Products That Overwhelmed You

[Sithlord]

I think that one of the more difficult things about Tekumel, IMHO, is not so much the alien science fantasy aspects of the setting, but, rather, understanding the cultures of the game from a more day-to-day sort of perspective, such as its values and how family-clan kinship relations work.

I love settings like tekumel. But one thing I learned is most players really don’t want to do the homework to play in such a system.

 

[Aldarc]

I love settings like tekumel. But one thing I learned is most players really don’t want to do the homework to play in such a system.

Same. It's an impressive setting, but I needed a graph to understand how inner-clan relations in Tekumel were conceptualized regarding who is or isn't a mother, father, aunt, uncle, cousin, sibling, etc. It was a real headache as someone coming from an incredibly simplistic Euro-American "nuclear family" frame of reference.

 

[Lwaxy]

This got me thinking about other products I've purchased, including the original edition of Ptolus

Ptolus is super easy to run for me - currently running a group with PF 1e through several campaigns at once. All the info makes it easy - if you have the time to read it all AND a memory for those facts. If not, better ignore the published stuff altogether.

Hint - read it while on the John, you can't give up so easily then

I tend to give up on non-d20 rule books with more than a few pages of rules nowadays, especially when the print size and/or color/font is unreadable.

 

[Lwaxy]

I'm finding that I am getting overwhelmed more frequently these days. I wonder what the difference is now?
I don't have the free time I had in my youth to pour over rulebooks?
I have less patience for convoluted mechanics after seeing numerous systems over the years?
COVID/Pandemic exhaustion making me hesitant to learn new stuff?
I have a lot of games to read and study (and play) and I get things mixed up easily?
I place higher importance on using all of the rules/setting material and playing a game "correctly" than I did when I was younger?

I think it is because we've seen almost everything in the way of rules, and we know what we like. and too many "new" systems with minor variations come out, and who wants to bother to keep them all straight? So we prefer to stick with what works for us, and then it is just work to work through new rules.

 

[Fenris-77]

Also, old gamers are often lazy gamers, no criticism intended (I'm including myself there). There's a point where you know what you like, and your tolerance for a whole bunch of reading goes way down unless its in service of something really exciting.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I tried reading the Tekumel setting but I really couldn't get into it. Maybe it was the writing style. I dunno.

 

[aramis erak]

As I recall, that’s the correct way of doing it.

At least, it's what was in the FAQ for 4th at one point.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The One Ring. Love Tolkien and Middle-Earth, and the system is good once you get it figured out, but while I could play it, I never got comfortable enough to try and run it.

D&D 3.x and Pathfinder. They were fine at first, but the more stuff came out and the more you needed to know, the complexity got to be overwhelming to the point I gave up on both of them.

 

[Ace]

I think that one of the more difficult things about Tekumel, IMHO, is not so much the alien science fantasy aspects of the setting, but, rather, understanding the cultures of the game from a more day-to-day sort of perspective, such as its values and how family-clan kinship relations work.

It also makes it hard to get players into the adventuring . Most player groups like to play what are essentially vagabonds. Tekumel is well set for adventuring but the ties you noted don't sit well with players who prefer an anti authoritarian play style.

 

[Sithlord]

The One Ring. Love Tolkien and Middle-Earth, and the system is good once you get it figured out, but while I could play it, I never got comfortable enough to try and run it.

D&D 3.x and Pathfinder. They were fine at first, but the more stuff came out and the more you needed to know, the complexity got to be overwhelming to the point I gave up on both of them.

I loved pathfinder and I think they came up with many good idea. But when they game got so complex that we were using hero lab to create characters we quit. They keep adding layers of complexity like archetype (different than 5E) and traits and I can’t remember what else.