Games you were turned off of and why

[Elemental]

Rifts: Love the setting, ran an epic campaign in the setting, but eventually the flaws got too big to ignore. But it was a great big, fun, gonzo, bad-for-your-teeth blast while it lasted--super-powered lizardmen blowing up space dreadnoughts with solar flares, the PC's flying round in a million-year old sentient spaceship made from nanotechnology, an android and Atlantean fighting a horde of bio-cyborg mercenaries....just typing that has made me want to run it again.

I'd love to find another system I can graft the setting to, that can keep the same 'feel', but owing to Palladium's beautifully deluded stance on homebrew material, it'd be a lot of work.


Shadowrun 3: Liked the look of the setting (seeing a theme here?) The combat rules made my eyes bleed, and I couldn't even get started on the rules for vehicles, magic or hacking. Somehow, it managed to be absurdly over-detailed and ridiculously unrealistic at the same time, which is quite an accomplishment.

 

[painandgreed]

Rifts - Don't like the setting. Don't like the system, but that could be salvagable with a 2nd edition.

WoD 2.0 - Most of it is ok but I can't stand the system. I liked WoD 1.x and thought it was a great system with lots of flexability for great detail if wanted or a simple default mechanic if not. 2.0 simply seems too dumbed down to be of any real interest to me. One roll combat just seems to tip the game too far to one side in the ease of play/realism balance that makes a game enjoyable to me.

Tunnels & Trolls, Cyberpunk (early editions of both) - Too often possible to have combats where one side will never have a chance of ever being able to harm the other.

Mind's Eye Theater LARPing - OK, so all my friends that I played Vampire with were either punk rockers or goths long before the game came out and we liked it because it was a cheezy stereotype. Too many of the LARPers were gaming geeks trying to be goth whose fantasy lives didn't quite match up to what we actually did last Saturday night. I don't need a game to PRETEND that I'm wearing $300 worth of clothes from Hot Topic, hanging out in a cemetary, and preforming illegal activities because I'm gaming to do something besides that for a change. There were literally multiple times a friend of mine would describe her activities from the previous weekend and my response would be "Really? I don't remember seeing you there." only to find out she was talking about "the game."

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

3.x D&D - The concept of balance over flavor, and IMO fun, and the fact that it plays nothing like D&D that I like makes me dislike this game. I never had as little fun running a RPG as I did with 3.0. It was much closer to work than a game keeping track of high level parties and what all thier feats were doing to the various rolls and stats and stuff. They only way I'll play it is on NWN to be honest. I think if a game of it came up with friends I'd probably say "no thanks".

Champions/Hero - My experiences are limited to 2nd & 4th editions, but there is just too much going on there. Too many rules. A bit on the complex side for me.

FASA Star Trek - Loved, Loved, Loved the setting materal. Thought the system was mediocre except for the combat system which was horrid beyond belief.

TSR Marvel Super Heroes - I probably played more of this than any other RPG save maybe 1e AD&D. But man did it have faults. The system was too simple and the charts, which I'm not against in theory, were not well put together. Once we found DC Heroes 1e we quit playing it forever.

Pendragon - Ugh. Didn't care for the system and the tone of the game wasn't what we were looking for. Way too different than D&D for us to handle at the time.

Villians & Vigilantes - Didn't think it did a great job modeling comics as we thought it should. Did love the legal system write up in the core book though.

 

[Aaron L]

WEG STar Wars. Hate the system something terrible.

Any CCG. I dont have the money to spend on any type of random grab bag of game material, and despise the entire concept of collectible games.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Man...I don't understand how anyone can read The World of Synnibarr and come away hating it.

I mean, it is certainly an odd duck--a unapologetic kitchen-sink powergamer's wet dream--but the love and enthusiasm of the Author for the Project really leap off the page at you

Is it playable? Probably not.

Would I like to play it? Definitely

Anyway, the game turned me off was Nobilis. It got quite the tsunami of good press over at RPG.net (which, honestly, should've been my first clue), and the pre-release commetary on it gave the impression that the PC's were going to be "Godlings" who were something akin to The Enfdless from the Sandman comics. So far, so good.

Then we played.

It was basically just nonsensical. Firstly, a whole ton of was required regarding your "home base" and your "boss", and you did play some manner of "otherwordly superpower", but the effects of it were so varied in their utility and reliability (our God of Rage expended most of his power attempting unsuccessfully to get a fussy baby to throw a temper tantrum) as to be useless.

The game world itself was just atsy-fartsy gibberish, akin to the "jargon-fest" that was the Old World of Darkness, but without all of the charm and "ease of connection to the matrial" for the players.

Also--and inexplicably--most of the specific terminology used in the game was based on...flowers (the Game Master for instance was called the Hollyhock God for reasons never adequately explained).

The whole thing was just non-fun dog's breakfast of bad ideas coupled in perfect harmony with poor mechanical execution.

I'm pretty certain RPG.net still loves it though

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Y'kow...I almost picked up Nobilis.

For an art department to work THAT hard to make the game sooooo pretty...it had to be good, right?

And yet, as I read it, I was struck that it reminded me of The Primal Order...but not as logically. The terminology was abysmal. The mechanics? Ugh!

But it was soooooo pretty...

Everytime I went into the game stores, I looked at it. Everytime, I left without it.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Y'kow...I almost picked up Nobilis.

For an art department to work THAT hard to make the game sooooo pretty...it had to be good, right?

And yet, as I read it, I was struck that it reminded me of The Primal Order...but not as logically. The terminology was abysmal. The mechanics? Ugh!

But it was soooooo pretty...

Everytime I went into the game stores, I looked at it. Everytime, I left without it.

I'll grant you, it's production values were top-notch.

 

[Testament]

NWOD-I liked the OWOD system, this one is sort of weaker and the story isnt even interesting, aside from the one in the core book about the Angel being found on the moon, that was cool but the other books are lacking seriously in meta-plot.

Lack of meta-plot, I thought, was kind of the point.

 

[mythusmage]

Man...I don't understand how anyone can read The World of Synnibarr and come away hating it.

I mean, it is certainly an odd duck--a unapologetic kitchen-sink powergamer's wet dream--but the love and enthusiasm of the Author for the Project really leap off the page at you

Is it playable? Probably not.

Would I like to play it? Definitely

What is The World of Synnibar?

The World of Synnibar is 70s era Marvel comics on Jolt Cola.

 

[mythusmage]

... the game turned me off was Nobilis.

What is Nobilis?

Nobilis is 70s era Marvel Comics as written by 1st year philosophy students.