hornedturtle
First Post
I thought this was going to be about character actions that ended a campaign before it got off the ground. Like the characters killing each other beacause of a argument in the first session.
Games that didn't survive first contact. . .
- Thread starter jdrakeh
- Start date
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
It can be, for sure. Re-read my first post (specifically the section about Rifts) and my above post about Toon. In both instances, the games crashed and burned at first contact due to GM ignorance or player spasticity. The specifics of the Rifts game are as follow:
Cyber Knight x1
Hyperion Juicer and Coalition Defector x1
Thousand-Armed Godling x1
Coalition Dogboy x1
Full Conversion Coalition Borg x1
In Rifts, all of these characters (except for the two Coalition troops) are idealistically opposed per setting canon. Well, except for the Thousand-Armed Godling, which is really just a mindless, godlike, killing machine. Thus, what we had was a recipe for disaster.
The GM started the game by saying "You arrive at the edge of an open field and across the field you see X!" (where X represented the player character that appeared in your field of vision). Having spent his life fighting against the Coalition, the Cosmic Knight immediately engaged and killed the Dogboy. The Coalition Borg lasted a little bit longer, getting in a hit on the rogue Juicer before dying. The Juicer then killed the Cyber Knight and, in turn, was transformed into a bloody smear by the Thousand-Armed Godling.
The GM was stupified that all of these opposed characters weren't willing to work with one another to "have adventures" for. . . uh. . . no good reason. So. . . he used some kind of hand-wavey magic to resurrect the dead, then dropped some kind of a Giant Redwood-sized treant into the middle of the field (a GMNPC) and proceeded to tell all of the players that they had to get along or he would kill them. Well, needless to say, this got all of the PCs to work together. . . just long enough to kill the DMNPC.
It was a horrible exercise in total failure.
The instances of Toon are a lot easier to explain and very similar. More or less, they all started with the following conversation:
Y: "I attack X's character!"
X: "What?!?! Why do you do that?"
Y: "Because that's what cartoons do!"
SpiderMonkey
Explorer
Werewolf, Wraith, and Mage from the OWoD. We tried. A bunch. Werewolf never succeeded for us, I think, because our ST didn't really know what he was doing and gave up. But tried another time. And again. It just seemed like there were too many suboptimal choices, even for a heavily rp-based game. Wraith and Mage never worked out for us because the settings and foundations of both games were so nebulous that it was hard to conceptualize what was feasible in either setting; this made it hard to even describe or interact in let alone trying to establish a suspension of disbelief or sustainable verisimilitude. The funny thing is, I thought the same of Changeling but then had a great ST who made it work. Who knows?
I'll add another chime for Rolemaster, but to be fair I had a notorious heel for a GM who managed to anti-Midas every other system he touched, too.
Rifts. I'll go with the classic "neat idea but not the system for me" on that one. Heavily restricting the PC available classes might help, but there were gross inequalities in the game that I played. Fortunately, I chose to play a glitterboy and thus had fun. Just not repeatable fun.
I'll add another chime for Rolemaster, but to be fair I had a notorious heel for a GM who managed to anti-Midas every other system he touched, too.
Rifts. I'll go with the classic "neat idea but not the system for me" on that one. Heavily restricting the PC available classes might help, but there were gross inequalities in the game that I played. Fortunately, I chose to play a glitterboy and thus had fun. Just not repeatable fun.
Earthdawn, mostly due to GM flakiness. Everyone was having a good time. We started in a city being chased by some guys, never found out why. The head librarian sent us to some massive dungeon complex that we were supposed to explore and report back. We got there, fought some lizards and were about to enter the complex when the GM says "I haven't got around to designing the dungeon so we'll stop here and play again when I finish, in about three months."
WayneLigon
Adventurer
Cyberpunk 2020. Man, I tried to love this game. It sounded and read and looked so cool, but it was handicapped by the exact same problem that ExploderWizard mentioned. I remember Pondsmith franctically trying to defend the combat system in the main rules book and Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads, which convinced me he was either insane or he was using a vastly different combat system from what he put down on paper. I tore it apart trying to find that one sentence I must have missed that made it all make sense but it just wasn't there. The quick-and-dirty grim-and-gritty death-is-around-the-corner combat was all in Pondsmith's head. Cheap 'bulletproof T-shirt' = Invulnerable to something like 90%-99% of the small arms in the game, which is the only things your Nomad guy should have.
Tunnels And Trolls. I ran this a couple times and while I like the general way things work, it's obvious that magic - since it doesn't add into the general combat roll - was meant to tbe the big tie breaker. The all-or-nothing way combat works means that if you lose the first round, run, because you will never beat them. We could have lived with this, but then we ran into a situation where there was no way for either side to effect the other. It would have been an eternal stalemate. That killed everyone's interest in it and we never returned to it.
GURPS A poor GM almost succeeded in killing my interest in this game forever, but thankfully I was rescued by someone who'd actually spent more than 15 minutes before the game going over the rules.
Tunnels And Trolls. I ran this a couple times and while I like the general way things work, it's obvious that magic - since it doesn't add into the general combat roll - was meant to tbe the big tie breaker. The all-or-nothing way combat works means that if you lose the first round, run, because you will never beat them. We could have lived with this, but then we ran into a situation where there was no way for either side to effect the other. It would have been an eternal stalemate. That killed everyone's interest in it and we never returned to it.
GURPS A poor GM almost succeeded in killing my interest in this game forever, but thankfully I was rescued by someone who'd actually spent more than 15 minutes before the game going over the rules.
Glyfair
Explorer
Space Opera: Spent 1 session with character creation (a 4 hour session) and were so burned out we decided not to start the campaign.
Chivalry & Sorcery: Again, 1 session of character creation, but a brief encounter. Gave up and ended up playing in a Runequest campaign (this was about '79-'80).
Unlike others, I enjoyed my Toon experience. I even know the right group. Unfortunately, we don't get together often and have so many RPGs to play (even did the Rocky & Bullwinkle RPG with the hand puppets).
Chivalry & Sorcery: Again, 1 session of character creation, but a brief encounter. Gave up and ended up playing in a Runequest campaign (this was about '79-'80).
Unlike others, I enjoyed my Toon experience. I even know the right group. Unfortunately, we don't get together often and have so many RPGs to play (even did the Rocky & Bullwinkle RPG with the hand puppets).
Mercule
Adventurer
You aren't alone, my friend. GURPS was the low point of my rather long, varied gaming career.
I'll offer up Aria. Absolutely fantastic mental masterbatory reading. Seriously. Anyone who regularly thinks about gaming when their brain is in idle stands a fair chance of enjoying the read. If your entire group isn't into that level of internalizing gaming, the system just won't work. Don't even plan on most players understanding character creation. Of course, the whole thing is more of a meta-system, so the GM has a buttload and a half of prep work to even get the character creation system ready to go.
Psion
Adventurer
Well, FWIW, I'm glad I didn't take your take to heart way back when I was trying it out. Spirit of the Century is a solid hit in my group, and I'm introducing it to new players all the time.
I do think some concepts take some getting used to, but it does flow nicely and has made for some great games.
Obryn
Hero
Well, SotC uses FATE 2.0, whereas I was running with FATE 1.0 (Fudge Edition). I think; I lost track of the version numbers.
I would not be surprised if the system was shored up & dramatically improved for SotC.
-O
