Failed promises

[TheAuldGrump]

Great Googly Moogly! I forgot D20 Deadlands!

While I have swiped a bunch of the mechanics for my OGL Steampunk game there were some fairly glaring problems with those books...

The Auld Grump, though I do like the autofire rules just fine...

 

[Breakdaddy]

Ooh, deadlands was weaksauce too! My internal defense mechanism had blocked that one from my memory.

 

[JoeBlank]

Hmm. Of all the crappy kitbooks, the only one I actually have fond recollections of is the Bard's Handbook. The Herald, The Skald, The Meistersinger, The Jongleur, The Jester, The Blade, The Gallant, The Loremaster, The Gnome Professor, The Gypsy--one kit after another that had special abilities with applications that were actually cool, interesting, and innovative. More than one insipient 3e mechanic was introduced. Well-done, Blake Mobley, wherever the hell you are.

Beat the hell out of Song & Silence.

Agreed. I picked up the Complete Bard's Handbook before 3e came out, when I heard there would be a core bard. I think having just read it made S&S that much worse.

 

[wingsandsword]

Ooh, deadlands was weaksauce too! My internal defense mechanism had blocked that one from my memory.

Now, original Deadlands was excellent, it was just the d20 conversion that sucked more than anything else had ever sucked before.

I realized that the original question never specified d20, so in that vein:

The Babylon Project. It was everything a licensed RPG shouldn't be: no rules for playing during the actual time of the show (in fact the book says you must play before Babylon 5 is actually built), no pictures from the show other than an exterior shot of the station on the cover (mediocre drawings for all the illustrations, of about the quality of a talented amateur), no stats for the main characters (and a tiny disclaimer that the book in no way depicted any characters from the show, what kind of strange licensing deal did they have?), a game about warring stellar powers and no starship combat system in any way.

Then there was the actual writing of the book, the system was a strange blend of rules-light and ultra complicated. Very simple task resolution, but hit-location charts that were daunting to say the least. The system was poorly explained, and you couldn't learn a dang thing from just picking it up and looking through it, I owned that book for well over a year before I even understood how the system worked, and that was only when I decided I was going to sit down and read the entire thing cover-to-cover (which just drove the lameness home). I realized how the game was supposed to run, but I also realized it had huge holes and gaps in it that made it practically unplayable for anything other than a one-shot that was tightly scripted to work around the gaps, and that if I ever ran a Babylon 5 RPG, it would never, ever be with this system.

The game was practically unplayable with just the core book, they made one suppliment, which I didn't even bother to pick up. I hear it had an attempt at a starship combat system, but you had to buy a suppliment to have space battles in a space game? What is this, Star Wars Galaxies?.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

The game was practically unplayable with just the core book, they made one suppliment, which I didn't even bother to pick up. I hear it had an attempt at a starship combat system, but you had to buy a suppliment to have space battles in a space game? What is this, Star Wars Galaxies?.

The Earthforce Sourcebook did, indeed, have a space combat system. Not just any combat system, mind you, but one based on the legendary Full Thrust (available for free from GZG), which made it one of the best RPG space combat systems available. It was the best thing about the game.

 

[Remathilis]

3e Psionics Handbook.

Nuff Said.

 

[Axegrrl]

For as much as it was hyped and how much we paid for it vs. how useful we're finding it: Sharn.

 

[Breakdaddy]

3e Psionics Handbook.

Nuff Said.

Yeah the original Psionics Handbook was definitely suckalicious, but the XPH is much better.

 

[Deaths_Fist]

I'm gonna toss in my own opinion here and go with Lords of Darkness, Races of the Wild, and Complete Divine. I'm most disappointed of the above with LoD. I think there was about two paragraphs in the whole damn thing that included something I didn't already know, and there wasn't enough crunch to make up for that fact. The others were just books full of new stuff that didn't excite me in any way. Bland spells, bland races, blah blah blah. There's a few gems in almost any book, sure, but being mostly disappointed by the whole affair just ain't right. I loved the ELH, and Ghostwalk had lots of potential but was just too different to be usable. I get a kick out of the Bonesinger though. I mean...evil undead bards? Hahaha!

Personally, I liked Champions of Ruin, but also found the CRs on the Elder Evils way too low. Then again, I see the Elder Evils as mostly indestructible immortal creatures anyway, so on the off-chance I would actually use them as a monster of all things, killing them certainly wouldn't dispose of them forever. To top that off I find the Elder Evils kind of silly anyway. I wouldn't use them, so the rest of the book is perfectly useable if they're removed.

 

[Elemental]

Deities & Demigods again. Stats for the gods--don't mind that. Except, oops, you made them useless by not including CR's. So much for the epic campaign where our heroes oppose the mad god, huh? And no rules for having a PC ascend to godhood or to run a campaign where all the PC's are gods.

Not really impressed with the BoED either. "Poison is always evil! So here are these substances that have exactly the same effect as poison, only they're good! Undead are always evil! So here are some things that exactly like undead, only they're good, because they're powered by positive energy. And here's some arbitary morality that won't solve any arguments about what a paladin can do. And the grotesquely overpowered Saint template."

The Epic Level Handbook. Could have been soooo good, but most of it was basically normal D&D with the word 'epic' added in front of everything. And in the section on epic adventuring, we get a DUNGEON. Featuring the classic anti-magic field, and a beholder and black dragon that have nothing better to do with their lives than wait behind a pit or behind an illusory wall and wait for 21'st level PC's to come along. And then there are the monsters. Some are inspired, others are just lame beyond words, like the Sirrush or Brachyrus. "Let's take a normal monster, give it +20 hit dice and immunity to these PC tactics.". And the Union Sentinel. These guys could reap in millions from even a couple of adventures, but they apparently hang around and get paid 200 GP a week?

Savage Species was mostly good, despite messed-up progressions (the giants become Large at 11th level, after the minotaur, ogre and troll?) but the anthromorphic animals were atrocious. Whoever wrote the LA +0 for the baleen whale was smoking something wacky.

Monster Manual 3. Is there a houserule I missed that says that all Transmuters go stark raving mad after they learn Origin of Species? Impressive mythological creatures like the Koschei or Thunderbird remain unstatted, and instead we get giant evil tumbleweeds, a crystalline humanoid from the plane of air that hates fire and undead, a lawful good, INT 0 golem made out of light, a giant crab troop transport, and spider-gorilla centaurs?! No frickin' sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads, though they'd have fitted right in. And enough with "A crazy wizard created them!" Please.