How can we sleep while our game is burning? Or, how many problems?

[TheSword]

It depends entirely on the scale of the problems. Bloat was a major issue with Pathfinder. As was complexity as was increasingly niche Adventure Paths.

However none of that would have made us abandon Pathfinder had 5e not been there to lure us away.

There have to be pull factors as well as push factors otherwise the status quo rules.

 

[GMMichael]

I'm very confused by this 1-2-3 phrasing though.

It's for voting simplicity. I don't want to attempt to define "mechanical issue" or "major (mechanical issue)." To illustrate , three of your examples were one-problem examples: combat too slow (x2), and lore sucked.

I do not get the Midnight Oil reference. That song is about returning stolen lands to indigenous folks so...yeah, not seeing the connection to giving up on a D&D game that isn't working. Are we giving up and returning it to its rightful owners? "Here you go, Dave and Gary, have your game back." Confused.

It's just a theme song for the thread. The singer had one problem with dancing: the earth is turning. And one problem with sleeping: his bed's burning! Does that mean he's going to abandon dancing or sleeping?

The time has come. (To change games.)
A fact's a fact. (Stop ignoring the fact that some rules irk you.)
It belongs to them. (Including the licensed content.)
Let's give it back. (Or give it to Goodwill?)

 

[Tonguez]

It's for voting simplicity. I don't want to attempt to define "mechanical issue" or "major (mechanical issue)." To illustrate , three of your examples were one-problem examples: combat too slow (x2), and lore sucked.


It's just a theme song for the thread. The singer had one problem with dancing: the earth is turning. And one problem with sleeping: his bed's burning! Does that mean he's going to abandon dancing or sleeping?

The time has come. (To change games.)
A fact's a fact. (Stop ignoring the fact that some rules irk you.)
It belongs to them. (Including the licensed content.)
Let's give it back. (Or give it to Goodwill?)

Yeah I’m not sure game choice is quite the same as indigenous land rights and the threat of Big Oil….

 

[Yora]

I stopped liking the d20 system.

The D&D 3rd edition PHB looked amazing compared to AD&D, but after 10 years I had such a laundry list of significant issues that I got fed up with the whole d20 engine.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Can’t say I’ve genuinely abandoned a game I liked. I’ve stopped playing certain editions in favor of others, but I’d still play games in those systems if that’s what was on offer.

 

[aramis erak]

While I listed two, I mean two major issues. If I have to make minor rules calls or change a few numbers here and there, that's fine. If I have to make major tweaks, 2 is my limit on those.
Savage Worlds, 2d20, and YZE, I've not found a need to do house-rules for play, per se. I've integrated bits from multiple worldbooks in Savage Worlds.

Prime Directive, my house rules were simply listing the options in use and adding some additional equipment, and a couple canonical races not discussed in the SFU.

LUG Trek, I simply reverse the roles of attributes and skills in the dice mechanics. That solved most of my issues in play with it. It's issues in play. The other change I had to make was jus tmaking specialties always X over the base skill, rather than the taken at fixed level, and if not raised before the base skill is equal, lost. There were a number of minor issues that weren't huge, and I, at the time, preferred the Star Fleet Universe (of SFB and Prime Directive) to the (then) Canon Trek Universe (TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager)

If there are large numbers of minor issues, They can add up to "Not again."

 

[Celebrim]

But I can happily play a game like InSPECTREs that only has a few page of rules and never feel the need to add to or alter it.

For me at least though, I've never wanted to play those light frameworks for more than say 12 hours with the same characters. I guess everyone has different aesthetics but rules light frameworks to me fill like one shots or short campaigns, whereas if I want to do some serious story telling and stay in a system for 300 hours or more than I'm going to want something crunchier with more meaningful advancement. Also light frameworks tend to have one thing that they do and one thing only with the players expected to stay in the lane and not depart from what the system intends to be the play cycle. I prefer in a long campaign for the players to feel like they can just do whatever and the system won't constrain them.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I have never made an active decision to "abandon" a game... where I have purposefully made the choice that I was no longer going to play it. I have, however, stopped playing games I used to play (like all previous editions of D&D), because a newer version game out and I chose to play that instead. Not because it was "better" necessarily, but only because it was newer and I like trying new things.

I am up for playing any game someone offers to run in my social gaming circle, and for the most part I run games for which I have the most material at hand to use (which means usually the current edition of D&D.)

 

[el-remmen]

I think more people should abadon games they don't like and write their own games that match their exact taste. That's how the Dungeon Crawl Classics TTRPG came to be born!

I think so too and totally would myself, but I don't have the available time and energy I once did to put towards RPGs. Basically, I can choose to run a D&D game or two with friends and tweak the rules as issues/preferences come up OR I can stop playing long enough to write up the version of D&D I have in my head (and I do have one in my head) - a project of at least a year - and then playtest it a bit and then run a game or two with my friends.

I just choose to do the former because ultimately it is more fun for me and my friends. If I was still close to my old crew that liked to kitbash and collaborate, we'd probably write a new game while we were playing it, but my current group is not that group.

 

[aramis erak]

I love trying new games and new settings, too... but a lot of them never got a second run because they had large issues.

I've avoided reuse of a few systems where the authors came out with public statements or edition changes that annoyed me after playing the game. D&D 5E is one of those - the OGL F...up & the genericization of races/ancestries from Tasha's onward. TOR 2E for breaking the combat system and putting the game into "Daddy Can I Play?¹" threat level.

But still, two major flaws, flaws that need fixing to be played, are about my limit.

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1: Doom reference; Easiest, least lethal, level of play.