I Believe There Are No Bad Roleplaying Games

[Tsyr]

Never played FATAL, have you?

Bad concepts. Bad setting. Bad mechanics. Bad game.

 

[nsruf]

Never played FATAL, have you?

Yeah, but who has?

(Discalimer: please don't answer - this is a purely rhetorical question and I don't want to know )

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

The genre is fascinating, you are all descendants of the Man from Atlantis (remember that TV show with Patrick Duffy?) and you hunt Dolphins because... well... you just do, it's a competitive type of thing.

South Park has a quotation for everything. Maybe this could be used to start your Dolphin Hunter book:

"Dude, dolphins are intelligent and friendly!" -- Stan
"Intelligent and friendly on rye bread, with some mayonnaise." -- Cartman

 

[Zappo]

Well, but you could play with the rules of Dolphin Hunter in the Forgotten Realms, and then at least the setting would not... nah, nevermind.

Anyway, maybe there are no bad roleplaying games, but in the Universal Scale of Gaming Goodness, you can bet that FATAL, RaHoWa, Hybrid and Synnibar all rank pretty low.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Okay, sorry I commented on V:TM. I'm not a fan (unless the DM or one of the players is a hot goth chick. Then I instantly become a huge fan).

HOL- Human Occupied Landfill. Of course, HOL was intended as a parody game. It's actually pretty good if you don't take it seriously and milk it for all that it's worth- which, comedically, is quite a bit.

There are many excellent comic actors who couldn't act their way out of a paper bag if put in a dramatic role. HoL is like one of those.

As for FATAL, I've thought about attempting to run it one of these days just for the sheer exercise in tastelessness... maybe I'll run it at the upcoming con this weekend... ... I'll tell you guys how it goes.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Hmm, I have to disagree with the premise of this thread. When I was about 12, I saw the Ghostbusters roleplaying game. Unfortunately (or fortunately as the case may be), I couldn't afford to buy it at that time. So, I made my own. I wrote up my own version of the rules, made photocopies of the original covers, and created something that is arguably playable. I'm not quite sure, but I'm not positive that there were actual rules for busting ghosts, but you could definitely grab a spiked chain and bust the gang-banger down the street. I'm pretty sure it sucked. I was 12, and how often do 12 years olds not write stuff of maximum suckage?

So if a 12 year old who's been gaming for a year can make a bad RPG, how could there be no bad RPG's?

 

[Sabaron]

Thanks for bringing up Racial Holy War, Zappo. Prepare to have that assumption of yours challenged, Blockader7.

Originally posted by shurai:

RaHoWa the RPG was invented by white supremacists, and has skinhead racism built right in to the system. It assumes a dark-future dystopia that presumes the world has gone bad thanks to the failure of National Socialism.

The player characters are, you guessed it, white crusaders against a world overrun with, well, everyone else. The 'monster manual' part of the rulebook is particularly grotesque . . . you can send your team of heroes against all sorts of non-white-people-as-monsters, each with their special power. Asians, for example, got extra attacks because they watched lots of fake martial arts movies (although they're not called Asian in the book . . . they use a racial slang word that I will not utter here).

I believe it had all sorts of horrid things to say about homosexuals, women, and 'liberals' as well.

All this, and the system was terrible, and I mean really awful. Weird dice rolling everywhere, ambiguous rules, counterfactual game physics, the works.

So, ready for a game?

 

[kkoie]

I agree, so long as there is someone out there who enjoys playing it, no Roleplaying Game is a Bad Roleplaying game. Its all a matter of perspective, what sucks to you, may be the best thing since white bread to someone else.

 

[Blockader7]

Okay, sorry I commented on V:TM. I'm not a fan (unless the DM or one of the players is a hot goth chick. Then I instantly become a huge fan).

HOL- Human Occupied Landfill. Of course, HOL was intended as a parody game. It's actually pretty good if you don't take it seriously and milk it for all that it's worth- which, comedically, is quite a bit.

There are many excellent comic actors who couldn't act their way out of a paper bag if put in a dramatic role. HoL is like one of those.

As for FATAL, I've thought about attempting to run it one of these days just for the sheer exercise in tastelessness... maybe I'll run it at the upcoming con this weekend... ... I'll tell you guys how it goes.

Don't worry about it. We all have our own tastes in RPGs.

It's kinda wierd sometimes though. Much like how the football or other die hard sports fans paint themselves up in the colors of their favorite team and in zero degree weather wear nothing but pants, then turn around and call Star Trek fans crazy because they like to wear the uniforms of the Federation.

Go figure.

 

[Umbran]

To that end, there are no bad RPGS.

Ooh. Faulty logic on a numbe rof levels.

First, the existance of many d20 settings does not guarantee everyone will find a setting they like. It's more likely with many settings, but not at all guaranteed.

Second (and more importantly), if the game is made up of multiple parts, the game as a whole can be rendered bad if any part of it is sufficiently bad. If the mechanics are bad, the setting won't save it.

Perhaps you mean that, with so many settings each person should find a mechanic/setting combination they like. That's not saying that there are no bad RPGs, but that everyone can find or build an RPG they will like.