Biggest gaming heartbreak?
In the 1990s, I used HERO to run a supers campaign set in the Vernesian/Wellsian version of 1900, sourcing mainly from Space:1889 and a host of other contemporaneous settings- The Difference Engine, Wild, Wild West, Adventures of Briscoe County Junior, Kung Fu- and storylines I could yoink and reset in that era. I stole freely from Marvel & DC comics, Alien Nation, The Man With The Golden Gun, novels by Michael Moorcock and Harry Turtledove and more. The PCs were part of an INTERPOL-like group. And the players bought in 100%.
It was my magnum opus as a GM.
15+ years later, with a different group in another city, I was given an opportunity to run a Supers game again. My first thought was to dust off the 1900 campaign for this group. But nobody was interested in HERO. I suggested M&M 2Ed due to its evolution from D&D 3.5- the group’s preferred system- and that was greeted warmly.
I figured I should update things a bit, so I chose 1914 as the date for the new campaign. I created new enemies & rivals, like Spring-Heeled Jack (with a pneumatic exoskeleton) and Dr. Zeus (a classic evolved orangutan with a glass-domed brain who had weaponized the inventions & ideas of Nikola Tesla). There was a time traveler. This group’s organization was more akin to the X-Men.
...it was a disaster. The game crashed after 6-8 sessions.
Player buy-in was spotty. One guy paid almost ZERO attention to the setting. Another designed a character who was going to be a big problem for the local authorities...even after I pointed this out. Some players opted not to show up at all. Despite its relation to 3.5Ed, the differences irked several of the players. And the final nail in the coffin was that my mastery of the system was not sufficient to the task- I started running the game before I was truly ready,