Games that didn't survive first contact. . .

[Remathilis]

I asked WTF could have caused that and was told that because this man had sooooo.... much money he had a MAGIC trap installed, despite being told numerous times magic didn't exist...

Anytime I hear a DM say the words "this is a no-magic campaign" my brain instantly translates it as "You, as PCs, will never get to use magic. I, as DM, will run the game as if it was Elminster's Birthday Party on Eberron and there is nothing you can do about it."

 

[billd91]

For me, the games that didn't survive first contact were:

Vampire: discovered I didn't find playing a vampire to my taste at all

Robotech: based on Palladium, we got a bunch of mechs shot out from under us in the big Zentradei invasion and never did figure out movement rules for vehicles ... quite frankly, we never found any that were identifiable.

Recon: character stats were on a d100, so were most skill levels, and so was skill resolution. Swingiest game I ever played.

 

[Dykstrav]

RIFTS: There are already alot of RIFTS posts, but what the hell... I tried playing RIFTS twice myself, and both times, the games fell flat. There were just too many character options and no coherence or direction to the plots, although I'm willing to concede that as most likely being the GM's fault rather than the game itself. I might try it again if the right GM ran it.

Wraith: the Oblivion: This is actually a game I love dearly. I'm actually a bit pleased to see it discussed so much, even though many people haven't enjoyed it. I've never really had any problems explaining the setting or society of wraiths beyond laying out the cosmology a bit (although players do tend to get caught up in the Shadowlands/Temepst thing for some reason, but it rarely goes past the first session).

With Wraith, my problem has always been getting players that can actually make characters. I don't mean in the "assign dots to your attributes and abilites" sense, but in the "what is so important to you that you can't pass on?" sense. In my experience, the players are generally enthusiastic about selecting their powers and figuring out a basic concept of who their character was in life and how they died. It gets hung up on passions and fetters. The players who are excited about their characters ("Cool! I can use Outrage to start fires in the living world!") fall flat when they have to describe why their characters have those powers and what they intend to do with them ("Uh... My guy was a pyromaniac, I guess.").

I've found that players enjoy the game with a bit of coaching, especially in the area of character design. The Outrage guy that I reference above just wanted to start with Outrage 4 and be a classic poltergeist type of character, but the game requires a bit more development than that. So I walked him through his character concept, and we decided that he was a cop who was gunned down while on patrol and felt like the department didn't do enough to investigate. Now he haunts the run-down parts of the police department and parts of the bad neighborhood he used to patrol. His passions include discover who his murderer is (anger) 3, renew the investigation into his murder (determination) 3, keep the old neighborhood safe (pride) 2, and protect beat cops (pride) 2. His fetters include the bulletproof vest that failed him (4), his old badge (2), the police department building (2), and the photos of his wife who divorced him after he joined the force (2).

Fun stuff. Sure, helping a player design a character might be construed as "railroading," but the player needed it and we both had a blast with the character. I particularly enjoyed playing his Shadow and its attempts to destroy the evidence he needed and ruin his old neighborhood.

Wraith is a very character-driven game, and bluntly, players who sit on their hands if they aren't spoon-fed the plot won't enjoy it. Alot of the drama and satisfaction of the game relies on players selecting long-term and short-term goals for their characters and working towards them. Fighting against your own Shadow is really cool when done properly by a skilled storyteller, or it can be contrived and wooden when handled poorly. It really is a game where you have to actually design the characters and their backgrounds and have a skilled storyteller to pull it off.

 

[WayneLigon]

Anytime I hear a DM say the words "this is a no-magic campaign" my brain instantly translates it as "You, as PCs, will never get to use magic. I, as DM, will run the game as if it was Elminster's Birthday Party on Eberron and there is nothing you can do about it."

That is perhaps the most succinct post on the matter I have seen in a long time. I certainly appreciate the idea of a low/no-magic campaign but all too often the above is what the reality of things actually is.

 

[JeffB]

I find the comments re: MERP and Rolemaster kind of "shocking" as I find 3.X far more difficult a game to run than either of those ICE offerings. RMSS could be pretty unweildy but RM/RM2 (now RM Classic I believe) were cake compared to 3E, MERP even more-so.

I was out of gaming for quite some time, so most of my experience with running/playing games besides D&D was in the 80s, and in recent years owned alot of newer games, but mostly just as reading material.

So my list

1) Powers & Perils. This made RMSS and 3.5 look like T&T.
2) Man Myth & Magic. Cool idea, horrible mechanics
3) Adventures in Fantasy (Arneson)
4) Runequest 3. I'm a huge RQ2/Glorantha fan and wanted to love this and bought tons of stuff for it. But it was so dang clunky.
4) Swords & Glory-Tekumel
5) Twilight 2000 (original) again, wanted to love it, but ended up writing my own system and borrowed the fluff.
6) Universe (SPI)
7) Most everything from FGU but V&V and Aftermath (and that was pretty brutal)- Chivalry & Sorcery/Psiworld/Space Opera/Merc/LOA/Daredevils all just flopped with me or my groups-all of them are beyond clunky.
8) Fringeworthy/FTL/Stalking The Night Fantastic- again all brilliant ideas and horrible horrible rule sets. Fringeworthy especially was a great idea.

I'm sure I could remember more if I really tried

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Wraith is a very character-driven game, and bluntly, players who sit on their hands if they aren't spoon-fed the plot won't enjoy it.

This is both WtO's strength and it's weakness.

 

[pawsplay]

This is a painful one for me to 'cuz' I really wanted this to be cool. I loved practically everything from R. Talsorian but they should have just worked to make their Interlock System actually interlock instead of recreating a poor man's HERO System.

AD

Yeah. I was terrified at one point that Champions was going to be a Fuzion game permanently.

 

[Dykstrav]

This is both WtO's strength and it's weakness.

It's definitely not everyone's cup of tea. It does happen to be mine. I love ghost stories, and in alot of ways, Wraith seemed like it was tailored exactly to my play style and aesthetics when it came out. Every time I can get a group together for it, I rejoice.

Now that I've had a bit more time to think about it, I've never played a game of Werewolf: the Apocalypse beyond the first session either. I did play in a LARP game that allowed vampires, ghouls, normal humans and werewolves and I played a vampire, if that counts. I've had my character concept shot down by storytellers (beause I'd want to play a hippie-peacenick Child of Gaia that focused on social skills and hated violence, or a Shadow Lord who favored himself a Machiavelli and never sullied his own hands with blood when minions could do it).

Other players actually stopped and stared icily at me when I tried to talk to NPCs. In three of the five Werewolf games that I tried to talk to NPCs, I was literally told to, "Just cast detect wyrm, that'll tell you if you can kill it or not." Storytellers would call for Empathy rolls when I tried talking to NPCs, and then tell me, "You realize that you should use sense wyrm." The Werewolf games I saw were gore-choked abattoirs where you needed a State-level CSI unit to conduct the body counts and identify the victims.

This was extremely jarring to me--I came in from Vampire at first, and every other World of Darkness game I played focused more on social interaction than murdering monsters. The last straw on Werewolf for me was when I had a character object to killing some normal humans and the characters asked me why. I began reciting portions of the Litany, and the game ground to a halt for half an hour as the storyteller and I explained the Litany to the "experienced" Werewolf players (in a chronicle that had been going for almost four years). The players got huffy at me that I'd "resort to legal tactics to advance my agenda," convinced that I really didn't understand Werewolf at all because I didn'y just murder everything I came across.

 

[Jhaelen]

This was extremely jarring to me--I came in from Vampire at first, and every other World of Darkness game I played focused more on social interaction than murdering monsters. The last straw on Werewolf for me was when I had a character object to killing some normal humans and the characters asked me why. I began reciting portions of the Litany, and the game ground to a halt for half an hour as the storyteller and I explained the Litany to the "experienced" Werewolf players (in a chronicle that had been going for almost four years). The players got huffy at me that I'd "resort to legal tactics to advance my agenda," convinced that I really didn't understand Werewolf at all because I didn'y just murder everything I came across.

Ha! That sounds familiar. After reading the books I was quite interested in playing the game because I liked the spiritual side of it. When I tried to recruit players, though, everyone could only ever think of 'splatter-type' campaigns, so I decided to leave it be.

I had similarly bad experiences when talking with Vampire players, btw. All they ever talked about was what kind of incredible powerhouse characters they had. Sometimes a bit of intrigue might be involved but never the slightest indication of the tragic side of being a vampire. Everyone seemed to enjoy being a blood-sucking monster.

Regarding Wraith - I fell in love with the rpg immediately but I also knew immediately I'd never find players who'd 'get it'. Plus, I'd rather play it than GM it.

 

[ShaggySpellsword]

Hol: But that was because I am quite certain the game wasn't MEANT to actually be played. Stupid gaming parody made up to look like a runnable system.

Call of Cthulu d20: We made it through a session. We even had a few moments of fun. But never more fun than we had playing 3.X ed/D20 Modern/Rokugan d20/Iron Heroes/Mutants and Masterminds/Star Wars Saga/4 ed. We never went back.