Friday, June 4, 2010
Open Friday: Games Unplayed
I've mentioned before that I regret not having chosen to play more RuneQuest as a younger man. Are there any RPGs you chose not to play in the past and now regret not having chosen to do so?
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Traveller...I bought it in 1980, and put it aside for Space Opera from FGU. I wish I would have ran both games.
ReplyDeleteUnknown Armies, Wraith: The Oblivion, and the Midnight Campaign Setting for D&D 3.5. I could never find anyone who wanted to play them.
ReplyDeleteStar Trek... I never had anyone who wanted to play.
ReplyDeleteBirthright setting for AD&D2e. I would still love to play it someday.
Likewise Birthright, perhaps 2300AD as well.
ReplyDeleteTraveller, Runequest, Gamma World and Marvel Superheroes (FASERIP).
ReplyDeleteExcept for MSH, none of these games was popular around here.
+1 to Birthright and Runequest
ReplyDeleteI turned down an opportunity to play Star Trek because I couldn't figure out how something like that would be a fun RPG. I wish I'd given it a chance.
ReplyDeleteCyberpunk 2020 and Mekton are two games I like the system for and love the settings for. I've only played Cyberpunk once and never Mekton, but I do hope to change that.
ReplyDeleteI wish I'd tried Twilight 2000. My friends and I had it, we just never played it. I wonder what we would have come up with as young people still living under the fear of nuclear war.
Ars Magicka - I own tons of books, they are awesome, but the game system is waaaaay too complicated for my group so it is a private love.
ReplyDeleteBirthright - Played it intensly for a brief period of time. Really cool setting and the unique game elements (modes?) opened my eyes to the wonderous potential of the traditional D&D end-game (rulers/landowners/war/politics), something I had absolutely no interesting in before playing Birthright. More people should play this.
D&D actually. I learned on Marvel superheroes from my friend's older brother (and his friends) but they reserved D&D for "them" only.
ReplyDeleteNo one in my same age group was a D&D player until I got to college. By then, it seemed like everyone was gravitating away from the game and onto things like Vampire, and a slew of other games I had no interest in.
Hmmm.
ReplyDeleteChampions I guess. I have friends that rave about it but I never got the appeal on my read-thru.
Traveller - for whatever reason, when I first encountered it I couldn't figure out what you were supposed to do with it. It was too open-ended for me at the time, I guess.
ReplyDeleteArs Magica - always been fascinated with how the game plays against some standard RPG conventions, but could never fined anyone willing to play it.
Pendragon. I bought it on a suggestion from a friend, after telling him how much I dig Birthright. I haven't convinced my group to play it...yet.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see so many Birthright fans here.
I owned but never played Swordbearer, though I always wanted to. Never played Runequest, even though I had that gorgeous red hardcover edition. Also, I wish I'd played Alma Mater more than once, just to see if it could be made to work.
ReplyDeleteTalislanta! Wonderful world with decent rules. Thankfully, most books and supplements are available as free downloads now. It still remains difficult to recruit players for it. Perhaps it will remain a fantastic setting I can mine ideas from.
ReplyDeletePendragon - I remember being very impressed by an interview with Greg Stafford in Games Master magazine way back when.
ReplyDeleteTraveller - all those scenarios in White Dwarf looked interesting, but a scifi RPG wasn't what my group was looking for.
Marvel Super Heroes - I sold my boxed set on ebay recently. Again, fantasy RPGs were what my group was into, and not many were into comics like I was.
Empire of the Petal Throne. Only ever played in one session of it. It was actually one of the few games I never bothered to pick up at the time, probably because of the horrendous price tag (US$25; which was US$15 more expensive than D&D at the time).
ReplyDeleteAlthough I did later pick up later versions of games set in Tekumel, such as the TOME and GOO games.
[Although true regret is a modern thing for me; I have many games that I really want to try out, that I doubt I will ever get the opportunity to do so. Even worse, if I do, I probably wont be able to "play" in them as I will be the one running them. Which while fun, isn't the same thing at all.]
Also Talislanta. Have owned various editions over the years and have never once played any of them. Not a lot of Tal people in Iowa, apparantly...
ReplyDeleteMekton. Despite owning virtually all the Mekton stuff produced, I never managed to persuade anybody they wanted to play. They all preferred Cyberpunk, instead.
ReplyDeleteSigh.
Ringworld.
ReplyDeleteTraveller: played it a short while, but quickly replaced by Star Trek to keep the players happy.
ReplyDeleteVampire, the Masquerade: Had the main books & supplements, waited too long for another GM who wanted to run it. Never happened, and everyone lost interest.
Champions: Heard a lot of praise for it, but I held steadfast to MSH.
Empire of the Petal Throne: Also passed on this one, wasn't impressed with the artwork at the time. D'oh!
Ciao!
GW
In one sense I don't have any regrets, though from what has been shared so far, I suppose I do have a regret for not looking into Ars Magica. I certainly have a regret for not purchasing Empire of the Petal Throne, though I do have the Different Worlds reprints, one of the original maps, and the Game Science maps. However, I've never actually tried running or playing EPT, just experimented with running other games in the setting. I also have most all of the Talislanta stuff. Same story as EPT, played with the setting but not the system.
ReplyDeleteHmm, I suppose Villains and Vigilantes might be another thing I might wish I had played at least once.
I have long ago given up on regretting not trying more games. The number of games out there is just impossible to keep up with.
Frank
Traveller: one of our group bought it ca.1984, but no one had ideas right away, and we went back to AD&D. I bought reprints last year, but haven't formed a group yet.
ReplyDeleteStar Trek (FASA): we actually played it a little, but most of my group had turned anti-SF by then, and we couldn't come up with adventure ideas good enough to overcome that. I wish we could have done more.
OTOH, I have played a lot of Twilight:2000 and Birthright.
MERP - Love the High Fantasy setting, but our group was already involved with several other RPGs (AD&D, Boot Hill, TW2K, WFRP, Gamma World - loved that two-headed mutant chicken!!!) and most of the other members of my gaming circle were more into Dragonlance than Tolkien.
ReplyDeleteNever did more than flip though the books at the local hobby shop. From what I understand a lot of the original material is now quite difficult to come by :(
Spawn of Fashan.
ReplyDeleteFor me it would be Tunnels and Trolls and Chivalry and Sorcery.
ReplyDeleteBoot Hill for me. It just wasn't on my radar as a kid, but I didn't really get into Westerns until much later in life, so it would have been lost on me then anyway. I'd love to give it a go now.
ReplyDeleteAnd, for simple fact that I've been dying to see a copy of this ever since I saw it briefly mentioned in Dragon years ago, I really want to sit in on a game of Creeks & Crawdads
Bushido. Never got to play it, always hugely intrigued. Ditto EPT, Mage, RQ, Space 1889, BESM. Nowadays I'd like to get a designer's eye on Mechwarrior, WFRP, Top Secret, Morrow Project, Dogs in the Vineyard, My Life With Master, Indiana Jones RPG, Savage Worlds, and see what makes them tick/distinctive, because I've had idiosyncratic ideas about system design since forever, and frequently discounted things just because.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd like to have a fresh go, now I'm all growed up, at T&T, Vampire, Doctor Who and Bunnies & Burrows, to try to excavate what they actually intended, rather than to play whatever the popular wisdom thought they were.
AD&D. There was a long period (late teens to late 20's, roughly corresponding with AD&D 2nd ed.) when I felt playing such an inferior, mechanically broken system was beneath me, and mere dungeon-delving was a juvenile waste of time. The problem being, very few of the other gamers around me were so discriminating, so I ended up shut out of most at-the-table experience. I ended up being the guy who read a lot of game books on my own, occasionally managed to convince some folks to let me GM one of the "weird" games I liked, but almost never got to actually play a character.
ReplyDeleteI am slowly ticking through my list of games I have always wanted to play. Currently, we are playing 1E Gamma World. Next I would like to pick up Traveller (also 1E). We started a few Traveller games back in the day, but never really finished.
ReplyDeleteSometime I plan to actually play some Mythus as well.
As for games I want to play, but probably never will... Pendragon and Bushido.
Twilight 2000.
ReplyDeleteThere are many games I wish I'd run differently from how they were run, and other games I wish had been available at the height of my gaming career. Ahh...such is life.
DC Heroes - I used to play lots of Marvel, and even some Palladium Heroes (later Champions), but when I was at my height of super heroes gaming I played Marvel. A player of mine had gotten DC and wanted to try it. I wasn't in the mood to learn a new game, and Marvel was fine for me so I didn't try it. Years later; I'm on the net and reading about super heroes RPGs, and read how DC was in fact a well designed game. I hunted down some PDF copies to read. It looks pretty good. I now wish I had tried it, and maybe even converted my game over to it.
ReplyDeleteI also wish I hadn't stuck playing Basic D&D as long as I did, and had gone 1e sooner. And wish I had realized the big difference between 1e and 2e, and had stayed playing 1e for games I ran. I didn't like 2e over-all and it had me stop playing RPGs for a few years until just before 3e came out.
Far too many to mention, and many already have been, but one in particular would be SHADOWRUN. I always dug cyberpunk, and it seemed an interesting twist, but I could never get my friends interested.
ReplyDeleteAlso wish I spent more time with some non-RPG's like Ogre and Car Wars. We tried them a few times, but they were just too SLOW.
Chivalry and Sorcery. I made great use of the world building rules, but never actually played the game itself.
ReplyDeleteThis is difficult, since I've played a lot of games over the years. Since I worked at a game store for a number of years, I had lots of opportunities. That said, though, I missed out on, and regret missing, Birthright (which I own, but never got to play in), Dark Sun (same situation), Lace & Steel (same… actually, all of these I mention are ones I own but have never been able to play, due to a lack of group interest) and for that matter Albedo, Wraith: The Oblivion, GURPS Goblins, Empire of the Petal Throne (any version, though I only own the Different Worlds reprints and several of the Adventures in Tékumel volumes), and Swordbearer. I've played, but not to any sort of conclusion, Pendragon, Chivalry & Sorcery, and Realms of the Unknown, and I'd like to play them more fully (though I'd need to heavily house-rule the last to resolve some of my reservations about it - heavily enough that I'd be pretty much writing a new game, which I may yet do).
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that there are others, but that's what I can think of offhand.
This is a hard topic for me too, and of course complicated by what I ran, rather than got to play in. But James asked, what did we *choose* not to *play*, that we regret now? And that's a very specific question, so I'll try to answer it as stated.
ReplyDeleteI played with enough groups that I probably could've persuaded someone to run almost anything, so if I let a game slip by, I suppose I was choosing not to play it. With that in mind:
I chose not to play WEG's Star Wars. I wasn't really into the movies back then. Now I think I would've enjoyed the game.
I chose not to play WFRP, just because we played so many fantasy games already. I know now that I would've loved it, and hope for another chance.
But there are plenty of games I wish I got to play, that I GM'd. And plenty of games we didn't play enough, through no fault of my own, that I wish we'd got to play more of.
But those are other questions.
Baron Greystone: Good point. I'd have to revise my answer, then. I've never regretted any game I chose not to play. There are few enough of those: FATAL and Empire of Satanis are the only two that come to mind immediately. I don't regret choosing not to play those.
ReplyDeleteOh, maybe I regret choosing not to play Earthdawn, though it was a choice between that and another game and then the opportunity never arising again rather than an active disavowal of Earthdawn itself. But I don't regret it a lot.
I regret never having played Boot Hill or Star Frontiers. I've always wanted to play both of those games but never had the chance to do so. It would be great to get in a game of one of those at some time.
ReplyDeleteThe game I've played but wish I could have played more was Call of Cthulu. I really liked that game but for a variety of reasons I never got to play as much. When I'd run a game, it always seem to break up too quickly. *sigh*
For me: Rifts and Shadowrun. I've always found both settings truly intriguing.
ReplyDeleteShadowrun is a great setting but at least the 1st ed was in sore need of a mechanics overhaul.
ReplyDeleteGames I have never played but have been dying too: Boot Hill, Encounter Critical, Twilight 2000, Champions, and Bunnies and Burrows!
I played Runequeset once in the late 80's as a pup and don't remember anything about it other than the ducks.
Rolemaster... in Spain was a very popular game, but I never play it.
ReplyDeleteI chose not to play Skyrealms of Jorune because I was disappointed to learn that nonhuman species were not an option for players (contrary to what I had supposed). I regret not trying it.
ReplyDeleteWow...um...no.
ReplyDeleteI can think of games I wish I had gotten the chance to play more often but I can not think of a game I wanted to play but never did.
I've played a lot of different games. As I've said before here and elsewhere, trying new RPGs was my groups 'thing' for a while.
Yeah, Runequest has languished on my shelf for years, due to uynfair neglect on my part. Dying Earth still languishes due to outrageous lack of interest by ALL of my gaming peers. Old-school D&D of every stripe languishes due to being old-school (thanks again, philistine co-gamers)...
ReplyDeleteRagnardbard: I understand your pain as regards old-school gaming. Though most of my gaming group is interested in giving it a try (again, in most cases, for the first time in others), there is one player who is extremely opposed to the idea of even trying it out. He claims that he has been "abused" by old-school games in the past, which seems to be a line from out of the Story Game movement. It's most absurd because pretty much all of the goals he sets for story games are the same, in my opinion, as those for old-school ones, with only the perspective changed. Tribal identification can be powerful, I suppose.
ReplyDelete