TheFonz
First time out of the vault
I first got started with second edition in high school, where I ran it for two years but this post is going to be about my experience with the current edition.
I ran it with some randos but I had the same three players for most of it. All of which were experinced with the system.
My issues were as follows.
The balance is wacked out. It was an issue with players who didn't want to play a tank that if they didn't min max, they would get one shot by my enemies. These same enemies even though I targeted him, failed to ever even knock down my super mutant player. This was with me attempting to kill him, having assassins that would target him with anti material rifles. If these assassins had hit any other player it would have been instant death. This in my opinion was a significant part as to why encounters were boring. I couldn't give a uniform threat to the players, with anytime I targeted a player besides our super mutant him being instantly knocked down. Many such cases. Then they couldn't really player. It made for a bad combat experience. But to top it all off after I asked the player to halve his health, he then. Tanked. TEN. C4. At level 11. This was after being the main target of four waves of reskinned centurions. This was the last combat encounter we had.
The hex map is genuinely annoying. This is small, but I dislike hex style map.
The combat isn't fun to play. Every combat encounter will have me frantically typing after rolling dice. The skills were cool in the computer game, but with all the possible modifiers, perks, and how you have to subtract the role, it is annoying to run with a calculator being a constant companion. This would slow down combat and making it much more boring.
The enemies rely upon perks with the perks being explained above. I must admit that it wasn't until a few months ago that I realized this. Every enemy has a series of perks. Instead of explaining the perks there or just adding the stats to the enemy. This is confusing and annoying as you have to continually scroll back and forth, which extends combat and makes it more annoying.
But the roleplaying was good right? I must admit that was fun by not because of the system. The system being basically a combat based rpg better for dungeon crawl, lead to us often having arguments about what skills would apply to what. For example, at one point a player wanted to paint. Yeah well tough, what skill is that? The system far from facilitating our roleplay, hampered it with lack of options.
The crafting system is garbage.
The system of having ammo be the dice and the weapon being the modifier is cooler on paper, but in practice, lead to alot of scrolling and was pretty annoying.
The survival mechanics are so under baked we ignored them.
The people making the system have Bethesda's respect for the lore. I understand adding the Bethesda stuff, but seriously, why do we need a southern super mutants?
SUPER MUTANTS WERE ONLY IN MARIPOSA AND SUCH!
In addition, its clear they had the do not rebuild the wasteland itis.
The creators don't understand weapons. I had a friend on there who is a gun nut and he would rant sometimes about how inaccurate the weapons are. Not to mention if it was Japanese it was automatically better.
The system is in active development and instead of having like monthly or bi yearly updates, it happens whenever so its annoying to play a system where things will randomly change.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts I quickly wrote down based on the gming. Campaign ended when one player kvetched and said he wasn't having fun. I then said I didn't want to say it but me either. So we kvetched about the system. I then said, lets just play pathfinder so now I have a week to homebrew a whole campaign from scratch lol.
Anyway, I wouldn't recommend the game at its present state. Its gotten better I must admit where it used to be you'd have to take a percentage off of damage in addition to a damage threshhold. But my problems are with the current version of the game.
I ran it with some randos but I had the same three players for most of it. All of which were experinced with the system.
My issues were as follows.
The balance is wacked out. It was an issue with players who didn't want to play a tank that if they didn't min max, they would get one shot by my enemies. These same enemies even though I targeted him, failed to ever even knock down my super mutant player. This was with me attempting to kill him, having assassins that would target him with anti material rifles. If these assassins had hit any other player it would have been instant death. This in my opinion was a significant part as to why encounters were boring. I couldn't give a uniform threat to the players, with anytime I targeted a player besides our super mutant him being instantly knocked down. Many such cases. Then they couldn't really player. It made for a bad combat experience. But to top it all off after I asked the player to halve his health, he then. Tanked. TEN. C4. At level 11. This was after being the main target of four waves of reskinned centurions. This was the last combat encounter we had.
The hex map is genuinely annoying. This is small, but I dislike hex style map.
The combat isn't fun to play. Every combat encounter will have me frantically typing after rolling dice. The skills were cool in the computer game, but with all the possible modifiers, perks, and how you have to subtract the role, it is annoying to run with a calculator being a constant companion. This would slow down combat and making it much more boring.
The enemies rely upon perks with the perks being explained above. I must admit that it wasn't until a few months ago that I realized this. Every enemy has a series of perks. Instead of explaining the perks there or just adding the stats to the enemy. This is confusing and annoying as you have to continually scroll back and forth, which extends combat and makes it more annoying.
But the roleplaying was good right? I must admit that was fun by not because of the system. The system being basically a combat based rpg better for dungeon crawl, lead to us often having arguments about what skills would apply to what. For example, at one point a player wanted to paint. Yeah well tough, what skill is that? The system far from facilitating our roleplay, hampered it with lack of options.
The crafting system is garbage.
The system of having ammo be the dice and the weapon being the modifier is cooler on paper, but in practice, lead to alot of scrolling and was pretty annoying.
The survival mechanics are so under baked we ignored them.
The people making the system have Bethesda's respect for the lore. I understand adding the Bethesda stuff, but seriously, why do we need a southern super mutants?
SUPER MUTANTS WERE ONLY IN MARIPOSA AND SUCH!
In addition, its clear they had the do not rebuild the wasteland itis.
The creators don't understand weapons. I had a friend on there who is a gun nut and he would rant sometimes about how inaccurate the weapons are. Not to mention if it was Japanese it was automatically better.
The system is in active development and instead of having like monthly or bi yearly updates, it happens whenever so its annoying to play a system where things will randomly change.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts I quickly wrote down based on the gming. Campaign ended when one player kvetched and said he wasn't having fun. I then said I didn't want to say it but me either. So we kvetched about the system. I then said, lets just play pathfinder so now I have a week to homebrew a whole campaign from scratch lol.
Anyway, I wouldn't recommend the game at its present state. Its gotten better I must admit where it used to be you'd have to take a percentage off of damage in addition to a damage threshhold. But my problems are with the current version of the game.