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I'm going with Army of Darkness RPG
I'm tempted to get this just for the sheer WTF of it.
Still, a game where actually taking action to defend yourself is a bad idea, passive encourages metagaming and so many of the players actively encourage betraying PCs....
Hmm...odd. I've never had any of those things happen when I played CoC or BRP. Hell, on defending yourself, the Dodge skill is a bit broken in how overpowered it is. Which is literally the only problem I have with the game.
I'm going with Army of Darkness RPGI'm tempted to get this just for the sheer WTF of it.
Still, a game where actually taking action to defend yourself is a bad idea, passive encourages metagaming and so many of the players actively encourage betraying PCs....Hmm...odd. I've never had any of those things happen when I played CoC or BRP. Hell, on defending yourself, the Dodge skill is a bit broken in how overpowered it is. Which is literally the only problem I have with the game.
again, this is mostly just my own bad experiences with a few players.
DnD 4th ed. Its not a RPG. Its a very detailed mini combat game with a few RPG elements.
Second.
4E (an even then it wasn't over hyped.
I found the whole "This game is awesome. It's better than everything. Now you can finally move out of your parents' basement" thing they had going on without a shred of actual information was a textbook definition of hype.
I know there was a vocal subset who hoped that Paizo were going to fix everything that was wrong with 3.5 but to do that any rational person would realize that you wouldn't have 3.5 anymore. You'd have 4E.
Well, you would have *a* 4e. Not *the* 4e.
But it's true that some things they couldn't fix because they wanted to do a revision instead of new edition.
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I do enjoy Cyberpunk because it was gritty and dark. "They call it a sucking chest wound for a reason, son."
As opposed to an awesome chest wound?
Wow. So this is the official "let's take a steaming dump all over someones favorite RPG thread?" Because, yeah I dont see the purpose of this thread otherwise.
And before any of you ask "then what am I doing here?" I figure if people who can't stand Pathfinder can come in and crap on people's cornflakes you should be just fine with me doing the same.
My personal answer? There IS no overrated RPG. Each one is someone's favorite and as long as people are having fun with what they're using to run their games why should we give a rats behind? If we're tired of hearing what a great RPG so and so is, then stay away from the forums that push those games. One of the reasons why I dont hang around EnWorld or RPG.Net anymore is because of the pure HATE ON that they have for games that I like.
Yeah, that's the best post in here. +1 to you, friend.
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My personal answer? There IS no overrated RPG. Each one is someone's favorite and as long as people are having fun with what they're using to run their games why should we give a rats behind? If we're tired of hearing what a great RPG so and so is, then stay away from the forums that push those games. One of the reasons why I dont hang around EnWorld or RPG.Net anymore is because of the pure HATE ON that they have for games that I like.Yeah, that's the best post in here. +1 to you, friend.
I sentence you both to a lengthy FATAL campaign.
Warhammer (1st and 2nd editions - never played 3rd). Superb setting. Superb adventures. Absolutely rubbish combat system.
Stuff
I don't remember all the details like you do (21 years ago), but I'm pretty sure we were running it correctly (players included 2 engineers and a doctor), but the bottom line is we found that armor in that game gave you too much protection and made combat silly. We didn't like it, you like it. So I guess we have different opinions, oh well. I guess I don't blame you since you worked on the system.
Traveler
Sorry, but your character did not survive character generation, please try again.
Hey, that's a feature! The only other game I know that is more awesome is Human Occupied Landfill (HOL), where not only can you die, but you can also get the result: Hated by God: God blames you, personally, for the death of his only son.
StuffI don't remember all the details like you do (21 years ago), but I'm pretty sure we were running it correctly (players included 2 engineers and a doctor), but the bottom line is we found that armor in that game gave you too much protection and made combat silly. We didn't like it, you like it. So I guess we have different opinions, oh well. I guess I don't blame you since you worked on the system.
Fair enough, really. I started writing for it years after it came out, so I like to think that my opinion was formed after I'd already dealt with figuring the system out. But, I absolutely could be biased, I admit.
I'd really be interested to see what I could do to run a "proper" combat in the system for you, but I suspect at this point it would be moot.
Though, if I had to pick two things out of the system that were just. plain. silly. I'd have to say the damage on a 7.62 round (11D6+3 per bullet that hits the target) and the fact that grenades were really the One True Weapon.
Say you fire a 3 round burst of 7.62 lead at some poor shlub, hitting with all 3 (because it's easy to do so). You deliver two to the chest and one to the leg. He's running around in SP 18 armor on both locations. Rolling completely average on all three shots, you run in to (11d6 x 3.5 = 55 + 3 = 58) 58 points of damage to all three locations. Drop that to 40 on the first hit due to armor, then (SP 18 drops to 17 from the hit) 41 on the second - even with massive Body Type saves, that's 81 points of damage through armor. The leg is moot, but it's also pulped.
The damage went from relatively moderage (2d6+3 for most handguns, about 5d6 for most machine guns) to this whopping mankiller for what amounted to the easiest to obtain, cheapest-in-the-long-run assault rifle - and nothing compared to it. It was the game ender.
GM: "The Red Chrome Legion thugs pour out of their armored van, shouting racist slurs and pumping their FN-FAL's over their head in victory dances, they spot you and draw down..."
Players: "So, uh, we'll roll up new characters now..."
Just. Silly.
Grenades were the other big thing. Take a grenade. Throw it. Do lots of damage. Tell the GM you want to take a series of successive actions to throw your other 9 grenades. GM tells you that you'll incur a cumulative -3 penalty for every action after the first. Tell the GM "Hey, that's okay, the grenade deviation rules say that they'll all land within one to two hexes of the intended target, meaning that the blast radius from these things guarantees full damage at my target hex. Any cover he's got will also be suitably shredded."
Laugh all the way to the bank as the GM vows silent, swift, revenge.
As said before: Just. Silly.
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Really? Which CP was that from? I stopped bying anything after CP202 and it's supplements. Actualy, i stopped after cybergeneration came out.
As i recall, a 7.62round did 6d6 damage...and some more depending on the rifle.
As it is, i retconned the weapons to use the real world ones anyway...never liked arasaka and other imagined stuff weapons.
Really? Which CP was that from? I stopped bying anything after CP202 and it's supplements. Actualy, i stopped after cybergeneration came out.
As i recall, a 7.62round did 6d6 damage...and some more depending on the rifle.
As it is, i retconned the weapons to use the real world ones anyway...never liked arasaka and other imagined stuff weapons.
Cyberpunk 2013, the original black box, three-book set.
That's the FN-FAL, using a 7.62 NATO round at close range - and I was wrong, it's actually 11D6+2, not 11d6+3 - and since most firefights take place at close range or less, the average grunt-monkey running around with one of these things is going to be greasing the pavement with player characters left, right, and center.
CP2013, Friday Night Firefight, Page 18.
By comparison, an AK-47 using a 7.62 Soviet round "only" does 7D6+3 at close range - for an average of 28 points per round - a gross disparity if ever there was one.
(Big thanks to www.scribd.com for the reference, since I don't have my CP2013 books here at work...)
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Warhammer (1st and 2nd editions - never played 3rd). Superb setting. Superb adventures. Absolutely rubbish combat system.
In the WHFRP 2e campaign I played in I started bringing a book to the games to read during combat because my non-speedy dwarf only got to go if the two archers hadn't already killed everything in a single round.
Luckily, one of the other characters was a doc.
Reminds me of something I was told by some people in my Sunday group. They played all sorts of games. This one was some futuristic/modern thing, don't ask me what. It was one without clerics.
So one character plays Doctor Somethingorother. Everyone calls him The Doctor. Whenever someone is in need of bandages or life-saving surgery, he was their go-to guy. He was really good. Never botched an operation or anything.
Then someone got this crazy idea that "doctor" isn't necessarily the same as "physician". Funny little thought, so they think what the heck and ask him what he has his doctor in.
He tells them.
"Entomology."
"EntoWHAT?"
"That's the lore of insects."
The never let him operate on them again. :D
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Really? Which CP was that from? I stopped bying anything after CP202 and it's supplements. Actualy, i stopped after cybergeneration came out.
As i recall, a 7.62round did 6d6 damage...and some more depending on the rifle.
As it is, i retconned the weapons to use the real world ones anyway...never liked arasaka and other imagined stuff weapons.
Cyberpunk 2013, the original black box, three-book set.
That's the FN-FAL, using a 7.62 NATO round at close range - and I was wrong, it's actually 11D6+2, not 11d6+3 - and since most firefights take place at close range or less, the average grunt-monkey running around with one of these things is going to be greasing the pavement with player characters left, right, and center.
CP2013, Friday Night Firefight, Page 18.
By comparison, an AK-47 using a 7.62 Soviet round "only" does 7D6+3 at close range - for an average of 28 points per round - a gross disparity if ever there was one.
(Big thanks to www.scribd.com for the reference, since I don't have my CP2013 books here at work...)
Oh. Well, then i am happy that my group and i play 2020...much more balanced...
I'm going with Army of Darkness RPGI'm tempted to get this just for the sheer WTF of it.
Yay. They made an entire Hollywood movie to promote it. Can you believe that??
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In the WHFRP 2e campaign I played in I started bringing a book to the games to read during combat because my non-speedy dwarf only got to go if the two archers hadn't already killed everything in a single round.Warhammer (1st and 2nd editions - never played 3rd). Superb setting. Superb adventures. Absolutely rubbish combat system.
The one time I played, I had an Academician Herbalist. All well and good, but quite poor in combat. After running some numbers, I determined that the only way he would be able to hit in combat was if he managed a critical. A critical involved rolling three times to find out what your attack looked like, and involved losing sanity points. That's when I decided the system was no good.
The one time I played [warhammer], I had an Academician Herbalist. All well and good, but quite poor in combat. After running some numbers, I determined that the only way he would be able to hit in combat was if he managed a critical. A critical involved rolling three times to find out what your attack looked like, and involved losing sanity points. That's when I decided the system was no good.
That's not quite how criticals work. Criticals are what happen after you reduce a character to 0 wounds. They reflect serious injury to a character. They are not related to what you roll to hit. Even the most untrained combat character should be hitting 20% of the time. Most experienced fighters do hit around 50-60% of the time.
In warhammer you don't hit often, but it only takes a couple good hits to drop even the toughest of foes.
I won't say it is the most elegant system around, but I certainly enjoyed the Enemy Within campaign when I ran it. Taught me a lot of what I knowabout GMing.
Traveler
Sorry, but your character did not survive character generation, please try again.
I have to defend the honor of the old regiment here.
Traveller has a much different character paradigm than most other RPGs. As opposed to a level 1 nobody, your average Traveller character is a highly competent professional. The counterpoint to this is that XP is, functionally, a non-starter in Traveller. The character you leave character generation is about as good as your character's going to get.
The rules for in-generation character death (and disability) are, more or less, part of the braking system. It's not like you flip a coin every other turn to see if you survive. But the more you look to munchkin out, the more likely you are to have a bad roll either kill or generally ruin your character's overpower potential. Try to build a competent character and get out while the going's good and there's never any real chance.
The problem is, especially more modern gamers who've grown up on things like 3.X-4 D&D where a lot of the fun /comes from/ constantly pushing the system to its limits, find the mental shift in something that's otherwise so generally accepted, that trouble results.
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Not sure if it counts exactly as RPG...
Starfleet Battles
It's hilarious to watch a SFB tournament. 30 guys lugging in laundry baskets filled with books, and then 3 hours spent as everyone agrees on which books will be allowed in the tournament. Then everyone plays one combat. About half fail to finish it, while the other half ends in 15 minutes due to someone remembering rule 12, sub-paragraph 8, clause 10, section 9 that let's them win in the first 2 rounds of combat.
Then the tourny ends and everyone lugs their laundry baskets full of rule books home again.
Fun fact - I have one of the original spiral-bound proofs of SenZar. It had been sent to members of my AD&D group because one of the creators had played with said group some years before (prior to my joining). So a bunch of us are sitting around a table leafing through copies of SenZar, and every few minutes someone says, "That was from my campaign!" or "I created that race!" or "Hey! I said that in character years ago, and he even used the name of the character in the quote!"
Of course, no one had ever been asked for permission to use material they had created. That was my last real experience with SenZar. I didn't know until years later of all the idiocy involving the creators of the game and their reaction to criticism.
I think the most over-hyped RPG for me was White Wolf's Trinity. I spent the last 20 minutes or so just trying to remember what it was called. I remember seeing the posters at the local game/comic shop proclaiming it's arrival for almost a year, I think. After being told by so many people that it was going to be the next big thing, all it did was make me go "meh."
I sentence you both to a lengthy FATAL campaign.My personal answer? There IS no overrated RPG. Each one is someone's favorite and as long as people are having fun with what they're using to run their games why should we give a rats behind? If we're tired of hearing what a great RPG so and so is, then stay away from the forums that push those games. One of the reasons why I dont hang around EnWorld or RPG.Net anymore is because of the pure HATE ON that they have for games that I like.Yeah, that's the best post in here. +1 to you, friend.
You would! How the hell have you been?
I think the most over-hyped RPG for me was White Wolf's Trinity. I spent the last 20 minutes or so just trying to remember what it was called. I remember seeing the posters at the local game/comic shop proclaiming it's arrival for almost a year, I think. After being told by so many people that it was going to be the next big thing, all it did was make me go "meh."
I really liked the background for that game.
My votes:
Traveller. I found it overly complex to play, and the setting just doesn't pop much at all to me. It feels like someone genericized an amalgamation of Star Trek and Star Wars and then went into way too much detail about a rather boring galaxy. (But then again, I'm not much of a sci-fi fan, so I'm not really this game's target audience, I suppose.)
The World of Darkness. The rule books are nearly impossible to read if you just want to learn how the damn game works - the crunch is sandwiched and laced with so much fluff that it hardly seems worth the effort. I remember reading the original V:tM book and liking all that fluff, but I can't say the same for any other White Wolf book in the last or current generation. Which is a shame, because I like the system - just not all the setting canon baggage attached to it.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition. Though fondly remembered by grognards for its quaint and charming layout and roundabout way of discussing, well, nearly everything, it was a poorly organized and overly complicated snarl of rules. 2nd Edition wasn't much better, but at least the presentation was done in a way that made it more legible. The limit of my patience was reached when the bonuses for weapon types vs. armor types came into play. It's just too much.
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I think the most over-hyped RPG for me was White Wolf's Trinity. I spent the last 20 minutes or so just trying to remember what it was called. I remember seeing the posters at the local game/comic shop proclaiming it's arrival for almost a year, I think. After being told by so many people that it was going to be the next big thing, all it did was make me go "meh."
Trinity? Heck, I remember all the posters and ads with the name "Aeon" and how they all had to be replaced after an IP injunction.
Now THAT was overhyped.
I sentence you both to a lengthy FATAL campaign.My personal answer? There IS no overrated RPG. Each one is someone's favorite and as long as people are having fun with what they're using to run their games why should we give a rats behind? If we're tired of hearing what a great RPG so and so is, then stay away from the forums that push those games. One of the reasons why I dont hang around EnWorld or RPG.Net anymore is because of the pure HATE ON that they have for games that I like.Yeah, that's the best post in here. +1 to you, friend.
*rolls around on the ground attempting to extinguish flames because now MY VERY SOUL IS ON FIRE*
Overrated? Almost any game can be overrated when you compare your own experiences with it with those of the breathless fanboy you can't seem to shake at the Con or game store who has latched onto you after you exchanged a simple pleasantry.
If I had to pick a most overrated game in my opinion, it would be 4e. The rally cry of "They fixed the math" has been met with at least 2 math fixes so far. There are also plenty of other design elements that rub me the wrong way. Plus, some of its hyping came at the expense of previous editions and that strikes me as belittling the competition in order to look better rather than just laying out how you're a cut above, and that's almost never going to raise my estimation of a product.
GURPS was just way to open ended and very confusing to start with. I think that they have a good idea on their hands but the mechanics were very easy to abuse and sometimes it was damn near impossible to figure out if it would be better to invest in skills or ability scores.
While I like GURPS, I have to agree that it is easy to break. The setting and how many points you get to build characters with determine how quickly the game breaks, but it can be broken in horrible ways if the GM is not paying attention.
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Plus, some of its hyping came at the expense of previous editions and that strikes me as belittling the competition in order to look better rather than just laying out how you're a cut above, and that's almost never going to raise my estimation of a product.
Most companies that replace a product hype the replacement as being better than the previous iteration. YOu can't really blame WotC for doing what's standard proceedure in the business world. The big difference is only that, because of the OGL, there were also a thousand and one systems that were also based on d20, some of them very very close to 3.X D&D.
I don't really care for 4E personally, but the amount of villainization that some of you do towards WotC is rather extreme.
When it first came out the original World of Darkness games were a bit overhyped. I know plenty of people that played it and it was very popular. Its nothing about the game system or the setting, it was the wave of "this is real roleplaying" that seemed to accompany the game. I think a lot of it had to do with a backlash against the worst days of 2nd edition, but it felt a wee bit elitist and actually kept me away for a while.
I was GenCon the year Werewolf was released and played in a demo game run by White Wolf. They took a few shots at TSR for releasing D&D 2nd edition (both in the demo and just in talking about the World of Darkness). I always found it ironic that they started releasing second editions of their books within the year.
Shadowrun always struck me as strange, because they hype really played up the cyberpunk "any fight could be your last" nature of the game, but it always left we wondering what the point of the "elves, dwarves, orks, and dragons have come back" side of thing was, except to maybe get the system more attention back when there were a lot of cyberpunk games around.
The fantasy aspects were meant as a tie to the Earthdawn RPG. The timeline goes Earthdawn, the modern world (low magic period), Shadowrun (magic returns).
I can appreciate SR for what it tried to do. But in the end, but no matter how "dark and gritty" it was supposed to be, it still felt too much like unicorns and glitter.
You must have never tangled with Bug Spirits or a Ghoul strain HMHVV outbreak in a game. Still, I can see your point if the GM plays too much with the fantasy and not so much with the monstrous horror that is part of it (or how it combines with human/metahuman cruelty).
Mechanically, first edition was unplayable. It wasn't until 3rd and 4th editions that the game really played well. Ironiclly, the game improved after the hype faded.
Shadowrun always struck me as strange, because they hype really played up the cyberpunk "any fight could be your last" nature of the game, but it always left we wondering what the point of the "elves, dwarves, orks, and dragons have come back" side of thing was, except to maybe get the system more attention back when there were a lot of cyberpunk games around.The fantasy aspects were meant as a tie to the Earthdawn RPG. The timeline goes Earthdawn, the modern world (low magic period), Shadowrun (magic returns).
I think perhaps you've got that backwards. Earthdawn (1994) was released five years after the initial release of Shadowrun (1989) and is more likely what's referred to as a "Shoehorn" where its continuity with the previous game is concerned. The fantasy aspects of Shadowrun were unrelated to Earthdawn until Earthdawn became a viable concept at FASA - they built the second game as a tie to the first, not the other way around.
Speaking of, I wonder why no one has brought up Earthdawn over in the Under Rated RPG thread. I kind of liked it!
Scion for me. A fantastic idea for a game utterly ruined by horribly broken rules and a messy maths intensive combat system that does not lend itself to cinematic combat in the slightest.
huge +1. Another classic "did they playtest this!?!" from white wolf.
Plus, some of its hyping came at the expense of previous editions and that strikes me as belittling the competition in order to look better rather than just laying out how you're a cut above, and that's almost never going to raise my estimation of a product.Most companies that replace a product hype the replacement as being better than the previous iteration. YOu can't really blame WotC for doing what's standard proceedure in the business world. The big difference is only that, because of the OGL, there were also a thousand and one systems that were also based on d20, some of them very very close to 3.X D&D.
I don't really care for 4E personally, but the amount of villainization that some of you do towards WotC is rather extreme.
If you paid attention to what I actually wrote, you'd see that simply stating that your new product is better isn't what I'm getting at. It's the question of actually cutting down the predecessor that's problematic. And you don't often see that in marketing because it points out your own company's deficiencies and undermines your customers' confidence in your products.
I think perhaps you've got that backwards. Earthdawn (1994) was released five years after the initial release of Shadowrun (1989) and is more likely what's referred to as a "Shoehorn" where its continuity with the previous game is concerned. The fantasy aspects of Shadowrun were unrelated to Earthdawn until Earthdawn became a viable concept at FASA - they built the second game as a tie to the first, not the other way around.
Speaking of, I wonder why no one has brought up Earthdawn over in the Under Rated RPG thread. I kind of liked it!
Yeah, I realized that was off after I wrote it. The Shadowrun game came before the Earthdawn game, but "in-game" Earthdawn exist before Shadowrun.
I had forgot it was a five year gap (I thought it was only a couple of years), so the references were shoehorned.
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My picks:
D&D 4e: I don't hate it the way some people do, but because it's D&D, it was naturally hyped to the moon, and it's really not my cup of tea. I don't really see it as a tabletop version of WoW; more of a tactical combat game to which you can add as much roleplaying as you want, whereas I prefer games that make the roleplaying more central.
Exalted: Even apart from the fact that the worst campaign I ever played used this system, I have trouble understanding why this system gets so much love over at rpg.net. The concept doesn't do much for me, and the system is kind of a mess.
Traveller: I'm not sure which version of this I read, but I've never come out of reading a rulebook with so little idea of what the game was actually about. I remember there were detailed instructions on how to calculate your ship's cargo capacity and how to figure out whether you would be able to make the monthly payments on your ship, but I had absolutely no idea what a game session was supposed to look like, or what the players would do. The book had a couple of sample scenarios, and one of them involved trying to leave a planet with a bunch of ridiculous regulations, getting the runaround from several low-level functionaries. Why would anyone want to spend hours of their free time dealing with fictional bureaucratic red tape?
Traveller: I'm not sure which version of this I read, but I've never come out of reading a rulebook with so little idea of what the game was actually about. I remember there were detailed instructions on how to calculate your ship's cargo capacity and how to figure out whether you would be able to make the monthly payments on your ship, but I had absolutely no idea what a game session was supposed to look like, or what the players would do. The book had a couple of sample scenarios, and one of them involved trying to leave a planet with a bunch of ridiculous regulations, getting the runaround from several low-level functionaries. Why would anyone want to spend hours of their free time dealing with fictional bureaucratic red tape?
Heh, you've obviously never played Paranoia. =]
The one time I tried Traveller, the scenario placed the players on a space ship where someone was a saboteur/spy for another organization, and our job was to interview the people aboard until we could figure out who the traitor was. It dragged on for hours, and the setup of the game was such that we basically couldn't determine anything useful about the NPCs with any of the in-game technology or skills. The most action I saw in that session was hitting a dude with a steel pipe.
I don't know if this was a scenario which was packaged with the core game rules or not, but it was definitely a published module. The problem I had with it is, if I wanted to play a mystery game, I'd much rather do something Call of Cthulhu-ey or even a Sherlock Holmes-type scenario. A sci-fi game where there's little to no interaction with any aliens or tech just isn't terribly interesting. It was also sad to see such a large portion of player handouts devoted to the setting and then playing a module that didn't really incorporate any of those elements.
Exalted: Even apart from the fact that the worst campaign I ever played used this system, I have trouble understanding why this system gets so much love over at rpg.net. The concept doesn't do much for me, and the system is kind of a mess.
I don't know.
Maybe its the expansive, detailed and interesting setting that leaves almost every other game not set in the real world in the dust for depth and complexity.
Maybe it is the pure awesomeness of playing characters who jump from floating island to floating island, killing five mooks with a single blow as they engage in a philosophical debate with their opponent, aiming to talk them into committing suicide, rather than having to physical defeat them. While the system is not perfect, it does let you do some really amazing stuff, and rewards you for thinking of cool approaches rather than 'i full attack with my two handed sword and use power attack.'
Maybe its that the basic pre-charms system is actually really durable, allowing really interesting and versatile play.
There are a lot of reasons to love second ed exalted. All that really needs sorting out is the charms.
And I have to agree with Pathfinder, with the following explanation. The setting and adventure paths have been great, but where they hype machine really kicks into overdrive is with the rules offerings. From the beginning Pathfinder has never been that great with the fine tuning of its rules, and 3.5 was pretty clunky to begin with. Its not that the system doesn't have it charm, but for a setting with strong storytelling elements, constant rules infusions really just is distracting.
+1
Pathfinder rpg deserves respect and hype as succesfully keeping a tricked up version of 3/3.5 alive - but the tricks when taken as a whole are unsatisfying.also D&D 4e- lotta hype, itty bitty gaming satisfaction.
I would have to vote hands down GURPS. People seem to love it as a be all end all universal system online but I just find it clunky and over hyped.
Are we talking company hype or fan hype?
If we are talking fan hype, you would have to include pretty much every system ever made.
If we are talking company hype, Pathfinder would not fit simply because Paizo has never hyped it as anything more than their version of a popular system that has continued support. 4E would fit because WOTC goes out of their way to present even the simplest change as a grand improvement that will change the game forever to the point that anything less than perfect is going to fail to live up to the expectations established by WOTC. This started late in the 3.5 era with all their splat books and has only picked up steam in the 4E era. I don't know enough about other system well enough to judge them.