Games that are fun, but need a one-in-a-million GM

[BluWolf]

I loved the Storyteller settings when they came out. I bought five or six Vampire books.

I found a few guys that were playing and joined in. First session was a blood bath drive from LA to Chicago. We would stay in motels during the day and each time one of the PCs would order a pizza and kill he delivery boy. ugh. Not what I was expecting at all from the game.

So I decided I would run a few scenarios. And while they were not the childish suck-n-slash sessions of the other GM. They still did not capture the fell of what I thought was possible.

I have since realised, that while I am an excellent DM I don't belong behind the screen of any other game. Its true. Because I have tried to run SF games with the same bland results.

 

[Vaxalon]

Continuum is another one.

I've never run it... it looks really rough to run.

 

[Sammael99]

Continuum is another one.

I've never run it... it looks really rough to run.

That looks soooooooo weird !

 

[Undead Pete]

Continuum is another one.

I've never run it... it looks really rough to run.

I bought it because I'm a big fan of time travel, etc.... but after reading it through, it seems nigh on unplayable.

It would fine as a setting for a novel, but beyond that.....UGH!

 

[Xarlen]

Changeling.

This system is for fairytales, however the system REALLY cutsied it up. I remember a friend telling me they played a game, and the villain was the 'Crayon Dragon'. C'MON, where is the Brothers Grim?

This system is for those who remember what it's like to be a kid, and imagine. But it can definetly be dark and twisted; I could see Pennywise, for instance.

A political campaign.

Something with lots of intrigue and schemes and stuff, I would think really does take a good DM.

 

[Pielorinho]

Changeling I've played a few sessions of, and it went pretty well. The best story-arc was one in which my character had sworn an oath to kill a dragon. It was the last dragon, and when I finally figured out where it was, killing it was great fun -- until the dragon lay dying, and it asked me to finish it, and I realized that there would never be any more dragons, and that my grand quest was over.

That, for me, is the feeling of Changeling. Very bittersweet.

Wraith I've played twice. The first time we didn't use the shadow rules, and it was reasonably fun (we played ourselves as pseudowraiths, realizing that we'd been in a terrible car accident and hightailing it back to the hospital before our bodies died for real). The second time, we did use the shadow rules; we played on a drive back from New Orleans, and as my shadow whispered in my ear I grew more and more tense, until I realized I was driving close to 90 mph, and I called a halt to the game. It was really unpleasant, and I've not played it since.

I really like Mage's system, but I find their coincidental/vulgar magic rules to be self-contradictory. I'm playing a game of it right now, and trying to convince my storyteller to be totally arbitrary with the dividing line between coincidence and vulgar: the rule doesn't make any sense to me, so I'd rather have a sense that magic is whimsical.

Mage, more than any other game, requires really good players. The magic system is so open-ended that it's very difficult, especially when a PC's life is in danger, to remember the limits of one's paradigm on magic.

Daniel

 

[Tsyr]

Changeling.

This system is for fairytales, however the system REALLY cutsied it up. I remember a friend telling me they played a game, and the villain was the 'Crayon Dragon'. C'MON, where is the Brothers Grim?

This is kinda what I was talking about... Changeling isn't insane or anything, it's just different. Actualy just about anything out of folklore can be used in changeling... Trolls (Well, ok, there is a kith "Troll", but you could also create bridge-monster type trolls), Griffons, Dragons, Phoenix, Giants, you name it. But too many people I've found either run Changeling as "Gingerbread Houses and Land of Oz" type games (to be fair, some of the published adventures sorta support this mode of play), or else basicly as DnD in the modern day world. Neither of these really does the setting justice. Changeling has all the potential to be just as dark as any WW game (Well... ok, wraith is more depressing, and probably Demon will have more potential for sheer atrocity, but...), but more than that, it also has the potential to be a very SERIOUS game. The court politics, the eternal paradoxes involved in being a kith, cultivating life and creation and imagination, trying to reconcile your mortal, banal existance with your chimerical one, staving off both banaility and bedlam, etc... and that's on TOP of the actualy adventures, which can be as chimerical or as banal as you like.

 

[Jack Daniel]

I think it's just further proof that the d20 system works. People can claim all they want that it's a video game in book form, or that it's a wargame and not an rpg, but when you get a talented DM behind the screen of the game that started it all, there's really nothing like it. Have you ever actually played a tearjerking game of D&D?

 

[Florin]

I think a lot of White Wolf's games are hard to run the way the company means you to run them. They are about personal horror, so it takes a very perceptive and mildly sadistic GM to run them and to really get down into your character's psyche and mess with him. I've had this happen once, during a Mage game, and I was about ready to cry because there was no good answer to the problem I was facing. It was the best game I ever played in.

The one game I think takes the best players, the best GM, and the most amount of trust between them all, though, is a LARP. I've played in an incredibly awesome Vampire LARP where everyone was focused on making sure everyone else had fun, but I've also played in a Vampire LARP where the players were only concerned about getting as much power for their own character. I really enjoyed the first, and I hated the second.

 

[Azimer the Mad]

When I run Changeling, I like to think it's kinda like if the characters from Record of Lodoss War lived in San Fransisco, had Peter Parker's problems on top of fantastic quests, and the whole thing is written by Neil Gaiman.

Yes. Changeling requires effort to pull off well. But when it is, it's phenomenal.

Werewolf as is good. I actually played in a campaign that didn;t have combat until the third session. Amazing.

For me, I choose Deadlands, Champions (Fuzion-style), and Call of Cthulhu. Not because of inherant difficulty. Because my all players have played under me in these games, and dammit, most are too intimidated to GM them rather than play. Every feel like you'd really want to play in your own games?