Games with "terrible" follow-up editions

[Ruin Explorer]

The best part about this is that apparently this cost Mike Pondsmith a bunch of money, like alot alot.

I remember, god, this would have been like 15 years ago or something. A bunch of people were making fun of it online somewhere saying how cheap it looked and Mike showed up and told them that all that cost him like 15K or whatever to do.

Which, in addition to being even more hilarious, absolutely blew my mind.

My mind is also blown by this. Back in 2005, the amount of highly professional art you could get for $15000 was, uh, very significant. That was like enough to basically hire an artist full time for multiple months. I suspect now, thanks to videogames and films snapping up so many of the artists who would previously have worked on this sort of thing it might not get you so far, but still jeez.

So we have an intentional decision to blow like, what, probably double the art budget of main 2020 book or more, on photos of dolls. Was this Pondsmith's idea or did someone convince him, "Monorail"-style?

 

[Scottius]

From what I recall Shadowrun 20th immediately and totally replaced the previous version of 4e for everyone I knew. Didn't they also re-organize the whole thing too, in addition to incorporating errata and just being a much more handsome book?

The 20th Anniversary Edition was definitely a major upgrade compared to the original 4th edition printing. It's been a while since I reread the monochrome version but from what I recall the rules were largely consistent but the errata was included as well as more content, better examples and clarity.

Book organization is an issue - I get along better with the DC Adventures book as a quicker reference on MnM 3 than the main line rulebook. I also like the breakout of two of the uber stats into sub-stats.

That said, the big change in MnM editions, I thought, was 1e to 2e. In 1e, I'd have pegged MnM as being at a midpoint between superhero games like Champions (power component point buy) and Villains and Vigilantes (pre-defined powers). The powers were bought with points but incorporated broader power definitions and effects bought with the same power. It's one of the aspects of MnM that really sold me on the game. 2e pushed it more into the Champions direction.

1st Edition M&M was a fun system, the comparison to V&V is an apt one I feel. At the time I was skeptical about a d20 based super hero system being any good but it was 2e that blew me away by giving me everything I wanted out of Champions character creation wise while having a system that I found and much easier and more fun to run at the table.

 

[Bluenose]

Good one!

This one I don't think was as "controversial" since it didn't replace anything it was just kinda a one and done book.

But I love the idea that Monte Cook went "hold my beer" and showed us the world of darkness we really wanted.

A supernatural post-apocalypse Minneapolis.

Apart from Star Wars, which as a licenced game probably didn't need the hassle of two companies publishing competing versions, did any of the D20 versions of IP replace an established game entirely? I know D20 Traveller overlapped with both GURPS and Hero Traveller (whether people consider those "real" Traveller or not), and most of the others I know of still kept the original versions around. Even 7th Sea, although new material for that appeared in their D20 Swashbuckling Adventures line.

And having actually thought about T20, I think I'd argue that the 2320 rules that took the 2300AD timeline forward and converted the system to D20 might be one of the oddest "new editions" of all;

 

[James Gasik]

Ooh I got one, BESM d20! Where they concluded the Monk was the most powerful class because it got the most special abilities!

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Whatever do you mean?

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I have never looked at a Cyberpunk book in my life. I have, however, played a LOT of different 90s era systems.

That is no doubt the worst art I have seen in an RPG product in the history of RPG products.

It looks like a photo someone might send to an artist to give them an idea what they want an actual piece of art to sort of look like.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Devoid of other context, the idea of playing young teens in a Lord of the Flies-style cyberpunk setting with minimal access to weaponry sounds kinda cool. Is it Cyberpunk 2020? Probably not. But the idea of a cyberpunk version of Kids on Bikes, that I could dig.

So anyway Mike came back at us with Cybergeneration. A bizarrely 1970s-vibing RPG, despite very modern art, where hordes of latchkey kids (mostly aged 14-18, but I think you could play younger) all broke up into these bizarrely sharp-edged tribes (which, frankly, were utterly alien to any experience of childhood I've ever come across - in reality kids are always a complex venn diagram of such groups), and got nanite-based superpowers. Surely us numbskulls couldn't turn this into Cyberslaughter '94, right? I mean, the efforts were strong. It was very hard to get weapons, the game was really designed to be about sabotage and evasion, not killing (the "blaster"-type superpowers were basically tasers, for example), and yeah, perhaps Cyberslaughter '94 was avoided. But at what cost, Mike, at what cost? The cost being a game that was, well, pretty implausible and boring, especially to what might be presumed to be the target audience. I was 15 when it came out, the same age as the characters, and whilst we gave it a good go, and I really liked the visual style, it didn't work for us, and doesn't seem to have been at all popular generally.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Devoid of other context, the idea of playing young teens in a Lord of the Flies-style cyberpunk setting with minimal access to weaponry sounds kinda cool. Is it Cyberpunk 2020? Probably not. But the idea of a cyberpunk version of Kids on Bikes, that I could dig.

Yeah, I mean we bought it for a reason. It sounded totally rad to us, all being 14-16 at the time!

It wasn't really Lord of the Flies, though, because it was post-Cyberpunk, but a very much superficially cleaner/safer setting than 2020, and all the edgerunners were dead, retired or settled down. The corporations run the government and take "unproductive" people to camps and so on and it was more a combination of the worst government elements of Singapore and China, but in California, and less anarchist hell-hole.

It was trying too hard to be both The X-Men (or at least The New Mutants) and to be a sort of Kids on Bikes thing, trying to sort of imply you were both underground/homeless and also not, and in fact latchkey kids - like a lot of what was going on just couldn't possibly make sense if you were a homeless kid - most of it even.

I think what really put us off was the YoGangs. There were a lot of them - way more than Cyberpunk classes - nearly 30 I think. And these were the subculture your character was from, and it was just completely not believable to us, as young people, that people would be in like these perfectly delineated little subcultures, totally cut off from the others, and the subcultures themselves didn't really make sense, because like, the game treated them as if they were 24-7 things, but that's just not how life works. It was more like an adult who watches too much kids TV thinks life works or something. Especially as they were treated as little societies. It just didn't fit with anything else about the setting either. If they'd framed it totally differently and made it more like "What's your kid's main interest/skillset", maybe, but literally frame it is as these little societies/cultures.

EDIT - Also the backstory of how you got your powers didn't really add up, because it seemed like it would be too location-specific/one-off (this also meant it could only be set in and around Night City).

And I think this was what kind of killed it - the setting a lot of individually good/cool ideas, but they put together in this way that just defied belief (again especially to us, kids of exactly the age it was about - like we couldn't see ourselves or even a version of ourselves in any of the subcultures - certainly not any single one).

It could have been saved with some reworking, but it just wasn't very well-conceived. Decent art at least, unlike some!

 

[DarkCrisis]

I remember playing a dice-less Marvel RPG and thinking “wtf is this? No dice?”

 

[aramis erak]

@aramis erak, Would you please tell me what is it you like about L5R 5E? Also, are there any bits you don't like?

Just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from:

I really like L5R 3E despite that it's almost unplayable. I mean, it is unplayable without some heavy house ruling. But I managed to play a few enjoyable mini campaigns of it. I guess I like the feel of it.

I'll address 3E first: my houserules for 3E are really short... one house minor added to the Crane Clan. Any others would be unintentional misinterpretations. I found it imminently playable as written... but also, I had players who actually wrote down their specials from high skills.

3E also had raises purely as a press your luck before the roll; I found that playable. Several of my players over the years disliked that, and I am not overly fond of it, but it kept the bushi in check....

So my likes of 5E probably won't match yours.

First, with 5E, I love the reduction to just the 5 rings. while it loses some granularity, it's easily enough handled to import older characters. And the scale is slightly different... but not enough to be a problem.

I also love the roll (Ring×■)+(Skill×⬠)keep(1 to ring), especially the stress system. Backlash is always a choice now; it is no longer merely bad luck. It's a "I need this spell now, and it's going to suck, but let's have it..." Failure can be chosen if the price in stress is too high...

I also love that raises/pushes have become after-the-roll; while 3E was quite playable, it discouraged risky and outlandishly swashbuckly type action. 5E encourages it, via the Opportunity spending mechanics.

A number of other elements

• I prefer the much broader choice of abilities within schools. They no longer feel like classes, and do feel like schools - not every member has the same abilities.
• I prefer the less limited magic.
• I like that magic works like any other talent.
• Combat can be even more brutal...
• The dueling is simpler to run, and more tempting for others to interfere (at risk of honor and glory).
• The art is better and more thematic, but only a bit.
• I can run a 50-on-8 battle without feeling like I need to break out Clan War to prevent it from taking two sessions. (yes, that was minions... 10 squads of goblins vs 8 PCs. Took about 2 hours. did not go well for the goblins, and it was hard on a couple PCs)
• I like the battle system, but it's a conceptually different approach from 3E's... 3E is about what happens to you as a warrior; 5e is you as a commander or non-squaddie hero. That is a HUGE change of perspective.
• I like the various conflict types with proper systems to support them.
• I like the reset of the setting to 1st ed's...
• my players (many of whom are LGBTQA*) love that it's a setting that is (now) LGBTQA* friendly...
• the game plays faster than Star Wars, especially since the dice to be rolled are entirely from the PC's sheet most of the time. (FFG SW uses difficullty as dice added to the pool, while L5R5E uses fixed difficulty in needed successes, and sometimes, needed opportunity, as a particular target might require spends to hit.)

My 3E stuff isn't for sale, but it's likely not going to see play again. If I had players ask for it, I might run it again... but, somehow, I doubt that's going to happen.

 

[aramis erak]

According to rpg.net it includes some Hero/Champions and Cyberpunk, and Victoriana 1e, Usagi Yojimbo 1e, Dragonball Z, Sengoku, Bubblegum Crisis, Teenagers From Outer Space, and a few others.

What RPG.net generally doesn't mention is that most of the games stick to one side or the other, few finding the middle ground. Sengoku is very much Hero-light. Friends tell me DBZ is very much on the Interlock side, tho' not really CP2020.