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

[dulsi]

I bought the Masters of the Universe Role Playing Game a long time ago. Hard to say it qualifies because it is more a board game than RPG. Still a bad board game because the rules are so unclear.

Harvesters might be up there. They didn't bother given spell descriptions in the book. Even if they did they didn't try to make a consistent world. You can still buy horses and dog while playing anthropomorphic animals.

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.

 

[Retreater]

I don't want to say any of these are "bad" games - but mostly just "not for me."
Dungeon Crawl Classics: so many charts and tables that you have to keep the books handy at all times. It's a system that seems to exist for underpowered 0-level funnels for lulz. And disgusting looking specialty dice.
Palladium Megaverse System: outdated, confusing, no sense of balance, terribly organized, etc.
Shadowrun: way too many dice, modifiers, and esoteric subsystems.

But it might be the "mid-tier" game that is most risky for me, those systems that seem good but have a few glaring issues that cause me to struggle...
Savage Worlds, Warhammer Fantasy, 3.5/PF1.

 

[kronovan]

CGL's A time of War, the Battletech TTRPG is about the worst I've played and run. It's Player Character build system is terrible. There's an alternate points-based PC creation sytem which is a bit better, but other elements of the TTRPG like skills are poorly designed and their battlemech fighting rules are utter crap. I just migrated my group to Traveller and the Cepheus Engine and never looked back. For Mech Vs Mech combat encounters, I now use CGL's Alpha Strike rules which are much simpler, fluid and allow me to run other social and exploration encounters instead of burning an entire session on a single Mech battle.

 

[GMMichael]

I've never played it, but I regret buying this weighty tome:
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One of the players in our group wanted to try DMing for the first time and chose Dark Souls. Being the most experienced with RPGs in the group, I said I would back him up and try to help with understanding rules. Well, the book was so widely panned by reviewers that we never bothered to crack open the book.

This is tempting, given the errors that were reportedly in the first edition/printing. But I have a worse one...

Modos 2, Free Edition. Because:

• No pictures. I know, it's not a mechanic, but it hurts my eyes.
• Only one table, unless you count the gear lists. How do I know what abilities my tiefling warlock gets at each level!?
• Modularity. Lame. If I want more rules or adventures, I'll just buy a heftier game.

And don't get me started on the mechanics. Okay, I'll get started.

• Tie rolls. I have to get a higher roll result than the difficulty to succeed. Like, I don't just win if I get the same number. And then, if I get the same number, I might have to tell the GM something interesting about the effort, otherwise, I HAVE TO RE-ROLL!
• Hero points. Apparently, I have to literally role-play to get more of these, but a long rest counts, too.
• Active defense. If I want to avoid damage, I have to use time and effort to do it. Sad. At least heavy armor absorbs most of it.
• Difficult spells. So, I guess spells are called powers, and higher level powers have a higher and higher chance of failure. So if I want to cast them, my warlock has to get gud at them. So I just made him a tiefling fighter instead. Which wasn't hard, because I guess warlocks can use swords and armor. So weird.

On the plus side, there are only three stats - not enough to need a dump stat. But still, it makes me wonder why I wrote the game in the first place If it's your worst too, tell me why! After all, the OP calls for developing better games in the future.

 

[Haiku Elvis]

If I must choose a second (and I am happy to because I just remembered!) the effing Witcher RPG. I know people love the world. And I do too. I know the 300 person line I waited in to get the book at GenCon had a mad-fandom. But the system seems like it was designed by a 12-year old that was told to write a system that didn't include boobies - even though they really wanted to have boobies! It is not good. By any way shape and form - it is not good.

Erm .. er ...which systems do include boobies?
...just asking for a friend.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm gonna do something different. I'm gonna nominate my own game I did two decades ago. Altus Adventum. 18,000 of you downloaded it at some point, so someone might recognize it. Oh, the intent was good. My first attempt at doing a robust dice pool skill based classless system. Wow, is it wonky and cumbersome. Several levels of wound types to keep track of? Dice pool and % for skills?

This was not a well designed system. If I'm honest, one of the worst systems I've actually played. I keep it around to let me know I've come a long way, and to remind me that sacred things I like should hit the cutting room floor if it doesn't work. I apologize to anyone who played this, and to the 18,000 people who downloaded it lol

 

[hgjertsen]

I'm gonna do something different. I'm gonna nominate my own game I did two decades ago. Altus Adventum. 18,000 of you downloaded it at some point, so someone might recognize it. Oh, the intent was good. My first attempt at doing a robust dice pool skill based classless system. Wow, is it wonky and cumbersome. Several levels of wound types to keep track of? Dice pool and % for skills?

This was not a well designed system. If I'm honest, one of the worst systems I've actually played. I keep it around to let me know I've come a long way, and to remind me that sacred things I like should hit the cutting room floor if it doesn't work. I apologize to anyone who played this, and to the 18,000 people who downloaded it lol

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Hey, it's all about the process, right?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Hey, it's all about the process, right?

Oh good lord, yes. And how some great ideas just don't work in actual play well at all. I mean, I still think the initiative clock idea I had is pretty neat, but it was just way to cumbersome in play. It required a physical game aid during game play that a lot of people either didn't want or have handy. Altus adventum is definitely a swallow my pride game. And these screen shots are from the 2nd edition. The first edition was even worse

It really highlights probably the biggest danger in game design, especially when designed by analytical logical thinkers like myself. You quickly go down in a rabbit hole of how to handle all these scenarios mechanically, and before you know it, you've got a ton of rules bloat that actual people playing don't like (outside of the odd Rolemaster sadomasochist lol).

My two biggest pieces of advice to designers: 1. Be willing to let some of your cool ideas lay on the cutting room floor, and 2. Don't try to create a ton of rules to capture "realism" or any other specific area. It never works well in actual play.

 

[MGibster]

A very close second is D&D 2e & 5e. Soul-killing bland, over-powered, and lately, swamped with third-party garbage.

Damn, you came out of the gate swinging!

Cyborg Commando.

After all these years, Cyborg Commando remains the gold standard of bad games so far as I'm concerned. A friend of mine owned it but we never even attempted to play it. Every once in a while I threaten to buy it and run it for my current group. Only one of them knows just how bad the game truly is. But one day the rest will learn to fear and respect Cyborg Commando.

I'm going to add an odd one here and nominate some d20 games for your consideration. There were some excellent adapations of the d20 system including Call of Cthulhu (surprisingly one of the best adaptations), Spycraft, Stargate SG-1 (really just Spycraft), and Mutants & Mastermidns are just a few of the excellent games I can think of. But there were some real stinkers including Deadlands d20. Deadlands in partcular was one of the worst adaptations to d20 and it was a terrible, terrible game.

 

[hgjertsen]

Oh good lord, yes. And how some great ideas just don't work in actual play well at all. I mean, I still think the initiative clock idea I had is pretty neat, but it was just way to cumbersome in play. It required a physical game aid during game play that a lot of people either didn't want or have handy. Altus adventum is definitely a swallow my pride game. And these screen shots are from the 2nd edition. The first edition was even worse

It really highlights probably the biggest danger in game design, especially when designed by analytical logical thinkers like myself. You quickly go down in a rabbit hole of how to handle all these scenarios mechanically, and before you know it, you've got a ton of rules bloat that actual people playing don't like (outside of the odd Rolemaster sadomasochist lol).

My two biggest pieces of advice to designers: 1. Be willing to let some of your cool ideas lay on the cutting room floor, and 2. Don't try to create a ton of rules to capture "realism" or any other specific area. It never works well in actual play.

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I ran into something similar when trying to design a psion class for 5E a while back. I realized eventually that what I had made was basically total crap in 5E because it was five times more complicated than any other class so I had to scrap the whole thing. Now when I work on projects, either homebrew or a new system, I just try to hone in on the core identity, like "what if this system only used 2 six sided dice". Really does hurt to kill your darlings though.