Weekend Nonsense: Favorite Bad RPG

[James Gasik]

Hot damn I miss Earthdawn sometimes.

I can't say enough how much I wish I could get an Earthdawn game going, but I can't talk anyone in my area into trying it out...

 

[Reynard]

I can't say enough how much I wish I could get an Earthdawn game going, but I can't talk anyone in my area into trying it out...

That's what the internet is for.

 

[James Gasik]

That's what the internet is for.

Yeah, no thanks. I prefer sitting around a table with physical people as Arneson and Gygax intended, lol.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah, no thanks. I prefer sitting around a table with physical people as Arneson and Gygax intended, lol.

I used to feel that way until I actually tried it. Now I am able to play far more regularly and with folks I haven't lived near for 20 or 30 years. I still have an IRL group but even we went online for the pandemic.

 

[Blue Orange]

Synnibarr had a lot of fun ideas despite awful rules, as others have said.

F.A.T.A.L. was actually a good example of where realism conflicts with playability--standard distributions cluster near the mean, so interesting results are rare.

EDIT: Yes, there are lots of other horrible things about F.A.T.A.L., but that one never gets brought up.

 

[CleverNickName]

For me? Boot Hill. It's not a good game, but I had a lot of fun playing it with my pals back in the 80s.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I think Palladium got by for a long time on gonzo enthusiasm and/or licensing. The mechanical issues were easy to pass over back then when you could get in the cockpit of a Veritech fighter, fight interdimensional threats in high tech power armor, fight The Foot as a mutated dinosaur, or play a snail knight serving a post-apocalyptic King Arthur.

Yeah, while the Palladium system was wonky, it was certainly very fun for players (if horribly unbalanced). The designers never even pretended it was otherwise, I remember when Kevin Siembieda straight up admitted that, despite giving ordinary turtles more points to work with, you can't actually create the TMNT gang using the rules!

My one and only time playing Palladium Fantasy, on the other hand, featured a freaking Kobold with a Strength of 30 (!) due to one player's crazy die rolls.

And of course, I already talked about the time I was part of a trio of Glitter Boy, Amazon, and baby Dragon, and despite owning a giant robot, I was the weakest party member!

 

[Nutation]

People keep typing "Rifts" but it isn't "Rifts".

It's Palladium.

It's an ugly, disorganized mess. I was running Heroes Unlimited and had to get Rifts just to find the Initiative rules. That system is all over the place in a way that would make any group uncomfortable. It wasn't until Savage Worlds revised Rifts that people would even play it via podcast. Terrible system that I really wanted to like because of Ninjas And Superspies and Beyond The Supernatural and Heroes Unlimited.

I really wanted to like Heroes Unlimited. I kept going back to the book, fascinated by the random character generation. But, the different categories of hero just aren't balanced against each other. I ended up rolling up lots and lots of character ideas to port to Champions.

 

[overgeeked]

otherwise throw shade at peoples' preferences.

Calling any RPG bad is literally throwing shade at other people's preferences.

 

[Reynard]

Calling any RPG bad is literally throwing shade at other people's preferences.

Not really? Although preference does factor strongly in it, there are also objective measures of game design.