Ever play (or own) an RPG that was well received by others but you hated?

[fdw3773]

Have you ever played or owned an RPG that received excellent reviews or was really liked by your friends, but you hated? While there were excellent RPGs I've owned that weren't my cup of tea in the past like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, RuneQuest, or Dragon Age, I never hated them. A few, though, stand out, but not in a good way:

 

FATE Core System - I read a lot of good reviews and I bought some of the digital products to get started as an alternative to Champions and ICONS, but the narrative style of gaming was just too broad and vague for me. It reminded more of me playing soldier or knight in my backyard with my friends in whether or not we hit each other or suffered any damage, or with our action figures on whether the weapons the figure used penetrated the force field, and so on. I ended up hating that rules system, often saying to myself, "Is that IT!?"

 

Palladium Fantasy & Heroes Unlimited (2nd Edition) - I used to play Robotech throughout high school when Palladium had the licensing agreement, and my friends spoke highly of Palladium Fantasy from their game sessions, so I thought it would be a good fit along with Heroes Unlimited as part of the Palladium Megaverse concept. I was mistaken. The skill and magic system proved maddening, and some of the interior art in Heroes Unlimited was just plain awful, along with a lot of gaps in character creation and advancement.

[Lord Liaden]

The Champions: New Millennium supers game got a lot of flack for how the Fuzion system was implemented, which I admit I disliked myself; but I often read and hear the setting itself praised for its originality and flavor. I found the presentation of it in the core book an incoherent mess. There was little logic to how the world information was laid out, jumping from one topic to another. Description of key events was lacking. Explanation for how things operated, and who important characters were, had big gaps. Quite a few characters had practically nothing addressing their motivations -- they were just villains or heroes because, Why Not? (One of them even used those exact words to explain why he was there.) The subsequent books in the line added some clarification of those issues, but I had to dig around to find it. An index would have helped immensely, not just with the setting but the Fuzion rules, but of course was completely absent.

 

I tried to play it out of loyalty to Hero Games, but gave up in frustration.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I didn't exactly hate it but I was underwhelmed by Savage Worlds.  Its an interesting system but not very satisfying and the dice exploding thing is one of my least favorite mechanics.  I figured out very early that smaller dice that have a higher percentage chance of a "crit" causing the exploding dice syndrome are much better than bigger dice.

[Ternaugh]

Fudge: It's essentially so rules-light that there are several suggestions on how to modify the base rules to be able to create characters and run a game. I have a few games based on the rules, but I've never had the urge to actually run it. I've been a player in one game, a Paranoia adaptation running with Fudge rules, and generally had a good time, but that was more due to the group and the referee (who actually has his name in the playtesting credits for the main rule book). I should also note that Fudge provides the "bones" to the Fate Core rules, which is basically a structured modification to allow for easier play. I have a ton of material for that system, but I've never had the urge to actually run it.

 

Palladium/Rifts/Heroes Unlimited/and others: Palladium always read to me like early D&D with the serial numbers filed off, but without any attempt at play balance. One of my friends from high school absolutely adored the various games, but he was the player who would always attempt the most munchkin build in any game that we played.

 

GURPS: The mechanics are clunky, but some of the sourcebooks have eminently stealable ideas. I've always been a big Traveller fan, and the GURPS Traveller materials are generally pretty good, so long as it's adapted to CT/MT. 

 

Marc Miller's Traveller (T4): This version of Traveller had many problems, and each book essentially felt like an unfinished beta test put together by someone who had heard about desktop publishing, but hadn't really figured out how to do it.

 

Castle Falkenstein: The books are beautiful, and fun to read, but I've never had a gaming group that would fit the mindset needed to play it.

 

[tkdguy]

D&D 3e and beyond. I tried to like the d20 system, but it's just not for me. I stick to older editions of D&D, along with a couple of retroclones.

[Lord Liaden]

3 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

Palladium/Rifts/Heroes Unlimited/and others: Palladium always read to me like early D&D with the serial numbers filed off, but without any attempt at play balance. One of my friends from high school absolutely adored the various games, but he was the player who would always attempt the most munchkin build in any game that we played.

 

The RIFTS concept always intrigued me, and the books in the line have a uniquely vivid style. I always remember Hermes from Pantheons of the Multiverse, with his man-portable rail gun, "The Herminator." 😄

 

The system is an unwieldy jumble I have no interest in running.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Aces & Eights won all kinds of awards and had some neat design features (like the shot clock) but in practice I found it nearly unplayable.

[Cygnia]

5e D&D for me (though, I appreciate casters' cantrips, so they're not totally borked in combat).

[assault]

DragonQuest. No advantages compared to D&D, plus clunky complex rules.

 

Space Opera. Gratuitous complexity, plus a default assumption that all the massive range of mutually incompatible technologies would be thrown in together.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I loved how DragonQuest was laid out and I enjoyed the concepts.  They were the first game I know of that didn't have levels, you just got better at stuff by using it.  It had a strange renaissance fantasy feel to it.  SPI came out with some very interesting ideas that weren't the best in play practice.  Universe had a lot of neat concepts and I liked how it looked but it wasn't much in play.

[Scott Ruggels]

Having worked for several RPG companies I have a fair amount of experience at con with trading rulebooks with other company reps.  
 

Also as a bit of background, I was involved in the arguments on rec.games.frp.advocacy on the old Usenet, and was firmly in the simulationist camp, having a dim view of the narrative side as squashing immersion.  So.  
 

Chivalry & Sorcery First Edition.  FGU’s overly complex almost tool kit of a game.  Beautiful publications, but combat was frustratingly long and complex.  Hero was smooth in comparison.  
 

Other Suns.  Another FGU offering, written by Nikolai Shapero. Mechanics were obscure, basically “Reversed Runequest. The second book was mostly background. Background played favorites so anything other than human was preferable. Patient zero for the furry fandom. 

 

Tri-Tac Systems  I met Richard Tucholka at Origins, and we hit it off, and I did illustrations for his games, Stalking The Night Fantastic, Fringeworthy, and FTL2448 (modern paranormal, multiverses, and Science fiction, respectively). All of the games were based off the same system. That system was another overly complex system, like early D&D, but a lot more lethal.  I could follow instructions, and do things when Richard would run games at cons, but I could not run them myself.  I ran Hero instead.  He and his Detroit friends revamped the system shortly before his death, but I had not the heart to crack the new books open when I received them after his death. 
 

Living Steel. Beautiful Art.  Absolutely unplayable. 
 

FATE, FUDGE, Savage Worlds. Any system with only three stats is not for me ( except Melee/ Wizard).  I’ve tried them, but the modern minimalism, to me feels like my character is on the set of a low budget film or TV production, improvising dialogue to the director-GMs plot outline.  The buildings are cardboard, the props are cheap, and the mountains in the distance are painted backdrops.  The escape, and occasional immersion I desire in a game, just isn’t there for me in these minimalist systems. Any game that does not give that living world feeling, be it because of railroading in a good system, or minimalist mechanics for me is a bad experience. Savage Worlds’ exploding dice mechanic was illogical to this gun nut, where a baby with a butter knife was the most lethal entity in the universe. I am also an anti-fan of fate points fate tokens or similar te-roll mechanics. The dice rule. I wish Sean Fannon well for his system, but I won’t return easily to his minimalist Superheroes.  Basically any system that favors a narrative structure or is plot driven, I walk away from. 

 

There are others, but this covers what I can remember off the top of my head in the early pre-dawn hours.  
 

 

 

 

 

[death tribble]

Warhammer. Chaos spiky bits. I prefer any version of D+D

[Christopher R Taylor]

Warhammer's entire purpose is to sell miniatures, the game rules are kind of secondary if that.

[Scott Ruggels]

On 8/20/2022 at 10:35 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

Warhammer's entire purpose is to sell miniatures, the game rules are kind of secondary if that.

Yeah, but such ugly, mis-proportioned miniatures. I hate that particular, exaggerated, style. For me it’s less about the rules, and more about the ugly art, and depressing background.  
 

I am learning and practicing digital sculpting so at some point in the near future, I can produce my own miniatures. 

[tkdguy]

There are so many companies offering better - and cheaper -- miniatures than GW. Reaper sells both plastic and metal miniatures representing different genres. Copplestone Casting (a UK-based company) also sells miniatures for different genres. Wizkids only offers plastic fantasy miniatures, but the miniatures look good and are already primed. Iron Wind Metals sells miniatures from the old Ral Partha line. Pulp Alley sells miniatures meant for a Pulp-era game. There are also a lot of companies that sell historical miniatures.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I agree, their minis are kind of cartoonish but they are well done.

[tkdguy]

I prefer Reaper Dark Heaven Legends. The metal miniatures are more realistic, and they come with integral bases (I can never overstate my loathing of slotta bases).

[Old Man]

I download .stl files from Thingiverse or Hero Forge and print them on my Monoprice Select v2.  It's slow and the detail's only okay, but it's way cheaper than buying metal.

[Duke Bushido]

On 8/15/2022 at 7:20 PM, assault said:

Space Opera. Gratuitous complexity, plus a default assumption that all the massive range of mutually incompatible technologies would be thrown in together.

 

 

I promise you, Space Opera was _never_ well-received. 

 

I liked it though.  Well, at least up until the newest iterations (there is a lot of new material available online).  I still play from time to time.  I liked SpaceMaster, too.  (And I was inclined to: I liked the first  RoleMaster game, even though it was a bit sluggish).

 

Things that were well-recieved that I did not like:

 

Twilight 2000.

 

I bought it because I thought I would love it- you start play right at the moment WW3 ends.

 

Problematically, you start in Poland, a place I know-  well, frankly, I know more about Mars, Phobos, and Deimos than I know about Poland.  Ultimately, my Players didn't know much either.  At the time, half my players were military (I never was; lousy knees kept me out of the service- I tried three times), and they wanted to stick to the military roots of the characters and setting, and I could not provide the "feel' they wanted, because up I did not have enough knowledge and had zero personal experience.  The other half of the group was like me: didnt know crap about the military, but going further, they wanted nothing to do with playing a military-centric game.  Yeah- that wasn't the game's fault entirely,  but it set up a miserable experience.  Would have been nice if the game had been set in the same hemisphere in which I live, though, or at least given some ideas as to terrain, climate, culture- sure, we could totally fake it, but if you live in Liberty County Georgia (I did at the time), your players know when you are describing Liberty County, Georgia.

 

The system was a huge disappointment to me (to clarify: it was not unworkable or even particularly,difficult; it was just... Blah.... Bland and uninspiring)

 

Another well-recieved game I didnt care for was Mega-Traveller- the combination of a system that was essentially identical the underwhelming system of T2000 and the baked-in revolution setting....  I won't say I hated it, but I went right back the Traveller Book as soon as we had given it a few solid tries.  (Yes: I love my LBBs, but I personally found The Traveller Book to be a great sweet spot for Classic Traveller that is agreeable to most Players).

 

Paranoia.

 

Hated it.  "Hmmm...   How fast can thr GM kill the entire party?"  Fast enough that you get six copies of your character.  Yeah, it had a great laugh factor-  the existence of it and talking about it-  but playing it just...   Well really-  How do I not get killed by the GM?  We can call it a game and pretend that I am doing all the right things to stay alive, but honestly, I am still alive only because the GM has decided to _not_ hit me with a six_pound supersonic meteor.  Playing Paranoia does little for me beyond making that point painfully, 'suddenly this hobby seems a bit goofy' uncomfortably obvious, and I can't push it from my mind while .when the subtext of all conversation is "I hope we don't die in hillarious ways for absolutely no reason!"

 

These have already been mentioned, but still:  put me down for not being terribly impressed with BESM or any of the other Tri-Stat (tri tac?)  offerings.  They may have been fun with a different group or in a different setting (I can't help but think of a fast-and-loose group story telling effort replacing Trivia at some upscale bar while half-drunk revellers and their dates make up skills and roll dice and hoot and holler when it is their turn to control the narrative: that is the vibe I get from Tri Stat; that is the reason I bought the d20 version of SAS (and I have never made a secret of my general dislike of d20, so you have a good guage right there).

 

Warhammer 40k.  I dont mean the tactical wargame; I mean the actual RPG.  Everything you might dislike about the wargame, it exists in similar fashion in the RPG.  Sure, the gothic is fun for a bit, but that bit fades quickly (human self-defense of the psyche: you get numb to constant grimdark and even gore, to a point, when it is poured over you in buckets for hours on 3nd. And the religion angle never stops- it's an  incredibly poor choice for escapism for those of us who live in the Bible Belt.  Thematically.... Well, there's a reason my wife calls it "Catholic Traveller."

 

C'thulu-  any of them.  There is the minor reason that the over-arcing metastory is identical to that of Paranoia (give the GM a whole city packed full of fishmen?!  Surely my fragile sanity will survive that!) and of course, a selfish, nothing-to-do-with-gaming reason:  Lovecraft was a guilty pleasure as a kid, and I knew very few people who were familar with it, and oddly enough, I liked them all.  I also learned that Lovecraft wasnt well-known amongst most of my peers... Until,after the games,started coming out (not much internet back then), and within just a couole of years, I was so over-exposed to Lovecraft and Love-alikes that I just got sick of it, and I haven't really enjoyed it since.  While it wasnt the game's fault per we (congratulations on a successful product, after all), I still blame the existence of Call of C"thulu for my now almost-distaste of something I used to love.  Yeah, I know....

 

Fate. Nothing too deep here, comment-wise; I just didnt like it.  I am nit a die-hard I-need-rules-for-breathing" kind of guy, but I do need enough rules to percieve the framework within which the game is played.

 

 

A three-fer:  Kult, Chill, and Underground.  I _know_ they arent the same game, nor even similar in system, but they all trigger the exact same,_kind_ of distaste, and I cant really define it any better than (forgive me) this:

 

You have this absolutely,_stunning_ new girlfriend.  She is almost perfectly the girl,you have imagined of since you started thinking about girls.  Her quirks are all minor, really, except that one obsessed kink that kind of makes your skin crawl.  Every time you have inimate contact, she starts pushing towars satisfying that kink, but the truth is that just _thinking_ about it kills,your mood _for days_.  It"s just on3 thing- one thing!- and it is her entire reason for initiating, and everything leading up to it is glorious, but the idea of going durther teiggers that bile-in-the-throat reflex.  Clearly, while everything about her is fantastic, onve you start getting really into it, that one thing is problematic enough that you realize the two of you will never be compatible....

 

Feng Shui.  Now I can't say there was anything fundamentally wrong with the game, because I barely knew the rules (I was invited to play)..  I will honestly say that I would be unable to give an objective look anyway, as I dislike the genre. (Wierdly, I liked Bushido, mostly because there was a _sort of_ realism there that Feng Shui was  proudly distancing itself from.)

 

Now this last one Will likely catch me some flak, so let me remind you that none of my answers are attacks on these games: the question is "well-received games you did not like and I am answering that question, period.

 

 

Villains and Vigilantes.  Didn't like it.  Played a lot of it; never liked it.

 

Sure, my list is longish compared to many of the others, but weirdly, this is (not all but ) the bulk of the set of those games which I did not like.

 

Wierd that so many were very popular in their day....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ninja-Bear]

@Duke Bushido, I’ve only played W40K as a war game however I have read some of the fiction of the setting and I agree with your assessment.  Do they have a term for something that's darker than grimdark? And some of the war gamers were annoying too. In a “real” conflict the Space Marines should try to use all the available cover they can get. I’m playing a game with a time limit though and that’s boring! I have walked straight into the middle of the board to take out the enemy. Heavy losses ? Yeah but then I’d somehow make an incredible and memorable save. I once had a marine attacked by the max amount of Orks that could touch my base and the Marine survived!

[Duke Bushido]

3 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

  Do they have a term for something that's darker than grimdark? 

 

 

I don't know, Sir.  I call it "Batman," myself.   

 

 

[Hugh Neilson]

On 8/15/2022 at 5:20 PM, assault said:

Space Opera. Gratuitous complexity, plus a default assumption that all the massive range of mutually incompatible technologies would be thrown in together.

 

Not to defend the game, but isn't "mutually incompatible technologies thrown together" the weapons and armor lists for most fantasy games?

[Ninja-Bear]

3 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

Not to defend the game, but isn't "mutually incompatible technologies thrown together" the weapons and armor lists for most fantasy games?

To be fair in a fantasy setting how many would realize that? As long as it swords and axes and armor its fantasy. I myself have been learning a lot about the differences lately. I’ve been binging on Schola Gladiatoria.

[Old Man]

21 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

Do they have a term for something that's darker than grimdark? 

 

Reality.

 

I actually like the over-the-top ridiculosity of the 40k setting.  It's grimdark, but it also achieves scales of epicness that are rarely achieved in any scifi.  The Imperium spans vastnesses of both time and space in a way that just isn't conveyed in Wars, Trek, Traveller, or any other SF property.  

[Christopher R Taylor]

I like the setting of Warhammer at any time period but it needs tweaking to be playable.  The games exist only to sell miniatures, so the actual content an play is kind of secondary and its brutally lethal and dark, beyond my preferred play style.  I hate PC deaths for any reason other than story or epic satisfying events.  "Random die roll" is just not really fun for anyone.