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I've had the same problem, though probably not for the same reasons at all, so this may not be particularly relevant.  I'm playing with my children, who have only ever played with my old 1e rules.  They didn't get particularly attached to the rules, and in fact lost interest after a bit.  They've been more interested in Next, but we still have times when everyone starts bickering (a sign they're bored) and I call time.

The problem for us probably comes in two parts.  First poor DM style.  I'm a little (a lot) rusty and they're just learning.  So things can be a bit stop go.  I'm really glad the rules are so easy, so at least we're not further slowed by endless table-checking.  Second, dull dungeon.   Given a choice between wandering around a made-up town or micro-dungeon, and going back to the CoC, they'll always choose the former.  I don't know what it is about the caves but they just don't like going there.  Partly I think it's just they are a little under-dressed and I've tried to add a lot more traps, narrative twists, and wandering monsters and things.  They do have a "why are we here" story about hostages, but they haven't found them and they're frankly no longer that interested.  They just don't seem to be getting a sense of achievement out of CoC, despite having all levelled up.

So we're mainly doing small adventures using the Next rules.  That's actually going quite well, though the youngest did rather lose it when her favourite weapon was destroyed by acid.  Oh well, we all have to go through that experience once, and she can buy another....

In short, not really the same problem as the OP, but I wonder whether the nature of CoC might be part of the problem? 

I was thinking this about an hour after I finished the first session of the playtest. People were fairly bored, since combat, though it was quick, lacked excitement, and they didn't specifically like the fact that they didn't feel like the characters they were playing were theirs. I too, felt like the adventure I was running wasn't mine. But what I'm deciding to do was just invoke the **** out of rule 0, for the second session. I wanted to stay as close to the playtest as possible, the first time, but I think the best feedback I can give, right now, is on which house-rules I run actually work. I think a lot of people, myself included, have said what doesn't work, but if I can find out what does work, I can potentially give them feedback on variant rules I'd like to see, or hell, even get a head start on the game's release, to fill my house rules binder, when they invariably don't include rules I want to see.

For example, for this session, the Fighter's player told me he wasn't having a ton of fun with his character, and asked if he could have something different, so I house-ruled the Fighter into a swashbuckling Elven, Dex-based, Light armor, Rapier-wielding fighter. Is is 100% accurate to the character design rules? Probably not. Is it as close as I can get with my interpretations of what we've been given, with reguards to bonuses? Yes. Will it be game-breakingly broken, and taint the feedback on the core of the system? Probably not.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the characters - compared to 1e they're just fine, and it's not as if 1e was a disaster.  You can embroider as you wish.  For example, a visitor at the weekend played one of the characters (not the thief), a Chaotic Neutral, and decided to balance the goodie-goodiness of the rest of the players by engaging in a great deal of imaginative theft in order to make money in town, before they even ventured out to the CoC.  He managed to get one of the other players arrested, and they finally left town because no one would talk to them, which was making further trickery awkward.  Anyway, everyone was amused (if occasionally put out), and there's no question that we had a "player character".

And they got some very nice horses, though frankly they don't know what to do with them.

Anyway, the complaint this morning was that CoC was "just fighting more monsters", and therefore lacked real interest.  They enjoyed the ogre, mildly, but it was a small encounter in what to them is a landscape of boredom.  They've barely dipped a toe in the place because having dealt with the goblins and had a few tastes of the kobolds, orcs and hobgoblins, they're jut bored.

I'm trying to add more of what they like - more sub-narratives, more tricks and traps, more peculiarities and unexplained phenomena to puzzle out.  I know that this is part of what a good DM does, but I've generally created my own dungeons in my own landscape, and the narrative has been built from the ground up.  Here I'm trying to impose narratives on an existing framework that is rather short of them - and have been trying to learn the new rules, which has left less time to decorate the dungeon.

In short, I do get the boredom thing.  I just don't think it's Next - it's really only the playtest materials. 

Jun 24, 2012 -- 6:47PM, penandpaper2 wrote:

I would have to ask the same question that's been asked before - why the hate? 

Without specifics it's hard to pinpoint what might need to be changed.  Someone mentioned the fighter being boring, but that's a tale as old as time now.  Some love the freedom of the new fighter, others want dictated powers, stances, and feats to use. 

Eh... I don't care if they don't give the fighter codified powers. What they do need to do is give it DCs and spell out what it can do in combat. For instance:

prone +3 Str or Dex apposed by Str or Dex
blind 1 round +3 Dex check opposed by Dex (and in the eyes)
stunned 1 round +3 Str check opposed by Con (smack him in the head).
Attack multiple targets for -3 per target (i.e. for 3 targets it would be -9 to all 3 attacks).
Attack and apply a status effect -5 to attack roll and ability check as above.
etc...etc...

You get the idea. If they did that I'd be all for it. So long as the player can expect to be effective regardless of which DM they are playing at...

I think the biggest thing missing is some amount of customization for the players.  It's hard to invest in something created by someone else.  I think if they came out with like 6-8 templates, 6-8 backgrounds coupled with the four classes already offered (they should actually add at least Bards) and a handful of races and you basically pick one choice from each pot to make your character...that's almost 1000 different types of characters you can make.

In my group, I have 8 players, so the 5 pregens don't exactly fulfill my needs.  Also I had three players who really wanted other classes; specifically sorcerer, ranger and bard.

I love the new streamline of the rules and even though we haven't fully gotten through a session yet, I can see this is a definite improvement.

I really hope they work out this modular character process soon as I would like to see how well it would adapt to a "future" campaign, ala SpaceHulks and Aliens.