Quote from: Bren;803425Thanks for the explanation. Sam Haite appeared about half way down page two of my search. So maybe his infamy is fading. He sounds like a caricature of the a friendless, orphan loner uber-PC.

Re: Metaplot
Metaplot seems like something that can only work at the micro level not the macro level. By that I mean, you might create a metaplot for one person's campaign (micro level) with some hope of it being useful after the players get involved, but trying to create a metaplot that will be useful for everyone's campaign (macro level) is doomed to failure. The only way it can succeed is to keep the metaplot at a level too high for the PCs to affect it, in which case it may be part of the setting but it isn't all that useful for the PCs since they can't actually interact with it. The pitfalls seem like something any GM who had ever run two different groups of players through the same scenario or even the same dungeon should have been able to anticipate from experience.

EDIT: Scooped. Also I'm not alone in my impression of Sam Haight as a PC caricature.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with your evaluaation of MEtaplot. Tribe 8 managed it OK, as there was a metaplot that played out over a series of campaigns in the first edition, but in the core rules for the 2nd edition they basically laid it all out in one chapter and said: "there, thats the story as it could have happened. You can go from there or just ignore the whole thing"

As for Sam Haight as a PC charicature, maybe it was the age group at the time I was playing, but he quickly seemed to become more like a PC model.

But this was the age of Highlander: the TV series, when trenchcoat/katana was de riguer for gothic superheroes.

Quote from: TristramEvans;803435But this was the age of Highlander: the TV series, when trenchcoat/katana was de riguer for gothic superheroes.

Ah yes, the trenchcoat of katana holding. That cracked me up every time MacLeod did that. :rolleyes: And let's not forget the duster of two-handed sword holding that some of the villains seemed to wear. I think you are right though, that some things make a different sort of sense at the time than they do in hind sight. That certainly applies to the fashions of every decade I've lived in.

I still like Forgotten Realms a lot. Kept it at 3e and just never adopted the Schizoid Magic Schism Thing where the earth opened up and bad magic popped out and touched everyone in the Forgotten Realms in taboo places.

I still like Eberron. Just haven't had an opportunity to run a game for it since 2012 or so.

Never really liked Greyhawk in the first place, but the maps were totally cool, so I seem to have all of them. Even though I have never run a game there. ever.

I still like Mystara, but no one plays that at all. I mine the Gazeteers for my 0D&D game though, and I like Calidar even better...

I have several home brew settings I run, I like them all, though not all equally well. There is one setting I haven't run a game for, for 15 years. I still crack the binder about once a year and go through it though for ideas.

I like the Wilderlands very much. Can't say I soured on that at all, and ran a couple of one shots earlier this year here.

I still like the Spinward Marches. Am running a Traveller campaign there right now and this game is steadily gaming momentum.

I still like Hârn a lot, just haven't found anyone willing to play in Hârn since about 2004 or so.

Haven't really soured on much.

Quote from: Bren;803442Ah yes, the trenchcoat of katana holding. That cracked me up every time MacLeod did that. :rolleyes: And let's not forget the duster of two-handed sword holding that some of the villains seemed to wear. I think you are right though, that some things make a different sort of sense at the time than they do in hind sight. That certainly applies to the fashions of every decade I've lived in.

It's because of this Dark Era that I get pissed off every time Michonne takes out a bunch of zombies in the Walking Dead with her stupid katana.

Soured on:

Forgotten Realms, after the first gray box set and some of the original area sourcebooks. Way way way overdeveloped to the point of being ludicrous, and Elminster can go slip on a piece of soap in the bathtub and drown. Not too bad if you limit it to the early stuff.

Old World of Darkness, for being too much cooler-than-thou, splatbook railroad, metaplot up the ass, and as Necrozius said, "I gave up that setting when I figured out that it wasn't at all about introspective personal horror but who was the fastest killing machine."

Dark Sun, once the second boxed set was released and explained everything that was happening and updating the world to the post-Tyr-freed milieu of the novels. First boxed set was awesome, fighting to survive in a world that absolutely did not give the least amount of shit about you. Metaplot creep happened early (unfortunately), but there was so much good stuff that could be mined out of it.

I've actually de-soured on Forgotten Realms. For one, I don't mind bland, standart and whatever else in that vein is applied to FR. I've also finally wrapped my head around the concept of taking what I like and leaving things I don't like by the wayside. There's a lot of good gaming material for FR and the canon police won't bust my door because I don't use a bunch of NPCs, depowered others and play in a different era.


If anything, I've soured on non-standart D&D fantasy. Settings like that always try so hard to be special and innovative, but I often find it gimmiky and it runs out of breath to fast. Tried and true "bog standart" makes for good gaming and there's plenty of space for good and creative ideas in the details, where they muck up less and matter to play more, imo.

Dark Sun. Most D&D settings, I can tolerate. There is stuff I like, there are some basic assumptions I find a bit annoying. Not annoying enough to actively avoid them, but for me, the implied D&D setting and its idiosyncracies is definitely not a selling point for a game. Dark Sun was different, and I was genuinely intrigued by it for a time - until I started to read more of the stuff about it, and really didn't like it. The original basic box is quite good, the extended material really is more annoying and I found the various changes really changed the setting for the worse.
Legend of the Five Rings is similar. I want to like the setting. But the metaplot and its cataclisms every other year or so doesn't let me.

Quote from: Beagle;803559The original basic box is quite good, the extended material really is more annoying and I found the various changes really changed the setting for the worse.

Yeah. That seems an unfortunate recurring trend with TSR. It was about 85% likely that any re-release of a setting was going to somehow screw things up somehow. Dragonlance is the posterchild for that.

Quote from: RunningLaser;803182FORGOTTEN REALMS

When I first got the grey campaign box, I was in love.  As time went by, I began to severely dislike the realms.

Exactly happened with me. I just loathe the realms now.

Quote from: TristramEvans;803296This is the second time I've heard this obliquely referenced, but what exactly did SJG do recently? All I hear is "attitude" and "stunts pulled", but outside of this forum I've never seen anything from them since GURPs 4th limpdicked onto the scene then disappeared, taking with it 3rd's exceptional library of supplements.

Umm. 4th's limp dick is rolling along nicely (almost as if perhaps the dick was not limp at all...), with PILES of PDF releases including Pyramid. Also, an enormous number of 3e books are now available in PDF with more released regularly. Horror was recently released in hard cover as was the delicious Zombies.

On Subject:

Beside FR, I ditched the meta plot in oWoD from the beginning, I felt it was kitschy. Also, I like making my own shit up. :-) When nWOD was released I thought the absence of a meta plot was awesome. But I seemed to be in the minority on that. BRP can easily handle a good modern horror. :-)

I'm not a big fan of Pendragon (And, to a lesser extent, Yggdrasil); it's the names. They don't stick in my head well, and of course, you can't play Pendragon with knights called Bob, Jeff, Lewis, Kerry and Duncan, that would be stupid.

Other than that, I tend to be willing to just go with the flow of a setting, and accept it for what it is.

Quote from: Will;803179One of them, that helped sour me on a game, was Feng Shui.

I started working out the details of the Architect 2056 juncture, about how people lived and civilization and so on.

I ended up so fucking depressed about it that, combined with other dissatisfaction, killed my interest in the game.

2056 is hell. I always read it as a "failure state" for something going deeply wrong.

I played a con game as a character who was from then; his wife had disappeared under "mysterious circumstances", so he go recruited into the time-traveling cyborg assassin project. His target for this game was a young boy in the modern-day juncture, whose mum looked like his wife.

Basically, I was playing the Terminator, and that was the exact way I handled it... right up to him walking into a hospital... making his way to the children's ward... looking through the glass and seeing the boy, and his mother... bursting through the door... bringing up his weapon for the kill...

...and then having a breakdown, because this time, he couldn't do it.

The woman wasn't his wife, but he wound up smashing his time travel device and staying in the modern day with her. I kinda imagine him having to fight off other future assassins every so often, and them going on to have an okay-ish relationship that never quite works because he can't get rid of all of his programming.

I might have enjoyed it more if the game was essentially a self-examination personal horror game.

But given it's mostly pitched as a high flying chop socky goofy action game, contemplating actual dystopias are best done lightly.

Quote from: Ladybird;803587I'm not a big fan of Pendragon (And, to a lesser extent, Yggdrasil); it's the names. They don't stick in my head well, and of course, you can't play Pendragon with knights called Bob, Jeff, Lewis, Kerry and Duncan, that would be stupid.

I think you can get away with Duncan. If it's good enough for Macbeth (Duncan is actually the King) it should be good enough for an rpg!

Also turn Bob into Robert or Jeff into Geoffrey and your set.

Even though I still run the Forgotten Realms I think this latest direction has me quite soured on the setting as a whole. I'll be the first to admit that I LOVE the Spellplague, the 100 year jump, the death of so many redundant, moronic, and ill-conceived deities, and the removal of both Mexico and Egypt that 4E's era really captured for me what was "fantastic" about the setting. It really did dump all the garbage I felt was cluttering up the Realms and replaced it with actually original ideas.

And now they're bring all that shit back. Yea I'll keep Mexico and Egypt back on Earth, where they belong WotC. Thanks.


Another setting that I started to read and wanted to play adventures in, but ultimately decided it wouldn't work based on what the books did was Dragonlance. I think the meta-plot of the entire setting sort of ruins any sort of independent adventures that could be had. Not to mention that they started changing things with the War of Souls trilogy and from there.......it sort of went downhill.

Quote from: Omega;803427Not sure if Trinity counts? For me the transition from Aberrant to Trinity was a low point as Trinity reveals that the novas apparently went nuts and then left the Earth.

Given the nature of taint, that's inevitable. I'm not sure why superheroes need CoC like insanity.

Quote from: Necrozius;803421I had to look him up, having been knee-deep in the 90s angsty goth phase of WoD.

His actual name was Sam Haight and supposedly he was a joke by the designers. Whether that's true or not, he apparently got soul-forged into an ashtray in the Wraith world. Ha Ha!

Sam Haight was a notorious character. I don't think anyone likes him. He is mostly known for being every splat at the same time and very overpowered. So they turned him into an ashtray to get rid of him. Nobody likes him, not even oWoD fans. He is hated. The worst of the metaplot.

Settings I don't like anymore are generic fantasy settings. For not doing anything new and being very black and white. And new WoD. For not appealing to me, while it technically should. I mean no metaplot, much more options. There is nothing in there that grabs me.