Games with "terrible" follow-up editions

[Scottius]

All my experiences with GURPS were 3rd edition too, I note. It was around for 16 years so a long time.

Same. I still have a large library of 3e books and pick up more when I find interesting ones used. Never made the jump to 4e as I wasn't really playing much GURPS around the time they transitioned.

 

[Voadam]

The GURPS WoD books were at a GURPS point/power scale where you were mostly designing at the character creation stage with little room for normal GURPS progression to affect most anything other than a few skills from xp. I expect GURPS Supers would play out the same.

The GURPS WoD books were pretty fantastic as all in one (or two for VtM) sourcebooks for WoD basic lore for the three big classic WoD lines (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) though. I used the Werewolf one for that purpose recently.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I never saw much point in GURPS 4e. Still have a bunch of 3e stuff and at the rate at which they publish books for 4e will never catch up to the breadth and width of the 3e line.

That and the rules changes aren't really significant enough to warrant the investment.

 

[Ulfgeir]

The GURPS WoD books are for GURPS 3e.

I thought they were, but wasn't quite sure just how old they were... Have actually played a convention scenario where the characters where build with GURPS Vampire, and then converted to Savage Worlds to make it a faster game...

 

[Scottius]

The GURPS WoD books were at a GURPS point/power scale where you were mostly designing at the character creation stage with little room for normal GURPS progression to affect most anything other than a few skills from xp. I expect GURPS Supers would play out the same.

The GURPS WoD books were pretty fantastic as all in one (or two for VtM) sourcebooks for WoD basic lore for the three big classic WoD lines (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage) though. I used the Werewolf one for that purpose recently.

I feel that same sentiment can be applied to the entire GURPS line. When it came to setting/history/research purposes their books are phenomenal. I regularly use my GURPS books as reference material for just about any RPG I run even though I rarely use them for GURPS games at this point.

 

[Thomas Shey]

EDIT - Man I really want to complain GURPS Supers more one day, good god that was a bad idea. C:NM was tedious but GURPS Supers was just basically a bad idea from the ground up.

Its not a coincidence that even a lot of GURPS fans didn't like GURPS Supers. There's a lot of different ways for expectation clash to happen in games in general, and things like whether you're looking for something more like Champions Complete or Supers! RED tends to turn on things that actually don't have much to do with the genre they represent (I've seen massive superhero fans react badly to either one, even though I think both are sound designs for what they were doing).

But GURPS Supers (at least prior to the current version, which I'm told is better but don't have personal experience to say one way or another) went at its fundamental design apparently not understanding how much of anyone wanted a superhero building system to look. When part of your design process uses "How common is this?" in assessing costs, you've pretty much missed the point out the gate as far as superheroes go.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I feel that same sentiment can be applied to the entire GURPS line. When it came to setting/history/research purposes their books are phenomenal. I regularly use my GURPS books as reference material for just about any RPG I run even though I rarely use them for GURPS games at this point.

This has been a pretty common sentiment about those over the years IME.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I think the absolute worst must be Paranoia 3e and 4e - two editions so bad that even the internet has suppressed knowledge of their existence. Seriously, they have fewer fans even than "Highlander II" and "Star Trek V" - that's how bad they were!

This was going to be my suggestion, but apparently every edition of Paranoia has been perfect. The computer told me so.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

So there is Gamma World, mentioned up thread.

1e and 2e remain the best editions. So many have come since, and some, like the gonzo D&D 4e inspired one have some fun stuff, and some are just terrible.

3e Gamma World probably is the most disappointing game product I have ever bought and tried to use.

I’ve only ever played the 4th edition, but it was wacky fun. Were the first 2 editions wacky or serious?

 

[aramis erak]

kApart from GURPS Supers (which might as well have been called "GURPS: This is why you don't give people 400 points and access to all the books"), I've never played a superhero RPG that felt less about superheroes/superheroics.
[snip]
EDIT - Man I really want to complain GURPS Supers more one day, good god that was a bad idea. C:NM was tedious but GURPS Supers was just basically a bad idea from the ground up.

I was a part time GURPS GM when Supers came out... 400 Points? Sure...
until my supers players (for the one session) used Horseclans, Fantasy, and Commonwealth.... The 400 point wizard was, by himself, well more than a match for any proper super built. I GM'd a number of one off fights to prove it, even tho' I'd not run G:Supers ever as an RPG attempt.
When you give a Cat 300 points of spells, things are weird. An the pre-contact thranx as a super was cute... totally a wimp, tho', as the point totals were spent on powers without setting limits... and the limits being used still didn't make him the equal of the 400 point wizard.
G:Supers was the point I started to dislike GURPS player-culture, too, as players took and dumped everything into Atts and Powers, with only 1 point in the skills for their powers, because it was mathematically more efficient... but ignoring that the concept wasn't a hulked out braniac... and, every power roll was, without mods, only going to be an issue due to autofail at 16+.

 

[TerraDave]

I’ve only ever played the 4th edition, but it was wacky fun. Were the first 2 editions wacky or serious?

No version of it was that serious.

If it was the 4th edition--from the 90s--it would be comparable.

If it was "D&D Gamma World" associated with 4th edition D&D, that is probably the whackiest of all.

 

[Thomas Shey]

No version of it was that serious.

If it was the 4th edition--from the 90s--it would be comparable.

If it was "D&D Gamma World" associated with 4th edition D&D, that is probably the whackiest of all.

You didn't consider the Alternity version relatively serious?

 

[James Gasik]

You didn't consider the Alternity version relatively serious?

That someone remembers Alternity is impressive! What's next, will someone bring up The Amazing Engine in a post?

 

[Thomas Shey]

That someone remembers Alternity is impressive! What's next, will someone bring up The Amazing Engine in a post?

I owned the majority of products for both of them.

 

[aramis erak]

That someone remembers Alternity is impressive! What's next, will someone bring up The Amazing Engine in a post?

I'm happy the Amazingly Bad Engine is still, for the most part, dead. Neat enough idea, but not good mechanics.

I also have run Alternity. It's an amusing system, but suffers the same nasty bits about all dice by difficulty systems: can't just look at your sheet and roll; have to wait for the GM to set the difficulty. Didn't play enough for it to get smooth, but ran it for the Retail Play program. Half the players liked, half disliked.
Was annoyed that the Starcraft box was a sampler, not a proper setting, and that the full starcraft setting corebook never made it to my FLGS. (Not that it seems to have been released...)

 

[aramis erak]

Uhm, it was mostly a slightly modified and renamed Disadvantage system, which absolutely came from Hero.



I'm not clear why you say that with the latter. CNM had any number of problems, but needing C4 wasn't one of them.

If you wanted powers not in CNM, the instructions in CNM referred one to the HSR4 rules. The selection in CNM was too pedestrian.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you wanted powers not in CNM, the instructions in CNM referred one to the HSR4 rules. The selection in CNM was too pedestrian.

I'll just point out CNM had everything Champions had up until the Champs 3e additional supplements. That might have excluded some things some people had gotten used to, but it was well within what Champions players had gotten by with for two and a half editions.