History AudienceAlienatingEra / TabletopGames

* ''TabletopGame/HeroSystem'' went through one of these with "Champions: The New Millenium" in the late 1990s. It abandoned the HERO system in favor of the Fuzion System, and and replaced the [[UsefulNotes/TheBronzeAgeOfComicBooks Bronze Age]]-ish setting Champions had had up until then with one mirroring the DarkerAndEdgier attitude of UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks.

* ''TabletopGame/CardfightVanguard'': Towards the end of the G Era, there was such ludicrous amounts of PowerCreepPowerSeep that the meta was changing radically with every new set release, resulting in the entire card pool up to that point having to be relegated to its own format and having a new format where Creator/{{Bushiroad}} essentially got to start from square one, beginning the Audience Alienating V-Era, and to be honest that's putting it nicely. Setting aside the fact that Bushiroad chose to essentially dodge the consequences of having run the game into the ground by throttling the secondary market [[note]]and all the obvious consumer confidence problems that entails[[/note]], the new format, then called "Standard" was immediately off to a rocky start. Since the card pool was essentially starting from square one, most of the clans in the game wouldn't be legal for a long time, and some of the ones that were legal were basically unplayable at any level that could vaguely be called "competitive" for a long time after they became legal in the format. There's also the fact that the "Imaginary Gift" mechanic introduced in the V Era was horribly designed, with the quality of the types of gifts that were available ranging from GameBreaker to "absolute garbage that no one would ever use in a serious match", even though each clan had a specific gift type that was to be baked into the core of their design going forward. The V-era anime [[note]]which came with its own set of issues that will not be mentioned here[[/note]] was an adaptation of the original manga, meaning that for pretty much the entirety of the cards released in V-Era featured characters from the original continuity and whose stories had already been read and closed. To top things off, Bushiroad evidently failed to learn from the mistakes that resulted in them needing to scrap the card pool in the first place. [[EpicFail They ran the game into the ground a second time, and had to scrap the entire card pool a second time, resulting in everyone who was working on Vanguard at the time being fired and replaced by a bunch of]] [[VideoGame/{{ShadowVerse}} ex-''Shadowverse'']] [[EpicFail developers]]. The new Standard format was a massive departure from pretty much everything that came before, but managed to, over time, salvage ''Vanguard'' from the brink of cancellation, and it's clear that Bushiroad wants to forget the whole ordeal ever happened. A new format was created called "V-Premium" in which only V-Era cards were legal, which means it isn't fed by Standard and only gets whatever new cards Bushiroad decides to give it, resulting in the format being dead within two years.

* ''TabletopGame/CardfightVanguard'': Towards the end of the G Era, there was such ludicrous amounts of PowerCreepPowerSeep that the meta changing radically with every new set release, resulting in the entire card pool up to that point having to be relegated to its own format and having a new format where Creator/{{Bushiroad}} essentially got to start from square one, beginning the Audience Alienating V-Era, and to be honest that's putting it nicely. Setting aside the fact that Bushiroad chose to essentially dodge the consequences of having run the game into the ground by throttling the secondary market [[note]]and all the obvious consumer confidence problems that entails[[/note]], the new format, then called "Standard" was immediately off to a rocky start. Since the card pool was essentially starting from square one, most of the clans in the game wouldn't be legal for a long time, and some of the ones that were legal were basically unplayable at any level that could vaguely be called "competitive" for a long time after they became legal in the format. There's also the fact that the "Imaginary Gift" mechanic introduced in the V Era was horribly designed, with the quality of the types of gifts that were available ranging from GameBreaker to "absolute garbage that no one would ever use in a serious match", even though each clan had a specific gift type that was to be baked into the core of their design going forward. The V-era anime [[note]]which came with its own set of issues that will not be mentioned here[[/note]] was an adaptation of the original manga, meaning that for pretty much the entirety of the cards released in V-Era featured characters from the original continuity and whose stories had already been read and closed. To top things off, Bushiroad evidently failed to learn from the mistakes that resulted in them needing to scrap the card pool in the first place. [[EpicFail They ran the game into the ground a second time, and had to scrap the entire card pool a second time, resulting in everyone who was working on Vanguard at the time being fired and replaced by a bunch of]] [[VideoGame/{{ShadowVerse}} ex-''Shadowverse'']] [[EpicFail developers]]. The new Standard format was a massive departure from pretty much everything that came before, but managed to, over time, salvage ''Vanguard'' from the brink of cancellation, and it's clear that Bushiroad wants to forget the whole ordeal ever happened. A new format was created called "V-Premium" in which only V-Era cards were legal, which means it isn't fed by Standard and only gets whatever new cards Bushiroad decides to give it, resulting in the format being dead within two years.

*** The "Post-Spellplague-Era" seems to be held in this regard by many fans. Advancing the timeline by over a century, killing off many of the popular characters and deities, and all but annihilating most of the less popular regions of the world, it is a very different setting that does have its own merits, but significantly different from its 20 year history. Making this worse is that these changes took place during the already-controversial 4th edition rule set.

* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay'': The third edition, which was the first edition of the game designed by Creator/FantasyFlightGames, received a much more mixed reception from the fanbase than the first and second editions. Instead of functioning like a 'traditional' tabletop RPG, where all you needed was a rulebook, a character sheet, a writing implement and some dice, third edition leaned heavily into being a boardgame, coming in a box-set with tokens, miniatures and cards that had to be drawn and consulted. The result was a game that was much more expensive to buy, required a big physical box to play and was much more obtuse to get into. It was mostly ignored and lasted only five years before being shut down, with Fantasy Flight Games losing the licence to all three ''Warhammer'' settings shortly after. Creator/Cubicle7 was given the reins for a fourth edition, which went back to the game's roots and plays like an UpdatedRerelease of first edition; fandom reaction has mostly been positive.

** The 4th edition is widely disliked, though less because there was anything wrong with it per se (it's still considered a rather good tactic-focused RPG) than because it's so different from all other editions as to almost be D&D InNameOnly. The designers sought to get rid of rule imbalances from previous editions such as LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards, and [[GoneHorriblyRight ended up with a mechanically rigorous system of perfectly balanced classes... that had absolutely none of the flavour or distinctiveness of the ones the fans were used to.]] This also affected a lot of the game's flavor (notice how many entries involving 4e on this wiki involve the words "done away with" or "ended in"), which included things like gutting alignments or changing core parts of the lore that'd stood since the 80s. In short, it was so radically altered that most people didn't see it as the new edition so much as an entirely separate game, and so largely just kept playing their older ones, resulting in 4e being the first edition to lose its status as the bestselling RPG on the market.

* ''TabletopGame/GammaWorld'''s 2003 "Sixth Edition" is regarded as the Audience-Alienating Era of Gamma World, mainly because they ditched most of the outrageous cheeziness of previous editions and tried to make it like a serious and sober RPG. It was not generally well received by fans, most of whom loved the cheezy fun of the setting.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'': You get one of two answers depending on which side of the BrokenBase you contact. Either most of second edition was the Audience-Alienating Era, with terrible rules and poor writer communication, or the third edition is the Audience-Alienating Era, with a different tone, the setting being heavily revised and new splats added. This has produced ''many'' knife fights.

** Tom Kirby's tenure as Creator/GamesWorkshop CEO is viewed as this for the company as a whole -- discontinuing Specialist Games, shutting down [[TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyRoleplay Black]] [[TabletopGame/DarkHeresy Industries]], [[TorchTheFranchiseAndRun nuking]] ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasyBattle'' and replacing it with ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar'', excessive price-gouging that resulted in the company's stock prices falling off a cliff, and a cynical approach to dealing with the customer base that made [=GW=] seem like it was OnlyInItForTheMoney and not interested in actually supporting working rules for the games it produced. Then in 2021, the company instituted a FanworkBan on any and all fanmade animations.

** ''D&D' 2nd Edition was also unfairly hampered by societal problems in the US and UK at the time. Mass hysteria centered on supposed Satanic influences led to a shameful period of censorship within the product line, including the infamous renaming of the "Devil" and "Demon" monster types. [[note]] The creators of 3rd edition were able to gain back a large amount of gamer credibility by refusing to tailor the game to such attitudes. [[/note]]