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Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-08, 07:12 PM
What are some RPGames you bought/played and wish you hadn't. Please refrain from flaming other posters - everybody is entitled to their opinion. Please talk specifically about your experiences.


I'll start it off:

Hack Master.


The game had all the marketing it could possibly want. Everyone was thirsty for blood and gore. What happens? I buy the game and notice there are gross spelling, grammatical, and massively contradictory errors in the fundamental rulesets.

When people go to the Kenzer & CO website for clarification, they get two spokesmen (names withheld), both of them work in the offices, and both of them start divying out their own version of erratum which don't match up with what either person is saying.

To make matters worse, One of the spokesmen doesn't even play the game, the other spokesman is constantly being corrected on which entry is on which page and what it says.

It was an unmitigated disaster. A disaster I spent over $180 on, and that includes the 5 year membership which was absolutely worthless (I never got into a sanctioned game and the books/pamphlets I received in the mail kept offering erratum to previous pamphlets I received in the mail).

What was worse was that my initial character I created was approved by Kenzer, (half human-drow cavalier), and then they outlawed that build within 6 months for no other reason than: "oh we forgot we approved that race/class combo."

I went through 3 weeks of processing to get my character registered.

Nobody I know even owns the books for HackMaster anymore. It was a very big disappointment to say the least.



So what are your stories?

SilverClawShift
2007-11-08, 07:21 PM
Bioshock.

They fooled me into thinking Deus Ex 2 would be good. They fooled me about Neverwinter Nights 2.

I didn't think they'd let me down with bioshock. I thought it would be a worthy successor to system shock 2, since they said it would for the 3 years leading up to it.

They fooled me again :smallfrown: . Between the game flaws and the security problems playing the stupid game... Lesson learned. No more giving money to these companies until I've seen the game in action...

daggaz
2007-11-08, 07:30 PM
Gonna have to go with both

Neverwinter Nights 2, and

Oblivion IV.

I liked Oblivion alot, until I realized that
a)every cave is the same
b)the AI is retarded
c)the quests are spoonfed to you like you are retarded
d)everything scales with YOUR level (OH MY GOD.)
e)optimizing your character is COMPLETELY counter-intuitive. (want to be really strong? better not choose any strength based skills as your main skills, or you will get boned).

malcolm
2007-11-08, 07:30 PM
Neverwinter 2. I usually try those games before I buy, but I loved NWN 1 so much and figured this couldn't be much worse...

I was wrong.

The best purchases ever (Very favorable ratio of dollars paid / hours of enjoyment):

Hero Quest

Archpaladin Zousha
2007-11-08, 07:46 PM
Baldur's Gate II. I should never buy a game if I can't understand the rules. The game doesn't seem to have anything in the way of a tutorial, and I don't know 2nd Edition rules, so I had no idea how the game worked. Now it's sitting on my shelf until I get desperate enough to play it, and even then, I'll probably get frustrated to no end because I've never played 2nd Edition.

Unlike some of the previous posters, I actually like NWN2, and its new expansion. The ammount of character customization allows for an almost infinite replay value, I thought the story was well done and most importantly, I understood how the rules worked, so I could actually play it.

Tyrael
2007-11-08, 07:52 PM
Gonna have to go with both

Neverwinter Nights 2, and

Oblivion IV.

I liked Oblivion alot, until I realized that
a)every cave is the same
b)the AI is retarded
c)the quests are spoonfed to you like you are retarded
d)everything scales with YOUR level (OH MY GOD.)
e)optimizing your character is COMPLETELY counter-intuitive. (want to be really strong? better not choose any strength based skills as your main skills, or you will get boned).

Mods, my friend. If you're playing it on the PC (and you should), mods can fix all of those.

Gerrtt
2007-11-08, 07:53 PM
Final Fantasy XII.

I really wish I had bought another new game at the time, because the trade-in value I got for it was not even close to half what I spent. It wasn't too bad of a game, I can see how someone might like it, but I hated it.

Matthew
2007-11-08, 07:55 PM
Baldur's Gate II. I should never buy a game if I can't understand the rules. The game doesn't seem to have anything in the way of a tutorial, and I don't know 2nd Edition rules, so I had no idea how the game worked. Now it's sitting on my shelf until I get desperate enough to play it, and even then, I'll probably get frustrated to no end because I've never played 2nd Edition.

Doesn't it have an Instruction Manual? I recommend playing Baldur's Gate I beforehand.

Hmmn. I don't think this is supposed to be about CRPGs... Anyway, I have never bought an RPG I didn't like already.

Cubey
2007-11-08, 07:57 PM
Hmmn. I don't think this is supposed to be about CRPGs... Anyway, I have never bought an RPG I didn't like already.

Same here - it's supposed to be about tabletop RPGs, I think, that's why it's in gaming (general RPG) and not gaming (other).

And neither did I buy a tabletop RPG that has disappointed me.

EDIT: I liked Bioshock, Neverwinter Nights 2 (this one a little less), Oblivion and Baldur's Gate 2.

MCerberus
2007-11-08, 08:05 PM
Final Fantasy Tactics. Everyone kept blabbing about how good it was so I eventually got the game boy version (even though I haven't liked a FF game since 1) and :smallsigh: . I eventually sold it to a friend and went back to playing Advance Wars/Fire Emblem for boring times at school (High school at the time). Everyone claimed I was a heretic and then went on to insult the fact that I liked Golden Sun 1 and 2.

Other than that I've been rather good in my RPG decisions.

Ryuuk
2007-11-08, 08:14 PM
^ Ah that's because you played Tactics Advance, not Final fantasy Tactics for the PS1. They're completely different games and as far as GBA tbsrpgs go, Tactics Advance is pretty forgettable.

As for rpgs that I've bought, I don't really regret buying any of them.

UserClone
2007-11-08, 08:15 PM
OK, I have to disafriggin'gree with the FF Tactics Advance one. That game rocked my socks off. (I also enjoyed Golden Sun.)

...Hmmm...I really didn't like Final Fantasy X (though I may have to take this back someday, as I may give it another chance). I played it for about 400 minutes, during which time I watched about 35 minutes of cutscenes. Yes, they were pretty. But I didn't feel like a part of the game.
Also, Wind Waker. I didn't mind the cartoony graphics that everyone bitched about at the time. I loved them; they were awesome. I friggin' hated the sailing. At one point, I literally pointed the boat where it needed to go, left and made (and ate!) myself a sandwich, came back and waited 30 more seconds to get to my destination! There's grand scope, and then there's obnoxious distance!:smallmad:
Edit: Yes PSOne FFT was way better, but FFTA was great also. Everyone should own/play FFT at some point in their lives.:smallbiggrin:

Azerian Kelimon
2007-11-08, 08:28 PM
For tabletops, I'd have to say Cyberpunk. Everything it does, it's more enjoyable in Shadowrun.

Now, CRPG's, hmm...The Ultima games. Never have I been so shocked to see crappy games. The opposite happened with Wizardry, 8 and Werdna's revenge FTW!

shadowdemon_lord
2007-11-08, 08:30 PM
Playing paranoia as droids. It's like Paranoia, but you don't get clones. Hence no random killing off other characters. Aside from that, I've blotted the experience from my memory, ugh!

Azerian Kelimon
2007-11-08, 08:34 PM
Recoverin it using Ultraviolet clearance...


Aaah. Scary, indeed. This should be eliminated, lest the computer become crazy enough to turn capitalist.

lordhack
2007-11-08, 08:37 PM
The DBZ table top RPG. The rules for that were so convoluted, and players would break the system simply by progressing their characters.

Tam_OConnor
2007-11-08, 08:42 PM
Zousha: Just a word in defense of an awesome game. There is a tutorial in game; I do believe it's under single-player. Knowledge of AD&D ain't completely required, though it can be helpful if you've got optimization urges. If the tutorial is hiding well, though, may I recommend http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/index.php ?
BG2 is just too full of win to be missed.

Back on topic. Wheel of time is up there. It's got interesting mechanics, but the campaign setting itself doesn't exactly lend itself to adventuring.

Goff
2007-11-08, 08:46 PM
The DBZ table top RPG. The rules for that were so convoluted, and players would break the system simply by progressing their characters.

That sounds in fitting with the show. :smallamused:

Jannex
2007-11-08, 08:46 PM
For tabletops, I'd have to say Cyberpunk. Everything it does, it's more enjoyable in Shadowrun.

Really? Personally, I disagree. CP2020 has a completely different feel than Shadowrun; it felt grittier, and the setting was much more immersive and fleshed-out. It actually felt a bit like playing in a William Gibson novel. And while Shadowrun can be amusing, I can't help thinking, "Get your elves and your magic out of my dystopic near-future!"

Games I regret buying? Mummy: The Resurrection. I still don't know why I bought it. It was so very... meh.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-11-08, 08:58 PM
I think I heard a horror story from that game, and it wasn't one about a plot.

kkortekaas
2007-11-08, 09:03 PM
I've got one word for ya: HARN

While the history of the world was awesome and the level of detail really cool I could not stand the mechanics.

Logic Cannon
2007-11-08, 09:51 PM
Final Fantasy 12 was so bad that it made me utterly lose faith in the series altogether. Which takes a lot of doing, considering I got on board as a wee lad with FF1. What an awful game.

NWN2 would be a good game if it wasn't for the god-awful camera. It's sucked since I bought the game and it continues to suck. Badly. I can't understand how they still haven't fixed the thing despite months of people bitching about it.

The newer Zelda games are starting to disappoint me. I got on board with LoZ 1 there as well, so perhaps it's just the grumpy old grognard in me. I've been playing through Twilight Princess, but I find the "OMG WOLF LINK" aspect pretty lacking and tedious and the dungeons have been extremely easy combat-wise but very time-consuming to work through all the puzzles and corridors and whatnot. Quite boring. Oh, and I'm constantly drowning in money I have no idea what to do with. Maybe there's a tavern of Hyrulian hookers I never found? The good news is, I'm almost done with it.

As far as tabletop RPGs go, I regret picking up the DBZ roleplaying game book long ago when I saw a DBZ fantard (thank God that's over), as it was a hands-down awful gaming system. Otherwise, I've usually been pretty good about my tabletop choices.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-08, 10:02 PM
Maybe there's a tavern of Hyrulian hookers I never found?


pfft

LOL

I love this. If you ever find it, let me know, it'll be the first link game I'll want to buy :D

Kizara
2007-11-08, 10:19 PM
Final Fantasy 12 was so bad that it made me utterly lose faith in the series altogether. Which takes a lot of doing, considering I got on board as a wee lad with FF1. What an awful game.

NWN2 would be a good game if it wasn't for the god-awful camera. It's sucked since I bought the game and it continues to suck. Badly. I can't understand how they still haven't fixed the thing despite months of people bitching about it.

The newer Zelda games are starting to disappoint me. I got on board with LoZ 1 there as well, so perhaps it's just the grumpy old grognard in me. I've been playing through Twilight Princess, but I find the "OMG WOLF LINK" aspect pretty lacking and tedious and the dungeons have been extremely easy combat-wise but very time-consuming to work through all the puzzles and corridors and whatnot. Quite boring. Oh, and I'm constantly drowning in money I have no idea what to do with. Maybe there's a tavern of Hyrulian hookers I never found? The good news is, I'm almost done with it.

As far as tabletop RPGs go, I regret picking up the DBZ roleplaying game book long ago when I saw a DBZ fantard (thank God that's over), as it was a hands-down awful gaming system. Otherwise, I've usually been pretty good about my tabletop choices.


Personally, I liked FF12, and Ashe in particular.

I hated, passionately, FFX-2. FFX? Pretty good, blitzball was fun. FFX-2 had an almost non-existant leveling system, silly-as-heck plot and the no-direction freeform %completion style of the game didn't appeal to me at all: I don't like fretting about if I played a game 100% perfectly, getting every secret: I just want to progress. The only positive thing I can claim in my 2-3 hours of trying to play this game are that the girls (not Paine really) were cute, and the outfits hot, which couldn't hold my attention any longer.

I bought the WoT RPG, which was basically just a campaign setting for 3.0 DnD. Nothing really wrong with it, but I never got to play it, dissapointing me greatly.

doliest
2007-11-08, 10:26 PM
I liked the DBZ game....and I DMed it. GAmes I wished I hadn't bought, well that boils less to I didn't enjoy and more of my players didn't enjoy. You see I'm the only one who can shell out money for the games so I DM, but have different taste than my players. So I wished I hadn't bought the star trek game, because the players won't play. Also, I still can't get myself all the way through gurps supers-GURPS just doesn't work, palladuim does it better.

SpiderKoopa
2007-11-08, 10:32 PM
I myself deeply regret purchasing M&M.:smallfrown:

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-08, 10:38 PM
I myself deeply regret purchasing M&M.:smallfrown:

sorry I am not familiar with those initials, what is it?

Dwarkanath
2007-11-08, 10:40 PM
Space Opera (http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showbook&bookid=1314)

Absolutely horrid typesetting, spelling and layout, not to mention numerous missing pages and whole sections repeated. I gave up trying to figure out the darned game.

-- Dave

Reinboom
2007-11-08, 10:42 PM
Tabletop:
Shadowrun
Too much dice, and too many wasted features.
I find Shadowrun to be just bad design.

Electronic:
Final Fantasy (main series, I like FFT)...... nearly all.
I play FF 1 to waste time, and FF for the story. Even then I dislike them.
Grind, grind grind. Pointless Combat, Pointless Combat, Pointless Combat.
The games would become infinitely more fun for me if they had an option to -remove all middle ground- and level from each boss. I hate the pointless middle fights, if they occurred 1 in 10 of what they do now for each game, then perhaps I would find it enjoyable.
At least with other games by squaresoft (Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3, Chrono Trigger) I can -interact- or avoid the battles. Do something.
I have yet to play FFXII, but it thus far looks to perhaps be the first one I would be able to devote to.

Riffington
2007-11-08, 10:43 PM
Synnibar.
As to you DBZ people... you got what you deserved.

Zincorium
2007-11-08, 10:51 PM
BESM d20.

Now, don't get me wrong. I loved the tri-stat version of BESM, very adaptable and while there aren't many anime series I like, the concept of anime I find very interesting.

However, the d20 version was BS. Not only did it slap together both systems with little forethought, but it took the worst aspects of both.

BESM had some balance issues, but you could correct that fairly easily within the game framework by providing certain people with more or less points to build characters with. BESM D20 ports those right over, and makes it harder to balance the point values with the rest of character creation. I had balance issues with players that weren't munchkining in the slightest, just making characters naturally as they went along.

As far as adaptability goes, you had rather meh classes with the point system tacked on. One class was 'you get x points' for it's sole class feature every level. But you still had to have a class to base your character on.

To put it bluntly, I was rather horribly disappointed by the way it played.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-08, 11:02 PM
Tabletop:
Shadowrun
Too much dice, and too many wasted features.
I find Shadowrun to be just bad design.

I'm with you. I could handle the dice, if the rest of the system wasn't so ridiculously cumbersome with such little use and pliability to each character type. It was like the only characters worth playing were totally cybered up characters, and I'm just not that into borg.

13_CBS
2007-11-08, 11:05 PM
Synnibar.
As to you DBZ people... you got what you deserved.

You...you bought Synnibar?

Oh you poor, poor, fool.

:smalltongue:

I haven't tried it, but has anyone tried the infamous FATAL?

Manticorkscrew
2007-11-08, 11:10 PM
The "Star War revised core edition".

Not because it was bad. Just because I never got to play with it before Saga edition came out. So it was a wasted buy.

SpiderKoopa
2007-11-08, 11:17 PM
sorry I am not familiar with those initials, what is it?

Mutants and Masterminds.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-08, 11:35 PM
Mutants and Masterminds.

ok thanks ^_^ Yeah I was warned off of it, I'm glad I took that advice.

Green Bean
2007-11-08, 11:46 PM
I haven't tried it, but has anyone tried the infamous FATAL?

FATAL is a real game? I thought it was an urban legend, created to scare new RPG players! :smallwink:

Deepblue706
2007-11-08, 11:48 PM
Final Fantasy XII.

I really wish I had bought another new game at the time, because the trade-in value I got for it was not even close to half what I spent. It wasn't too bad of a game, I can see how someone might like it, but I hated it.

I feel your pain.

While it had a few good elements, overall, it just plain sucked. The only reason I finished the game was simply because I felt if I were to have any right to dislike it, I should at least finish the story. It's a shame, because I think it had a lot of potential.

Archpaladin Zousha
2007-11-09, 12:07 AM
Zousha: Just a word in defense of an awesome game. There is a tutorial in game; I do believe it's under single-player. Knowledge of AD&D ain't completely required, though it can be helpful if you've got optimization urges. If the tutorial is hiding well, though, may I recommend http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/BG2/index.php ?
BG2 is just too full of win to be missed.

Back on topic. Wheel of time is up there. It's got interesting mechanics, but the campaign setting itself doesn't exactly lend itself to adventuring.

I don't deny that it's a good game. It probably has a great plot, but I just can't seem to figure out how to play the thing. I mean, I asked on the Bioware boards for good builds for beginners, and all I got for my trouble was a bit of helpful advice buried in a mountain of jargon. And the copy I bought (Baldur's Gate 2: The Collection), didn't have an instruction manual (though to be fair, I did buy it at a Half-Price Books, but it was new). I'd play Baldur's Gate I if I could find a copy of it, but I can't at the moment. I have the same problems with Planescape: Torment. Just can't find a copy of what looks to be an awesome game. I got into the CRPG world too late it seems. The first CRPG I ever really played was Morrowind. And it was the Game of the Year edition, so it had already been out for a while.:smallfrown:

Archpaladin Zousha
2007-11-09, 12:11 AM
You...you bought Synnibar?

Oh you poor, poor, fool.

:smalltongue:

I haven't tried it, but has anyone tried the infamous FATAL?

What is this "Synnibar" you speak of? The only thing that I've seen of it is this poster.

http://llbbl.com/data/RPG-motivational/target135.html

And I don't understand what it has to do with laser-eyed bears, mollusks that shoot flames, or what the phrase "man what" means.

doliest
2007-11-09, 12:19 AM
Whats with the hate for the DBZ game? Admittably it has its flaws, but a little house ruling & it runs like a kitten.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-09, 12:21 AM
I don't deny that it's a good game. It probably has a great plot, but I just can't seem to figure out how to play the thing. I mean, I asked on the Bioware boards for good builds for beginners, and all I got for my trouble was a bit of helpful advice buried in a mountain of jargon. And the copy I bought (Baldur's Gate 2: The Collection), didn't have an instruction manual (though to be fair, I did buy it at a Half-Price Books, but it was new). I'd play Baldur's Gate I if I could find a copy of it, but I can't at the moment. I have the same problems with Planescape: Torment. Just can't find a copy of what looks to be an awesome game. I got into the CRPG world too late it seems. The first CRPG I ever really played was Morrowind. And it was the Game of the Year edition, so it had already been out for a while.:smallfrown:

Planescape: Torment is an awesome game despite it's ending. What sucks about it is the fact Interplay still owns rights for all the characters and they're going through some nasty legal proceedings now :( I wish to god I could get rights for the characters.

Baldur's Gate 1 rocks.

I can kinda sorta help you with BG 2 if you wanna PM or email me (email might be better).

Knight_Of_Twilight
2007-11-09, 12:43 AM
Castles & Crusades.

Not because I dislike it, no, I love the hell out of it. Easily my favorite fantasy system ever.

No, its because none of my gamer friends like it. So it sits on my shelf, and I sit at my desk, wishing I had someone to play it with. :(

Swordguy
2007-11-09, 12:55 AM
FATAL is a real game? I thought it was an urban legend, created to scare new RPG players! :smallwink:

No, it exists. I actually rather liked it, despite it's Rolemaster-esque insistence on massive (d1000+) tables. Then again, I grew up on early D&D and Rolemaster, so I don't mind this so much. Others do.

Why would I like such a horrible, mysogynistic, overly violent game? Because it's a set of rules that allows one to accurately reflect nearly the full range of behaviors people are capable of displaying towards one another and have in fact displayed towards one another, both good AND bad (naturally, most people focus on the bad - specifically the fact that it has several detailed sections on sex and rape). It differs from other games in that it includes rules for such, rather than roleplaying guidelines or simply glossing over it (how to half-orcs come about again, hmmm?). It is impressive in that scope. If I had a gaming group mature enough to deal with that (I almost do - we've run BoEF campaigns before) it would be an interesting experience.

People make the mistake that a FATAL campaign must focus on sex. It is under no such compunction. It simply has the mechanics to portray such if the group chooses to engage in such. Just like any other game, it is what the GM and group makes of it.

cattoy
2007-11-09, 12:57 AM
M&M 2nd ed is a vast improvement over the 1st edition which was nearly unplayable.

But I still prefer Champions.

Savage Worlds is one of the RPGs that many people claim to love that I cannot stand. The mechanics just kill it. An unnamed NPC with a maxxed out skill rating still blows a simple task 25% of the time. WTF? Makes you wonder what the hospitals are like in a SW game. Get a famous doctor or you're boned.

cattoy
2007-11-09, 01:02 AM
FATAL is a real game? I thought it was an urban legend, created to scare new RPG players! :smallwink:

It exists, but more as a thought experiment rather than a product.

There is no ISBN number, no SKU, so from a commercial standpoint, it doesn't really exist. Anyone can throw a bunch of words and numbers around make it downloadable and call it a game, but it's getting into distribution that makes it 'real'.

Doresain
2007-11-09, 01:03 AM
i dont necessarily hate Shadowrun, but last time my group and i tried to play, we didnt give the rules a very good looking over...so we got really confused really fast...

i do hate Mage:the Awakening however, or at least compared to the other ones, simply because of how the magic system can really screw you over

lordhack
2007-11-09, 01:08 AM
Whats with the hate for the DBZ game? Admittably it has its flaws, but a little house ruling & it runs like a kitten.

It was the first tabletop game I ever played (and I DMed) and I was about 12, so that might have been part of the problem. But by the third session, people were throwing attacks that dealt around 1000d6 and almost always hit. It quickly became who goes first wins. I patched that game with about 1000 house rules, and it still spiraled out of control prety rapidly.

doliest
2007-11-09, 01:11 AM
My biggest problem was players were to weak to handle the enemys, but I was sending beginning characters against kami, yajirobe and such, with plans for the saiyans.

Prustan
2007-11-09, 02:59 AM
I like FFXII, particularly Fran. The voice actor is brilliant.

As far as tabletop RPGs...Call of Cthulhu and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Can't find anyone to play with, so they're gathering dust, plus WFRP was far too expensive to consider getting any more books. And, I'm not too great a fan of their percentile systems.
Having said that, I am having a great PbP WFRP game on another forum, but the DM is taking care of the mechanic stuff, and I just have to post.

Kurald Galain
2007-11-09, 03:12 AM
Playing paranoia as droids.

I've found that some of the Paranoia sourcebooks are more fun to read than to actually play with, and this is one of them. But I paid like five bucks for it and it's still fun to have around.

Game I regret buying? Nephilim. Both the character creation and the magic system are so complex as to be utterly unplayable.

clericwithnogod
2007-11-09, 05:01 AM
1) Beyond the Supernatural Second Edition - This one gets the number one ranking because I was really looking forward to an update of the first book which I've had and used for years so the disappointment was greater. They changed the skill system from an interesting package system (which needed a bit of tweaking) that allowed you to create a character with a diverse range of skills and experiences to a system that gives you skills based only upon a single occupation. There are no magic classes in the core book. And, they added a flaky, "your powers only work around the supernatural" mechanic that I don't care for.

2) Cyborg Commando. It was the first book I thought of. I paid $2.00 for it in the game section of a mall toy store marked down. I remember thinking that someone stole a book or something and the store resealed it because there wasn't a whole game in there, but I wasn't able to make the trip to return it within the return period. A Google search today has informed me that I wasn't missing a book, but there just weren't rules for things like guns.

3) Fantasy Wargaming - I purchased it when it first came out and was greatly disappointed, especially for the price of a hardcover book to me then. It has grown on me a little over the years as a curiosity, but not much.

4) I hated the second edition of Twilight 2000 that used a different mechanic and 5) I hated the version of Traveller that used that mechanic too.

Dishonorable Mention:

Lancer's Rockers. Not a whole game, but wow was that crap.

Zeb The Troll
2007-11-09, 05:41 AM
Castles & Crusades.

Not because I dislike it, no, I love the hell out of it. Easily my favorite fantasy system ever.

No, its because none of my gamer friends like it. So it sits on my shelf, and I sit at my desk, wishing I had someone to play it with. :(Hmm, my group just picked it up recently as an alternative to buying all new D&D books when 4th ed. comes out. We haven't even really been playing 3.x for quite a while except using the SRD, but that's for another topic. Anyway, this is the one I regret. I hate it. It's like the opposite of FATAL. There aren't any rules for anything. It's like 1st ed. D&D with all the fun stuff stripped out of it and only the wonky convoluted stuff still in it. Like, why is that your rogue is 7th level and my wizard is only 4th, but we have the exact same amount of experience? (Seriously, in the campaign we're playing now using C&C, our rogue just got third level [2,501] and two of our party hasn't even hit second yet [wizard/illusionist gets second level at 2,601 and paladin not till 2,701]. :smallconfused: ) At least older versions of D&D had the xp tables sort of balance out at the mid levels but this one doesn't seem to.

Winterwind
2007-11-09, 06:05 AM
I'm with you. I could handle the dice, if the rest of the system wasn't so ridiculously cumbersome with such little use and pliability to each character type. It was like the only characters worth playing were totally cybered up characters, and I'm just not that into borg.I'm not sure what you mean by "worth playing" - to me, a character is worth playing if it's the kind of character one would like to roleplay, and that's it - but if you are talking about mechanical power, magical characters are usually more powerful than mundane ones in most regards, at least in the newer editions.

As for the thread's topic, there is no RPG per se I regret buying, but I wish I had not spent so much money on ShadowRun supplements. What exactly I was thinking when I bought more rules for a system where we don't use half of the rules to begin with, I have no idea. Especially since I do not exactly consider SR to be the best written RPG out there either (I really like the setting and don't mind the mechanics, but the books themselves could stand a shift of focus from "Look how cool we are" to genuine atmosphere).

warmachine
2007-11-09, 07:20 AM
Babylon 5 RPG 1e by Mongoose Publishing, based on d20. Yes, fantasy version, not modern or future.

I like the TV series and think it'd make a great setting for an RPG. Half of the stuff I hated about the RPG has been purged from memory for sake of my sanity. Where do I start?
Minbari have +2 STR, -2 CHA with the latter 'cos they're xenophobic. Yes they are but that doesn't mean they can't be charismatic when they want.
The Minbari favoured class is Diplomat. Yes, they are described as xenophobic and have a penaly to CHA, making them naturallly inclined to be diplomats. Gah! Worse this misunderstands the caste-based mentality of their culture. Or rather they describe worker caste as dedicated workers and warrior caste as dedicated soldiers but they're still natural diplomats. Gah!
All characters have Shot On The Run because they're trained. That's a lame excuse for a maladapted combat model.
Shadowtouched Minbari. They are not shown in the series and they're not needed. In B5, the enemy are dangerous factions and powermongers, not dangerous sub-races. The authors should stop thinking of the dark elves in AD&D.
A warning that the Non-aligned race stats weren't playtested. Cheapskates! The Non-aligned add mainstream richness to the world and can be fun to play. Don't release half-finished works.
The pay for characters in supplied scenarios didn't cover B5 room rent. Fixing half-finished works slows game play.
Smaller equipment catalogue than the PHB of the low-tech AD&D. Umm.. gadgets are part of a space opera world, are they not?
Attack by a large monster on barren, lifeless planets. Oh for ****s sake! This is a heavily realistic space opera, not fantasy.
Action-oriented, script based adventures, rather than faction based. Umm... B5 was a space opera with competing factions. Maybe it should be faction-based?

I stuck with the games but it was the GM that finally scrapped it and he was the one that bought the books.

Riffington
2007-11-09, 07:23 AM
You...you bought Synnibar?

Oh you poor, poor, fool.

:smalltongue:



What is this "Synnibar" you speak of? The only thing that I've seen of it is this poster.

http://llbbl.com/data/RPG-motivational/target135.html

And I don't understand what it has to do with laser-eyed bears, mollusks that shoot flames, or what the phrase "man what" means.

In my defense: I had to go on a very long car ride with my folks, and I wanted to read something long on the way. And it was a big book.

So basically, it's like there's this whole artificial mechanized globe that's much larger than Earth, and around/inside it, everyone's a character class of some kind. And, I think there's some mutant bears with super powers as one of the classes. There's like cyborgs and wizards and amazons and knights and variant amazons with magic and starship pilots and... well, I think he basically took every roleplaying game he could think of, put them all together, and created full level progressions to all of them. And then just calculated how large the world would have to be to hold all of that. And said, "damn, wouldn't it be even cooler if the actual world were a robot". If anyone knows how to run an actual campaign of it, serious props.

Kurald Galain
2007-11-09, 07:31 AM
Babylon 5 RPG 1e by Mongoose Publishing, based on d20.

I played the B5RPG from before that (the d20 system didn't exist yet, back then). I don't recall much of the background, being unfamiliar with the B5 series, but I do recall the system was pretty stupid.

Roll two dice. If the green die is higher than the red die, add that to your skill mod, otherwise subtract the red die from your skill mod. And they had several social skills, but only one "xenosocial" skill that replaced all of those as long as you were dealing with other species. Weirdness.

Matthew
2007-11-09, 07:49 AM
I don't deny that it's a good game. It probably has a great plot, but I just can't seem to figure out how to play the thing. I mean, I asked on the Bioware boards for good builds for beginners, and all I got for my trouble was a bit of helpful advice buried in a mountain of jargon. And the copy I bought (Baldur's Gate 2: The Collection), didn't have an instruction manual (though to be fair, I did buy it at a Half-Price Books, but it was new). I'd play Baldur's Gate I if I could find a copy of it, but I can't at the moment. I have the same problems with Planescape: Torment. Just can't find a copy of what looks to be an awesome game. I got into the CRPG world too late it seems. The first CRPG I ever really played was Morrowind. And it was the Game of the Year edition, so it had already been out for a while.:smallfrown:

The instruction manual should be a PDF on one of the discs. If you really need advice on 'builds' (and honestly, you don't, it's not that sort of game) ask on the gaming board here and you're bound to get answers. Planescape is notoriously difficult to get hold of, but BG1 is still available:
http://shopping.yahoo.com/search/all?p=Baldurs+Gate+PC
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Isle-Studios-C95-625-0-Baldurs/dp/B00001QEQA


Hmm, my group just picked it up recently as an alternative to buying all new D&D books when 4th ed. comes out. We haven't even really been playing 3.x for quite a while except using the SRD, but that's for another topic. Anyway, this is the one I regret. I hate it. It's like the opposite of FATAL. There aren't any rules for anything. It's like 1st ed. D&D with all the fun stuff stripped out of it and only the wonky convoluted stuff still in it. Like, why is that your rogue is 7th level and my wizard is only 4th, but we have the exact same amount of experience? (Seriously, in the campaign we're playing now using C&C, our rogue just got third level [2,501] and two of our party hasn't even hit second yet [wizard/illusionist gets second level at 2,601 and paladin not till 2,701]. :smallconfused: ) At least older versions of D&D had the xp tables sort of balance out at the mid levels but this one doesn't seem to.

Poor Zeb. Castles & Crusades isn't for everyone. Thieves level up faster than Paladins because level to level they aren't as good. Think of it as a Class Feature. Are you sure you fully understand the Siege system? It should provide you with the basis of handling everything.
Poor Zeb.

SpikeFightwicky
2007-11-09, 08:05 AM
Whats with the hate for the DBZ game? Admittably it has its flaws, but a little house ruling & it runs like a kitten.

I have to side with the naysayers. We ran the game once, and decided never to run it again. Starting at the lowest power level, we were rolling something like 30-40 d6s with every attack... it was somewhat overwhelming.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-09, 08:24 AM
I'm not sure what you mean by "worth playing" - to me, a character is worth playing if it's the kind of character one would like to roleplay, and that's it - but if you are talking about mechanical power, magical characters are usually more powerful than mundane ones in most regards, at least in the newer editions.

almost all the SR games I was invited to, or even watched, basically showed me that RP and Power go hand in hand. It really made me cringe.

I'm a guy who plays a Brownie Paladin (probably the single weakest character I've ever played), so I'm not exactly a munchkin for power.

It just drove me nuts the entire system. It was like I wouldn't be able to offer anything of value to the gaming table if I wasn't some kind of jacked up character.

Serenity
2007-11-09, 08:50 AM
No, it exists. I actually rather liked it, despite it's Rolemaster-esque insistence on massive (d1000+) tables. Then again, I grew up on early D&D and Rolemaster, so I don't mind this so much. Others do.

Why would I like such a horrible, mysogynistic, overly violent game? Because it's a set of rules that allows one to accurately reflect nearly the full range of behaviors people are capable of displaying towards one another and have in fact displayed towards one another, both good AND bad (naturally, most people focus on the bad - specifically the fact that it has several detailed sections on sex and rape). It differs from other games in that it includes rules for such, rather than roleplaying guidelines or simply glossing over it (how to half-orcs come about again, hmmm?). It is impressive in that scope. If I had a gaming group mature enough to deal with that (I almost do - we've run BoEF campaigns before) it would be an interesting experience.

People make the mistake that a FATAL campaign must focus on sex. It is under no such compunction. It simply has the mechanics to portray such if the group chooses to engage in such. Just like any other game, it is what the GM and group makes of it.

A game where you randomly determine your characters 'humors', a million sub-abilities that don't actually have any bearing on each other, where there are tables telling you exactly what sexual acts your character will perform--this encourages roleplaying? FATAL can claim it's 'just being thorough' all it wants--there is no need in any RPG for rules on rape, and when every reference you have to women uses some variation on 'whore' or 'trollop', when the core setting of your RPG involves women suffering frequent gang rape (which is not considered a serious crime), then you are not mature, you are a misogynist *******.

And, lest we forget, this is the system that gave us 'cursed armor of [extraordinarily racist caricature]', and the 'Jar of Jacking Off'. There is just no excuse for this game.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-09, 09:08 AM
ok No more discussing FATAL. From what it looks, it's a disgusting game. I thank myself that I have not had the misfortune of comming across it.

Artanis
2007-11-09, 09:54 AM
ok No more discussing FATAL. From what it looks, it's a disgusting game. I thank myself that I have not had the misfortune of comming across it.
Somebody once suckered me into trying to read a .pdf of the rulebook.

By the time I gave up a few minutes later, I could swear I could hear baby Jesus crying.

Matthew
2007-11-09, 10:18 AM
Somebody once suckered me into trying to read a .pdf of the rulebook.

By the time I gave up a few minutes later, I could swear I could hear baby Jesus crying.

Nah, that was just me crying with laughter: There's one born every minute... (http://www.donatebytes.com/fatal.pdf)

Irreverent Fool
2007-11-09, 10:50 AM
For tabletops, I'd have to say Cyberpunk. Everything it does, it's more enjoyable in Shadowrun.

Now, CRPG's, hmm...The Ultima games. Never have I been so shocked to see crappy games. The opposite happened with Wizardry, 8 and Werdna's revenge FTW!

BLASPHEMY! I loved Cyberpunk 2020. Shadowrun's good on it's own, but I have a hard time accepting the mix of magic and tech.

I wish I hadn't spent my money on 2nd ed. D&D, not because it's bad, but because by the time I found a group, I had a couple hundred bucks of 2nd ed. books and 3.5 was the norm.

warmachine
2007-11-09, 10:50 AM
I've read the FATAL PDF and its character creation really is focused on bodily dimensions, rules focused on bodily functions, rape and violence and longs tables based on obsessive and childish ideas without thought to gameplay or coherency. And yes, there are detailed rules on rape and women are described in misogynist terms.

Fortunately, I've never tried to play. I never will. I have nightmares that some religious nut will use it as an excuse to attack the RPG business.

FATAL is the Godwin's Law of RPGs. Please stop discussing it.

Knight_Of_Twilight
2007-11-09, 10:53 AM
Hmm, my group just picked it up recently as an alternative to buying all new D&D books when 4th ed. comes out. We haven't even really been playing 3.x for quite a while except using the SRD, but that's for another topic. Anyway, this is the one I regret. I hate it. It's like the opposite of FATAL. There aren't any rules for anything. It's like 1st ed. D&D with all the fun stuff stripped out of it and only the wonky convoluted stuff still in it. Like, why is that your rogue is 7th level and my wizard is only 4th, but we have the exact same amount of experience? (Seriously, in the campaign we're playing now using C&C, our rogue just got third level [2,501] and two of our party hasn't even hit second yet [wizard/illusionist gets second level at 2,601 and paladin not till 2,701]. :smallconfused: ) At least older versions of D&D had the xp tables sort of balance out at the mid levels but this one doesn't seem to.

See, it gives you a way to do anything, but its not specific. It brings me back to playing older editions where not everything is quantified.

My friends are like you, they like to have a clearer definition of things. So thats why I don't get to play. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-11-09, 10:53 AM
As someone said: "All the games are the joke...FATAL is just the punchline".

Heh, I enjoy cyberpunk too, but I find it's spectrum TOO limited. That's why I say I prefer Shadowrun. There are very few games that are limited and draw people. Unless it's the incredible (if taken time to rework it), Rifts.

Knight_Of_Twilight
2007-11-09, 10:57 AM
I have to side with the naysayers. We ran the game once, and decided never to run it again. Starting at the lowest power level, we were rolling something like 30-40 d6s with every attack... it was somewhat overwhelming.

Throwing about a billion dice an attack was one of the perks for me and my friend.

I loved the Fuzion system, even if it was a mess.

Winterwind
2007-11-09, 11:07 AM
almost all the SR games I was invited to, or even watched, basically showed me that RP and Power go hand in hand. It really made me cringe.

I'm a guy who plays a Brownie Paladin (probably the single weakest character I've ever played), so I'm not exactly a munchkin for power.

It just drove me nuts the entire system. It was like I wouldn't be able to offer anything of value to the gaming table if I wasn't some kind of jacked up character.Frankly, sounds like you had some really poor gamemasters.
I really don't think it's more difficult to craft a story accommodating a mechanically weaker character in SR than in any other system; in fact, it might even be easier than in most.
Besides, cyberware is just one way amongst many to obtain power, and in my humble opinion not even the most effective one.


As for FATAL, I heard about it on these forums as the supposedly worst RPG ever (a notion I support 100%!), which got me curious enough to go forth and first read this (http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/fatal.html) report (which is true) and then to read the PDF, although I admit I merely skimmed through it in a few minutes (I value the few remnants of sanity I still possess too much to do otherwise).

Yes, it is every bit as perverse as people say, and more. Not to mention it is, at least by my standards, so ridiculously overruled it's goes beyond not funny anymore and starts to be funny again. :smalleek:

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-09, 11:49 AM
Frankly, sounds like you had some really poor gamemasters.
I really don't think it's more difficult to craft a story accommodating a mechanically weaker character in SR than in any other system; in fact, it might even be easier than in most.
Besides, cyberware is just one way amongst many to obtain power, and in my humble opinion not even the most effective one.


That may be true. Although, I still dislike the magic system, and magic items being "bound" to those who create them. That drove me nuts and drove me away. There were also some other rules concerning combat and dice/specializing in certain weapons made you weaker for the entire weaponclass type of nonsense.

Of the characters I played, one of them was a "pure human", he was a clone created to be a body guard for some dragon or something like that. Basically he'd do what they'd tell him, no real concept of self identity (the entire purpose was for him to discover his own identity). First game, he realizes that what he is ordered to do is murder, he says that's wrong. So his boss orders him to give him his gun, then the boss raises his gun says then you need to die, either you kill or you die.

My friend was trying to make my guy run or defend himself. But, my guy failed his check for resistance or self awareness or whatever we agreed on. So all my guy could do is just stand there because his "programming" prevents him from disobeying (he has no reason to disobey, and thinks that his death will save the other people's lives). So my guy gets his entire shoulder blown off, and it just was a major suckfest from then on out.

What's more is my friend said he used 1/2 normal creation points (or whatever they are called) alloted to create the NPCs and my guy was still too weak for the entire situation.

In the other game I played I tried to figure out the magic system and just ... it was such a mess trying to play, I got fed up with it.


Maybe I did have Bad GMs, I dunno. It just irritated the hell out of me, and the creation system just bugged me.

Fax Celestis
2007-11-09, 12:36 PM
Mind's Eye Theater (that is, LARP) Wraith: the Oblivion. Love the system, love the fluff, love the game. No one else does, though.

Palladium 2e. The book is so horribly formatted that I can't even read the thing. And it's softcovered, so it's not like I can take it anywhere without worrying about it falling apart.

Winterwind
2007-11-09, 12:47 PM
That may be true. Although, I still dislike the magic system, and magic items being "bound" to those who create them. That drove me nuts and drove me away. There were also some other rules concerning combat and dice/specializing in certain weapons made you weaker for the entire weaponclass type of nonsense.Okay, that's a matter of taste, I suppose. I like the magic system quite a bit, and magic items are rare in our games.
As for specialization, yes, that's the general mechanic how it works, for weapons and otherwise. I don't see anything nonsensical about it though - it means your character is trained with this specific kind of weapon to the point of neglecting the others, making you better with this one and worse with others of the same kind at the same cost. It's not like you're forced to specialize or as if you would become worse with the weapon class if you specialized later on.


Of the characters I played, one of them was a "pure human", he was a clone created to be a body guard for some dragon or something like that. Basically he'd do what they'd tell him, no real concept of self identity (the entire purpose was for him to discover his own identity). First game, he realizes that what he is ordered to do is murder, he says that's wrong. So his boss orders him to give him his gun, then the boss raises his gun says then you need to die, either you kill or you die.A clone? For a dragon? With amnesia? :smalleek:
Wow. That's... quite a bit different from the way we interprete the setting. I won't say it's worse, but I wouldn't want to play with such a high level of freakiness.


My friend was trying to make my guy run or defend himself. But, my guy failed his check for resistance or self awareness or whatever we agreed on. So all my guy could do is just stand there because his "programming" prevents him from disobeying (he has no reason to disobey, and thinks that his death will save the other people's lives). So my guy gets his entire shoulder blown off, and it just was a major suckfest from then on out.A check for being allowed to do what you want to/roleplay your character the way you want to? A check in a character-defining moment, delegating the roleplaying from the player to the dice? Okay - I no longer assume you had a poor gamemaster. And by the way, let me assure you, there is no place whatsoever in the entire system in no book I know of (and I have read a good bunch of them) where any kind of check in a situation as you describe would be suggested. Nowhere.


What's more is my friend said he used 1/2 normal creation points (or whatever they are called) alloted to create the NPCs and my guy was still too weak for the entire situation.Creation points are not the standard SR character creation procedure. That's an alternative system from the Compendium.


In the other game I played I tried to figure out the magic system and just ... it was such a mess trying to play, I got fed up with it.Fair enough. I like it, but there's no reason for anyone else to do so. Taste is a perfectly good reason to dislike a system.


Maybe I did have Bad GMs, I dunno. It just irritated the hell out of me, and the creation system just bugged me.Just out of interest, what did you dislike about the creation system (if you still remember, that is)?

Tekraen
2007-11-09, 01:07 PM
Okay, that's a matter of taste, I suppose. I like the magic system quite a bit, and magic items are rare in our games.
As for specialization, yes, that's the general mechanic how it works, for weapons and otherwise. I don't see anything nonsensical about it though - it means your character is trained with this specific kind of weapon to the point of neglecting the others, making you better with this one and worse with others of the same kind at the same cost. It's not like you're forced to specialize or as if you would become worse with the weapon class if you specialized later on.

A clone? For a dragon? With amnesia? :smalleek:
Wow. That's... quite a bit different from the way we interprete the setting. I won't say it's worse, but I wouldn't want to play with such a high level of freakiness.

A check for being allowed to do what you want to/roleplay your character the way you want to? A check in a character-defining moment, delegating the roleplaying from the player to the dice? Okay - I no longer assume you had a poor gamemaster. And by the way, let me assure you, there is no place whatsoever in the entire system in no book I know of (and I have read a good bunch of them) where any kind of check in a situation as you describe would be suggested. Nowhere.

Creation points are not the standard SR character creation procedure. That's an alternative system from the Compendium.

Fair enough. I like it, but there's no reason for anyone else to do so. Taste is a perfectly good reason to dislike a system.

Just out of interest, what did you dislike about the creation system (if you still remember, that is)?

My most powerful Shadowrun character is a 4th edition ruleset Ork who started with no cyberware, but had his arm cut off in a botched run. He was powerful because he was RP'd as unflappably simple, yet could come up with ingenious plans (laden with puns, natch) to get around situations without blasting everything in sight. SR, from what I've experienced, rewards the smart player; not so much the twinked character.

As for the system I regret? Aliens, the original house system that was released. Mostly because nobody else ever had it.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-09, 01:12 PM
Okay, that's a matter of taste, I suppose. I like the magic system quite a bit, and magic items are rare in our games.
As for specialization, yes, that's the general mechanic how it works, for weapons and otherwise. I don't see anything nonsensical about it though - it means your character is trained with this specific kind of weapon to the point of neglecting the others, making you better with this one and worse with others of the same kind at the same cost. It's not like you're forced to specialize or as if you would become worse with the weapon class if you specialized later on.

Here was my problem: when you're trained in small arms fire you know how to use all related small arms, even if you "specialized" your knowledge with specific small arms, you could still pick up a revolver and use it with a near same deal of accuracy. But the way the rules were written, that's totally out the window, which is what bugs me.

Either that or it was explained to me wrong :confused:


A clone? For a dragon? With amnesia? :smalleek:
Wow. That's... quite a bit different from the way we interprete the setting. I won't say it's worse, but I wouldn't want to play with such a high level of freakiness.

I wanted to play a 100% human, my friend said that was more or less out of the question and went on to explain how people became aware and all that nonsense.

So I created a background where my character was a clone from a facility trying to determine and track down what exactly happened. So they made pure humans without whatever gene it is that made some change.

And then when the study was more or less over in the lab he was sent out to be "field tested". Basically he would have to break the "internal programming" in order to become self aware.

I thought the idea was cool.


A check for being allowed to do what you want to/roleplay your character the way you want to? A check in a character-defining moment, delegating the roleplaying from the player to the dice? Okay - I no longer assume you had a poor gamemaster. And by the way, let me assure you, there is no place whatsoever in the entire system in no book I know of (and I have read a good bunch of them) where any kind of check in a situation as you describe would be suggested. Nowhere.
What kinda irritated me about my friend, is that I built my character's background to make the internal programming a gradual thing. But he wanted to get the deal done and overwith in one single adventure.

It was just a really crappy situation. And because it was a character using his willpower to break internal programming or some nonsense, he said that it was a moderate check because my guy was still an "asset" of a company owned by the dragon. Keeping in mind it was conditioning rather than computer programming.

He claimed that there were such rules, willpower breaking conditioning, but even if there weren't, he knew my guy had no concept of self-preservation. I mean, that's how the character was approved, he would have to LEARN what the scientists/lab people kept from him.

So the whole thing frustrated me. I did give my friend an earfull for screwin me, and his brother did agree. But even if he had let my character do what I originally wanted I'm not entirely sure I enjoyed the rule system :sigh:




Creation points are not the standard SR character creation procedure. That's an alternative system from the Compendium.

He got screwed on the other system and he hated it. He allowed me to try and use the other system whatever it was to make my character, and I remember it sucked so bad he tore up the sheet and gave me points. Point wise my character was at least given a shot.


Fair enough. I like it, but there's no reason for anyone else to do so. Taste is a perfectly good reason to dislike a system.

Just out of interest, what did you dislike about the creation system (if you still remember, that is)?

ok that's coo.

Trying to remember a game that happened 13 years ago is hard ;D

But let's see. The magic thing did bug me. The skills, how specializations would take away from the parent.

This is how it was explained to me, if I am wrong then pls do not yell, it's been a while since I played and I may have misunderstood my friend!


It would seem more appropriate to me if specializations would take away from an UN-RELATED skill set. i.e. saccrificing your time to learn small arms, and further studying a .9m Glock would force you to reduce your skill set for another skill of your choice such as say Studying History, or give you a glass ceiling cap on science. For each specialization you gain, specializations or skills for another skill set would cost double, or tripple, or quadruple.

But the idea that specializing in a 9m makes it more difficult for you to learn another gun regardless of similarities just drives me up the wall.


I also got screwed on the standard method of creation, it was so bad, my friend ripped up the paper and gave me points. So there must've been something else I can't remember right now.

OzymandiasVolt
2007-11-09, 01:14 PM
BESM 3e.

It's like M&M 2e, only with crippling design flaws that make me want to destroy all of creation in flames of seething hatred.

Also some of the art was kind of silly.

(And whose idea was it to make damage multipliers apply BEFORE armor? And FLAT POINT COSTS for power mods? Oh hey, if you want your force field to inflict damage as a weapon of its rank, don't increase the cost per rank by one point. Nope, just pay ONE SINGLE POINT. Oh, and you can negate four points of armor or eight points of shielding per rank of Penetrating or Piercing. Once again: damage already outpaces defense, especially if they increase their multiplier, but the designers felt the need to make it even worse by letting you pay one point to negate four points of armor, which cost four points for the defender to buy in the first place.

Blah blah rant rant blah I'll stop now.)

ryuteki
2007-11-09, 01:32 PM
i do hate Mage:the Awakening however, or at least compared to the other ones, simply because of how the magic system can really screw you over

I'm SO with you on the Mage Hatin' but not for quite the same reasons. I hate it firstly because it is such a big fall from the first edition game, and second because it is so AMAZINGLY internally inconsistent that it is nearly impossible to figure out what you can do with your magic and why - and in cases where you can figure it out for a specific magical arcanum, it's WRONG according to the basic rules for arcanum in general! And don't even get me started on how unbalanced the various arcanum are against each other (no really, don't do it).

YPU
2007-11-09, 01:47 PM
The worst rpg I ever bought, has to be a package of American larp settings. I’m dutch, I live near to Germany, that means I am used to larp being a semi-contact sport at times, using high quality weapons and well made systems for skills and the like. It was rather a shock to find that every darn larp system I downloaded turned out to be for some sorry excuse for people drawing cards at each other.

Besides that, I really regret buying shining soul for the GBA, glad I bought it second hand for quarter the shop price.

Winterwind
2007-11-09, 01:52 PM
Here was my problem: when you're trained in small arms fire you know how to use all related small arms, even if you "specialized" your knowledge with specific small arms, you could still pick up a revolver and use it with a near same deal of accuracy. But the way the rules were written, that's totally out the window, which is what bugs me.

Either that or it was explained to me wrong :confused:Well, yeah, the general skill becomes worse if you specialize at character creation; this is mostly a result of the rules staying simple and not making excemptions for everything, because you may specialize in any given skill, not just weapons. You can have Athletics 6 to indicate that your character is extremely good at sports in general, or you can create a character who is a, say, football player and hence is not quite as good at sports in general (because a football player likely won't be as good at some completely unrelated kind of sports as at football) and take Athletics(Football) 5(7). Which is not so much about you getting worse in Athletics in general, but about you not wanting to have a character who is exceedingly good at all sports, but in Football only. It has side-effects like what you mentioned with the weapons, where it may strain one's suspension of disbelief, however.
If you specialize in game, on the other hand, you just improve in the specialization, without the general skill getting worse.


I wanted to play a 100% human, my friend said that was more or less out of the question and went on to explain how people became aware and all that nonsense.Okay - that's not how the ShadowRun setting looks like at all officially. Two thirds of the population still remain ordinary 100% non-awakened humans. The other meta-races (elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls) are all minorities (albeit growing ones), and only 1-2% of the population is awakened (magic-capable).


So I created a background where my character was a clone from a facility trying to determine and track down what exactly happened. So they made pure humans without whatever gene it is that made some change.

And then when the study was more or less over in the lab he was sent out to be "field tested". Basically he would have to break the "internal programming" in order to become self aware.

I thought the idea was cool.I'm not saying it's not, and after re-thinking it a bit, I guess I could actually conceive of that happening after all, even though manufactured pre-programmed clones not intended as spare-part magazines would be a pretty big affair, enough for a rather large campaign, in our group. So, I take back what I said before about that.


What kinda irritated me about my friend, is that I built my character's background to make the internal programming a gradual thing. But he wanted to get the deal done and overwith in one single adventure.

It was just a really crappy situation. And because it was a character using his willpower to break internal programming or some nonsense, he said that it was a moderate check because my guy was still an "asset" of a company owned by the dragon. Keeping in mind it was conditioning rather than computer programming.

He claimed that there were such rules, willpower breaking conditioning, but even if there weren't, he knew my guy had no concept of self-preservation. I mean, that's how the character was approved, he would have to LEARN what the scientists/lab people kept from him.I am quite certain there are no rules for that. And even so, as you say, the situation was crappy indeed.


So the whole thing frustrated me. I did give my friend an earfull for screwin me, and his brother did agree.Well, so do I.


But even if he had let my character do what I originally wanted I'm not entirely sure I enjoyed the rule system :sigh:Perfectly fair.


He got screwed on the other system and he hated it. He allowed me to try and use the other system whatever it was to make my character, and I remember it sucked so bad he tore up the sheet and gave me points. Point wise my character was at least given a shot.That's... really strange. A character created with the priority system is, usually, quite on par with a character created with the points system. I'm at a loss to explain what might have happened there.


Trying to remember a game that happened 13 years ago is hard ;DThirteen years? Okay - in that case, scratch pretty much everything I said so far. I'm not even sure whether that's Second or maybe even First Edition, which I don't know nothing about except that they were different from the Third Edition (which is what I play) and the Fourth Edition (which is the current one). And I heard that the differences were mostly stuff being more cumbersome in the older editions in some areas, including magic. No idea whether it's true; at any rate, I don't know how the system worked back then.

Okay, I suppose that ends the discussion. We're talking about different games, and I don't know the one you speak of. :smallwink:

Logic Cannon
2007-11-09, 05:38 PM
I have yet to play FFXII, but it thus far looks to perhaps be the first one I would be able to devote to.
If you hate grinding and random battles, you're in for a nasty surprise with FF12. I have played Dragon Warrior 1 many times, and it's one of the most grind-tastic games I can think of. The sheer amount of grinding required in FF12 was too much for even me, if that tells you anything.

The character development is awful too. It actually looks like it's going somewhere in the beginning (even though Basch jumps the shark fairly early in with the "it was my evil twin!" backstory) until Princess Ashe shows up. Then the whole story revolves around her whining constantly and screaming at your party to go chasing off across the globe in every which direction. And then you need to grind for hours through all kinds of areas just so you can watch another cut scene of Ashe being a drama queen while nobody else's character develops at all. Calling it aggravating beyond belief is being generous. The voice acting tends to be done well, and the graphics are very good. But it doesn't save a game saddled with both a boring story of extremely slow character development and a grind-a-riffic combat experience from collapsing beneath a complete lack of momentum.

Edit: One other thing I forgot about was how similar all the characters behave in combats. In the early game especially and into the middle game less so, your characters will be fairly distinct because there's only so many things you can do with license points and so you tend to differentiate them to do different tasks. But by the late-middle to the end of the game, you're likely to have maxed out the license grid of everyone, so you can change a character's combat role by simply having him/her wear different clothing and giving them a different weapon. This is extremely dull, as it means no character really does anything special or different as compared to other characters, with the exception of summoning, which is extremely weak and rarely done anyways.

For extra added fun, all the armor and weapon options available for purchase only note differences in defense values and attack values as well as elemental damages and the like, so equipment worth purchasing for its changes to other stats does not appear to be so on many occasions, because it offers very limited benefits to the primary stats, which are the only benefits displayed on the purchase screen.

Crazy_Uncle_Doug
2007-11-09, 06:44 PM
Rifts: Here's a game where I find people are either, "Good lord this game is the best thing since sliced eggs!" or "Why oh why did I roll a character for this?" I'm in the second category. Palladium systems make my eyes bleed. Oddly, I still have fond memories of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness".

Gamma World (Second Edition): What was TSR on when they came up with the skill-use system for Gamma World 2e? Because I want some of that. To this day I cannot tell you how to use it. All I remember is a bright, multi-colored table at the back cover of the book that was somehow used to determine success or failure. Our attempts to play the game involved rolling dice, looking at the table, and just deciding for ourselves whether it was a good roll or not.

Farscape the RPG: So to this day I wonder why I bothered to pick this game up? Given the overall crumminess of tv/movie-turned-rpg that exists today, why would I think the Farscape RPG would be any better? It wasn't. To this day, I don't admit to my closest friends that I ever owned a copy.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-09, 07:08 PM
Rifts: Here's a game where I find people are either, "Good lord this game is the best thing since sliced eggs!" or "Why oh why did I roll a character for this?" I'm in the second category. Palladium systems make my eyes bleed. Oddly, I still have fond memories of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness".


That's because despite claims by many RPers, TMNT and After the Bomb rules aren't RIFTS.

Although they are both palladium system games, there are some major differences in functionality as well as system concepts.

I love TMNT/After the Bomb, but I HATE Rifts.

Archpaladin Zousha
2007-11-09, 10:14 PM
So basically, it's like there's this whole artificial mechanized globe that's much larger than Earth, and around/inside it, everyone's a character class of some kind. And, I think there's some mutant bears with super powers as one of the classes. There's like cyborgs and wizards and amazons and knights and variant amazons with magic and starship pilots and... well, I think he basically took every roleplaying game he could think of, put them all together, and created full level progressions to all of them. And then just calculated how large the world would have to be to hold all of that. And said, "damn, wouldn't it be even cooler if the actual world were a robot". If anyone knows how to run an actual campaign of it, serious props.

Okay. That's understandable. Weirder than heck, but still understandable. But what does "man what" mean?

horseboy
2007-11-09, 11:28 PM
You...you bought Synnibar?

:smalltongue: I had a copy of that. Crap, some how, that guy that wrote it got my address and mailed me a module for it.

I've got one word for ya: HARN

While the history of the world was awesome and the level of detail really cool I could not stand the mechanics.That would be a game system I would LOVE to see in a video game. All those WQ rolls every round just demanded automation.

In general, I don't regret buying a game book even if I don't play it. Except for Shadowrun 4th edition. That book pissed me off worse than the 3.5 DMG.

As far as video games, I'm not generally a fan of japanese RPG's, between the monotonous, take two steps and fight something, and the painful rail roading, just not a fan. Though I did buy Xenosaga 1 because it was cheaper than two months of cable. I WATCHED it instead.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-10, 07:33 PM
Although it was mentioned once I'll mention it again:

GURPS Prime Directive.

Did the system suck? Well... not really. It was decent. But there were glaring problems that have turned me away from GURPS. For instance: you can survive about 4500 rads in this game system. That's quite a lot of radiation, in fact, enough to probably boil your brain and zap it into dust. It's just not realistic, and I like my science fiction to have some amount of science behind it.

Good points? Well, Klingons are classic Klingons, and this system worked well in like with Starfleet Battles (considering they were more or less written by the same people).

Support? Not much. I even wound up talking with the guy who wrote it on the phone when I was trying to get a bit of clarification on some email that I got back which is a long story unrelated concerning the web based updates. Anyway, Wound up actually talking to someone on the phone and he was of the mind and opinion that the RPG was basically a throw away.
We didn't argue, no accusations were made, it was a friendly phone call, but what it boiled down to was he could care less if the RPG would produce any further supplements or not. It's really hard to explain without relaying all the details and I doubt half of you would believe them.

Basically, it was just a big downer for Trekkies. What many of us saw as promises of a future Star Trek RPG with modules, campaigns, newsletters (even ones written by the fans), really became a reality of:
"This is a marketing gimick, we'll give you 3 or maybe 4 books and you can do whatever you want with them because we could care less."


Nobody I knows plays this game, and in fact, it's just much easier translating star trek into BESM or WEG's d6 system than it is trying to deal with the bulky and inconsistent GURPS.

Kizara
2007-11-10, 08:52 PM
If you hate grinding and random battles, you're in for a nasty surprise with FF12. I have played Dragon Warrior 1 many times, and it's one of the most grind-tastic games I can think of. The sheer amount of grinding required in FF12 was too much for even me, if that tells you anything.

The character development is awful too. It actually looks like it's going somewhere in the beginning (even though Basch jumps the shark fairly early in with the "it was my evil twin!" backstory) until Princess Ashe shows up. Then the whole story revolves around her whining constantly and screaming at your party to go chasing off across the globe in every which direction. And then you need to grind for hours through all kinds of areas just so you can watch another cut scene of Ashe being a drama queen while nobody else's character develops at all. Calling it aggravating beyond belief is being generous. The voice acting tends to be done well, and the graphics are very good. But it doesn't save a game saddled with both a boring story of extremely slow character development and a grind-a-riffic combat experience from collapsing beneath a complete lack of momentum.

Edit: One other thing I forgot about was how similar all the characters behave in combats. In the early game especially and into the middle game less so, your characters will be fairly distinct because there's only so many things you can do with license points and so you tend to differentiate them to do different tasks. But by the late-middle to the end of the game, you're likely to have maxed out the license grid of everyone, so you can change a character's combat role by simply having him/her wear different clothing and giving them a different weapon. This is extremely dull, as it means no character really does anything special or different as compared to other characters, with the exception of summoning, which is extremely weak and rarely done anyways.

For extra added fun, all the armor and weapon options available for purchase only note differences in defense values and attack values as well as elemental damages and the like, so equipment worth purchasing for its changes to other stats does not appear to be so on many occasions, because it offers very limited benefits to the primary stats, which are the only benefits displayed on the purchase screen.

The combat for the game was remarkably repetitive: even for a FF game. You also would think that they would have more then about 12 total types of monsters, and harder variants of the same thing (different color ala SNES CRPGS).

I agree about the leveling system as well. As for character development, I actually liked it: but there simply wasn't enough. The amount of grinding you have to do to progress the plot lost my focus/feeling for it, and thus lowered my appreciation of it. Really interesting world an d environment though, and Ashe was dang hot.

Zorg
2007-11-11, 10:22 AM
Heavy Gear - for a game centred on giant robots and military action the combat system was very poor. CP2020 Maximum Metal did it better in my mind.

bosssmiley
2007-11-11, 11:24 AM
BESM d20.

Now, don't get me wrong. I loved the tri-stat version of BESM, very adaptable and while there aren't many anime series I like, the concept of anime I find very interesting.

Another GOO game that was a waste of £££s: Tekumel (GOO's version of the company-killing "Empire of the Petal Throne" setting).

Don't get me wrong, I love the whole idea of pulpy 'future Mayans in an alien pocket universe' setting ever since I heard of it back in the day, and the Tri-Stat system was good. But - sweet raptorjeebus - the online "Tekumel" community are a bunch of joyless, micro-detailing 'one true way' miseryguts. Deviation from the canon as laid down by the alpha game run by the game's original creator? Heresy!

A potentially good game, turned into a wallbanger (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.WallBanger) by its cliquey, elitist uber-grognard fandom, and by the realisation that - for all the fanboi *squeee!* that surrounds it - I've written better myself. :smallmad:

On a related note: Talislanta. This kinda sub-Conan tosh was revolutionary when? Sounded great, played like a pig.

Cyberpunk: a good, no, great rpg system (Interlock's simple and intuitive "stat+skill+mods+d10 vs Diff" mechanic is what d20 is still straining towards) ruined by over-used iconics and some outright cheesy elements. The 3rd Edition thankfully sank without trace.

Oh, and the Star Wars d20, Stargate d20 and Babylon 5 rpgs were just poorly-executed grabs at the game-movie geek crossover. General rule: game of a licensed property = POS. :smallannoyed:
(honourable exceptions: "Dune", LUGTrek & WEG's Star Wars).

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-12, 11:26 PM
DC Superheroes for West End Games.

There are absolutely 0 kits, 0 alien kits, 0 superhero type kits... if you try to make a superhero like anything you see in DC Comics, you will find that half of the powers don't exist (making a New Gods character is almost impossible), or that you can't even make a simple Hawk Man/Hawk Woman Thanagarian without dumping a load of drawkbacks that make your character as weak as a toddler.

I emailed WEG about it, saying this was ridiculous. Their official response was: "We have to approve everything through the DC Licensing department, even the role playing rules for making alien players. Their official position is they don't want anyone making/playing as a Kryptonian or a Martian. If you're frustrated with this then please email them here and write to them here:"

...and the guy gave me the mailing and email address for the DC Licensing Department.

It was the weirdest email I ever received from a gaming company. But it explained a LOT. It also backed up so many stories I've heard from various companies concerning the impossibility of dealing with the DC Licensing Department, and explains so much on why Marvel seems to know how to make money off of their licenses, but DC doesn't.

Such as failed projects as Capcom vs DC (DC tanked it), or the Battle Dice Game with DC figures (DC tanked that one) or you name it.

Yahzi
2007-11-13, 01:13 AM
Rifts:
My favorite: the sniper rifle with two barrels. You could either shoot someone for with the 4D6 bullet, or you could shoot them with 200D6 with the laser.

Why would a sniper ever choose the first option?

But I didn't actually buy the game so I can't complain.

:smalltongue:


Gamma World (Second Edition):
Yes! This is the top of my list. We tried to play that game. We just couldn't figure out how.

And they made a Secret Agent game whose leveling system was simply incomprehensible.

Dalboz of Gurth
2007-11-13, 01:19 AM
My favorite: the sniper rifle with two barrels. You could either shoot someone for with the 4D6 bullet, or you could shoot them with 200D6 with the laser.

Why would a sniper ever choose the first option?

But I didn't actually buy the game so I can't complain.

:smalltongue:

Actually I can answer that question. If you're in a quarantined area (such as a space ship or a bio dome surrounded by a planet full of acidic air), if you fired the 200d6 laser, it would not only cut through your target, but continue going until either the range limit or total damage done by the laser was reached. It might be an optional rule, but it'd be one that I would sure use.

One of my friends once talked about a Rifts game with a similar situation. He wound up firing his weapon (whatever it was) straight through 7 decks of the space ship he was on and ruptured the engine core by accident. He said his character barely got the the escape pod.

The story made me laugh.



Yes! This is the top of my list. We tried to play that game. We just couldn't figure out how.

And they made a Secret Agent game whose leveling system was simply incomprehensible.
I've heard lots of bad things about Gamma World. Wasn't it also the system on which the short lived Doctor Who RPG was based?

F.L.
2007-11-13, 06:37 PM
GURPS Prime Directive.

For instance: you can survive about 4500 rads in this game system. That's quite a lot of radiation, in fact, enough to probably boil your brain and zap it into dust.



Well, they're only off by a factor of 10. 450r is the mean fatal dose for a human being. So, assuming some kind of magic future medical science, being able to take 4500r and immediately getting excellent medical care before your week or so of remaining life is up, survival is possible. But you've then used up your alloted dosage of radiation for the rest of your life, the damage to your cells accumulates.

There's also the story of a researcher who got a radiation beam from a particle accelerator through the head and lived, taking something like 20Krad, though I've since lost the link to the story, and it was a tightly focused beam that just burnt a conical hole through his brains, which was not ultimately fatal.

mabriss lethe
2007-11-13, 10:41 PM
Amber DRPG

Love the novels. They, along with all the works of Roger Zelazny, will always have a special place in my heart. The game? Extremely flexible, you can literally create anything with a very limited ruleset. Unfortunately, it's diceless. The rules don't make a bit of difference if you don't have a DM who can handle it properly.

Rutee
2007-11-13, 11:14 PM
I like FFXII, particularly Fran. The voice actor is brilliant.
SEriously; That VA managed to make an utterly foreign accent. Not "British", not something common, completely new to me. FFXII in general was pretty good too, to me. FFX-2's big flaws were awful music/story. The gameplay and writing (As in, characterization and the cleverness of lines) was top notch.

Bad RPGs.. the worst I've bought... The Star Wars West End Games version. If only for introducing so much non-canon crap to dig through in my memories before I completely gave up on understanding Star Wars canon. There's also Legend of the Dragoon, which was /astoundingly/ bad. But those aside.. I've never been REALLY unhappy with stuff.

WhiteHarness
2007-11-13, 11:25 PM
I picked up a copy of the Second Edition of Exalted because the illustrations in the armour section of the equipment chapter made me nostalgic for certain old video games.

Damn, what a terrible purchase. Exalted is a horrible game, and the setting it comes with is even worse.