Games with "terrible" follow-up editions

[Beleriphon]

Our GM was very upset with the TSR, as I recall.

WOTC owns the IP now. I wonder if they will eventually do something with it. Maybe it's too close to D&D and they want to avoid competing with themselves.

I was reading the rules for Arena of Death, the intro mini-game for Dragonquest, not long ago. Fun game. I want to try it out in 2022.

If they do it would be easy enough to just use it as a D&D Setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

D20 Star Wars was a big step down in emulating Star Wars from WEG Star Wars.

D20 Call of Cthulhu is an even bigger step down from Chaosium Call of Cthulhu.

Basically, shovelling an IP into the d20 system because you can doesn't make for an improvement.

I don't think it was ever done to improve the game. It was done to make more money, and that's about it.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

also! as 'shadowrun' has come up, so many times, has anyone had any experience porting the 6th ed stuff to a different system?

Why bother? Seriously. It's not like 6e lore is particularly good or well-written. It's just more backstory for players to wrap their heads around, and further from the initial setting and themes that were always the main draw.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Back in the day I ran a long campaign in SR 1e. It was fun but the system is clunky. Workable, but clunky.
I played 1 session of 2e and a power gaming buddy of mine broke the system in that session so I don't want to use it.
I haven't played or even read any of the other editions.

But I do love the setting.

Open question: which edition of Shadowrun is playable?

 

[Mercurius]

I mean he specifically kind of pointed out that that particular discussion is going to be useless. Maybe he was a bit too subtle about it.

To try to drag this back into non edition war territory - the various editions of Ars Magica had a variety of negative reactions around them over the years. IIRC - and I might be misremembering - Fourth was especially contentious.

I think "Ars Magica purists" like 2E best - an improvement on 1E, but still sticking close to home. 3E was considered OK, but was infected with White Wolfianism. No one remembers or plays 4E. 5E was better than 4E, but in addition to weird art, still felt somewhat removed from the vital purity of 1st and 2nd edition.

 

[Mercurius]

I'm gonna go with Everway here. The original boxed set was a really innovative, beautiful, thing. The world wasn't ready for it and it had some rough edges, but it's overall an amazing product, IMO. Recently, a new edition was published. It is both extremely expensive and, as far as I can tell, doesn't improve on the original (still widely available) game in any appreciable way. I don't know that I'd call it "terrible" but it seems to be perfunctory, at best.

This is disappointing to hear. I just recently discovered "Silverway" and was excited, as Everway is one of my all-time favorites.

Not to threadjack, but do you own the books? It seems like the page count has enormously increased...I assume that means a ton more lore? Setting stuff? Etc. Is there a lot of new stuff, or did they just incorporate Spherewalker's Handbook into the main books?

 

[James Gasik]

I think "Ars Magica purists" like 2E best - an improvement on 1E, but still sticking close to home. 3E was considered OK, but was infected with White Wolfianism. No one remembers or plays 4E. 5E was better than 4E, but in addition to weird art, still felt somewhat removed from the vital purity of 1st and 2nd edition.

Well considering that they outright stole House Tremere and the Order of Hermes for the World of Darkness, I guess it was inevitable that when they got the license, things would be retconned.

 

[heks]

Why bother? Seriously. It's not like 6e lore is particularly good or well-written. It's just more backstory for players to wrap their heads around, and further from the initial setting and themes that were always the main draw.

because that's the version of the lore that my group is familiar with and wants to use (we've been using the 6e rules, so far, but they're honestly such a mess that we voted unanimously to switch to a different system if we could come up with one that works with the current lore.)

 

[MGibster]

I mean, structuring the entire "engine" around cooldown abilities with outrageous, flashy effects like an MMO is enough to warrant a comparison on its own.

I started playing World of Warcraft shortly after 4th edition came out, and it didn't take me long to conenct the cooldown abilities in the MMORPG with 4E. Plus the roles changed to include tanks, strikers, healers, and controllers which sure seems an awful lot like tank, DPS, and healer we see in MMORPGs. The connection between MMORPGs and 4th edition D&D seemed obvious to me at the time.

D20 Call of Cthulhu is an even bigger step down from Chaosium Call of Cthulhu.

d20 Call of Cthulhu was one of the best of the d20 glut of games that came out. When it came to introducing new players to the game, I think d20 CoC was better than the classic version of the game.

 

[MGibster]

I think the first new edition that really disappointed me was L5R 2nd edition. But it's been so many years, I can't remember exactly why I disliked it. I think they changed the basic roll & keep mechanics and I thought it was a bad decision. (Also, I can't remember why I hated Circuit City so much, but they're out of business now so I feel victorious.)