What I mean by played out is when you've played a game enough to experience most or all of its permutations as written. Your players have tried all the chrome, whether that's the classes, magical options, or items. They've faced most of the published foes, everyone has seen the dice fall every which way and the mechanics are fully explored. Characters have reached high levels. There's no mystery.

But (in most trad RPGs which are not tightly focused) - there remains endless possible variation in plot and campaign parameters, if you choose. You can start over. But is the game played out at that point? Do you prefer move on to another?

Quote from: The_Shadow;1044093There's no mystery.

I wouldn't say that. The players may know what's in the books, but they don't know what's in my head.

I've definitely seen the sentiment.

I remember one guy I played with who declared one day that he had "completed" Greyhawk. He had conquered the game and was going to play some other game now.  I can't recall what the other game was that he was moving his attention to.  He played Marvel and Ghostbusters with us, so his new no-D&D stance didn't affect us.  But whenever a D&D campaign got brought up, he said he wouldn't play that because he had already "beaten" D&D.  He drifted away after that.  He was actually a pretty good player.  I don't miss him though.  He was a big proponent of "winning," so he was a bit of a jerk while playing RPGs.

Games with a narrow, specific concept - mostly genre or licensed games - get played out pretty fast. But I find the 'core' systems never do. They are either too big to ever fully explore, or too flexible to run out of room to grow.

Not exactly, but something very close.  I do sometimes get "system fatigue" where something I play a lot gets to the point where I still appreciate it, but just want a break with something new.  But this isn't because I've exhaustively explored it.  It's usually a case of there is something about the system that chafes a little, and now I want to play something that isn't rubbing that sore spot.   Usually takes many years to get to that point, though.

Quote from: The_Shadow;1044093What I mean by played out is when you've played a game enough to experience most or all of its permutations as written. Your players have tried all the chrome, whether that's the classes, magical options, or items. They've faced most of the published foes, everyone has seen the dice fall every which way and the mechanics are fully explored. Characters have reached high levels. There's no mystery.
But (in most trad RPGs which are not tightly focused) - there remains endless possible variation in plot and campaign parameters, if you choose. You can start over. But is the game played out at that point? Do you prefer move on to another?

For me, it is usually more that I rotate between what I want to do with regards to various things. Complex systems vs. simple, sci fi vs. fantasy, realism vs. genre-fidelity, etc. So my desire to play (ex.) a Star Wars game is pretty proportional to how long it has been since I last did so.

However, there is definitely a case where you can never have the 'first time you ran into a Mind Flayer' happen twice in one lifetime. There are things in game books (especially ones like D&D that 'are their own thing') that were novel once, and are not now. If you have DM who is sufficiently imaginative that you don't know the spell, magic item, monster list, etc. by heart, that helps a lot.

For me, it's mostly caused by playing systems where I strongly dislike how certain things are done, which are initially bearable, but get harder and harder to deal with as time goes on. For instance, my current group plays a LOT of Pathfinder. I'm fine with it in short bursts, but after a while I tend to bow out and wait for the next game to start. We're a large group, so one or two people skipping out doesn't really impact the group's ability to play.

Beyond that, it's not so much me getting burnt out on systems so much as itching to try different mechanics in different systems. There's so much variety out there, it's a shame to just stick with the same tried and true every single time.

Some games do. The better ones don't, at least not really:).
Then again, I tend to change systems between campaigns just for the fun of it, so it's unlikely to ever become an issue;).

Vampire: The Masquerade in my college town in the nineties. Dominated the whole RPG scene like a cult for the better part of a decade. I went from a big fan to "Jesus, there are other games you know" in about two years.

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;1044137Vampire: The Masquerade in my college town in the nineties. Dominated the whole RPG scene like a cult for the better part of a decade. I went from a big fan to "Jesus, there are other games you know" in about two years.

Ugh... Where I live, that was big with LARPers. Creepy LARPers who ran around at night in trenchcoats. Some of them were in the BDSM scene. There were crossovers. Just no...

Quote from: The_Shadow;1044093What I mean by played out is when you've played a game enough to experience most or all of its permutations as written. Your players have tried all the chrome, whether that's the classes, magical options, or items. They've faced most of the published foes, everyone has seen the dice fall every which way and the mechanics are fully explored. Characters have reached high levels. There's no mystery.

But (in most trad RPGs which are not tightly focused) - there remains endless possible variation in plot and campaign parameters, if you choose. You can start over. But is the game played out at that point? Do you prefer move on to another?

Quote from: Krimson;1044098I wouldn't say that. The players may know what's in the books, but they don't know what's in my head.

I agree with both of these points.

The problem for me, and this seems to be the default mode with D&D, is that while each different DM can bring something new to the same game - most DMs follow a pattern which matches what they deliver to the least common denominator of player who expects it. With D&D, its minimize the role-playing and concentrate on murderhoboing. You can do a lot more with the game, any version, but most of the gameplay falls into the same rut because most DMs do not push things outside that envelope of play (partially because that rut is what most players expect).

Quote from: jeff37923;1044147With D&D, its minimize the role-playing and concentrate on murderhoboing.

My games are RP heavy. However, when the players get restless then they get to the murderhoboing. Though I'm not a big fan of random dungeon crawls. Since thieves and rangers are popular, I do a lot of stealth based games and heists, where murdohoboing sometimes needs to be avoided, especially when you are robbing an "allied" NPC.

Quote from: Krimson;1044149My games are RP heavy. However, when the players get restless then they get to the murderhoboing. Though I'm not a big fan of random dungeon crawls. Since thieves and rangers are popular, I do a lot of stealth based games and heists, where murdohoboing sometimes needs to be avoided, especially when you are robbing an "allied" NPC.

That is what I mean. You can do a lot more with most games than what the default gameplay is, it is just that most do not.

Quote from: Krimson;1044098I wouldn't say that. The players may know what's in the books, but they don't know what's in my head.

Pretty much this.  Systems, on the other hand, I can find get played out.  Especially those that reward system mastery, like 3.x, where there's a very few series of optimal choices that the game actively funnels you into, unless you willingly kitbash and house rule the ever living *beep* out of it.

Quote from: The_Shadow;1044093What I mean by played out is when you've played a game enough to experience most or all of its permutations as written. Your players have tried all the chrome, whether that's the classes, magical options, or items. They've faced most of the published foes, everyone has seen the dice fall every which way and the mechanics are fully explored. Characters have reached high levels. There's no mystery.

But (in most trad RPGs which are not tightly focused) - there remains endless possible variation in plot and campaign parameters, if you choose. You can start over. But is the game played out at that point? Do you prefer move on to another?

Yes, to one degree or another.

When first learning a game, there's a lot of unknown to discover. After having player it enough, I have been over the space of what's possible more. It depends on how interesting the game is to me, and how many possible situations and moves, whether the game can hold my interest after that point (or possibly just for how long).

A related thing that happens is that when I'm first getting into a game, it's usually easier for me to relate to the game situation as the situation it's supposedly about, rather than the game mechanics. If the game mechanics don't represent the situation the game is supposedly about in a way that makes sense to me, then as I notice that, the game becomes more about the game mechanics and not about the situation. That's one of the main things that has me become disinterested in games, and one of the reasons I tend to prefer simulationist games to abstract or fantastic or gamey games.

Some games manage to seem be both interesting to play and like decent simulations even after many years of playing them heavily. Those tend to be the ones I keep being interested in and that I still want to play.