Games with "terrible" follow-up editions

[eyeheartawk]

I was just looking into, and discussing in a different thread, about the latest edition of Shadowrun and how it seems to have not been well received by alot of people who played the previous edition. Which got me thinking (a rare occurrence, natch). What other games* have had editions that a not insignificant amount of the existing player-base at the time vocally rejected?

*I'm not gonna say don't talk about D&D editions in this thread, but I don't really wanna get bogged down in debating minutiae of how one edition handled cart laden encumbrance etc, or general edition warring.

 

[Tonguez]

DnD 4e?

 

[Jer]

DnD 4e?

I mean he specifically kind of pointed out that that particular discussion is going to be useless. Maybe he was a bit too subtle about it.

To try to drag this back into non edition war territory - the various editions of Ars Magica had a variety of negative reactions around them over the years. IIRC - and I might be misremembering - Fourth was especially contentious.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I'd say that Warhammer FRPG 3e was pretty controversial for many reasons.

 

[eyeheartawk]

DnD 4e?

Yeah, I guess it is the obvious elephant in the room that needs mentioning, but yeah let's not go hard on this, we don't want this thread to blow up into one of those.

To try to drag this back into non edition war territory - the various editions of Ars Magica had a variety of negative reactions around them over the years. IIRC - and I might be misremembering - Fourth was especially contentious.

Do you remember what was contentious about it? Removed too much stuff? Added too much stuff?

 

[Mezuka]

Star Frontiers got a 1.1 edition in the form of a book called Zebulon's Guide to the Galaxy. TSR Designers proposed the FASERIP colour-coded system as a replacement for the d100 system. There was a big outcry by the community. Wasted pages that could have been used to expand the setting with new planets and creatures, for example. Still today, some are fuming over this book.

 

[Tonguez]

I mean he specifically kind of pointed out that that particular discussion is going to be useless. Maybe he was a bit too subtle about it..

sure, but stating that shadowrun 5e was a confused mess that adds nothing new is anyless edition wars than comparing dnd editions

 

[Jer]

Do you remember what was contentious about it? Removed too much stuff? Added too much stuff?

I'm trying to remember and I think it was mostly that it shifted from being a White Wolf game to being an Atlas Games game. A whole lot of stuff got removed or changed from the game at that point because between 2nd and 3rd White Wolf changed a bunch of stuff about the assumptions of ArM to make it more compatible with their World of Darkness games. I think (and again I might be wrong on this -it's been well over 20 years ) the folks who came in with 3rd were irritated about the changes and the folks who were there from 1e or 2e actually liked the move.

It wasn't outright rejected by Ars folks, and in fact eventually it became a popular edition, but I do remember a subset of folks not moving on to 4e because they liked the White Wolf version more. I may also be conflating the events of the time together - it was a bit of a dark time for Ars as it was sold by White Wolf to Wizards of the Coast originally and they had Tweet working on the 4th edition, and then they bought TSR and their plans shifted suddenly and they sold Ars and their 4e rewrite to Atlas. Some of the fan reaction I'm remembering might be less about the game itself and more about how it was being perceived as being passed around by companies at the time.

(Oh my poor brain - being asked to dredge up 25 year old memories. it's my own fault for having 25 year old memories I suppose).

 

[Jer]

Star Frontiers got a 1.1 edition in the form of a book called Zebulon's Guide to the Galaxy. TSR Designers proposed the FASERIP colour-coded system as a replacement for the d100 system. There was a big outcry by the community. Wasted pages that could have been used to expand the setting with new planets and creatures, for example. Still today, some are fuming over this book.

They were so excited about those color coded tables - some folks must have believed they were the wave of the future. Gamma World had to get a new 3rd edition using them, and Star Frontiers got a stealth half edition using them. And yet the only TSR game that they worked well for was Marvel - in both GW and SF they were just pointless add-ons.

(Same idea worked fairly nicely for Pacesetter though - I remember both Chill and Timemaster being fairly fun games and they used a similar idea.)

 

[billd91]

Two candidates I remember:

Cyberpunk v3 as a follow-up to Cyberpunk 2020
Traveller: New Era as a follow-up to MegaTraveller