Forget the ones that were never successful, like heartbreakers or most Forge games.

I mean games or settings that sold moderately well or more, and yet you think they sucked absolute ass.

I'm not taking that bait!

Quote from: Dumarest;962633I'm not taking that bait!

Pundit has really walked into that one hasn't he?

Quote from: yojimbouk;962637Pundit has really walked into that one hasn't he?

The devil in me wanted to answer a certain game near and dear to his heart.

Waiting for the first FR blast (which has sold moderately well...or more...).:-)

Actually, if you want a serious answer , can you tell us what games sold well enough to be considered popular? Aside from D&D and its various derivatives, are there any that qualify? I've got a roomful of RPGs but aside from Classic Traveller, I'm not sure how well any of them have sold.

It depends if you mean lame at the surface - or a setting which makes no freakin' sense once you delve in.

I can't think of many popular settings which are the first.

Quite a few are the latter.  Rifts being foremost amongst them.

When I was young and pretentious and had a big stick up my ass I would have said "Palladium", but since then I've gotten less mature and realised that there is nothing wrong with grown men pretending to be mutant ocelots and horned toads with katanas and uzis having epic battles with ninja in the middle of 80's strip malls.

I can't see how anyone could answer this with out claiming someone (actually many people since it must be a popular game) are haveing bad/wrong fun.

Quote from: Headless;962687I can't see how anyone could answer this with out claiming someone (actually many people since it must be a popular game) are haveing bad/wrong fun.

I don't know about that.  I can't stand the taste of beer - but that doesn't mean that I think that people who drink beer are horrible people.  (I prefer scotch.)

I have mixed feelings about some popular settings.

1. Golarion - well detailed BUT way too much going on here. There are aliens and dimensional travelers and magic and every culture and every god and every city and this and that and... it's exhausting.
2. Forgotten Realms. I grew up running this setting. I love it and hate it. Mostly because I'm just tired of it. I don't like using it for games because of the cannon-wanks, the meta-plot, and all the "celebrity NPCs" monkeying about. Recently I picked up a bunch of the new stuff, starting reading and just felt... meh.
3. Shadowrun. Now that we're in the future the future in SR seems silly. Too much history and baggage to start over. I prefer to invent my own from scratch with the same "elements" that make SR so awesome. Don't get me wrong. I love it. I just also think it's too far afield to be internally consistent (setting-wise).

Now, these are not bad settings. I just have a complicated relationship with them. :-D

Planescape. Take the awe and majesty of the outer planes and dimensional travel and turn it into Oliver! Even the art was terrible, everything grey and brown, as opposed to something by Roger Dean

Traveller's Imperium.  Space travel is about exploration. So let's make a galaxy where every single system within reach (because of our slow star travel) is statted up and any blank areas is not left to referees, but given to 3rd parties to stat up. Also, lame aliens.

Quote from: JeremyR;962703Traveller's Imperium.  Space travel is about exploration. So let's make a galaxy where every single system within reach (because of our slow star travel) is statted up and any blank areas is not left to referees, but given to 3rd parties to stat up. Also, lame aliens.

Ha ha...I never understood the transition from Traveller's implied setting being the wild frontier to the civilized imperium, nor did I ever understand the appeal of the imperium for reasons similar to your words. But I can't comment in the aliens one way or the other as I never bought any of those books. I saw the wolf people and lion people and whatever in the Journal of the Travellers Aid Society and that was plenty for my taste.

The best approach to Traveller is to stick with the basic set plus a half dozen LBB's that suit your interests, and then put together your own pocket empire sort of area, which can either be its own thing or whatever corner of the Imperium you might want to say it sits in. That is, it's OD&D in space.

Shadowrun would have to be it. Like Gibson, my basic reaction to cyberpunk with elves is not a positive one. The system is not much cop either, but it's one of the most successful RPGs ever.

Also Champions. I know it's a seminal system, and some people love it, but jeezuz it's an overly complex system that has some awful explanations of rules in it's current iteration. Any game that bases it's core roll in combat as:

"Attacker's OCV + 11 - 3D6 = the DCV the attacker can Hit"

....is not an intuitive game for a beginner! Too many TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms), to many 'see pXX' references, too many ruling stipulations to learn.

And bad art for a game supposing to simulate the comic genre.