The worst Roleplaying game ever!!!

[buzz]

Re: Worst Game Ever

Swordbearer. Nice try to have a fantasy RPG with an abstract money system, but it was utterly abyssmal, badly written, and was a waste of money in my opinion.

And here I was going to get in a huff because Joshua Dyal didn't like Champions.

Swordbearer was the bomb. One of the few playable, well-designed games FGU ever produced.

Barring FATAL, my vote for "worst" goes to games I wasted money on, like:

Lords of Creation
Star Ace
Mechanoids
Man, Myth, and Magic

and one I didn't:

The Window

 

[buzz]

No, my vote for the worst RPG of all time goes to AD&D2. Incredibly restrictive character creation and ill-designed, unbalanced, badly applied patches to fix it, combat mechanics that were nonsensical and boring to play through, and a magic system so restrictive that it couldn't approximate any in the literature (even Vance) even with tweaking.

I second this. Not that I hate the system, but that I hated the crappy effect crappy AD&D2e had on the hobby. Though I suppose it opened up opportunities for companies like WW...

 

[shurai]

Whoa, somebody's heard of The Window besides me? Incredible!

Of course, it would turn out that the only other person I know of who knows the game doesn't like it.

In summary:

*Characters are described by adjectives, each of which has a die associated with it (it uses the set of seven polyhedral dice, so there's seven possible levels of skill or ability).
*Actually uses the d30.
*One die roll for any particular action; two die rolls for opposed actions.
*The game doesn't make any attempt whatsoever at game balance (I'm really serious, no attempt whatsoever).
*To wit, character creation is entirely free-form.
*No combat system to speak of (it handles attacks like any other opposed roll, no real damage system or anything like that).

I actually really like it.

-S

 

[buzz]

*Characters are described by adjectives, each of which has a die associated with it (it uses the set of seven polyhedral dice, so there's seven possible levels of skill or ability).
*Actually uses the d30.

The main thing I didn't like was its snobbish attitude. The above were the other things I didn't like.

1. The adjectives are meaningless. It's not like FUDGE, where "Fair" means "Fair." Here, the adjectives really are just stand-ins for the die type you need to roll. If "Strength: Excellent" really means "Strength: d20," why the heck do I need to write the former on my character sheet? Why not just write the die type? Oh, but that wouldn't be "story-focused".

2. d30s? C'mon.

I dunno. These two goofy bits combined with the assertion that the game is some kind of revolutionary advance just made me want to delete it all the sooner.

 

[Tetsubo]

Worst game I ever played (actually GM'd) was the edition of gama world that used the color coded success/failure/action table (I don't remember what it was actually called.)

We played GW quite a bit. We even started developing in-house rules for character advancement, etc... Then I spotted the new (at the time) edition that had rules for characters going up in levels, skills, etc... Couldn't wait to get a game together. Everybody rolled up first level characters, hit their first encounter, and nobody, including the opposition, could do anything. "I do this" roll, fail. "The bad guy does this" roll, fail. "I'll try this" roll, fail. I think we went at it for an hour before giving up.

KABAL, got it, read it, and it is still sitting in a box somewhere in my attic. Gets my vote for poorest written RPG ever.

Powers and Perils. Loved the character generation system (provided you had a weekend or three to make a character), but, outside of combat and spellcaster, what do you do? I mean, you have all those skills, with skill levels, but how do they work? I know there was a chart in the back of Book I, but after staring at it for years, I'm still not sure how the heck things work. I know Rolemaster static maneuvers were bad (and I played RM for years) but, geeze, at least the GM could figure something out.

Lords of Creation. I've no idea what to say about that game. It exits and we tried to play it once or twice. 'nuff said.

I ran a three year Gamma World campaign using the 3rd edtion, which had that color code chart. I loved that game! I still have all of my notes for it. The chart did frequently create a deadly game however. The damage jumped up in discrete amounts, 5 points, 10 points, 15 points, etc. But, darn it was fun...

 

[Walter_J]

I second this. Not that I hate the system, but that I hated the crappy effect crappy AD&D2e had on the hobby. Though I suppose it opened up opportunities for companies like WW...

Not my vote for the worst (after all there has been SO much bad stuff put out...), although I absolutely agree that 2E was bad. We tried running several different 2E campaigns at one time or another with various DM's. It just never worked out, though.

 

[Walter_J]

I ran a three year Gamma World campaign using the 3rd edtion, which had that color code chart. I loved that game! I still have all of my notes for it. The chart did frequently create a deadly game however. The damage jumped up in discrete amounts, 5 points, 10 points, 15 points, etc. But, darn it was fun...

Really? What level did you start at? Years ago, a friend of mine told me he ran a great campaign and they started at 5th level (or the equivalent in terminology. The number 5 sticks in my head anyhow.) If often thought that may have been the reason for our bad experience. Which isn't totally unheard of. We had many RM campaigns that started out at 5th, just to give the characters a shot at survival!

 

[Scarbonac]

Games that suck:


Villains and Vigilantes -- picked this up used at a gaming shop 15 years ago, plus adventure and villain books.

Unplayable. Un-frelling-playable. Character generation goes past ''arbitrary'' into ''Why bother?'' territory.

Shadowrun : Picked this up on discount pile at another gaming shop about 10 years ago -- somewhat interesting concept...stupid mechanics.


Swordbearer : Just weak and dull (and also pulled from the discount/bargain pile-- I begin to see a trend building).


The worst, in my opinion, however, was SPI's Dragonquest -- ugh, just ugh. Drek for mechanics, a character generation system where you have to roll dice to determine your race (although ''human'' was the default), screwy ''Birthrights'' that determined whether your character was ''death-aspected'', ''life-aspected'', ''solar-aspected'', ''lunar-aspected'', et cetera,which meant that varying events (such as a birth, a death, the coming of ''high noon'', etc.) occuring in the vicinity of the character would have specific game effects on him.

A solar-aspected character would have a bonus (expressed as a negative number) to % die rolls at high noon...I think

Apparently, all the characters in the game also used magic of one sort or another.


The magic system made my head and my stomach hurt.


The only thing about the game that was remotely fun was the ''Grievous Injury Chart'', which had a friendly, jolly tone (''Congratulations! It's a bleeder in your primary arm!''), and that only for the GM.


I've had better role-playing experiences from Monopoly™, The Game Of Life™ or Pop-O-Matic's Trouble™.


Even now, I have a red red haze settling across my vision just thinking about that miserable game.


And yes, it came from the bargain bin...

 

[Darth Shoju]

2E AD&D

After reading some of the other posts, I'm going to have to say that I agree, AD&D 2E is probably the worst RPG that I have played (I'm not saying that it is the worst RPG ever made, but I just haven't played that many different ones). In retrospect, 2E is what spelled the end of Dungeons and Dragons for most of my friends until 3E came out. Frustration over the restictive class system, confusing combat rules and impractical magic system either resulted in attempts at other games such as Call of Cthulhu, Rifts and Earthdawn or attempts at creating home-brewed rules. I think that 2E really lost the spirit of the game envisioned by Gygax and Arneson and has my vote as the worst RPG that I have personally played (although, again, it's still far from the worst one ever printed, IMO).

 

[edge3343]

That was DragonRaid, a copy of which is still sitting, dusty, on my gaming shelf. It's worth noting that the creators didn't see it as a "game," but as a biblical study tool.

I don't know if it works well as a study tool. It certainly doesn't work well as a game.

Oh man, I had that game! It was a shoddy game to say the least, but it was the only thing my parents would allow in their house! It was printed by Adventure Learning Systems and was definatley designed as a scripture memory/ bible learning tool rather than a game.