Games that didn't survive first contact. . .

[Achan hiArusa]

Wraith the Oblivion: Got through character gen and everyone liked their characters. Never ran it again.

Changeling the Dreaming: Had a fantastic first game, everyone loved it. But everyone loved Vampire more.

Shadowrun: I ran a Shadowrun/Cthulhu game, we had a lot of fun. But ultimately, the players didn't like shooting a full clip of rounds into the the Dark Young and having it spit out the bullets. Otherwise, they had had long running Shadowrun games.

Vampire the Requiem: Ran it for a bunch of powergamers. When I told them it would probably last two or three sessions and they wouldn't get enough xp to do anything, but we would have a fun story anyhow, they all quit and went to Shadowrun.

Tri-stat: We were going to play a pulp Cthulhu game in it even though we had access to better pulp games. I didn't min/max my character and the GM was on my case to do so and I refused. We didn't get past the first session.

GURPS: Have never been able to get past the first session anytime I've tried. Fantasy, Modern Day, Transhuman Space, nothing. Tried THS with d20 Modern and I played two first sessions of Singapore Sling with two different groups.

BESM: Everyone loved the system, but we were always doing only a session, then a long hiatus, and then a brand new game.

 

[Woas]

We loved character creation and got well into Session 1, but our first contact with the Duel of Wits rules killed the game dead. What looked good on paper ended up working horribly for us in practice, so the GM fudged the conflict using the basic Versus rules, but the damage was already done. This same experience was repeated almost exactly for all three BW games that I was part of (two of which I played in, and one of which I ran)....

Oh don't get me wrong, I love love love the character burner and that whole processes and would enjoy porting a system like that to other games. But there is a lot of book-work envolved (especially for first timers!) that only a couple of the players got through the process. It probably didn't help that we had access to 2 books for 4 people.

There were a lot of great parts to the book that looked great when reading it. One of these parts that I got really into was BITs, and the idea of having a personal 'road-map' for your character to roleplay by and getting rewarded for it on top of it. It's something I've been trying to bring to all the games I play.


Another game that didn't survive first contact was Ars Magica. Decipe it having the best magic system for an RPG around, the game was just a little too nebulous for us all the wrap our heads around. Like Burning Wheel, I'd love to port parts of Ars Magica (like the magic system) to other games.

 

[Psion]

Well, SotC uses FATE 2.0, whereas I was running with FATE 1.0 (Fudge Edition). I think; I lost track of the version numbers.

Actually, SotC uses FATE 3.0... er, nevermind.

I would not be surprised if the system was shored up & dramatically improved for SotC.

There's a big difference in the way that 2.0 and SotC/3.0 handles aspects (I have no idea how that compares to 1.0, not having been into FATE back then). I can see how the way FATE 2.0 still had married fate points and aspects more directly would make them more abusable.

 

[jdrakeh]

But there is a lot of book-work envolved (especially for first timers!) that only a couple of the players got through the process. It probably didn't help that we had access to 2 books for 4 people.

I could see that, yeah. We had three players and two books and even that was very time consuming. I can see a less determined group of players deciding to sit it down and go with something less work intensive. I think that was a big part of what hung us up with DoW, too -- for as good as it looked on paper, a DoW ended up requiring a great deal more work to accomplish the same end result that more traditional methods (including a basic Versus test) accomplished with much less hassle.

 

[frankthedm]

Warhammer 40K Dark Heresy: The group loves WFRP2E, but this one was a crash and burn. Not all the group is keen on Sci-Fi, and the inflexible one class career system was not as interesting as the WFRP career to career system. The system was also far too focused on being Inquisitors.

Grand Theft Cthulhu: First session had too high a body count for the player's tastes.

 

[Dragonbait]

Usagi Yojimbo (the Fuzion version): LOVE the comic and the setting, but the Fuzion rules didn't really take off in my group. We tried a couple, moved to OA 2ed with the same setting and played a lot more.

Lord of the Rings/Rolemaster: Hated the system. 3 tables to perform some actions?

Project A-Ko: Hahaha, yeah there was a game of this! We played 1 or two games then moved back to our homebrew Mekton Zeta game.

World of Darkness: I made the mistake of trying to GM a group where there was a fey, mage, vampire, and immortal. The system was universal, but the subsystems were not. I could not manage all the different power systems, and the conflicting skill names/details. The system was NOT flawed, it was trying to mix them all for a beginner GM that was the trouble.

Eternity: Just didn't get the system. I GMed several games and had problems the entire time. It was 8 years ago, or so, and I can't remember the problem.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

I'll mirror what some others' have said and go with "Rifts." We had a glitterboy, a godling, a dragon hatchling, a ley line walker. Good so far! Oh and...

...a vegabond.

That right there killed it. Any Rifts game I run in the future, I'll be giving players a list of available OCC/PCC/RCCs.

 

[apoptosis]

We loved character creation and got well into Session 1, but our first contact with the Duel of Wits rules killed the game dead. What looked good on paper ended up working horribly for us in practice, so the GM fudged the conflict using the basic Versus rules, but the damage was already done. This same experience was repeated almost exactly for all three BW games that I was part of (two of which I played in, and one of which I ran).

Some people seem to love the DoW mechanic, but it just didn't work for anybody that I played with. I think what got in the way was the idea of scripting out arguments beforehand, rather than making individual arguments and then proposing counter arguments. Staging everything in advance isn't how arguments typically work in real life and, for me, it felt incredibly awkward in actual play as a result.

It's ironic that the thing I liked most about the game on paper ended up being the single largest hurdle between my fellow players and having fun. I suspect that we could have just dropped the DoW rules and used versus tests to resolve arguments instead but, at that point, there wouldn't be a lot to set BW apart from any other fantasy game in actual play (I still want to tear out the character creation rules for use in D&D, though).

i love BW in theory, but it needs some mods for it to work for my group. And EVERYONE has to understand the rules for it to work. Scripting combat does not work for us. I thought about just keeping combat the way it is sans scripting (just round to round decision making).

 

[jdrakeh]

Any Rifts game I run in the future, I'll be giving players a list of available OCC/PCC/RCCs.

This would have solved about 99% of all problems that I have ever run into while playing Rifts, though I have never seen any Rifts GM do this. For the record, I've never GMd Rifts

 

[Jackelope King]

RIFTS. Just... RIFTS.

Castles & Crusades. The attraction of the surprisingly elegant SIEGE Engine just wasn't enough to overcome the things we didn't like, with a lack of customization for characters and some changes that struck us as nostalgic but necessary. True20 took its place as the "lite" fantasy game, though 4e will likely supersede it.