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

[Undrave]

I guess I'm saying that it would not surprise me at all for every game we tried to list that there was someone who said, "I played that game and I had an amazing time!" In some cases, that might be a little bit uncomfortable (if the problem we had with the game wasn't mechanical but content), but since we are principally judging mechanics I know that there are people who had a blast playing Rifts, GURPS, and Storyteller games and who knows maybe even Mouse Guard with a good GM that plowed right over the problems.

Probably.

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

 

[Umbran]

1. Your favorite game.
2. @Whizbang Dustyboots ‘s favorite game.
3. @Umbran ‘s favorite game.

So, I have a very good friend who is an excellent negative indicator for me - any campaign she likes, I know I should not play in. Her goals in play do not align with mine, to the point where we would be constantly chafing over the differences.

I have a second friend who runs games, and he's repeatedly said that one of these days, he'd like to invite me to play. But, he runs games the first friend really likes, so I don't really get enthusiastic about his games.

 

[cranberry]

Which edition? Few games have had such wildly different rules sets as Gamma World.

It was in the early to mid 80's, so probably the first edition.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

OK, I heard it was bad, but mostly in terms of lore. How do you crit fail and crit succeed at the same time? I gotta know.

 

[Alzrius]

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

I dunno, Purple Duck Games' Rod of Wonder supplement called for a d1000 roll (albeit with ranges of roughly four numbers each, rather than having a different effect for each possible result), and that seems about right for an item that's supposed to be chaos incarnate.

 

[Bacon Bits]

OD&D wasn't designed in the same sense modern rules are. It is a rules set that grew organically in response to problems that came up in play, which each new problem generating its own solution. Was it perfect? Not in the slightest. Were the rules well organized? HA!

But over 40 years of gaming and I've come to appreciate the value of that far more than I find value in elegance and unified rule sets. Your opinion reflects the one I had say about 30 years ago, but then I actually ran elegant games with unified rule sets and found that shoe-horning every tested contention into the same fortune range or the same mechanical resolution had its own problems.

I still see significant value in a unified or a primary design. I don't think there needs to be only one resolution mechanic, but I do think that if you have a bespoke system for everything then it can be difficult to impossible to intuit what a given system is supposed to do or what behavior it's meant to reward. Worse, it can be difficult to ad hoc something on-the-fly, which I really like to do. A simple rule that's easily applied and works in 90% of cases is better to me than a rule that works in 99% of cases but is difficult and time-consuming. However, a rule that works in 99% of cases but is difficult and time-consuming is probably better than a simple rule that's easily applied that only works in 50% of cases. With "works" here meaning "fulfills the desired fiction and style of play." That is, "satisfies ludonarrative verisimilitude."

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."

 

[Bacon Bits]

I dunno, Purple Duck Games' Rod of Wonder supplement called for a d1000 roll (albeit with ranges of roughly four numbers each, rather than having a different effect for each possible result), and that seems about right for an item that's supposed to be chaos incarnate.

I really strongly feel like Rod of Wonder should use a d666 table.

 

[Deset Gled]

I guess what I'm saying is Synnibarr has a fanbase.

I started following Raven McCracken on social media a year or two ago, and I have to admit that my desire to play Synnibarr for real has been steadily rising.

Potential worst game: Star Frontiers by TSR, 2021. I don't think this one made it out of the legal department.

Never formally released (although the full game is available online), so I don't think it counts. Also, it's just better to not give it's creators any credit; even infamy is too good for them.

I'm not sure GURPS has ever been that popular in the sense of "generated a large number of long running games". Every GM I knew back in the day owned multiple GURPS books, but most of them just ended up as reading material, encyclopedia articles and research resources. GURPS was the king of "lonely fun", selling far more books than it actually produced games.

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).

 

[Yalım]

Dragon Age RPG for me. Loved the games but the book was beyond half-assed. Quarter-assed.

 

[Celebrim]

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 think that is all true but even more so my suspicion is that the most popular PbtA is Dungeon World which is a decidedly Trad gamist game that reminds me a lot of Basic D&D. I find this funny because it feels like the biggest attraction of PbtA is hipsterism. It's what the cool kids are playing (that and Blades). Don't get me wrong, there are a couple of clever things going on in both games that make me want to steal ideas from them, or play them if someone was offering, but sometimes I think the biggest attraction is claiming how much cooler you are than trad gamers no matter how trad your game actually is. It is I think the modern equivalent of saying, "My game doesn't have unrealistic things like classes and levels. And my spells are powered by mana points!"