What is your biggest RPG heartbreak?

[ECMO3]

My biggest rpg heartbreak happened with Star Frontiers. I was really into the d100 system and the primary plus secondary skill builds. I hand drew many new equipments, robot models, ships. Bought several official modules. I was designing a BIG space opera campaign. This is going to be great!

After two games the players didn't like the game and told me unequivocally they wanted to play AD&D instead. The first heartbreak is always the hardest. I've had RPG rejection in later years but it didn't hurt that much. I DMed AD&D but wasn't really into it. Took me several months to get back on my feet.

What is your biggest RPG heartbreak?

[edit: typos]

Tasselhoff Burrfoot in one of the 1E Dragon Lance adventures falling off a good dragon during an ariel battle over the city of sanction and landing in a Lava river so his body could not be recovered and raised.

 

[happyhermit]

It would have to be 4e D&D for me I guess, only because unlike pretty much all the other systems I am really not into, I kept getting roped back into it.

The only actual play podcast I stuck with for years (Critical Hit) played it until very recently. Mountains of "You just played it wrong" arguments online. The fact that I am the kind of person who likes to be able to find enjoyment in all sorts of games. Whatever else, somehow converged to keep bringing me back to a game that in the end just isn't any of the things I want from ttrpgs, and each time I noticed more things I don't like. Coupled with the attitudes I later read about from the advertising, and the behaviour of it's fans, it just kinda got pushed into a different category than other games which I generally can only get worked up enough to say "meh" or "not something I would want to play all the time".

ETA; Burning wheel

 

[Older Beholder]

I played a Kenku dragon-blood sorcerer a few years back which was a lot of fun, but just as he was starting to come into his own (around level 6 or 7) our DM wanted to make the switch to Traveller, and so his story line ended with being stuck as a prisoner to a bunch of Yuan-Ti.

The idea for the character was based around the idea that at level 14 a dragon-blood sorcerer can sprout wings, thus breaking the part of the Kenku's curse that stops them flying. Not that I ever expected to make it to level 14. It was just a bit heartbreaking to have to retire the character I cared so much about.

 

[bulletmeat]

My limited knowledge of Rifts (I've never played the Palladium version, though I have read their sourcebooks for inspiration when running it in Savage Worlds) suggests that a GM needs to be very careful about the power level and make sure that you don't get Glitter Boys and regular "MARS" characters in the same party, at least not without taking that into account with the adventure design.

I always started Rifts in or around Chi-Town so that super-powerful beings had to stay under the radar or get hosed pretty quickly. I always wanted to do a True20 Rifts game because I think that system had enough flexibility to run a fair amount of items (once I simplified the damage track).
For me True20 is my heartbreak. I'd love to run Star Wars or a Rifts clone but it was too much for my OSR group or not enough w/the 3rd edition group.

 

[Emerikol]

For me True20 is my heartbreak. I'd love to run Star Wars or a Rifts clone but it was too much for my OSR group or not enough w/the 3rd edition group.

Pretty neat you got both a 3e "heavy rules" group and an OSR "light rules" group.

 

[bulletmeat]

Pretty neat you got both a 3e "heavy rules" group and an OSR "light rules" group.

I had one then the other. Now neither.

 

[dragoner]

I always started Rifts in or around Chi-Town so that super-powerful beings had to stay under the radar or get hosed pretty quickly.

Chi-town burbs were a good adventure area, I played a lot of Rifts from mid-90's to mid-2000's; usually we kept the imbalance more to have the powerful RCC/OCC's be foes, and not PC's. That said we had a lot of fun, stuff like Juicer, Mind-Melter, etc. taking a Triax dimensional bathysphere to Worm Wood to find a magic flute that would lead the Gargoyles out of Europe; or a baby dragon, ley line walker, taking on Archie at Aberdeen.

 

[bulletmeat]

The shortest RIFTS campaign had us locked in a secret mountain vault in the NGR controlled by a nuclear powered brain. Couldn't roll to figure out how to get out so I shot it. Nuked us all only an hour in a half in.
Good times.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Being in a campaign for 3 years and being 5 or 6 sessions from completing the main story line with 16th level characters (the highest I ever played) and then 2 people moved away. We never got to finish.

Old-School Essentials, maybe. While my players haven’t demanded we do something else (yet?), there have been a few comments on the lack of options or the (in)capability of their characters. That’s why we’re giving Worlds Without Numbers a try in a few weeks. It has more of the stuff they like while still being GM friendly and OSR-adjacent. Of course, that could also turn out to be another RPG heartbreak. Hopefully not because I’m running out of ideas for things that would make everyone happy.

I have been playing World Without Numbers on and off for the last few months. Our group absolutely loves it. We are doing a rotating DM thing so I’m not sure if it’s the game itself that I love or if it’s the DM who is running it. I love the toned down stat bonuses, the carrying capacity rules or the hit point/stress system.

have fun with it!

 

[Blue]

I once ran a game with 12 players plus henchman. And if anyone else dropped by they would have been more than welcome to play.

Curios, did you ask for player buy-in for that many? When the DM needs to divide their attention that many ways, work in character arcs for that many characters, when combat is soooo long between actions. That impacts them greatly as well.

I probably would have skipped on a 12 player game.