Quote from: Koltar on January 06, 2025, 01:48:14 PM

Quote from: blackstone on January 06, 2025, 09:26:31 AM

Quote from: Koltar on January 03, 2025, 11:33:20 PMDungeons & Dragons - ANY version.

Its just NOT 'my bag' or style

- Ed C.

Even B/X or AD&D 1st ed?

NOPE.

 I am 'odd' or unusual compared to other gamers. The first RPG 'campaign' I ever played in for more than one session was not "Dungeons & Dragons" but classic little book TRAVELLER back around 1981.

 TRAVELLER was the role playing game that 'took' with me and fired up my imagination.
Think I had played once in a D&D session the year before - but it didn't work out. Also there were a group of guys that invited me to their group of D&D ..but that didn't work out.

- Ed C.

Huh. That's interesting. Your experience is a different take than most.

GURPS - just too crunchy
Space Opera - just too confused
Star Frontiers - just too retarded
DnD 4E - just too WoW
DnD 5E - just too disinterested
FATE - just too "mother may I?"
d20 Star Wars - just too "DnD in Spaaaaccce!"
SWN - just too "DnD in Spaaaaccce!"
Anything White Wolf - just too flamboyantly weird of a fan base
Anything Palladium - just too "one size fits all" and Siembada
FFG/Genesis Star Wars - just too gimmicky with dice

Quote from: Brad on January 06, 2025, 12:36:52 PM

Quote from: tenbones on January 06, 2025, 12:29:02 PMKevin has already stated he wants to take a step back and loosen the reins on things.

I am in absolute shock...no, really.

Yeah me too. But despite the overgrown janky system, I love me some Palladium Megaverse lore. It's not all good, but the good stuff in it hits hard. It makes me happy that someone is going to keep the torch lit over there.

Quote from: tenbones on January 06, 2025, 04:13:10 PM

Quote from: Brad on January 06, 2025, 12:36:52 PM

Quote from: tenbones on January 06, 2025, 12:29:02 PMKevin has already stated he wants to take a step back and loosen the reins on things.

I am in absolute shock...no, really.

Yeah me too. But despite the overgrown janky system, I love me some Palladium Megaverse lore. It's not all good, but the good stuff in it hits hard. It makes me happy that someone is going to keep the torch lit over there.

It was good for its time and I loved it to death despite the rules jank but I'm not sure it holds up so well after all these decades.  Almost no one other than middle aged men who remember it from the 90s ever talk about and I cant recall ever seeing an active topic on it populated by younger gamers with no nostalgia.  I fully admit my biases though both in favor of the lore as well as against Pal!adium as a company.

I have a (mostly nostalgic) fondness for Palladium Fantasy RPG -- the one with the black and red cover. I never cared about Palladium's other titles, though (e.g., Rifts, et cetera).

For the Palladium lovers apparantly they have a youtube channel (well they have had it for 3 years or so) but now they have added a bunch of content in the last month or so, but you probably knew that.
https://www.youtube.com/@palladiumbooks834

Add to my list Traveler. The system is, eh, but for fucks sake the fanbase turns me off running or playing it ever again.

I'll take Star Frontiers over that any time. Easy to learn and teach percentile system, semi-hard fiction. But Jesus Christ the Traveler fanatics despise it and cant ever shut their damn mouths.

Universe from SPI. I love the system for its robust starsystem gen. But it is such an intricately convoluted system. I suspect Im one of the few people to ever actually run it. But alot of the complexity is front loaded during chargen and other generative moments. Your PC will have little lists for what envoronments and gravities they do well in and what ones they do worse in. They will have social standings, probably done stuff for a few years before game start and several other little things that can come into play later.

Would I run it now if given a chance? Probably not. Re-learning that maze would be a task. But who knows.

I would pass on anything that runs on the Phoenix Command system.  We played a few games of the original Aliens rpg that used it.  I don't know what those guys were thinking.

I'd also skip Exalted 1e/2e.  I haven't seen 3e.  I always thought I should like Exalted, but I just didn't until a friend ran it in FATE.

Quote from: Omega on January 06, 2025, 10:45:46 PMAdd to my list Traveler. The system is, eh, but for fucks sake the fanbase turns me off running or playing it ever again.

I'll take Star Frontiers over that any time. Easy to learn and teach percentile system, semi-hard fiction. But Jesus Christ the Traveler fanatics despise it and cant ever shut their damn mouths.

Universe from SPI. I love the system for its robust starsystem gen. But it is such an intricately convoluted system. I suspect Im one of the few people to ever actually run it. But alot of the complexity is front loaded during chargen and other generative moments. Your PC will have little lists for what envoronments and gravities they do well in and what ones they do worse in. They will have social standings, probably done stuff for a few years before game start and several other little things that can come into play later.

Would I run it now if given a chance? Probably not. Re-learning that maze would be a task. But who knows.

If you dont mind me asking, whats wrong with traveller's fanbase.

D&D 3.x, 4e, 5e. Frankly, I've been dipping my toes into OSR and I'm more enamored of "my ideas on how to make D&D better" than any clones of the original. I think I just played too much and I'm bored of it. Also, later editions are just supers in fantasy-land. Would rather use a proper supers game.

GURPS. I do love it, but boy did I find Improv with the rules a pain. Just too many rules. I still use it as a reference and measuring stick. If I need an idea on how to handle something, how much damage it should do, what special features it has, how much it might have cost... I use GURPS as the Encyclopedia RPGica and I'm happy with it.

PbtA, FATE, or games with meta-narrative rules. I like my traditional games without a bunch of meta-points and plot-editing nonsense. There are some interesting things in some of these games but actual play annoys me to no end.

AFMBE, Terra Primate, Conspiracy X. The dice mechanic annoys me. Lots of good stuff in here but I always want to convert to a simpler Stat + Skill + 2D6 thing. Easier to just use something like Cepheus and steal things like zombie/primate/home base creation.

It's a dead system, but I remember playing in a game of Twilight 2000 2.2 rules. The one where each character could have multiple actions per turn and a single action could fire 3 or more bullets. My guy was the SAW gunner and his M249 shot 10 bullets when fired. Then you had to roll to-hit for each of those bullets at the primary target. Then locations for each and damage for each. Then you rolled any bullets that missed at the next target down range and repeated the steps for hit. Then anything left was rolled on the next next target and so on until all of the bullets struck something or there were no further targets in range along the line of fire.

Even worse were automatic AoE weapons (like the Mk-19 AGL). In addition to the above steps, you had to roll for deviation from previous round and each could inflict multiple fragmentation hits on multiple targets. This took for-fucking-ever to resolve. We had a single ambush with a dozen militants attacking our HMMWV and 5-ton truck with six PCs between the two vehicles. The first bad guy got off an RPG shot but missed and the fragmentation only did superficial damage. Then the gunner on the HMMWV fired the Mk-19 AGL. It took over an hour to resolve those five grenades. Then the character fired again...

And everyone of us players aside from the GM and the guy playing the gunner decided to leave and grab some snacks at the local 7-11. We got back in 45 mins and they still weren't done resolving the second salvo. When it was finally done another 45 minutes later (this salvo took longer because it actually resulted in far more fragmentation hits) the GM just laid the screen down and said "No More." We all agreed.

Quote from: Koltar on January 06, 2025, 01:48:14 PM

Quote from: blackstone on January 06, 2025, 09:26:31 AM

Quote from: Koltar on January 03, 2025, 11:33:20 PMDungeons & Dragons - ANY version.

Its just NOT 'my bag' or style

- Ed C.

Even B/X or AD&D 1st ed?

NOPE.

 I am 'odd' or unusual compared to other gamers. The first RPG 'campaign' I ever played in for more than one session was not "Dungeons & Dragons" but classic little book TRAVELLER back around 1981.

 TRAVELLER was the role playing game that 'took' with me and fired up my imagination.
Think I had played once in a D&D session the year before - but it didn't work out. Also there were a group of guys that invited me to their group of D&D ..but that didn't work out.

- Ed C.

My first role-playing experience was D&D.  I didn't like its convoluted and often contradictory rules.  A few years later someone introduced me to RuneQuest, which I enjoyed so much more.  D&D is a title I won't play again.

I think the big reason for a lot of this comes down to cheaper, or even free alternative of every old game that exists.

Hell, D&D has how many OSR clones at this point?  Just naming all the free ones is a bit of a struggle.

My problem is that I love Japanese mecha, RoboTech in particular.  That's not a popular genre.

Palladium was our system in high school.  We only played those games.  It's sad, as a fix is so easy.  Just rename what bonuses are meant for which use.  A hand-to-hand strike bonus isn't meant to make you aim a gun better?  Ok, change gun bonuses to a new term called "Aim".  If I have a +2 to Strike and +1 to Block from hand-to-hand, and weapon skills that give a +3 to Aim, and a +3 to Parry, you should not run into that player with a +5 to Strike with their pistol, and a +4 to Parry with their riot shield. 

D&D 1E and 2E.

I be prefer the more modern versions of D&D and find 1E especially janky to run. I had a short bout of nostalgia, played a few games of 1E and 2E and realized they were no longer for me plus Gygax onetruwayism especially in the 1E DMG which is a disorganized mess turned me off.

Palladium Books.

I just can't run or play the system anymore. Each time I get migraines and find it too much work.

Given that Savsge Rifts from what I heard does it easier, release more stuff often, advertise and actually listen to the fans. Why bother.

Any overly crunchy system like Hero or Gurps.  Both companies make no attempts to streamline their systems, cater to the hardcore fanbase and their exists easier faster generic systems to run.


Any overly political company like evil hat games. I don't buy rpgs from devs who hate me.

Quote from: tenbones on January 06, 2025, 04:13:10 PM

Quote from: Brad on January 06, 2025, 12:36:52 PM

Quote from: tenbones on January 06, 2025, 12:29:02 PMKevin has already stated he wants to take a step back and loosen the reins on things.

I am in absolute shock...no, really.

Yeah me too. But despite the overgrown janky system, I love me some Palladium Megaverse lore. It's not all good, but the good stuff in it hits hard. It makes me happy that someone is going to keep the torch lit over there.

Strangely, my group is the opposite.  We had the most fun with the loaned IPs (TMNT, Robotech, BtS - which I'd argue is just Ghostbusters with the serial numbers filed off).  Rifts we played for a short time, but it didn't grab us.  And Palladium Fantasy was, quite frankly, an also ran (so never got much time at the table)...