1. Cyberpunk 203X: Sorry Mike Pondsmith, but you totally jumped the shark on this one. You had gamers waiting waiting YEARS for a game that was not anything like it's predecessors. Rache Bartmoss destroys the NET? No one knows what year it is? There is NOTHING reliable about any part of history? Everything everywhere has been changed and without books to backstop things, everything is in question in history. Sorry.. I bought the PDF when it came out, spent six hours reading it..and almost cried.
2. D&D 4e: The bad signs, to me, were the way the core book mangled multiclassing, alignments and went straight to the 'MMORP' outlook. (Tank, Healer, Blaster roles; 'enchanting dust' and such). Then the roll back in alignments and the total elimination of the old spell system, which was flawed I will agree, with a 'daily/combat use' talent set up. ("Oh no..shouldn't have used that fireball earlier.. it's only 1/day now")
Granted, I know that as an old school player dating back to the late 70s, I'm not one of the 'core demographics' that Wizards/Hasbro were aiming for. The total destruction of the 'official' DnD content that came before it and the death of Dragon/Dungeon Magazines as a dead tree publication has a lot to do with my ire as well. Almost every other game system that has been updated in the last few years still sells PDFs of their old content. Good luck trying to do that LEGALLY with Dungeon and Dragons Pre-4e. It's all gone.
4. Shadowrun 4e: Mostly I like the history update. The whole 'wireless revolution' is cool but the downgrade of skills and the addition of more attributes is a bit harsh in my opinion. Other than that it's still the rush of the mystic and tech, runaway culture shock and all the crunchy bits of cyberpunk gaming I like.
5. World of Darkness: Okay.. the Old World of Darkness had it's warts, I will be the first to admit it. Crossovers between systems? Not too good. (Vampire: "Die Were!" Were: "Blargh! I Rage, eat aggravated damage and this VW bus.") But on their own, each was good, especially when you had a GM who set the rules, made the calls on what you could and couldn't play, and knew how to play the Xanatos Gambit on the players. I still miss Mage and Vampire Games.
New WoD not so much fun. (Again.. my opinion.. lots of my buds love them, have fun guys, I'm waiting for the 20th anniversary edition of Vamp:Masquerade and pray that it leads to a Mage anniversary editon down the line)
Coming later on when I calm down and think things through a bit..
Games that were unfairly killed by the license owners.
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