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

[Celebrim]

Anybody who enjoys rolling on a d1000 table should just spontaneously combust.

The random magic item generator in 1e AD&D is effectively a d10000 table and it's an absolute blast. When you are doing hexcrawl or West Marches sort of random content generation, very large tables are well justified. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the mechanic.

 

[Celebrim]

I still see significant value in a unified or a primary design...With "works" here meaning "fulfills the desired fiction and style of play." That is, "satisfies ludonarrative verisimilitude."

I find that I've come to think about how an RPG works in a way that is very different than the conventional modern consensus, and it's exactly that "satisfies ludonarrative verisimilitude" that causes me to reject modern unified designs as the be all end all of good design. I would agree with the statement that your fortune system should be as unified as possible while still satisfying ludonarrative verisimilitude but what I feel is that the tasks being modelled vary so greatly in their underlying nature that if you attempt to resolve all of them with the same basic fortune test you will break ludonarative versimiltude badly. What differs from group to group is how fast they notice and how much they care. It turns out that 1e AD&D with entirely different resolution mechanics for lifting something, jumping a distance, and having previously learned a bit of lore (among other things) might well have better ludonarrative verisimilitude than 3e trying to make those all fit within a standard D20 skill check.

It turns out to me that when you are trying to have a single mechanic you tend to lose sight of what you are actually modeling and as a result design a system that doesn't model anything, and that gets to be a problem if verisimilitude is anywhere in your goals of play.

1e AD&D grappling rules, for example, certainly exist. But I don't know what the authors really wanted out of them. I can't tell what the design goal of the subsystem is. The generally accepted feeling seems to be, "the grappling rules exist to discourage using the grappling rules."

1e AD&D? That's a whole different area of discussion, because unarmed combat generally is more powerful than armed combat and you can generally dissuade players who want to use it from using it by threatening to allow the monsters to use the same rules. Zombies with grappling rules can be brutal in 1e AD&D. D&D 3e grappling rules would be on somewhat safer ground here, and I would say that rules that discourage grappling except in some narrow situations actually satisfy ludonarrative versimilitude.

 

[mamba]

Hm, I wouldn't necessarily agree that 5E is soul-killingly bland but the third party content does suck for the most part. Funnily enough, some of the better-balanced stuff I've seen is the result of a single person's efforts rather than a company.

single person… we need a name here

 

[Bedrockgames]

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"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.

This game is a thing of beauty. I played in a brief campaign because one of my players is a huge fan. It is a lumbering, colossal system. There is no real getting around the time investment on the game and the speed. But for people who want that genre and want crunch, it definitely has something that I found compelling. Character creation was definitely a long process

 

[Faolyn]

I have started to wonder if Powered by the Apocalypse is the current version of this. It's discussed ad nauseum in RPG design threads, and the Wikipedia page claims there a hundreds of published games that use the system. But VTTs seem to report its market share below 1%, and I've never personally seen or heard about anyone running a campaign (admittedly, the internet discussion about it always leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, too).

I would guess that's because PbtA games can be easily done entirely theater of the mind, and as far as I can tell, the benefit of a VTT over something like discord is for the table top.

 

[The Soloist]

Well, I don't think you can call OD&D the "worst" RPG ever made for a very simple reason; as you acknowledge, it's the first. So without it, we wouldn't have all the other TTRPGs (both good and bad) for people to ... um .... release upon.

More importantly, OD&D as originally released wasn't so much a complete game (really, try playing just "the rules" of the LBBs) so much as it was a toolkit. Almost all of the games in the 1970s were based off of OD&D, either because they were DM's notes that were later polished up and released as separate games, or because they were written in reaction to and based off of OD&D. In addition, there was a strong culture of play that emerged from it; it's impossible to understand OD&D without understanding the culture, the zines, and many different ways that people played OD&D. (This is covered in The Elusive Shift).

To summarize- I find the idea that OD&D was the "worst" TTRPG to be a difficult one to accept for a multitude of reasons. Instead, it's best to remember that it was something else that rhymed with worst, but starts with an "f.

Being the first RPG is not a factor. OD&D shows Gygax's design propensity to create sub-systems (and acronyms) for just about anything. The truth was revealed with AD&D, Cyborg Commando and Lejendary Adventures. Another designer with the same design goal would probably not have done so, or at least kept it in check. d20 for attacks and saves. 2d6 for anything else (turning, thief, tracking, etc).

Also, I disagree that D&D needed to exist for 'all other rpgs to exist'. From what I read a lot of people were toying around with the same idea at the time. TSR was the first to publish. So D&D it was.

(I didn't know who the guy in the meme was, hard to assess intention when you don't have the reference).

 

[Deset Gled]

I would guess that's because PbtA games can be easily done entirely theater of the mind, and as far as I can tell, the benefit of a VTT over something like discord is for the table top.

That's a fair guess. I've also heard claims that OSR stuff is under-represented because lots of those folks still playing at real tables. OTOH, it's one of the best and only sources that we have for numbers of actual play. ICv2 data isn't that helpful here because it shows sales, not games. And all the big professional market tracking stuff I've seen seems to focus more on app/digital stuff (TTRPGs are still a bit niche, after all). So...

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Being the first RPG is not a factor. OD&D shows Gygax's design propensity to create sub-systems (and acronyms) for just about anything. The truth was revealed with AD&D, Cyborg Commando and Lejendary Adventures. Another designer with the same design goal would probably not have done so, or at least kept it in check. d20 for attacks and saves. 2d6 for anything else (turning, thief, tracking, etc).

Also, I disagree that D&D needed to exist for 'all other rpgs to exist'. From what I read a lot of people were playing with the same idea at the time. TSR was the first to publish. So D&D it was.

People can always argue about whether something was inevitable, in the air, etc.

Point is ... there was nothing in terms of a game that was played. And then there was OD&D. Absent Arneson's original idea (which, of course, had antecedents) and Gygax's adaptation, expansion, and commercialization, we wouldn't have what we have.

Or, put another way-

Two economists are walking down the street, and they come across a $20 bill.

The younger economist says, "Hey, look, it's twenty dollars!"

The older economist shakes his head at the younger economist, and scoffingly replies, "That's nonsense. If there was a twenty-dollar bill in the middle of the street, someone would have already picked it up by now."


Now, I am not entirely sure that history is the same as the efficient market hypothesis, but I do know that at the end of the say ... it was first.

(I didn't know who the guy in the meme was, hard to assess intention when you don't have the reference).

Sorry, I assumed it was obvious.

 

[The Soloist]

People can always argue about whether something was inevitable, in the air, etc.

Point is ... there was nothing in terms of a game that was played. And then there was OD&D. Absent Arneson's original idea (which, of course, had antecedents) and Gygax's adaptation, expansion, and commercialization, we wouldn't have what we have.

Or, put another way-

Two economists are walking down the street, and they come across a $20 bill.

The younger economist says, "Hey, look, it's twenty dollars!"

The older economist shakes his head at the younger economist, and scoffingly replies, "That's nonsense. If there was a twenty-dollar bill in the middle of the street, someone would have already picked it up by now."


Now, I am not entirely sure that history is the same as the efficient market hypothesis, but I do know that at the end of the say ... it was first.



Sorry, I assumed it was obvious.

Gygax himself said that he felt he was in a hurry to publish because others were also experimenting with the same idea. Not sure where I read that. Maybe someone here knows?

 

[Laurefindel]

While i never played it, i read the (unlicensed) Twilight Imperium RPG from ‘90-something a few years ago. I don’t remember much other than thinking « yeah, the reviews were right. It’s crap ».

But despite the disappointing result, I’d hardly call that the worse game ever.