The Time & Time Again RPG (Morrow Project, 1984).  I absolutely loved the fiction revolving around the discovery of time travel in the game, and I also loved the concept of the para-military Voltigeur time traveling soldiers.  The concepts and and ideas are gold for me in regards to time traveling tropes and ideas.  However, the game system sucks ass.  Any game system that makes me roll 1d200 for results is off the table for me.  Years ago I worked on a conversion to RQ3 and a conversion to 3e GURPS.  I actually got to run few sessions of my RQ/T&TA conversion.

D&D 3e - I once was a 3e fanboy, mostly cuz I was a 2e fanboy, and 3 is greater than 2, so it must be the same only better!  (yeah, I was a teen at the time).  Then I finally got to play 3e.  Two years later I realized I never had any fun in any of the game sessions, whereas I hated most of the guys from my old 2e group but I was still able to have fun in that.

BRP - I thought I may have found the RPG for me.  I think that idea officially died when, during my first time running/playing it, one PC ended up grappling a monster of nightmare and beating it up, while another PC aimed at it point-blank with a shotgun and easily missed (yes, I used the point-blank rules).  The game was meant to be a modern horror game in the vein of Silent Hill ... and the character with a grappling of 50% became the most reliable fighter, which turned all the monsters into jokes.  Oh, and the Contested Rolls system was just awful.  Fortunately Savage Worlds seems to be giving me what I want now.

I wonder if a lot of people also have games they didn't want to like, but did.

RPGPundit

EDIT: Started a new thread about this.

Paranoia.  Reading it was hilarious and great.  Playing it...not so much.

Mage: The Ascension.  I think it was the most interesting of the WoD games, the magic system is cool, and I *still* want to like the game, but it just never worked for me in play.

Savage Worlds.  Another one that just didn't click for me in actual play.

Paranoia: I forgot about it. I just hate a game where you have to have demency. Give me a serious, introspective game based on embracing your junghian shadow through cognitive psychoanalysis and I'll provide all the needed demency.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;452982Paranoia.  Reading it was hilarious and great.  Playing it...not so much.

We tried playing Paranoia once as an ongoing campaign.  It got kinda repetitive and boring after awhile.  (Even the humor can get kinda boring and "mundane" after awhile).

It seems to play better as an evening one-shot game, than as a regular ongoing campaign game.

When did we change the thread's subject to: games you were darn sure were crap and righteous subsequent "I told you so" moment?

I wanted to like Feng Shui, but the system...I love kung fu movies. I love hong kong flix. I even liked the wonky setting. The system *seemed* like it was made for high flying awesome action.

In practice, I found it frustrating to the point where I winged my dice across the room. Let me get this straight...you want the players to have their guys be able to do HK Action Movie stuff, but most of the time you get penalties for it?

Fuck yooooou!

Still bitter about that game because it seemed perfect for my brain. Maybe we didn't play it right, who knows?

aaron

Quote from: boulet;453064When did we change the thread's subject to: games you were darn sure were crap and righteous subsequent "I told you so" moment?

No, but that would be a good topic for someone to start a new thread about, and it might dissuade people from confusing the subject matter of this thread.

RPGPundit

Quote from: thedungeondelver;450182Hackmaster Basic: When your basic game's character construction rules make me wanna hurl, you've done something wrong.  I didn't go into it looking for a game that "was just like D&D but not", but I'd hoped it was a little lighter.  I fear for K&C over what Advanced is going to be like if the dog's breakfast of character creation in that book is "basic".

I'd like a whole list of specifics, if you're amenable.    Extra feedback will be particularly helpful as we're working on the PHB.  You can post here or email me at mark at kenzerco dot com.

Scion: This should have been the perfect game for our group - gods and mythic beings duking it out on 21st century Earth! We didn't even expect much from the Storyteller rules, but this particular incarnation seems to have been written by some mathematically challenged imbecile. Why???

Exalted: We're playing it right now, but I'm getting seriously annoyed by the ruleset. Roll dozens of dice to attack, use some convoluted charms, roll even more dice to defend - before you finally realize that it ends with a single die of ping damage, no matter what you do!

Thanks for listening to this rant, now I need some booze!

Quote from: Todtsteltzer;457528Scion: This should have been the perfect game for our group - gods and mythic beings duking it out on 21st century Earth! We didn't even expect much from the Storyteller rules, but this particular incarnation seems to have been written by some mathematically challenged imbecile. Why???

Sounds like you may like the forthcoming Part-Time Gods.

Or Lords of Olympus.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;457811Or Lords of Olympus.

RPGPundit

If it ever comes out...

A really cool indie game I got from rpgnow called EPICS.  The concept was that you made a broad outline of your character, then started playing. When you came across a situation, you would then decide how good your character was at it, allocating remaining character creation points. Like "Pff, I studied computers a lot!" would cost you more than, "I used to work customer service for this particular computer company".  And you could get points back for being in a dangerous situation and announcing your character didn't have a particularly useful skill.

I liked this for a unique design-in-play type of situation to get your action hero characters moving quickly while still allowing them to flesh things out not based on your "best guess" of what the campaign would be about, but with unquestionably relevant benefits and drawbacks.

In practice, the point economy never quite made it, and the opening, sketchy characters, were too sketchy to satisfy even design-in-play people. You really didn't have much to go on.  Also the length of the campaign impacted your spending decisions way too much. You ended up gauging how many points to invest by the real-world calendar.  ("How long are we going to play this? Multiply by how often we play...")

But I still love the idea of working up your character capabilities on the spot, and the flaw mechanic of yelling, in the cockpit of a crashing plane, "I don't know anything about planes! Aaaagh!" and having that have a mechanical impact, all that was great. Wish it had worked.