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<blockquote data-quote="Nork" data-source="post: 5346471" data-attributes="member: 59879"><p>For me, the hands down winner for this one is Planescape.</p><p></p><p>Awesome to read. Can be fun to run. Usually horrible to play.</p><p></p><p>The basic problem is that in a setting where anything is possible, the players simply don't have any mental reference points that give them the capacity to 'expect' how the world will behave, and figure out how they should behave.</p><p></p><p>Even if the players 'go with it', it is nigh impossible to get everyone on the same mental page and everyone is out of synch as to what exactly is going on. At best, it seemed to devolve into the DM telling a story at the players and telling the players what their characters do to solve the problems since the players will almost never figure it out.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>A strong second in this category is Shadowrun. The terrible terrible rules balance doesn't do the system any favors, but that isn't the real issue with it IMO.</p><p></p><p>Shadowrun is about espionage in a high tech information rich world, espionage means that intelligence needs to be gathered and a plan formulated upon it. Generating that much supporting material/props is too much work for GMs. So the "planning" is virtually always handwaved away since the players are usually lucky to even get a floor plan, resulting in the game becoming either the players sitting there while the GM tells them what their characters do to infiltrate some location, or a dungeon crawl style string of encounters against security guards (at which point the system's terrible terrible rules balance rears is ugly head).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Nork, post: 5346471, member: 59879"] For me, the hands down winner for this one is Planescape. Awesome to read. Can be fun to run. Usually horrible to play. The basic problem is that in a setting where anything is possible, the players simply don't have any mental reference points that give them the capacity to 'expect' how the world will behave, and figure out how they should behave. Even if the players 'go with it', it is nigh impossible to get everyone on the same mental page and everyone is out of synch as to what exactly is going on. At best, it seemed to devolve into the DM telling a story at the players and telling the players what their characters do to solve the problems since the players will almost never figure it out. A strong second in this category is Shadowrun. The terrible terrible rules balance doesn't do the system any favors, but that isn't the real issue with it IMO. Shadowrun is about espionage in a high tech information rich world, espionage means that intelligence needs to be gathered and a plan formulated upon it. Generating that much supporting material/props is too much work for GMs. So the "planning" is virtually always handwaved away since the players are usually lucky to even get a floor plan, resulting in the game becoming either the players sitting there while the GM tells them what their characters do to infiltrate some location, or a dungeon crawl style string of encounters against security guards (at which point the system's terrible terrible rules balance rears is ugly head). [/QUOTE]
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