Games you thought you'd like and hated and games you thought you'd hate and liked

Been awhile since I posted anywhere outside the 4e forum. Taking a break from the realm of madness and insanity

Anyhow I'm a gamer, I play all sorts of games. There have been games that I'd thought I would really like and in the end I really didn't like them. For me this would be True 20. Based on the reviews and even buying and reading the rules I thought that damage saves would be the greatest thing ever. After playing through about 3 sessions I really came to not like Damage saves (too much variability). In the end I came to the conclusion that hit points weren’t such a bad mechanic after all.

Another Game that I was expecting to like and didn’t was Iron Heroes. Even when getting the rules and reading thru them I was anxious to play. After running a few sessions it really didn’t shine on me. I think the idea was great, it felt like the game was more of a beta version that got published. IMHO the game needed some more polish before being released.

On the other hand there are games that I expected to dislike or at the very least be “Meh” about, and they totally changed my perspective. A good example of this was the Warhammer fantasy rpg. One of the guys in my group bought every book released for the system and wanted to run a game. At first I was okay and bought the main book. I read thru the rules and was like “meh! Looks okay”. After playing though I really came to like the rules. The system does have its warts for sure, but it’s a decent game.

So what are your games that you’d thought you like and ended disliking? What are the ones you ended up liking despite initial thoughts of the opposite?

I really want to like GURPS but every time I try to actually play it, it falls flat on its face. In theory, having a completely generic, modular system should be a GM heaven, but somehow it makes characters and spells feel really amorphous, and the combat aspect of the game - again, very likeable in theory - is a pretty fickle thing. I own probably 30 or so GURPS worldbooks, most of which I love dearly. It's a beautiful system - but a pretty lousy game, imho.

1st edition Star Wars which I got as a present was a good surprise. It was the most rules-light system I'd seen to date, and I was very sceptical of the whole cinematic space opera style, but our one shot test-game turned into a very memorable, fun minicampaign.

Jorunkun said:

I really want to like GURPS but every time I try to actually play it, it falls flat on its face. In theory, having a completely generic, modular system should be a GM heaven, but somehow it makes characters and spells feel really amorphous, and the combat aspect of the game - again, very likeable in theory - is a pretty fickle thing. I own probably 30 or so GURPS worldbooks, most of which I love dearly. It's a beautiful system - but a pretty lousy game, imho.

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I found exactly the same thing.

Ditto on GURPS. I want to like it. But in the play it comes across kinda flat. But for source books: it is the bomb. You just ignore the crunch and use the flavour and information.

Hm. Good post.

Always thought I'd hate the Star Wars (d6) system, since I've never been much of a Star Wars fan (blasphemy, I know). But when I played it, and saw how fast it was to run cinematic combats, I fell in love. Because of that game, I actually sat through the star wars movies again (this was before Lucas decided to twiddle with them). Mostly, though, we ignored most of what occured in the movies and just played Space Opera games. Lots of fun.

Figured I'd love Mechwarrior, since me and my friends were HUGE battletech fans. But when we actually tried to play it, the game seemed sort of lame. We just couldn't find much to do that was really all that fun.

Ditto for Earthdawn. My best friend at the time was a huge fan after buying the book, and he kept talking about all the cool things you could do in the game (though even he admitted that "magic is a bit wonky"). The few times we tried playing it, though, it fell apart. I bought it again a few years ago, to see if it was as bad as I remember. It was.

Another friend of mine thought he'd hate Omega World (the d20 version). He felt that goofy RPGs were a bad idea, and he was moritified about the possibility of randomly rolling up a character with lobster claws. I told him that, in the off chance that he got crab claws (1 in 100 chance on the mutations table) I'd let him roll again. Of course, he rolled clab claws, we all laughed, and he played the character anyways. And we had a LOT of fun, and the game changed how we look at RPGs (it has since become our philosophy that random tables in CharGen are a great idea).

Haven't actually played it, but I loved the idea behind Twilight 2000. When I downloaded the book from RPGnow during their giveaway, I loved the material. But I can tell you right now that I'd hate the game in actual play.

Gundark said:

So what are your games that you’d thought you like and ended disliking? What are the ones you ended up liking despite initial thoughts of the opposite?

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Both Mutants & Masterminds (2e) and Iron Heroes are big examples of the "thought I'd like, and ended up disliking" categories.

M&M... well, I don't really like the damage system. But, more to the point, the game thrives on saving throws to avoid special effects. Either a power works or it doesn't, there isn't much of an inbetween. And the Power Level restrictions soon mean there's a sameness to all the characters. You have a power that works 50% of the time (or thereabouts). And if you don't max out your defenses/powers, something that you're weak to just pounds you into the dirt.

The less said about the Constitution Drain power (which costs the same as any other power drain, except it actually kills you) the better.

Iron Heroes has a lot going for it... but suffered terribly from inadequate development and playtesting. Token pools sound good, but for many characters are too hard to build up. I'm sorry, spending a standard action to gain tokens isn't worth my time in a system where a combat lasts four rounds. And then the abilities you can use them for are often completely underwhelming. The less said about a low-level hunter the better.

Oh, and the high-strength characters (with heavy armour) completely owned the battlefield. Utterly. Completely. Dex wasn't giving me a much improved chance of dodging blows, but their DR meant they weren't taking much damage *and* had better hit points. Consider that D&D has huge levels of Sneak Attack for rogues in 3.5e, and IH doesn't approach that...

I played two different characters in the IH game, and both didn't work compared to the strength guys. When all characters are basically melee characters, you need to do more to put them on the same level, and that work was lacking.

Probably the game that has surprised me the most was Marvel Super Heroes, which made a very simple system work really well. It may have been the DMing - well, that almost certainly was part of it - but because of its simplicity the problems with its design really didn't bother me that much. It was fast enough so you didn't have lots of time to worry about what it did badly. It's been ten years since I played it, but I'd play it again.

I haven't played many other games recently (just Amber and every edition of Star Wars), so I don't have much else to say. Though I could go on for some time about Boardgames...

Cheers!

Thought I Would Like But Hated:

True20 -- After some long thought, I realized that despite being based on the d20 System, there was a redicuolus lack of cohesion with regard to powers in True20, both in regard to damage and basic effects. If I didn't want a generic system that emulates genres with supernatural elements or magic, I could see myself liking True20 very much. As it stands, there are simply dozens of better options for on my shelf for that kind of thing.

C&C -- On paper, I still think that it looks fantastic. In actual play, however, for me and for my players C&C didn't provide enough options for mechanical character customization or tactical gameplay (I could have added that stuff myself but, really, it was more productive to simply buy a game that includes it as-written). In the end, it also became apparent that you can actually recreate a near exact facsimile of C&C simply by ignoring 98% of the rules in the D&D PHB, making my purchase of actual C&C rule books somewhat regrettable.

Burning Wheel -- I soooooo thought that I'd like this game but. . . gah! There are two physical combat systems (both entirely different), a social combat system, and several different bean counting resource management systems for everything from physical health to Arete. Ultimately, it seems like the game tries to be everything to everybody and suffers, mechanically, as a result. There are good ideas in there (the lifepaths are brilliant) but the larger game is a fractured, disorganized, mess with no central identity.

Thought I Would Hate But Liked:

Palladium Fantasy -- When reading the rule book, I hated the 'everything and the kitchen sink' approach to races, the inconsistent skill system, and the incredibly fiddly combat rules. In actual play, however, I think only AD&D has produced a more pleasureable fantay game experience for me than Palladium Fantasy. All of that stuff I hated on paper ended up being unobtrusive in actual play. I had a lot of fun playing PF.

D&D 3x -- I put off buying D&D 3x for a looong time. I didn't really buy anything d20 until 2002, and even then, I steered clear of D&D 3x. I eventually played in a few D&D 3.0 games and had a lot of fun. While I'm still not thrilled about DMing D&D 3x (it still requires more preip works than most systems I know, including all of its predecessors), I can think of few systems that have led to more pleasurable gaming for me in recent years.

Add me to the GURPS hatred club - I really wanted to like it, one of my gaming buddies loved it - but after three attempts I decided it wasn't my cup of tea (although since then I have used several GURPS books for reference material when writing modules for other gaming system).

The one that I didn't think I'd like at first but absolutely love is Sidewinder Rocoiled, which I initially bought just as a Western reference source but now have an ongoing campaign with.

Thought I would love Iron Heroes - D&D without some of its most annoying aspects, and with several nifty features added to it? Cool! Then we tried it for a while. Turns out, I really don't love it. The system is pretty messy, like a rough draft. :\

Didn't think I would like Mutants & Masterminds much. Not sure why. Anyway, it's frickin' awesome - for just about any genre.

Thought I would love Arcana Evolved. Yeah, not so much. It's change for the sake of change in some instances, and stuff I could do without in others. Classes that are bland and uninspired, races likewise, some names that are kinda cheesy (IMO) . . . basically, a whole bunch of arbitrary changes and decisions in general. I wanted to like it, and again, tried it for a while. Meh. :\

Didn't think I would like the new World of Darkness. But hey, it's actually not that bad. With just the core book and Second Sight (er, and some roleplayers, etc.,) great things can happen. Not sure about the new lines like Vampire - just haven't tried them. Probably not my cup o' tea. But yeah, IME, the 'core' nWoD works damn well - not perfectly, but very well - for low level mortals (or mortals++) in a terrifying world.

Games I thought I'd like, but hated:

Burning Wheel: After reading the reviews, this game seemed too good to be true. Turns out, it was just too mediocre to be true.

Exalted: Love the setting, love all the fluffy parts, hate the crunchy bits. This is the reason that 4e D&D seems to have sparked my interest; similar fluff, far different crunch.

Battlestar Galactica/Serenity/Supernatural: Love the settings, *hatehatehatehatehate* the Cortex system. Did I mention *hatehatehate*? Because I really, truly, hate that system.

Ticket To Ride: Though not an RPG, I really had high hopes for this game. It came recommended higher than any other game I'd ever read about, so I went out and bought it. I can sum up my experience with this game in three words: Boringest. Game. Ever. I have no idea what it is, specifically, that makes me hate this game so much.

Games I thought I'd hate, but liked:

D&D3: I played 2ndEdition primarily growing up (as it was the new shiny thing at the time) and felt I was being betrayed by the company I'd grown to love (ok, grown to tolerate). I feel kinda silly now, in hindsight, for all the things I said back then in anger.

Legend of the Five Rings: I played the d20 version, loved the story. I glanced at the 2nd Edition d10 rules and thought I'd hate it. Played the new version when it came out and fell in love with the system. Very nice for what it does.

Changeling: I took one look at the colorful drawings and kiddie artwork and scoffed. Then I played it. Holy crap, what fun! Then the new one came out and it just got better. Then Grimm came out, and it was like a kid's-imagination-fueled-death-machine of fun. Because of Changeling, I learned that games based on Fairy Tales could be fun *and* interesting.

-TRRW