Games you were turned off of and why

[Turjan]

What is Nobilis?

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

I just had to steal this pic from DSPaul on rpg.net:

 

[wingsandsword]

Wraith: For people who think Vampire is too happy and cheerful, or just can't let go of a dead PC from another game. Seeing a pack of character sheets at a game store that are dressed up to look like death certificates is a bad first impression for a non-Goth. In fact, I don't think anybody who wasn't emo or goth ever actually played the game of their own volition (except maybe somebody who just could'nt let go to their favorite PC in a WoD game and talked the GM into playing his former character as a Wraith)

RIFTS: A train wreck of notoriously terrible rules fused to a misshapen frankenstein of a setting that tries to be just about every genre and does none well. Yeah, it might be cool to have skull-themed quasi-facist giant robots and psionic drug-enhanced super-soldiers fighting vampires and dragons and when you're 14, by the time you're 18 it seems juvenile and lame. Kevin Sembieda's notorious bad attitude and really crummy production values on the books didn't help much either.

Star Fleet Battles: I didn't have the duel with a Rules Lawyer, I stumbled into this game unawares. When I really became big Trekkie (circa 1991, when I was ~13 years old) and I ran across a hobby/gaming store, the first thing I looked for was a Star Trek game, and this was all they really had on the market at the time, so I shelled out for lots of stuff at once and tried to learn the game with a friend. Two 13 year old kids who want lots of action and starship fights and excitement. . .are going to be really disappointed trying to puzzle through the esoteric complexity and steeped blandness of SFB. I still have all the stuff, but it never seemed like anything worth playing.

Warhammer 40,000: I didn't get into this game, but I came close. I saw some really spiffy demos of it that made me really interested in playing it. It seemed pretty neat, so I thought about getting my own army, until I saw just how much it was going to cost, then paint, then get terrain for, then update it all periodically, then notice how much more expensive their minis were than every other brand made me really hold off. Then stopping by my FLGS when people were playing regular games (not a demo for other people's benefit) and seeing almost every game degenerate into bickering and rules lawyering over the newest version of the Codex and tiny details of rules and I realized it really wasn't anything I wanted to get involved with.

AD&D: I played it happily for a few years, but once I saw 3e and how much better it could be, I just couldn't go back and play what I knew to be a game that was inferior in every way. I would look at the rules only allowing 1 16th level Druid in the entire world, or no monks higher than 14th level in the entire world, or the arbitrary demihuman level and class limits, or the clunky NWP/Thief Skill systems and know there was a better way.

 

[Dragon-Slayer]

So far Human Occupied Landfill is looking like one of the better role playing games out there as nobody has mentioned it here. One of the few rpgs truly appreciated while drunk on hard alcohol and listening to Ministry full bore.

edit: if people do not like DnD 3.x, why are they here? There are plenty of forums and messageboards and email groups for other games. Being here merely to natter seems a waste of time.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

I'm not picking on you here - it's found elsethread, too - but this doesn't seem like a reason to be turned off. It's a great reason to not play! To me, though, "it turned me off" suggests that you thought you'd be interested or enjoy it but you weren't or didn't. Like my experience with Nightbane - a game on that premise could be fun, it's just the game that sucked.

If you think vampires have to be bad guys, and you don't like playing bad guys, what possessed you to give Vampire: the Masquerade a shot? Same question goes to the people who don't like supers as a genre and nominated supers games; I'm baffled.

I didn't know anything about the game when I played. I quickly found out and never played it again. Pretty simple (I thought).

 

[Urizen]

WOD (all incarnations) Because I cannot stand the game system. I have absolutely no proof to this claim - call it a gut feeling if you will - but I feel they took bits and pieces of the Shadowrun D6 system ( 1st and 2nd editon) and used it to make a hodge-podge system that ultimately boils down to how many dots you have in a given dice pool.

The fluff for the setting was, in my opinion, great! Nice and dark, but I like dark settings.

Rifts is too bubblegum for me and has WAAAAY too many elements in it, not to mention the fact that combat can take hours to resolve. THE MAGIC SYSTEM SUCKS. It could have been a great post apocalyptic setting, if they had only mainted their focus... ahh well.

 

[Rockwolf66]

I googled this and went to the site and downloaded the game (they have a free download while they playtest the current rules)

Let me say that Rifts is divinely inspired holy writ compared to that game....I feel that my IQ has slipped a Stardard deviation after skimming the PDF. I plead with those of you out there who are considering looking this game up....don't... the game is really that bad. Now if you'll excuse me my brain is leaking and my eyes are burning.

I have the PDF saved on my computer and locked under coded password as something to turn into an autodownload virus for a couple of EX's of mine.

Yes the game is one of the worst I have ever seen. Still it gives you some ideas about BMI and a couple other things.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Warhammer 40,000: I didn't get into this game, but I came close. I saw some really spiffy demos of it that made me really interested in playing it. It seemed pretty neat, so I thought about getting my own army, until I saw just how much it was going to cost, then paint, then get terrain for, then update it all periodically, then notice how much more expensive their minis were than every other brand made me really hold off. Then stopping by my FLGS when people were playing regular games (not a demo for other people's benefit) and seeing almost every game degenerate into bickering and rules lawyering over the newest version of the Codex and tiny details of rules and I realized it really wasn't anything I wanted to get involved with.

Your intuitions were quite valid. I've spent ~$350 on my space marine army and haven't even touched them in almost two years. The models are extremely pricy, and seem to have a bad habit of getting more expensive every year or so, and the codexes themselves are $15 or $20 each. The game flat out encourages massive buying because everything is glued on the model, but in order to use a model in an official tournament, EVERY item has to be clearly displayed. So if you have a unit leader that you'd want one weapon or another, depending on the max points or the opposing army, you're getting two models! And I've played in about twenty games now. Every single one has resulted in rules-bickering to some extent. Though, that might just be the people I played with.

I'd also like to add to the votes for AD&D and MtG. My reasons why have all basically been stated already in others' posts.

And. in defense of Changeling, I played it once as a one-shot run by a pretty good GM and it was one of the most fun games I've ever played in. I haven't played any other WoD, so I don't really care how it fits in with the other games. We played it as elementary kids, took a light-hearted approach to it, and had a blast thinking up uniqiue bunks for our powers.

 

[Particle_Man]

AD&D: I played it happily for a few years, but once I saw 3e and how much better it could be, I just couldn't go back and play what I knew to be a game that was inferior in every way. I would look at the rules only allowing 1 16th level Druid in the entire world, or no monks higher than 14th level in the entire world, or the arbitrary demihuman level and class limits, or the clunky NWP/Thief Skill systems and know there was a better way.

1st ed. Notes:

1) There is only one 15th level druid (the grand druid) in the entire world. You can have as many 16th-23rd level druids (called Heirophant Druids) as you like. This came with Unearthed Arcana. With just the Player's Handbook, you can have only 1 14th level druid.

2) You can have monks up to 17th level (but only 1 monk per monk order for each level after 8th). You could (with a dragon magazine varient published in Best of Dragon vol. 3 ) have a monk up to 23rd level. Assassins also stop at 15th level.

3) There are no NWP's in the core books, although they get added in Oriental Adventures and some other books.

2nd ed. Notes:

1) There are no rules for limiting the levels of druids as such. Monks are simply variant priests in Spells and Magic, and have no rules for being limited in level qua-monks.

2) Thieves can specialize in their skills (so you could have a REALLY good locks and traps guy, or a REALLY good hide and move silently guy, or a generalist).

3) There are optional rules for having demihumans have experience point penalties instead of class level limits.

 

[DragonLancer]

1. Paranoia. I hate this with a passion. Its silly and stupid and in all the years that I was semi-forced to play it, I never enjoyed it one bit. Bah.

2. Changling: the Dreaming. Didn't fit the feel nor the nature of the World of Darkness. Not that it couldn't have been a good game but it wasn't dark enough and I could never get my head around some of the concepts.

3. Star Wars CCG (Decipher). Awful rules that were not easy to learn. I could just stop there but I won't. Most CCG's in my experience are built upon common cards with a few uncommons and a couple rare cards, but not this one, oh no. SWCCG was built around rares so that if you ran into someone with the cash to buy them all you could never win. It was far worse than Magic was for this.


And to the early poster who was looking for a decent Call of Cthulhu CCG, check out the current version by FFG, its an excellent game. Well worth the time, effort and money.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Chill - I remember it sucking. We only played it once, but I suspect a lot of that had to do with the GM.

Hey, I'd forgotten Chill. Chaosium had a monster hit with the truly excellent Call of Cthulhu! So, every other games company rushed out a 'horror' game. Chill was one, and it was not good.