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

[SteveC]

Bloodsport versus Lion Heart !

Bloodsport is clearly the better movie (and it has Ogre in it) but I can't remember laughing louder at a movie than in Lion Heart when a character just screams LION HEART!!!!

Okay, back to bad RPGs.

 

[mamba]

I do have to note that there's some pretty successful games that have moved out of the class sphere though--the Fallout series comes to mind here.

or Skyrim, same studio / publisher. One exception does not really contradict it being widespread however

 

[The Soloist]

The sad part is there's a pretty good game buried under there; the basics of the combat and even the magic system were reasonably clever and at least the former didn't work badly in play. But there was so much special-casing it pretty much drowned it (including the all-too-typical problems of exception based design in the magic system that were magnified by the fact the resolution/advancement system wasn't that simple in the first place). It also had the biggest random swings in power in character generation next to, perhaps, Stormbringer.

SPI's Dragonquest 2e was better but the constant recalculating of percentages during combat made it too slow for an RPG. But not enough to qualify it for a Worst Game. It's playable. I still play SPI's Arena of Death (the intro DQ game), solo, a few times a year.

 

[Thomas Shey]

or Skyrim, same studio / publisher. One exception does not really contradict it being widespread however

No, but I think when a whole series of successful games continues with the model it tends to at least bring into question whether class systems are the obviously best design choice. We're not talking about one or two obscure designs after all.

 

[Thomas Shey]

SPI's Dragonquest 2e was better but the constant recalculating of percentages during combat made it too slow for an RPG. But not enough to qualify it for a Worst Game. It's playable. I still play SPI's Arena of Death (the intro DQ game), solo, a few times a year.

I always felt the bigger problem in all the incarnations of that system were in the magic; it was just too hard to get it where you didn't expect it to blow up in your face a little too frequently.

 

[Laurefindel]

or Skyrim, same studio / publisher. One exception does not really contradict it being widespread however

Still, between the Diablo series, the Elder Scrolls series, the Fallout series, the Final Fantasy series, the XCOM series, the various Baldur’s Gate/Neverwinter/Planescape D&D games, WOW/Overwatch, the Mass Effect series, Cyberpunk 2077, all of which have variations of class/level/increasing health mechanics. The list is significant and their influence/importance on the video game industry cannot be denied.

 

[Undrave]

I've never played a really good superheroes system, but I recall being particularly frustrated with Mutants & Masterminds. Very detailed rules for powersets, but so many balance issues. Like, I think there was a transformation ability where, for a fairly low investment, you could essentially spend all the rest of your resources twice over, once for each of two forms, with the ability to switch between them very easily.

And in play the different powersets were difficult to synergise and very tough to build balanced encounters around, and in a party with vastly different modes and speeds of movement it became all but impossible to avoid splitting the party.

You only needed 1 point to create an alternate form, and the points you invested in your transformed state could be optimized even more by making your transformation slower. The longer it takes to transform, the more it improves the point you spent. In the version I played I think going from a free action to a standard action was like… 3 times the value? It was INSANE. You spend 15 points and you now have 45 to spend. Add 1 more point and you can have two 45 points forms available to you. I stumbled on it trying to make a Kamen Rider alike character and I kinda broke the game. And because I had improved resistance any attack that hit an ally just knocked them down way too easily (side note, if someone spent points to be bulletproof, let them no-sell an attack from time to time, damnit!) and every single hit that went through my defence was like "So I hit with a 40, you're bruised, injured, stunned". Every damn times!

Sure hope not! Back on topic, I think a really bad mechanic, not specific to any given RPG, but maybe more of a general complaint, is when there is a huge number of prerequisites for the use of a feature. This is obviously something there needs to be a good balance of though, because having every ability be completely atomized leads to builds, even emergent ones, feeling less satisfying, while the opposite makes you feel super stressed out trying to build towards anything in systems with leveling because missing out on one feat could screw you over five levels later.

Some prestige classes got pretty insane no?

Eh, shennanigans for another day perhaps.

Why isn't there a TTRPG named 'Shenanigans' or at least with a specific mechanic in it called 'Shenanigans'? It's such a good word... we don't use it often enough. Mischief is another good one I think.

I mean there were all kinds of things in the air at the time

Mostly drugs and cigarette smoke.

 

[loverdrive]

Classes? Levelling? Level elevating hit points?

None of which even remotely resemble how they work or ever worked in D&D.

 

[mamba]

No, but I think when a whole series of successful games continues with the model it tends to at least bring into question whether class systems are the obviously best design choice. We're not talking about one or two obscure designs after all.

we are still talking about what, 5-10% of cRPGs and related games? These are outliers, they certainly are no indication that they found a better system, just like they are not for TTRPGs.

 

[Gradine]

I would assume that the OP ban on RaHoWa and FATAL is also going to include dreck like MYFAROG, ACKS, LotFP, NuStar Frontiers, etc.

I'll get too honorable mentions out of the way first; the first of which is Numenera, which I wanted to love so much. My problem with the game isn't that it's bad, necessarily. It's not. It's just dull as dishwater. And it's just not quite modular enough to work out any character concepts that the game didn't come up with itself. Cypher has some good ideas in it, and I've even seen it done well (my daughter loves No Thank You, Evil!) but it's just... very not good.

Second is Dungeon World, which should have been an mix of PbtA and classic D&D and instead was a mix of classic D&D and PbtA. I know it has its fans so I can't call it a bad game either, but boy was it ever not at all the thing I was looking for when I first found it. I can recognize that's on me though.

The crown jewel of bad games for me though is FATE Accelerated. I have my problems with FATE Core; it's incredibly crunchy for a game that purports to be so fiction forward, so I thought dialing back on that crunch would be the solution. To that, I say, hahahahahahahahahahahahaha, oh dear lord no. Players choosing what to roll by performing the mental gymnastics of "but I do it <insert adverb here>!" every damn action got old so fast. Blades in the Dark neatly solved the problem of players choosing what skill/stat to roll off of by giving the GM more leeway on the position and effect. FATE Accelerated never even brings up the possibility. It remains the worst game I've ever run.