Games that didn't survive first contact. . .

[Gothmog]

For us, the games that never caught on were:

- WoD Wraith- an awesome game and concept, but I never could quite get a feel for how to run it, and my players had a hard time grasping the themes and concepts. I really hope the nWoD Geist follows in the same spirit, but is a little easier to run and grasp.

- Rolemaster/MERP- not because the system was hard or unweildy (its really not), but because it seemed like every RM campaign after the first I ran (which went for 3 years), seemed to be cursed to end abruptly due to real-life pressures.

- Arcana Evolved- we tried it when it came out, but the consensus in my group was it was too weird, the style of the game was not to our tastes, and it was too "furry" oriented.

- Iron Heroes- good lord, they found a way to make 3.x more complicated and harder to prep. Great idea in concept, but didn't work well in practice. We tried two sessions before shelving it.

- RIFTS- 'nuff said.

 

[Woas]

Burning Wheel
Man what a great read. I suggest it to anyone. Lots of great gaming advice in that tome. But good heavens a difficult game to play. I mean really the core rules are simple but... my group never made it past character gen, which felt like a whole game in and of itself!

 

[The Green Adam]

I'm another that guy...

Exalted:
The art and the concept seemed awesome and right up my gaming group's alley until we realized that the game really isn't about what we thought it was. It may not even be about what the creators think it is. The asian influenced over-the-top martial arts are cool, the magic powered mutants idea is cool, the western medieval elements are cool but they don't seem like they were made to fit together in the same game.

Eberron:
Everyone of my gaming pals who saw this milieu thought I'd love it. "Adam it has everything you use in your main D&D universe - Magical items as technology, lost continents, unusual versions of classic races, etc." Problem was I already had all that and tailor made to the way I like it. Why play something someone else made up that kind of resembles my stuff? Also, the whole "Pulp Noire" concept they never stop reminding us of really ticked my players and I off. Eberron has nothing to do with pulp or noire. There's no noire when everyone and their brother can cast light. There's no pulp when people shoot fireballs, shape change and fly. It just doesn't have the right feel. It reminds me more of Star Wars or epic fantasy.

D&D 4E:
Tried to make a character or two or three and when the third was very similar to the first I got bored. There just isn't enough 'game' yet to run an interesting campaign for me. We tried an adventure or two but the limiting character creation options and heavy combat feel just tired us out pretty quickly. Not a bad game but not my style and not enough customization available right now.

AD

 

[jdrakeh]

Burning Wheel
Man what a great read. I suggest it to anyone. Lots of great gaming advice in that tome. But good heavens a difficult game to play. I mean really the core rules are simple but... my group never made it past character gen, which felt like a whole game in and of itself!

We loved character creation and got well into Session 1, but our first contact with the Duel of Wits rules killed the game dead. What looked good on paper ended up working horribly for us in practice, so the GM fudged the conflict using the basic Versus rules, but the damage was already done. This same experience was repeated almost exactly for all three BW games that I was part of (two of which I played in, and one of which I ran).

Some people seem to love the DoW mechanic, but it just didn't work for anybody that I played with. I think what got in the way was the idea of scripting out arguments beforehand, rather than making individual arguments and then proposing counter arguments. Staging everything in advance isn't how arguments typically work in real life and, for me, it felt incredibly awkward in actual play as a result.

It's ironic that the thing I liked most about the game on paper ended up being the single largest hurdle between my fellow players and having fun. I suspect that we could have just dropped the DoW rules and used versus tests to resolve arguments instead but, at that point, there wouldn't be a lot to set BW apart from any other fantasy game in actual play (I still want to tear out the character creation rules for use in D&D, though).

 

[Obryn]

Actually, SotC uses FATE 3.0

Doh!

Then I ran FATE 2.0, Fudge Edition. Regardless, it was the standalone download on the Evil Hat page. It still may be there for all I know.

-O

 

[JiffyPopTart]

HARN: Spent 3-4 hours rolling up a character and in the end I got a guy who could enchant magical armor...only it took months and months for each item. He had no other abilities.

MERP: Spent a long time (not 3-4 hours though) creating a character and tried him out in a simple combat. Died from being shot in the eye by an orcish arrow in round 2. Quit.

RIFTS: Tried to run a game. PCs were as follows.
Glitterboy X1
Dragon X1
Vagabond X1

Guess which character felt out of place...

ADVANCED THIRD REICH: Not a RPG, but a wargame full of counters. Utterly unfathomable by just reading the instructions. My brother and I couldn't even get the game set up.

MAGIC REALM: Oh man how I wanted this to be playable. Also unfathomable.

DS

 

[jdrakeh]

Doh!

Then I ran FATE 2.0, Fudge Edition. Regardless, it was the standalone download on the Evil Hat page. It still may be there for all I know.

-O

Yeah, that's 2.0 (although there are multiple SotC/FATE 3.0 SRDs on the Evil Hat site, too).

 

[jdrakeh]

HARN: Spent 3-4 hours rolling up a character and in the end I got a guy who could enchant magical armor...only it took months and months for each item. He had no other abilities.

Out of curiosity, why didn't you use the non-random character generation options (such as choosing your own occupation) or choose Shek Pvar spells/abilities more to your liking?

 

[Korgoth]

RIFTS: Tried to run a game. PCs were as follows.
Glitterboy X1
Dragon X1
Vagabond X1

Guess which character felt out of place...

ADVANCED THIRD REICH:

Oh, somehow you just gave me a truly stupid thought! Let's posit a role playing game where you do not play an individual character... you play a vehicle and its crew. And who had a wider variety of cool and kooky armored fighting vehicles than the Wehrmacht?!

Imagine the possibilities contained within the following statement:
"I'm a Level 5 SS Jadgpanther."

 

[DrunkonDuty]

There was this homebrew I chucked together last year. Basically Conan d20 but with a few changes (eg: hit points got changed). Died a death. The group were fairly new to gaming and my changes to the basic rules just threw them. That and I wasn't really prepared for the campaign but got talked into starting before I was prepped.

And RIFTS. God what a nightmare that game is.