Games That Required Too Much Buy-In: Forked Thread: Games that didn't survive...

[Walt C]

This killed my M&M game before it got started. All my players said "uh, we have to do how much work to just get started?" and balked. Everyone's married/kids/jobs and doesn't have the time for hours and hours of pre-prep, which is a shame, since M&M looks like it works well once everything is all set up.

I have similar situations with my groups, and one of the best things about M&M is the sheer number of ready-made archetypes available, both in print and in PDF. Just ask your players what kind of hero they want to play and hand them the archetype.

Walt

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Promethean, Dogs in the Vineyard, Unknown Armies, and even Baron Maunchausen. Things that stray from the find them - kill them - loot them - find more philosophy tend to turn players off.

Which is depressing, because these are a few of my favorite games o/~

 

[Greg K]

This killed my M&M game before it got started. All my players said "uh, we have to do how much work to just get started?" and balked. Everyone's married/kids/jobs and doesn't have the time for hours and hours of pre-prep, which is a shame, since M&M looks like it works well once everything is all set up.

That's when you use Instant Superheroes or the various pdf archetype products.

 

[TerraDave]

Pendragon.

And, speaking of M&M, why I was just thinking this morning about its very involved char gen, in what is otherwise a pretty slick system. A very good example of "too much buy in".

 

[Stormborn]

How could I forget Mutants and Masterminds! There is all the effort of character creation (because somepeople just will not take a premade character and tweak it, no matter what) and then the complexity of an unfamiliar combat system. Tried it and it was DOA because it just too much work to do anything. Actually, I think all we did was a sample combat.


Another thing about MnM that I think realtes to buy-in is the kind of buy-in players and GMs are making. Even if this GM establishes a fairly clear setting and every one likes comics there are so many subtle shades of super hero comics that everyone comes to the table with a different idea. Super-hero team books can make wildly different characters work because a single mind (or two) is guiding the story. Even at the same PL its hard to have a character that would best be at home in Batman's Gotham another in Iron Man's New York and a third in Green Lantern Corps take on a villain that comes from Metropolis. Sure, it can be done, but it requires a certain kind of thought process on those involved and its those initial buy-ins and preconceptions that can drastically effect a game.

Both Unknown Armies and Mutants and Masterminds are on my list of "Games that I would really like to play/run a campaing in but probablly never will."

PS: I agree that Pendragon, while our brief campaigns went well, is ceratinly one of those games where everyone has to have the same mindset going into it or it fails. Its also a game where you have to be happy having random things incluence the development of your character as opposed to you choosing how they develop. Thats a big buy-in barrier for a lot of people.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Really? That's too bad. Of all the buy-in problems that could exist from RPGs, I really have a hard time seeing that Midnight is one of them.

I think it was because the setting if completely hopeless if it's run as the creators intend (and instruct). I love the fighting the good fight even though it's hopeless aspect of Midnight. But being a hero that can only stall the inevitable was too depressing to be a fun setting for him. That dynamic just isn't his cup of tea.

I have a freind who sees things in a very black/white way. I talked about Call of Cthulhu, and he got frustrated with the idea because "You can't kill that monster, so what's the point?" He missed the idea that you can succeed on a different scale: You just stopped the Mi-Go from opening up a portal to summon an Outer God, congrats! You just rescued a whole family from being sacrificed, congrats! etc..
All he'll see is: the game has Cthulhu in the name, therefor he is the end-boss of the whole game. We can't beat him and therefor there is no way to win.

The odd thing is, that same guy who dislikes Midnight, loves Call of Cthulhu! Maybe he doesn't mind that similar dynamic in CoC because he knows there is a high chance for his character's death, so he doesn't get attached.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

I'm gonna add "Ars Magica" to the list. (I'm qualifying "Buy-In" as being more than just a monetary drop.)

I love the game (even got to help playtest 5E), and while you can play with the core book, some of the other books are almost a necessity to get the most out of the setting.

Beyond the need for multiple books, add in the fact that the "classes" (Grog, Companion, and Magus) are inherently NOT equal, but all still require tons of book-keeping.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What's the issue with Unknown Armies? I've never played it, but it seems like at the lower two tiers, it should be pretty easy for people to get, especially anyone who's ever read pretty much any Vertigo comic book.

 

[jdrakeh]

What's the issue with Unknown Armies? I've never played it, but it seems like at the lower two tiers, it should be pretty easy for people to get, especially anyone who's ever read pretty much any Vertigo comic book.

I think the big wall that people run into is that there isn't a single, unifying, cosmology that you can use to quickly sum up the setting. Rather, there is a vast network of several hundred smaller conspiracies, cults, cosmologies, and other weirdness that form the setting -- some directly related, others not. In many ways, Unknown Armies is the Talislanta of modern supernatural weirdness RPGs.

 

[JohnBiles]

I've never had any trouble with getting people to understand Mage, not even when I ran it for a group of people who were all 45+ and only one of them had played an RPG invented more recently than 1984 (They'd all been playing RPGs since the late seventies, but had been using their own homebrew system for decades.)

That being said, my Mage games usually don't get too deeply philosophical.