Quote from: Ian AbsentiaYou think you were disappointed?  I was writing for the game when the powers-that-be decided to change horses in mid-stream, and the game suddenly stopped being about immortal monster-heads and started being about human enlightenment.  Magic stopped being flash-bang and started being too subtle to be noticed.  I was in mid-translation of one of the French books that ran completely counter to what the new guard was proposing.

Ah, Nephilim -- the game that Chaosium borrowed from someone else and never could figure out what they wanted it to be.

!i!

Nephilim was two great games, that didn't go particularly well together but were forced together nonetheless.

There was a great game about immortal spiritual entities in the modern world, there was a great occult conspiracy game, and for some bizarre reason they cohabited the same rulebook.

Quote from: RPGPunditBut without a doubt the worst case of bait-and-switch in history would have been the latest edition of Gamma World.

RPGPundit

Preach, it brother!

Erm, it's rather cold here at the moment, so I'm gonna ask: What's wrong with the D20 Modern Gamma World? I've never played the original version(s) or even read one, so what's the big difference?

Quote from: SosthenesErm, it's rather cold here at the moment, so I'm gonna ask: What's wrong with the D20 Modern Gamma World? I've never played the original version(s) or even read one, so what's the big difference?

Uh oh... You do not know the powers in which ye have invoked. For Pundits hate of D20 Gamma World is Unending and Unknowable.
 
I'm sure right now, he is likening it to cutting off some appendage and perhaps, doing the same to its author.

Quote from: SosthenesErm, it's rather cold here at the moment, so I'm gonna ask: What's wrong with the D20 Modern Gamma World? I've never played the original version(s) or even read one, so what's the big difference?

Once, when Pundit was a child, he fell into a river.  Nobody heard him calling, and he was swept downstream quickly and was soon in danger of his life.

He went under, fought his way back to the surface, and was going down again and realised that he was too tired and his clothes too heavy to let him reach the surface a second time.  He knew he was about to die.

At that very moment, a boxed set of Gamma World second edition floated downstream, dropped in by who knows whom.  Pundit grabbed onto it, and using it as a flotation device was able to reach the shore.

Since that day, he has regarded Gamma World as being quite literally the game that saved his life.

When d20 Gamma World came out, it was not a boxed set, it did not contain pockets of air that a drowning child might use to reach shore, and for that Pundit cannot forgive it.

So it is that, for Pundit, Bruce Baugh committed a terrible crime for had Bruce's version fallen in the river that day Pundit would surely have drowned.

In Nomine - for all the obvious reasons, damn fun and playable despite some of the worst written rules

7th Sea - despite being one of my favourite games, it failed to deliver at every level. Elements I expected were missing, and greatness was side-stepped by marketing idiocy.

MERP - for providing statistics for people you couldnt actually kill. If you gave stats to Gollum, you can bet your players want to kill him.

Quote from: LawbagMERP - for providing statistics for people you couldnt actually kill. If you gave stats to Gollum, you can bet your players want to kill him.

Did it actually mention that you couldn't kill him? BTW, which supplement contained the stats for Gollum?

Quote from: SosthenesDid it actually mention that you couldn't kill him?

Well, if they did kill the poor critter, that would leave the slight problem of explaining why Sauron didn't conquer the world after Frodo refused to destroy the Ring at Mount Doom... which is of course fine if you are comfortable with rewriting the events in LotR but potentially troublesome otherwise.

Yeah, but that's something the GM has to pay attention to. Either he's willing to live with that or will see that it won't happen. Just providing stats for the poor beast doesn't equal declaring hunting season.

There were stats for Darth Vader, too.
(Killing Luke and Obi-Wan is a really good way to start a Star Wars campaign, if you want to freak out your players)

Quote from: SosthenesJust providing stats for the poor beast doesn't equal declaring hunting season.

For some players it does, apparently, although personally I've never played in such a group. There's a current L5R thread over at RPGnet which turned into a debate for or against providing stats for deities, for that same reason. ("Are there any gods in there? 'Cause if there are, I wanna kill 'em.")

Engel.
 
What was probably the prettiest covers and internal design for an RPG. You pick up the book and you read all about this gritty post-pos-post apocolyptic mystical universe where great fires have erupted and Isectoid Demons, the Dreamseed, are terrorizing the survivors. The players will be Child-Like Angels, the great Winged warrior-protectors of the people.
 
Spoiler:

Spoiler

Then you find out it's all a lie in the GM section. The PC's are actual children, robbed from their homes, brainwashed and turned into "Angels" with nano-technology and genetic engineering. All of their miracles is explained with Nano-Tech. When they begin to hit puberty, they're killed and "harvested" to turn the next batch of kidnapped children into "Angels".

I think it was a twist that went too far. It made it impossible for the GM to see the PC's as real heroes, and the PC's didn't get to know why. If they ever find out, their once super-cool angels who were the last hope against the Dreamseed are now just tools of an oppressive theocracy, which is probably no fun to play.
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Quote from: KrakaJakIf they ever find out, their once super-cool angels who were the last hope against the Dreamseed are now just tools of an oppressive theocracy, which is probably no fun to play.

It could be, though. They'd just be fallen angels making their stand against both the Church and the Dreamseed.

Quote from: SosthenesErm, it's rather cold here at the moment, so I'm gonna ask: What's wrong with the D20 Modern Gamma World? I've never played the original version(s) or even read one, so what's the big difference?

The previous Gamma Worlds are crazy zany gonzo games of post-apocalyptic wackiness, where you play a bunch of wierd random-mutants (including bizzare stuff like mutant plants, mutant animals, guys with wierd powers, and usually with a few mutations that are actually counterproductive), living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that is NEVER explained (though you can surmise it was WWIII/the bomb).  Your characters wander around, beat up wierder mutants, take their stuff (the "treasure" being mostly the garbage of our civilization) try to manage their resources to survive, join up with or fight wierd sects, and basically have a lightheartedly good time.

Gamma World D20, by virtue of the very name, proposed that it was that.
Instead, what we got was a completely unrelated RPG by Bruce Baugh that had to do with nanites and ecological preachiness, with "society construction", a very serious game that had absolutely no comedic elements to speak of, where you were supposed to deal with Deep Issues. And Baugh has publically stated that he did GW in this way because he felt that the old kind of GW was wrong and that he wanted to show all of us how you're supposed to do "serious roleplay". In other words, the fucker is a swine of the worst degree.

RPGPundit

Quote from: BalbinusNephilim was two great games, that didn't go particularly well together but were forced together nonetheless.

Much as I still love the game (and I do, I really do), I have to say that I was more than just two games that queered the coffee.

• It was a game about spiritual possession and transformation
• It was a game about real magic in the modern world
• It was a game about historical reincarnation
• It was a game about occult conspiracy

Any one -- maybe two -- of those elements could have made a great game, but all four left it on unsteady legs and a divided fanbase.  It also led the a mid-stream change in focus when the line editor changed.  From what I've gathered, the French version never suffered from this state of split identity.  In many ways, it was their World of Darkness and similarly covered all the bases (though at least the WoD was divided into separate game lines).

Le sigh.

!i!

7th Sea - So umm, swashbuckling with no pirates, eh?  And sorcery comes from aliens.  I knew that was lame even when I was playing D&D in junior high and ripping characters out of NES videogames to fuel my roleplaying plots.

Necessary Evil - Yay, you get to play supervillains!  Umm, except you're really working for the good guys.  And doing nasty villainous things is extremely detrimental to your group in the packaged campaign.  Which is half-finished.  And the super-powers system is rather sparse and lacking.  Umm, damn.

Mage 2nd Edition Revised - Okay, it's not even a fucking edition change and the game setting and mechanics are drastically changed?  What the fuck? (Yeah, I know this is flamebait)

Lost Colony - Originally it was going to be a whole gameline.  Then it was turned into a supplement for Hell On Earth.  It doesn't work as either.  Had the potential to be supernatural horror Firefly though.  I weep for that missed opportunity.