest.

 - Ian

Hm.  Would you mind explaining?  I'm interested.

I too abandoned Exalted after 2e came out.  But I wouldn't say it was because things became a crunch-fest.  Rather, the changing up of the base system seemed to work faster in-play.

My problems were, if I can think to innumerate them:

• The new system changed things radically but didn't address the problems I already had.  Charm interrelations were still too complex, balanced challenges still too difficult to judge without long-term experience with the system and mastery of the Charm system, NPCs were still too complex to construct.
• Social combat was too intrusive and tightly wedded into the system to ignore.  It also sucked.  I hated stuff like Stealth charms using social combat mechanics.
• Subsequent books had White Wolf's usual lack of coherent design.  The ST Companion was sheer awfulness, having kludge mechanics obviously written independently of the corebook.  From what I heard, the DB book had the same sort of problem.  Why plunk down money for a system when the designers don't care enough to make sure it works?
• Frankly, I already own almost the entirety of the first edition gameline.  Mechanically, very little of it is usable or convertible to 2nd Edition.  I'd have to go about purchasing the DB splatbook again if I wanted DB antagonists.  I just couldn't be arsed to go through all of that again.

for me it was the inclusion of "swift/immediate/whatever" actions for d&d 3.5.  i enjoyed the game, didn't really mind the switch from 3.0 to .5.  but adding in a new type of action reminded me of the rules changes that i hated (and drove me away from) magic the gathering.  

i did houserule it away, tho, and made it clear to my players at the time.  

i can see adding rules options, but a new type of action is changing a core mechanic.

Battletech / Mechwarrior. Loved the 3025 setting. Hated the Clans and the munchkin-tech they introduced. We moved to Mekton and Silhouette for mecha action but if ever we wanted to go back to Battletech, it was always to the pre-Clan settings.

GURPS was great until they released Space and Supers first edition and grandfathered in the resulting steaming heaps of bad decisions into third edition.

But the problem is that GURPS wasn't even a complete gamesystem when it first came out.

We loved the options of Y but the implementation of Y left a lot to be desired.  Going back to just X seemed dull.  Like playing Rifts with just the core book.  It seems like you are taking away the games greatest appeal, player options.