Systems You'd Never Play after Reading Them

Aebir-Toril said:

Of course not. To me, at least, Shadowrun seems like a slightly weaker version of D&D with a better setting, it always has. If someone could convince me that Shadowrun had a better rule or ruleset in a certain area, I might play it, but that has not happened so far.

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Its not level based. That alone makes it a thousand times better than D&D and allows for much more character concepts than in D&D where non-combat skills are always tied to your ability to murder stuff. Not to mention that Skills are a lot more important in SR than in D&D.

Derren said:

Its not level based. That alone makes it a thousand times better than D&D and allows for much more character concepts than in D&D where non-combat skills are always tied to your ability to murder stuff. Not to mention that Skills are a lot more important in SR than in D&D.

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Really?, I haven't looked over Shadowrun rules in a while, and not in great detail. However, now that you say this, I remember a sort of level-less system. I will have to read the rules again sometime.

Witcher TTRPG.
I cannot believe this is not the number one choice on this board.

Well, with the exception of 4e, which people seem to dislike - a lot.

Aw... Dangerous Journeys.
I remember character creation being very broken (especially for assassins; something about order of operations being out of whack). I also remember AEarth setting - terrible. But, the rest seemed okay to us. Of course we were young and had only played D&D and MERP, so our perspective was not very broad. I think we weaved the rules into the D&D campaign, Thunder Roift.

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Arilyn said:

Numenera. There is nothing wrong with the system, perfectly servicable, but I just can't get excited about the player character generation system. I'm also not fond of fantasy that is littered with ancient tech. It's usually not executed well, and I'm afraid Numenera falls into this category.

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I'll admit, the system is minimal - the character creation is fairly limited in its final iteration. However, the setting was done marvelously, thanks to the Cypher system itself, mostly.

Gradine said:

What other RPG books have you read and thought to yourself "who could possibly what to play this?"

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I guess I'll count Savage Worlds - we got so far as to make characters, but as we practiced rolling and understanding the game (before playing), we didn't enjoy the very 'swingy' feel of the mechanics at all. So technically it's not 'read' and saying nope, but rather, we had to see what was read to understand the nope. Some didn't like using d6/d8/d10 etc as conflict resolution - some didn't like the 'tier' requirement for certain abilities. Personally, I wasn't fond of the extreme brutality feel of it. Felt a bit worse than classic WFRPG. I've wanted to try for a long time to give it a 'fair' shot - but every time I try, it just never comes to fruition.

13th Age never really flew with us either; seemed a bit like 3.5 meets 4e, and just never got from the book to the table.

Just thought of one more --- Warhammer 40k, whatever version (Dark Heresy, Trader, etc.)

This is one where I'm not even sure I've picked the book off the shelf to read it. The cover art alone is enough for me to give it a big, fat "nope."


I have to admit, I'm also very surprised at how often Savage Worlds is being mentioned in this thread. Maybe it's just where I was at the time when I first picked it up (sometime in 2011), but I was very open-minded about it, and found it to be EXACTLY what I was looking for.

But if it had been 6 years earlier in 2005, there was absolutely zero chance I would have considered playing/running anything but 3.5; it was the first, last, and only thing in my RPG universe.

I wonder how much of our reactions to certain things like this is related to how "open" we are to it at the time we're first exposed to it. Are we looking at a new system because, "Eh, maybe something else might be fun," but aren't really committed to the idea? Or are we really openly looking for something new and fresh, and really want to dig in and see where it leads?

Something else I did not want to play when I looked it over:
- the Gamma World edition that adjudicated everything with The One Comprehensive (Rainbow-Colored) Chart. How excessively comprehensive - and bland
- Gamma World Alternity. GW is supposed to be fun and over-the-top. Alternity combat is gritty and "realistic". Opposites do not attract in this case.
But I like GW as a game concept and background world. I hope 5e can eventually support another GW edition.

Xaelvaen said:

I'll admit, the system is minimal - the character creation is fairly limited in its final iteration. However, the setting was done marvelously, thanks to the Cypher system itself, mostly.

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The Strange interests me more.Have you played it?