RPGs that you feel trip over their own cool ideas

[aramis erak]

Castles & Crusades SIEGE Engine. Just a regular d20+bonus vs a DC standard D20 system would work better, IMO.

Seconded.

Cthulhutech: Again, the backstory is a problem. There's a lot of it up-front that you seem to need basic comprehension of to understand the setting, but I couldn't get it straight.

It's even more opaque when you're not a Cthulhu fan. I tried to read the setting info because a friend needed help grasping it... and it felt like word salad... no, not word salad, Voynichese. Clearly linguistic, but making no sense. It was, unlike the Voynich ms., eventually parseable...

Another where the setting is part of the hangup: Mechanical Dream. The "cool «bleep»" setting elements are some form of miasma that renders much of the world inaccessible at night. The edition I have is a "double book" format (first book is face up, second is upside down and face down; flip along text line axis to make second book face up and upright, with first now face down and upside down. So, literally, no back covers.) A later PDF is clearer, but the setting is still very unclear to me after reading another edition. (JJS, if you're reading this, I still can't grasp it.) It's one of the few where I couldn't get a clear enough mental image to play, let alone run, it. (There are a bunch where I grasp it, but don't want to run them.)

I think most setting first games suffer from this effect. Cases in point include Skyrealms of Jorune, Star Riders (the sequel to Teenagers from Outer Space), Ninja Burger, Coriolis: The Third Horizon, Coriolis: The Great Dark, almost all licensed games...

I found I lacked a lot of mythic context for the monsters in Dragon Warriors. The britanoceltic mythic landscape was something I learned partially from Pendragon.

I find Pendragon is one of the few setting-first games that has enough penetration of the underlying myth, and the myth being so varied, that it's widely acceptable for many - but I have had a few players who needed cuing in to grasp it, as they lacked a cultural context for not just the monsters, but the entire Arthurian myth.

 

[Swanosaurus]

Castles & Crusades SIEGE Engine. Just a regular d20+bonus vs a DC standard D20 system would work better, IMO.

That's one that I didn't get on the page, as well. So effectively, you just get a +6 in your primary attributes, right? But instead, they choose to express that as TNs differing between 12 and 18, depending on what you roll, and act as if that would be an innovation that changes everything ...

 

[Retreater]

That's one that I didn't get on the page, as well. So effectively, you just get a +6 in your primary attributes, right? But instead, they choose to express that as TNs differing between 12 and 18, depending on what you roll, and act as if that would be an innovation that changes everything ...

Yeah. And then the Castle Keeper needs to remember what everyone's primary and secondary attributes are, because that changes everyone's Target Numbers. And then you also have to add the monster's level to the Target Numbers.
And the players may or may not get to add their level to their rolls.
There are several levels of strange design decisions.

 

[MGibster]

Exalted sounds SO awesome, until you look at the system and realize it's extremely crunchy and slow in play. Too bad too cause it sounds AWESOME!

I was all set to play an Exalted game until I sat down to make a character. I think it was Charms that broke me.

 

[DragonLancer]

The One RIng.

We had recently played this over the last few months and while it nicely snuggles into the Tolkein lore, the system expects you play like you are reading the books. I couldn't get excited over critically successing a survival style roll only for it to be you locate an overgrown dwarven waystone by the side of a long forgotten path. I love Middle Earth but seriously, I could be playing D&D over this.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The One RIng.

We had recently played this over the last few months and while it nicely snuggles into the Tolkein lore, the system expects you play like you are reading the books. I couldn't get excited over critically successing a survival style roll only for it to be you locate an overgrown dwarven waystone by the side of a long forgotten path. I love Middle Earth but seriously, I could be playing D&D over this.

That doesn't seem like a system "tripping over its own feet". It seems like players that aren't completely on board with the intended playstyle.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

My feelings are for

Daggerheart = Plays like a game it was not designed to feel like. its generation of Hope and Fear don't work in a way that is fun to interact with. They feel more like random elements that are sloppy in how they flow through play. Never quite at the right times, and not really for the right reasons are they gained. Their Traits also feel shoe-horned in where they also apply in ways that don't match with combat play, and combat is the majority of the rules

Exalted 3E = and to a degree Vampire V5. The way dice explode and double stack is so sloppy it makes every roll feel like nonsense. In Exalted my 5 dice can be 2 successes or 12... Add to that how Successes are a wasted game mechanic outside of damage - persuade with 4 successes vs 7? = no difference... just vibes. Its mechanics feel like they are made in a way that has spilled out of the creators hands and become messy. (the thing is too, i love dice pool systems, I think Requiem was on its way to a very polished dice pool game system...)

 

[TerraDave]

High level D&D.

 

[cbwjm]

I was all set to play an Exalted game until I sat down to make a character. I think it was Charms that broke me.

Yeah, exalted has a bit too much mechanical complexity in what is an otherwise cool setting. I think I was thrown off by the charms as well.