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

[GMMichael]

. . . If you follow that and the auction rules, there is actually a net negative cash flow to the game. . .

Uh, the money supply remains fixed. Players must lose money to progress the game, so the bank, you guessed it, always wins.

Monopoly must be at least a decent board game, given that it's still in print. But we should note for this thread: it's a horrible role -playing game! Who wants to play an old, leather shoe?!

 

[Gradine]

Monopoly's biggest problem is the long tail. Everyone knows who's going to win long before it tends to actually happen. That's not a unique problem with Monopoly, mind; a lot of strategy games suffer from it as well.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This I think dovetails nicely into the idea that sometimes it's not that a mechanic in itself is bad, but that particular mechanic does not seem to fit well with the whole system or genre of play that the designer(s) desires to cultivate with the game.

Well, in the end, mechanics are a tool; a tool to produce certain kinds and varieties of results when evoked. In theory, all mechanics can be desirable if you're trying for a certain kind of result and feel when they're evoked; its just that some produce the kind of result its hard to see many people wanting ever, and even ones that produce results that might be appropriate under some circumstances are often applied in ways that seem perverse given when they're used and what the game is avowedly about.

This is why I say sometimes people appear to be using a wrench as a hammer to me; it can be used to pound nails, but its not what its set up for. But some people are so used to using the wrench they just don't want to use a hammer, and will not only get annoyed when you tell them it seems a poor tool for the job, in a small number of cases will scoff at the desirability of hammers in general.

(This is one reason you need to be pretty careful with the design of generic systems; often just opening up the operational space of an extent game isn't really doing an adequate job of it).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Monopoly's biggest problem is the long tail. Everyone knows who's going to win long before it tends to actually happen. That's not a unique problem with Monopoly, mind; a lot of strategy games suffer from it as well.

As someone who, in the computer game sphere plays almost exclusively turn-based strategy, its not only frequent its sometimes super-annoying; you can sometimes tell you've won a hundred turns before the game ends. I've been known to just abandon a play-through rather than go through the tedium of demonstrating authoritatively that I've won.

 

[Deset Gled]

Uh, the money supply remains fixed. Players must lose money to progress the game, so the bank, you guessed it, always wins.

I'll admit I wasn't being overly precise, but I'm referring to the money in the players hands, not in the bank. In standard play, the amount of money in play is generally peak at the start of the game and decreases as players buy property, build, pay taxes, etc.

Monopoly must be at least a decent board game, given that it's still in print. But we should note for this thread: it's a horrible role -playing game! Who wants to play an old, leather shoe?!

I would totally roleplay the hat. Also, Monopoly has great ludonarrative versimilitude. According to the definitions in this article, Monopoly could be classified as neo-trad.

 

[Gradine]

As someone who, in the computer game sphere plays almost exclusively turn-based strategy, its not only frequent its sometimes super-annoying; you can sometimes tell you've won a hundred turns before the game ends. I've been known to just abandon a play-through rather than go through the tedium of demonstrating authoritatively that I've won.

Read: Any science victory in any version of Civilization, ever

 

[pemerton]

Meanwhile, the Aliens RPG had the following useful guidance on skills "Most are self-explanatory":

Given some of those skill names, it seems like a fair bit of the explanation is meant to be found in the Classic Traveller rulebooks!

 

[Thomas Shey]

Read: Any science victory in any version of Civilization, ever

At least there someone can in some versions sneak a Diplomatic win in on you while you're getting there, but generally, yeah. I tend to notice it more with Mater of Orion 2 (of course there you can have late game stalemates too, unless you just get disgusted and go for the cheap shot of the Antaran win).

 

[Celebrim]

Monopoly's biggest problem is the long tail. Everyone knows who's going to win long before it tends to actually happen. That's not a unique problem with Monopoly, mind; a lot of strategy games suffer from it as well.

I think that's only the secondary problem. The biggest problem is that it's very unlikely with a reasonable number of players that anyone ends up with a matched set in order to develop the properties. If only one person does, then that person is most likely the winner. If multiple people do, they can fight it out and hope for luck until mortgage death spiral starts to happen and you declare a winner. But if no one gets a set, and that's the most common scenario, then the winner is a matter of negotiation or else there is a long and boring stalemate as people are slowly bankrupted by the games grind.

 

[MrTemplar]

To be fair, the Small Arms Combat System (which I presume you are referring to) does describe itself as "a stand-alone game or as a combat system for any other game", rather than as a RPG.

For those not familiar with the Phoenix Command line, they did also produce some RPGs (e.g. Aliens, and Living Steel) based on simplified versions of their Small Arms Combat System. I did once bolt on the SACS with the Living Steel weapons and powered armour supplements to a game of Traveller, but only ever ran it once - it was just too slow in play.

Ironically, they designed and produced an Aliens boardgame, using an even more cut-down version of the SACS, and it worked really, really well. It was fast and exciting, with important decisions to make every turn, e.g. trying to judge whether to use all your actions to have a good chance of hitting an alien, but risk being left behind, or take an action to move and an action to shoot with a much lower chance of hitting.

Swordpath to Glory by the same company, with a similar system, extremely complicated (not mathematically complex but way too many steps) ways of calculating wound value (the effect of strikes--there were no hit points) and resolutions of skills. I still have the first book and just the steps involved to do a medicine check is like 6 or so calculations. The idea of a hit point less system was pretty new at the time. Swordpath to Glory was supposed to be a standalone game. I don't recall if they published the other books.