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

[MNblockhead]

I will third Cyborg Commando. I actually played a demo with Gary Gygax at Gen Con. I didn't know anything about the game and wasn't that interested in sci fi games at the time. I was in high school and in awe with Gary and wanted to get his signature (still have issue 1 of Polyhedron with Gary's signature on the cover). At the end of the session, I lied about how I liked that game but had to get money from my parents. Then I avoided his both the rest of the convention.

Recently, the game I most loved the idea of but hated to actually try to run was Mage the Ascension. Poorly organized and explained rules drowned in setting fluff. I think the authors of the World of Darkness system just use TTRPGs as a venue for their fiction writing. It is what has really driven me to become a system-first consumer at this point in my gaming life. I would much rather play a great system with a bland or stupid setting than a wonderful and rich setting with obtuse, poorly organized rules.

I will caveat this by saying, however, that this comes from the perspective of running the game. I'd happily play in just about any game with the right game master. I also realize that their are many people who would could make similar complaints about games I love. And it is easy to make these complaints because I find the most TTRPGs do a poor job at clearly explaining and organizing their rules.

 

[MGibster]

GURPS is pretty darn bad as well. Despite being skills based it does everything you could possibly do wrong when designing a skill-based system. Chargen is a nightmare of fiddly choices. Combat is an uninteresting death spiral triggered by choices no more interesting than playing the child's card game 'War'.

This is a bold choice given how popular GURPS used to be in the 80s and 90s. When I think of worst, I tend to think of games there are nearly unplayable or don't work at all. GURPS certainly isn't my cup of tea these days, but I had a grand old time with it back in the day.

Never played it, but everyone says that. Lack of party cohesion is a generic problem that I've never seen solved in any SciFi game. It's a shame with Shadowrun because I remember picking up the examples of play and thinking the game could be cool.

What do you mean lack of party cohesion? Of all the flaws directed at Shadowrun this isn't one I've heard before. The characters are all shadow runners, meaning they're a team of criminals who commit crimes on behalf of their client, Mr. Johnson. One of the best things I've ever been able to say about Shadowrun is there's a clear direction for what PCs are supposed to be doing and a reason for them to work together. It's really no different than an adventuring group in D&D.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Speaking of bad systems and disappointing books, I ended up looking back at my Modiphius Conan book and it really does not feel well-explained at all. I sort of don't blame my players for not having any interest in it. The actual crunch is hidden under a mile of fluff and is so poorly organized as to be almost impossible to navigate. I felt like I was doing something wrong trying to generate a character.

I think it was over on RPG Pub (which very much dislikes the 2d20 system) where one of the former Modipheus employees posted about that. Essentially, they ran out of time to do final editing and clean-up. Nobody was happy with how the final book came out. They knew it had editing issues and important rules were buried everywhere. But the game was a KS, and they felt they were out of time and had to publish what they had. It sucked because reading the book you can tell that they love the setting and world.

But it was just as people really figured out how Kickstarter worked, and the KS was not structured well. Like look at the Conan Kickstarter. Launched in Feb 2016, and was still doing updates in 2022! And Modipheus dropped the license in 2023! Just look at the stretch goals! There's like a dozen hardback books there for £430k! They did the same thing Mighty No. 9 did. Too many stretch goals drowned the production team in work.

Now look at MCDM RPG. $4.5 million. Two books and two stretch goals. Granted a VTT is super expensive, but it's still ten times the funding for one tenth the books.

 

[hgjertsen]

I think it was over on RPG Pub (which very much dislikes the 2d20 system) where one of the former Modipheus employees posted about that. Essentially, they ran out of time to do final editing and clean-up. Nobody was happy with how the final book came out. They knew it had editing issues and important rules were buried everywhere. But the game was a KS, and they felt they were out of time and had to publish what they had. It sucked because reading the book you can tell that they love the setting and world.

But it was just as people really figured out how Kickstarter worked, and the KS was not structured well. Like look at the Conan Kickstarter. Launched in Feb 2016, and was still doing updates in 2022! And Modipheus dropped the license in 2023! Just look at the stretch goals! There's like a dozen hardback books there for £430k! They did the same thing Mighty No. 9 did. Too many stretch goals drowned the production team in work.

Now look at MCDM RPG. $4.5 million. Two books and two stretch goals. Granted a VTT is super expensive, but it's still ten times the funding for one tenth the books.

That backstory definitely encourages me to feel more sympathetically towards the game designers, but unfortunately it's still a very bad system in its original iteration. Making a character is a ten-step process involving multiple steps which are just variations of "gain a bonus to your attributes" and "gain a skill" with way, way too much fluff packed in between the mechanical details. It really is a shame though, it's such an engaging setting but the editing of the book makes it difficult to tell what the designers intended and what they did intend is probably just a little too yuck for my yum.

 

[Undrave]

FishBlade is not that great.

Shadowrun, and it's such a disappointment that it's bad. Now, the world of Shadowrun itself is awesome. It's a really interesting blend of fantasy and cyberpunk with a rich history. The world itself is really just plain great. The game, however, is always a horrible train wreck. It has overly complicated mechanics with modifiers and adjustments for every little thing. There is a completely different system for whatever you want to do. Fighting, magic, hacking into the Matrix or whatever are all different and needlessly complex. Not only that but the different systems silo people into doing their own thing during a game. If someone is going into the Matrix to do some hacking, the rest of the group had better find something else to do for the next three hours because they won't be playing. There have been several editions of Shadowrun over the years and they never get any better, just worse in different ways.

I don’t recall the version we had tried to play but the world was indeed fun but we took an entire session just to make characters especially because of all the damn equipment table! I thought playing a Rigger would be cool, as everybody had already picked their specialty and that was the one thing nobody had (especially since we needed a ride of some kind). But man… there’s no basic drone you can get! You have to go through EVERY step through a big equipment list and it’s all placed in different sections and it’s just a pain to navigate. You get the frame, the weapons, the communication, the AI… AUGH. And the game really makes you paranoid because everything you can do can be detected easily and tracked back to you… And as you say, everybody is always off into their micro systems.

After the Bomb and other Palladium RPGs are high on my list of bad games but that has to due with their lack of design improvements over the years.

Palladium Megaverse System: outdated, confusing, no sense of balance, terribly organized, etc.

I had (and still do have) Heroes Unlimited. The best thing was generating random heroes and try to invent a backstory and a name, because the system felt incomprehensible. And you had to stat-up with PC rules every damn opponent you sent to your PC. It was just a pain. I ran a single session, I think? I kept reading the combat rules and they felt like arbitrary rules. Roll a 12 or more to hit! Why? Who cares!

 

[jdrakeh]

Speaking as somebody who can find fun and positivity even in Palladium games, it really takes a tremendous faux paux to get me to brand your RPG as being a true failure. And, most recently, I think that award goes to CthulhuTech, the game where it's possible to both critically fail and critically succeed on the same roll.

 

[TheHand]

I’m going to echo too some of the frustrations of Amber Diceless. It might not objectively be the worst rpg ever made but I’ve only had bad, game group ending experiences with it. I think the GM has to really be truly in tune with the game to run it fairly and interestingly. Something about the pvp nature of the game and auctioneering of character points at the beginning really set an overly hostile tone for the groups I tried it with. And I’ll say all this as someone who loves the novels and a lot of Zelazny’s works.

 

[Bacon Bits]

That backstory definitely encourages me to feel more sympathetically towards the game designers, but unfortunately it's still a very bad system in its original iteration. Making a character is a ten-step process involving multiple steps which are just variations of "gain a bonus to your attributes" and "gain a skill" with way, way too much fluff packed in between the mechanical details. It really is a shame though, it's such an engaging setting but the editing of the book makes it difficult to tell what the designers intended and what they did intend is probably just a little too yuck for my yum.

Yeah, it's an explanation, not an excuse. Character generation is complicated since it's sort of like a Traveller life path, and the book focuses on character creation significantly before being a how-to-play manual to teach the game mechanics, or a technical reference guide for use during play. And still character creation feels a little obtuse. We used the web tool to create our characters, and I don't think that exists anymore. [Edit: Oh, no, it does. It just moved: https://conan.modiphiusapps.hostinguk.org/]

Supposedly the later 2d20 games are better organized, but, honestly, I don't find any of the later IPs that interesting of a setting.

 

[GMMichael]

I'm gonna do something different. I'm gonna nominate my own game I did two decades ago.

I beat you to it. But...

View attachment 343517

...I do like how you saved all that character sheet space by abbreviating Minor and Severe.

 

[Jahydin]

"Worst RPG ever made" is pretty harsh; I can think of a game that fits that description...

On a personal level though, I loved the art and concept of this game, but just could not get past the complex point-buy character creation system.

Sold it off years ago, but wish I still had it in my collection of odd-ball RPGs.