What is, in your opinion, the single WORST RPG ever made, and why is it so bad?

[aramis erak]

This is an interesting discussion and unfortunately it has sort of devolved into a "what's a popular RPG that I don't like."

I think it's interesting because the answer shifts over time. Back in the early days, when we didn't really understand what RPGs were, there were a ton, and I mean a ton, of bad games that were people who were excited by the idea and somehow put together money to get something into print. Every once and a while I come across PDFs of them. The last one I saw was from a game called KABAL. "Knights and Berserkers and Legends." It was terrible. But it was a different time.

KABAL was mediocre, editing better than the 76 printing of OD&D, but no better rules, but far from the worst, even of the era. It's clearly optical typeset form standard typewriter, probably a selectric with a cursive ball.

As for Gygax in 73 and rushing the job... the Dallhun manuscript is plagiarism, but without text to text comparison, whether it hits the point where it's copyright infringement is in doubt; in the US rules processes are not protectable by copyright, only patent. So anyone knowing that could have done TSR much wrong, quite legally, and bankrupted TSR and the Blumes.

D&D wasn't the worst game of the era, but it was poorly executed But the nigh religious overzealous attack mode towards those who don't hold it to be the best thing ever really is a disappointing bunch of ... hooey.

Especially if one's listened to the interviews of Dave Weseley... I have. He didn't think anything was strange with Arneson going beyond the price list - that's a standard FKR thing. Goes back to the 1910's or before.

 

[Celebrim]

D&D wasn't the worst game of the era, but it was poorly executed But the nigh religious overzealous attack mode towards those who don't hold it to be the best thing ever really is a disappointing bunch of ... hooey.

That's a bunch of hooey. Over forty years on and the fundamentals of D&D are universal in video games. It's not just cRPGs, it's basically every genre now that D&D's design influenced. For all the whining about how badly designed D&D is, almost all of its sacred cows are universal throughout the gaming world now despite going on fifty years for someone to come up with something better and almost endless trying to do that in the tabletop RPG realm. Almost everything possible has been tried, and yet the fundamentals remain.

It's not because it was first or it's just because that's what people know. It's because it's good solid organic design. It's the fiddly bits that aren't well thought out. The core of D&D is amazing.

 

[RangerWickett]

One night, while a lot of us were drunk for some party, my friends started spitballing names for RPGs, and the one that we landed on was Sorority Combat Mission. They insisted I run it immediately, despite having done no planning and having no rules.

In my drunk brain, I decided that instead of dice, every PC had money, which I doled out from the penny jar we kept to use for penny poker night. You could spend money to do stuff, or pay other players money to try to get them to do stuff.

The plot I came up with on the spur of the moment was that terrorists (this was 2005; it was in the zeitgeist) had attacked our college, and like something out of Red Dawn, the sororities had to defend against an attack, then arm up and save the school, all while bickering over whatever petty stereotypes we had about sorority women at the time. (We were dumb and more misogynistic than I like to remember.)

The game fell apart due to a mix of everyone being too drunk, and two players finding my penny jar and just giving themselves infinite power.

So yeah, that's probably the worst RPG ever made.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Listen, I’m going to block you, because you’re not the type of person I want to engage with on the internet. But before I do, I want you to know this: you’re embarrassing yourself. You are coming across as a clown, and an entirely unserious person for getting this worked up about someone else’s opinion.

Mod Note:

In the future, please do use your account’s blocking feature as much as you want. It’s there for a reason.

However, do not make announcements that you’re doing so; do not take parting shots at those you intend to block. Actions like that only agitate others and makes moderation more difficult.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The only thing I remember about Gamma World is a fellow player's character we named Fumbles the Scorpion. He was a mutant animal, scorpion, and was constantly rolling now for physical tasks of all kinds at critical moments. Whatever his name might have been, we started calling him Fumbles.

It can be hard to talk about Gamma World, because there are at least five mechanically pretty distinct versions: 1e and 2e (which were pretty similar), 3e (which was quite different), 4e (which was much more D&D-like), 5e (the Alternity based one) and 6e (which was the D20 Modern one). I'm not even getting into the 7e version which was quasi-D&D-4e version but also odd in a lot of ways that I think pushed it out of normal RPGs (and no, that's not a shot across D&D 4e's bow).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Y'all remember that old FFG game "Fireborn"? I wanted to like it. Seemed a cool setting with cool ideas, but my buddies and I literally couldn't figure out how to play it. We got together for 2 sessions to try and figure it out, lol. Never figured it out. I suppose this would be my pick for most incomprehensible game.

Conceptually great, broke as could be if you ever got into combat.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Please. No admonishment for the screeds @Celebrim has put forth? His take on Mouse Guard is abysmal. His assessment of the entirety of the fandom of PbtA and Blades in the Dark is about as lousy as it gets. And the idea that GURPS has never led to long standing games? I don’t even like GURPS, but that’s clearly ridiculous.

They’re awful takes. He said what he said and I’m responding to it.

Mod Note:

In an opinion thread about candidates for “Worst RPG Ever”, you want to make things personal? Not very wise or gracious.

If disagreement with someone’s opinion is enough for you to ignore board rules of civility, you probably need to withdraw from the rhetorical battlefield.

Don’t do it again, and nobody else should repeat this error.

 

[loverdrive]

That's a bunch of hooey. Over forty years on and the fundamentals of D&D are universal in video games. It's not just cRPGs, it's basically every genre now that D&D's design influenced. For all the whining about how badly designed D&D is, almost all of its sacred cows are universal throughout the gaming world now despite going on fifty years for someone to come up with something better and almost endless trying to do that in the tabletop RPG realm. Almost everything possible has been tried, and yet the fundamentals remain.

It's not because it was first or it's just because that's what people know. It's because it's good solid organic design. It's the fiddly bits that aren't well thought out. The core of D&D is amazing.

As someone who plays plenty of videogames.... No? Even in the same fantasy genre, D&D-isms are very rare.

What "ubiquitous sacred cows" are you thinking about?

 

[loverdrive]

I have started to wonder if Powered by the Apocalypse is the current version of this. It's discussed ad nauseum in RPG design threads, and the Wikipedia page claims there a hundreds of published games that use the system. But VTTs seem to report its market share below 1%, and I've never personally seen or heard about anyone running a campaign (admittedly, the internet discussion about it always leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, too).

In my experience, using VTT for PbtA games is quite rare because, like, what would you need a VTT for? Any app that allows for a voicecall is more than enough.

 

[loverdrive]

Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda.

If things had been different, they woulda been different. Since they weren’t, they aren’t.

Unless and until we get our own Marvel Multiverse, I will concentrate on the provably true, as opposed to the road not traveled.

Idk, in a reality I live in, roleplaying was separately invented at least once with ERP and other chat-based forms of roleplaying.

...and also Yoko Ono's Grapefruit predates dnd by a decade. Unless you are willing to argue that this

is not a roleplaying game.