As the title says. If you care to, explain why you thought you'd like it and what changed your mind.
WORLD of DARKNESS - the newer one thats a "core" book.
The overly long flavor text story in the beginning hooked me. Thought I might try to run a game with it , then thought I might adapt it to GURPS mechanics.
Now it just sits on my bookshelf.
Keep wondering what got me to buy it in the first place.
- Ed C.
Shab-Al-Hiri Roach
While the setting is interesting in it's own way, the random event cards are done wrong and sometimes just don't work...
Burning Wheel.
It sounded so good, but it turned out to definitely not be for me.
Exalted. Actually, I love the setting and I thought that the mechanics seemed a little convoluted but wanted to try them out. The system completely and totally killed the game for me. Too many fiddly bits, too many things to keep track of. Exalted would absolutely rock with a different system - I'm not sure which system, just not Storyteller (at least for me).
Star Wars Saga Edition
I bought it used, thought that all the problems I had with earlier versions of d20 Star Wars were fixed in this version, and then tried to play it. While it reads well, it still doesn't capture the feel of the movies like d6 Star Wars does - so it sits on my shelf. I'll probably put it up for sale on ebay here soon.
Earthdawn. I really wanted to like it, but I could never get into the mechanics, which I found to be true of all of FASA's games. Cool setting, great look, but playing it just left me feeling flat.
I'd LOVE to see an Earthdawn D20 though.
D&D 4e-It just doesn't improve on our game, or offer anything I'd need to bother switching
SR4-It sucked in every way possible
Rifts-For a game that could have been so cool, it just sort of fell flat with me
Amber-I loved the books, the game is a lifeless soulless creature
Traveller 4 - After TNE and some cleaned up chargen, it became readily apparent that in the final analysis, MegaTraveller was still overall a better system.
That's still pretty much true today. I'd use Mongoose Traveller's chargen, but I'd probably use MegaTraveller's task system.
Champions - We had a great guy GMing, but the game itself didn't go over.
HARP seemed like a good game, very loose and flexible professions (I think of it as a skill-based system disguised as a class-based system), the races (and half-races) and cultures seemed like good ideas, a magic system with spells that were easy to scale.
I couldn't get past character creation though. Stat scores, stat bonuses, skill scores, skill bonuses, all affecting each other in diferent ways and being affected by profession, race, class...it was too much to keep track of. I never even got around to learning the actual mechanics, character creation was so far beyond me.
Had the same problem with Rolemaster (Rolemaster Express, actually). And the charts, my God the charts! And the full version has many many more?
I want to like these games, I keep going back every now and then, but each time they leave my head spinning before I get through with the first chapter.
Earthdawn. Way more rules-heavy than I was led to believe. And the setting books have a ratio of about 9 parts backstory to 1 part useful game information.
Middle-earth Role Playing. I really thought this was going to capture the "feel" of the Lord of the Rings more than D&D did. It didn't.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1st Edition). After Vampire I thought this would be a really cool game about battling against the monster your character turns into. How to keep it from destroying you and the people around you, and trying to find a way to stop the madness. Not so much. It was about superhero wolf-men battling monsters with magic and swords. Blah.
OK,
Here they are, in order of experience:
Top Secret/SI
Champions
FASA Star Trek
Twilight 2000
Traveler (mini books version)
Bushido
Rolemaster
Rifts
Bubblegum Crisis
GURPS
FUZION
Usagi Yojimbo
CP v3
Capes
Burning Wheel
Savage Worlds. We're Deadlands fans and I was looking for a system for our Crucible games (kind of free-formish one-shots) that was crunchier and more tactical than our usual choice (The Window).
It's not a bad game. But it's something I'd have to do a lot of work to use. Basically, I wanted an electric screwdriver and got a manual one instead.
Seanchai
There have been some, but maybe Earthdawn. When I first read about it, it sounded really neat, but when it came to actually going through the rules and reading the book, I didn't feel anything. No love, no hate, just a lot of indifference. And I really don't have anything more to say about it. I'm sure people are having fun with it, and good for them.
If Midnight counts as a full game, it's another case where I thought the concept would be super-cool ("What if Sauron had won?"). But Midnight didn't deliver what I wanted out of it. I thought it would very much be a Tolkienesque game, just one where the world was a sad, grey and hopeless place, with glowing-eyed dudes in black armour, Big Fucking Wolves, sinister and cold darkness everywhere and an ever-present sense of loss. But Midnight doesn't do that - it treats the idea too modernly, with too much violence, and I think that kills its potential.
HEX, and, man, I tried to like it. I've read it like four times, and each time I like it less. Beyond that, I'll second the negative vote on Midnight.
QuoteThere have been some, but maybe Earthdawn. When I first read about it, it sounded really neat, but when it came to actually going through the rules and reading the book, I didn't feel anything. No love, no hate, just a lot of indifference. And I really don't have anything more to say about it. I'm sure people are having fun with it, and good for them.
If Midnight counts as a full game, it's another case where I thought the concept would be super-cool ("What if Sauron had won?"). But Midnight didn't deliver what I wanted out of it. I thought it would very much be a Tolkienesque game, just one where the world was a sad, grey and hopeless place, with glowing-eyed dudes in black armour, Big Fucking Wolves, sinister and cold darkness everywhere and an ever-present sense of loss. But Midnight doesn't do that - it treats the idea too modernly, with too much violence, and I think that kills its potential.
QFT thank you Melan for reading my mind.
3rd ed. D&D took me five years of playing and GMing in denial to wake up to the fact that I hated the whole thing.
Elric/Stormbringer 5th ed not only did I think the system for magic was flavorless, but the setting materials were weak.
Dude! I looked at Story Engine and I was all, like, "Whoa! A rules-light RPG with a focus on narration and quick task resolution!"
And then I got it, and I was, like, "...huh. A rules-light RPG with too much focus on narration and loosey-goosey task resolution, or...some...thing."
Empire of the Petal Throne /Tekumel. I really wanted to like this game but every time I read it, it leaves me cold. I don't even steal stuff from it.
Regards,
David R
D&D 3e.
After an initial read I thought: "This game merges D&D and Rolemaster -- brilliant!"
After running two campaigns (each about a year long) I decided that I would never run it again. It just wasn't any fun to DM. (I still played sporadically, and that was fine.)
FATE.
Loved how the mechanics read, but was gruesomely disappointed with the gameplay.
-O
Quote from: obryn;217701FATE.
Loved how the mechanics read, but was gruesomely disappointed with the gameplay.
-O
Same. I found it way too granular and loose for my tastes.
Nobilis. I thought it sounded like Amber a bit. I was also under the delusion that it would have a gamesystem better than Amber.
It turned out to be an over sensitive flower lovin' 15 year old Goth girl's wet dream. It didn't have a better gamesystem than Amber either.
Quote from: obryn;217701FATE.
Loved how the mechanics read, but was gruesomely disappointed with the gameplay.
-O
Thirded. I liked the read, but gameplay was lame. I like Fudge and all for the read and the ideas, but none of them games play well enough for me.
Heroquest, read through it, thought it all sounded cool and free-flowing, then we played it and found we ended up concentrated more on the mechanics and stupid point bidding system than we did on the actual action. We struggled on for 6 weeks trying to find if it would work for us and in the end abandoned it.
Vadrus
Exalted, no contest.
The art and some of the promo material gave me the impression that the game was part D&D, part Dragonball Z. What I got was the typical pseudo-intellectual navel gazing tripe that WW is famous for. A vehicle for lawncrapper power-trip wish fulfillment melded to a high-concept setting that made zero sense from the start, and less sense as material was added to it.
Yet I still bought supplements for it, in belief that I was just missing a vital piece of information that would suddenly make the whole thing make sense.
SilCORE (Silhouette v2.0)
One word: Complexity. One more word: Broken.
D&D 3.0, somewhat
Fun for a while, but the crushing weight.... too much like work, not enough like fun. I stopped playing about 6-7 months after picking it up on release day.
If I wanted a game this heavy, I'd crack open my HERO 4th books and do it right.
Hero Wars, the Gloranthan successor to RuneQuest. I detaled my reasons at some length in this review (http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_4182.html).
On the bright side of things, HeroQuest totally redeemed the game in my eyes.
!i!
Blossoms are falling. The Japanese Gaming Suppliment for Burning Wheel.
Love Nipponese fantasy. Have run several campaigns of it. Love Burning Wheel. Like the way it was applied here. Not as fond of the "game burning" in this book. Really, it has fallen flat for me. I should have loved it, but .. nope.. nothing is there.
This really isn't something that happens to me, mostly because I'm not much of an impulse shopper and generally learn enough about any potential purchases well in advance to know whether I'd enjoy them, long before wasting any money or time. I don't think I've ever actually been disappointed by an RPG book already in my hands.
Agone - It had a neat premise to the mechanics (mostly classless, based on skills), but waaaaay too much math... we spent half the game crunching numbers.
I'm going to have to agree with the people said D&D 4e. I played the demo on launch day and I really enjoyed it. Then when I read the books I really felt like I had throw my money away - in fact I returned it to the store. I felt really dirty for doing that, actually, because I'd never returned a gaming product in my life (nor do I hope to do so again) but it really offended me that much.
I picked up Shadowrun 4th and though I haven't played it much, it seems a little like they took out a lot of the fun. The whole wireless net innovation, while a logical extension of the development of modern technology in the real world, is a dramatic change to the feel of the setting that I don't like. (Plus I've never been happy with the magic systems they've used.)
And I know this isn't an RPG, but it's close enough: Quest Cards started out really really fun at first, and I was really expecting to pick a copy up after we finished. But by the end of the very first game I played, having rolled more dice than I do during your average D&D session, and bored to the point where I was relieved when it was all over, I decided I was extremely disinterested in ever touching it again.
First off I would vote up Earthdawn. Really like some of the setting ideas but they are coupled with a bunch of really not good at all setting ideas. Add in the system they used and I never even tried to run it.
The new World of Darkness from White Wolf. To much flavor text, hell a narrative of every single skill is in there. Plus the few other books I read required you to read over the flavor text just to get the details of the setting. Sorry no go there.
RIFTS. Back in the day when it first came out. The adds in Dragon magazine had me hooked like hell. But I had never even looked at another Palladium product so had no clue as to the system, my god the system. Then all those cool things in the adds were tossed together in an over the top gonzo setting that completely grated against my GM style.
Exalted - I liked the setting, and on a read-through the system didn't seem so bad with a little prep. Then I tried to run it. Oy. Won't be doing that again.
Eldritch - it seemed like a great little system, but combat completely soured me on it. Dodging, evading, parrying, etc. are static pools that get depleted by attacks, so as far as I can see it's miss-miss-miss-miss-OUCH-OUCH-OUCH-dead.
Jadeclaw - before I got Qin, this seemed the best choice to run a Chinese fantasy campaign (just strip the furry-ness out). But the editing was so horrible that large chunks of rules on important stuff (like, you know, creating a character) were missing.
Savage Worlds
I read a lot about this game before I bought it. Everything seemed to be something I would like and use. Then the book arrived and it read like a math textbook, or boring as hell. I somehow made it thru the book and then ran a demo game for my friends. We put the game thru the wringer and found the combat system to be decent and even fun. After tinkering with it for a few more months, and buying the sci-fi toolkits, I realized that I was completely unsatisfied with the game as a roleplaying system. I just found SW to be bland, uninteresting, and somewhat arbitrary from a design standpoint.
Savage Worlds, Adventure!, and All Flesh Must Be Eaten were all games that sounded really cool but the rules never clicked with me. Lots of others over the years, but those 3 jump out.
In response to the repeated mentions of Earthdawn, I'll say that it's one of the games I've had the most fun running, and I really liked a lot of what was in there rules-wise. It does have it's failings though. For me the main 2 were:
-combats involving a significant size group could take a very long time to play out and were lots of work for the GM (me).
-the campaign world got a bit too big for it's briches with all of the supplements. I loved reading the supplements which were 95% world fluff 5% game mechanics, but they had the effect of establishing too much of a "canon" for my liking.
each person has there own marits that make or break a rpg.
scion
i was so excitted at the readding of the concept and the world idea i was looking forwerd to the books arival. sadly though the rules are broken and while the concept has worth im porting it to d20 2.0 and savage worlds the ww main stay rules just dont mesh well with the mythos and seem to me is a after thought.
greyhawk
for world ideas this concept is hallow and really never made a impact on me i really believe the only reason it shows up every invisioning of d20 and d&d is becouse of gygax creating it not that anyone has a clue what to du with the conceptthe products are is faulty is most of gygaxs own ideas and i sure hope greyhawk duesnt resurface for a 4e.
traveller
there is not enough space to tell u how much i hate the rules and like the universe concept. if i want to spend time doing math ill do homwork i play rpgs to relax and have fun.
Scion: I liked the oWOD. I really like the nWOD. I saw this and thought, "Neat, an American Gods game!" and had all sorts of fun ideas in my head. Then I read up on it a bit and thought, "Alright, not a bad concept. Not what I would do, but it is something I can turn into an American Gods game."
Then I bought the book, and found an overly complex oWOD derivitive game that was sort of a pain with a setting that didn't make much sense.
I fully intend to convert the bits I like into nWOD.
3.0 and 3.5 D&D: My original thinking was, wow. This is cool, customizable tool kit-esque D&D. Fun! By the time Epic Levels came out I was irritated with how munchkin friendly everything was, and how little story based stuff was there, even in suggestion. I was willing to accept that they were making suppliments intended to be usable with every setting, however, and just ignored it, figuring if I wanted story elements to Feats, Class Abilities, or whatever, I could add them myself. What finally made me throw in the towel and say "fuck it" to ever running that game again is the fact that my most frequent gaming group has about three hard core rules lawyers in it. They aren't bad in most games, but 3.0 and 3.5 have so many fucked up interconected fidley bits that any on the fly ruling, house rule, or anything else caused more problems than I am remotely interested in dealing with.
Because of this, I intend to pick up the first three books of 4e, but I don't plan, at this stage to go any farther than that. It sounds fun to play, but for the moment I'm soured on running anything even remotely rules heavy.
Ironclaw/Jadeclaw- I was looking for a good anthropomorphic animal game after having played TMNT (loved my character in that game, hated the game system). Of the games that were out at the time, Ironclaw looked like it was going to be rather interesting, instead, I was just left shrugging & scratching my head as to why I was bored with it. :(
World of Darkness (new)- I like the rules changes, but much prefer the old world & splats. This new world just does nothing for me. I do like the addition of Promethean though.
I'm sure there are others, but since I dislike them, I've likely done my best to forget about them ;)
Ars Magica 4th edition
After running a long 3rd edition game, I thought the fourth edition would be better. It was streamlined, it was orderly and most importantly, spells went from a list of hand tuned minigames into a standardized mold. I hated it. In retrospect, the seat-of-the-pants hodgepodge spell list was superior in every way.
Feng Shui
Oh, there were a couple of good sessions, but they were the exception. Over all, I think the combat was not interesting enough because it was too over the top. If I ever run a kung fu game again, I'd pick one that's realistic with cinematic highlights instead of all wuxia all the time. I found the 1d6 minius 1d6 dice rolling to be way more trouble than it was worth. I'd happily just call it 2d6 and make up simpler rules for criticals. Still, I'd be interested in playing this with a better group.
Wraith & Wraith 2.0
I've got a soft spot for things that go :melodramatic: in the night. I heard good things about these games but I couldn't make heads or tails of what to actualy do in the setting. As far as I could tell, it was something about being unable to commit suicide.
Adventure! - It read very well. I enjoyed creating characters for it. I even bought an extra copy of the book for the group. Then we actually played the game. I found out that I really hated dice pool mechanics.
HARP - I heart RoleMaster, but it isn't to everyone's taste, and I get that. HARP seemed like a good compromise with my chartophobic group. Turned out to be bland as all get-out; we went back to a stripped down RM2 soon after.
D&D 4e - I thought it was going to be more like SAGA. Boy was I wrong.
Spycraft - I LOVE spy movies, I love spies, I like D20 and I heard good things. Too fidgety for my tastes.
The last time that happened: 4e
I was cautiously optimistic. But I'm not liking it much. Sure, I understand where they are going with this but even knowing the intent, I think they botched the execution.
I've read a lot of people say: D&D 4th edition is a great game, just not a game for me.
I say it's the other way around in my case:
This is precisely the kind of game that was aimed at people like me. Only the actual design is subpar. This is anything but a great game, IMO.
Ars Magica - I like the idea, but the rules drove me bat shit.
Ars Magica 5th: I've always loved ArM, so since I found that Atlas Games was going to release a new edition, I was very excited (as I am now with BRP and SIFRP). In fact, I got it as a present from my wife. There are some improvements in the rules (and some changes just for change's sake), but it feels soulless, it doesn't have the spark that ArM3 had. It's not that I don't like it, but I expected I'd like it way more than I do.
I thought I'd love Dark Heresy, but I didn't. The mechanics, and some of the setting are cool, but overall it was too focused for my tastes on one grim 'n gritty aspect of the 40k universe. The game felt too hopeless to me, even moreso than Call of Cthulhu, so I guess it's not for me.
Quote from: PaladinCA;218538Savage Worlds
I read a lot about this game before I bought it. Everything seemed to be something I would like and use. Then the book arrived and it read like a math textbook, or boring as hell. I somehow made it thru the book and then ran a demo game for my friends. We put the game thru the wringer and found the combat system to be decent and even fun. After tinkering with it for a few more months, and buying the sci-fi toolkits, I realized that I was completely unsatisfied with the game as a roleplaying system. I just found SW to be bland, uninteresting, and somewhat arbitrary from a design standpoint.
Yep, me too. I really wanted to love SW, but disliked it for much the same reasons as you.
D&D 4 - for pretty much the same reasons I was disappointed with SW. Too gamey.
Cthuluhtech: no horror, no genre blending, no understanding of the mythos, no point!