Weekend Nonsense: Favorite Bad RPG

[Geekrampage]

I have so much love for bad RPGs.

The World of Synnibarr is just glorious over the top nonsense.

Space Patrol, one of the very first RPGs period, was somehow both too ambitious and too limited in scope.

The Street Fighter RPG from White Wolf was not only playable, was not only enjoyable, but supported a massive shared universe ongoing campaign among me and several of my friends and their groups.

I also have a lot of love for Wizard's World. A fantasy heartbreaker with a creator unafraid of sharing their imagination and their sketchbook.

 

[Darth Solo]

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 buy electronics. When I go to Best Buy I get assistance from an at least semi-knowledgeable clerk. I find what I want. Now if I go to Walmart? I can walk around Electronics for days and not find anyone. I'm lost and that's what Palladium is:

You want to find something and there's no organizational structure in place to help.

 

[Jer]

For myself, I believe that there are no bad RPGs[*], just RPGs with bad rules

I love "bad" games when they have an amazing high concept and their rules let them down. RIFTS, After the Bomb, and TMNT and Other Strangeness fall into this category - gonzo post-apocalyptic nonsense, saddled with a set of rules that just make it harder than it should be to get into the game. Synnibar is also there - I love the craziness of it but I'd never actually try to run a Synnibar game with the rules it was sold with - in fact for both RIFTS and Synnibar I'd be inclined to use the Gamma World rules based on 4th edition D&D and I'd think it would be a decent fit.

dozens of teens I've known have no issue with learning RIFTS.

I don't know about teens these days, but back when I was 13 and discovering the wonders of TMNT we had no problem playing the game because if we couldn't figure out a rule we ignored it and made something up. If you care about following the rules of a game you've paid for Palladium games are rough psychologically because you probably can't - no matter how you rule you'll find out sometime down the road you've been doing it wrong IME. So you just have to wing it, hope for the best, and when you can't figure out how things are supposed to work from the rulebook either roll some percentile dice and try to get under your skill value or think about how you'd do it in AD&D 1e and chances are good that you're close to being right.

[*] Except for FATAL. FATAL is a bad game all around.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

The idea of being able to take any base creature and mutate it up and down was an amazing idea, and allowed for an amazing degree of flexibility. The rest of the Palladium system (particularly combat) feels especially archaic and creaky now (at the time, though, it didn't bother us one bit).

The TMNT RPG coming out right before TMNT fever hit big is the kind of timing that companies dream of.

I have a nostalgic love for TMNT and Other Strangeness - it was my first RPG and the art is still very evocative. But - like most Palladium games - it's not the easiest to decipher.

Ah, trying to read that book now, my eyes rebel! I remember it being a hoot, though.

Human Occupied Landfill, 1st edition (2nd edition sucked! just kidding).

Also its bonus insert, Freebase.

 

[TarionzCousin]

FASA's original Star Trek RPG. We had fun, but unless you were the captain, you were practically an NPC.

In Nomine. Cool setting--especially if you had angels and demons working together. Horrible dice mechanics.

 

[Geekrampage]

My high school buddies and I had a lot of fun making characters for and playing TMNT in an After the Bomb campaign and Robotech Invid Invasion. A lot of the fun was discovering the skill synergies that gave bonuses to Physical Strength and other stats - so everyone took skills like Weightlifting and Wrestling, etc.

One player made an armadillo and got their S.D.C. over 100. They were so proud of having "1 M.D.C. in hit points! Bring on the veritechs!"

 

[James Gasik]

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!

 

[Ath-kethin]

Human Occupied Landfill, 1st edition (2nd edition sucked! just kidding).

Also its bonus insert, Freebase.

Hey! HoL wasn't bad, just unplayable.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Well when your Earthdawn Sky Raider uses Battle Shout on a group of Trolls, reducing their attack step from d8 to d4, which results in you taking several armor defeating hits because their d4's keep exploding, and you can't do anything about it until the duration of your own ability expires, and your attempts to use Avoid Blow just result in you taking more damage due to the 1 Strain when you fail, you might characterize the rules as "bad", no matter how much you (and others) like the game.

As an example of FASA rules design in action. : )

BONUS EXAMPLE FOR TRUE FANS: because I can't see anything wrong with making Acrobatic Strike a Discipline Talent for Air Sailors and letting it substitute for the Melee Weapons Talent...

Hot damn I miss Earthdawn sometimes.

 

[Ath-kethin]

I remember the original Marvel Super Heroes game being a hot mess but lots of fun. And the original Castle Falkenstein was a great idea but we could never get the rules to work.

Og - the caveman roleplaying game - was also really fun, though the 20 (or whatever) word vocabulary was so rough to work with the GM let us roll Smarts checks to learn new words. Which how our ragtag group of Neolithics ended up using words like "hibachi" and "sauna.'

Maybe what I really miss is being in high school.