Failed promises

[Kanegrundar]

I totally forgot about Gamma World D20. Just once I wish the writers of new eiditons of D20 would just listen to the fans and give us what we want for a change. In both the D20 and the Alternity editions the fans clamored for a return to the "wahoo" style of play with mutant animals, mutant plants, and over-the-top action. Alternity gave us a very toned down version, but at least gave us mutant animals in a Dragon Article. The D20 version gave us nanites...great. I'm so sick of writers giving us their vision of what GW should be like, and give us the version that we want.

I'm calm now...and off the soapbox...

Kane

 

[Kanegrundar]

This thing that still gets me about Chaosium on that was how based on the lackluster sales of DoM, they dtiched a lot of their D20 aspirations. All I kept thinking was: "Duh!" If they would have put some real effort into truly CONVERTING Stormbringer to D20 instead of changing a few stats and then cutting and pasting the rest, I have no doubt they would have sold a ton of them. It's a shame really, since we're never really going to see any support for CoC D20, one of the best D20 games on the market.

Kane

 

[Morpheus]

The 1st edition of Conan was not pretty. Lucky for us, Mongoose owned up to their mistakes and fixed most of the problems (at a chepaer price).
The Lost City of Gaxmoor fills me with dread to this day. Why it's still sitting on my bookshelf, I'll never know. Oh wait, that's right, nobody else wants it...

 

[amethal]

Almost anything I bought from Fast Forward Entertainment - even after I knew what to expect, and only got those books I could pick up very cheaply, they often failed to meet even my minimal expectations.

Arcana Unearthed was a disappointment, but only because I had such high hopes for it. There's nothing wrong with it - and plenty of people rave about it - but it just failed to grab me somehow.

Complete Divine was a let down because of all the errors in it and the ease with which divine metamagic could be abused (especially as written, when it wasn't clear if you actually needed to have the feat you were reproducing).

I had a very depressing conversation with someone who had maxed out his turn undead / day attempts, created a character which would have had little prospect of surviving at low levels (but who cares when he's only being played from 12th level onwards) and thought any DM who wouldn't let him have 6th level spells last for 24 hours (never mind that a persistent 6th level spell is the equivalent of a 12th level spell) was a no good cheat.

On a more positive note,

D20 Paranoia is fantastic (and free), I love the True20 system, and the Expanded Psionics Handbook was unexpectedly great.

 

[The_Universe]

There have been many books that I avoided purchasing because the actual product wasn't as thrilling as the concept should have been. Of the "Races of X" (X=Destiny, Stone, the Wild, Faerun, Eberron) only Races of Eberron really caught my fancy. I thought the planar handbook was a poor retread of Manual of the Planes, with almost nothing I could or would use. Monte's Arcana Unearthed was highly recommended (practically the second coming of the messiah, in certain circles) but it failed to grab me in any way. I don't think I've used a single thing from it, ever.

The Epic Level Handbook was, of course, less than thrilling. It seems to have made epic levels needlessly complicated to run - they distanced it as much as they could from high level D&D. I thought that was ridiculous - if I want to play Epic Level D&D, you can probably assume that I think those levels from 15-20 work just fine and dandy. Those GM's and player's most comfortable at levels 6-12 probably aren't going to buy the book anyway, but that seems to be who it catered to. And the setting suggestions were singularly unhelpful.

 

[A'koss]

The one I was very excited about at the time, and completely turned me off (thank God I had the chance to borrow it before buying!) was the Epic Level Handbook.

I was disappointed as well, but in retrospect it is a monumentally difficult task to extend beyond the levels of the core rules. Especially since you have only a fraction of the man-hours the core books had to develop, playtest it and so on. The core rules just do not make it easy to higher level development and it's something I hope they pay much closer attention to for 4e.

Arcana Unearthed/Arcana Evolved... Too setting specific for my liking, and unfortunately I didn't care much for the setting. Some prunable rules, definitely, but most of the classes and animorphic races really turned me off.

A'koss.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I hope they pay much closer attention to for 4e.

I am confident that they will. Look at the trend: in 2e, you could not go even near level 20 before everything came crushing down. In 3e, you have 20 levels that work well. We can hope that 4e will be rock-solid for the first score of levels, and pretty decent beyond it.

 

[billd91]

The 2nd edition "2.5" of the day "skills and powers" and company were also pretty dissapointing.

I have to agree with this sentiment. I remember getting Skills and Powers, cracking it open on the bus ride back to my apartment, and feeling the disappointment grow in that short time. Probably the single worst gaming purchase I've ever made.

 

[Felon]

I find it somewhat amusing that Deities & Demigods gets knocked for providing stats for gods that are effectively invincible and untouchable, while Book of Vile Darkness and Champions of Ruin were both chastised for statting out ancient, terrible opponents so that they are at least remotely touchable (you know, by plain ol' punk-ass epic-level nobodies). Sort of a catch-22.

 

[Psion]

I find it somewhat amusing that Deities & Demigods gets knocked for providing stats for gods that are effectively invincible and untouchable, while Book of Vile Darkness and Champions of Ruin were both chastised for statting out ancient, terrible opponents so that they are at least remotely touchable (you know, by plain ol' punk-ass epic-level nobodies). Sort of a catch-22.

Personally, having stats for deities doesn't bother me. Having a book full of them, however, is nigh useless. Even typical epic level characters will be trounced by a typical deity.

AFAIAC, a system for quantifying deities is acceptable; though using them may be rare, it gives you a useful tool in the right game. But this very rarity makes a devoting a major part of a book to them wasteful.