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

[Snarf Zagyg]

Largely irrelevant...

Unprovable. RPG-like minis gaming was on the rise in many groups; if it hadn't been Arneson and Gygax, it could have wound up arising out Tolkienizing any 1:figure:soldier wargame. Or from the warped minds of Cali, better known as The Chaosium, as they were looking for a way to better explore Stafford's Glorantha (which originates in a late 60's wargame). Or from the SCA, which, while not a LARP, per se (no character sheets, no competency simulation mechanics), definitely spawned a couple LARP-like spinoffs in the 70's... It only takes a short wargaming hop for a LARPer to reinvent TTRPG.
A number of character per token games were in development - and came out in the early 70's. Most important to D&D is AH's Outdoor Survival. Add a GM and relax the restrictions, and it's an RPG.

The thing is, RPGs can spin off from any number of sources... it's a matter of just that Gygax had the connections and Arneson the ability to explain it to Gygax... (Too bad he didn't shop it to Flying Buffalo or SPI...)

Original D&D was a bad job editing and layout for the time; if you don't believe me, check out any of the 1965-1972 games from Avalon Hill, or 3M, or SPI, Or even the layout and editing of Strategic Review, by TSR themselves. Or Chainmail. Chainmail is FAR better written than the core. Or the Dahlun Manuscript, for that matter.

RPG's could have arisen from the nascent LARP scene (which isn't really tied to D&D, since LARPing really starts after the SCA becomes two kingdoms and has disaffected former members... late 1960's... and some wanted to gamify it all.

Likewise, ROTC brought minis gaming to many state colleges. This, technically, is how it got to Arneson.
Kriegspiel, especially Frei Kriegspiel, was common on many US university campuses, due to exposure within NROTC.

All it takes is 1:1 wargames, which outside campuses were also starting to get some play time, and you just need to combine either Model UN or Model Senate, or either of the 1960's games, Mr President with Frei Kriegspiel to have simulationist character roleplay.... You need the FK for the "not covered by rules" freedom, especially for underhanded tactics. Or, with Outdoor Surival.

Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda.

If things had been different, they woulda been different. Since they weren’t, they aren’t.

Unless and until we get our own Marvel Multiverse, I will concentrate on the provably true, as opposed to the road not traveled.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Largely irrelevant...

This isn't a very good argument. I have to agree that being the first makes a difference here and it means we evaluate it in the context of it being first. The history of heavy metal is debatable but if we take for granted that the song Black Sabbath was the first, it wouldn't be reasonable to do a comparison against songs in the genre that have built on ten, twenty, thirty or more years of development. One could point to that song and come up with all kinds of technical arguments against it (it is too simple, it is repetitive, it only has two parts, the main riff has three notes and two of them are octaves, so really 2 notes, where is the chord progression?,etc). You can always come up with these kinds of arguments. But this song still resonates, it got the ball rolling, and it established many of the basic elements you find in metal today. I also think it happens to hold up and is arguably the best metal song ever written but that is a matter of taste. OD&D is very similar to this song.

Unprovable. RPG-like minis gaming was on the rise in many groups; if it hadn't been Arneson and Gygax, it could have wound up arising out Tolkienizing any 1:figure:soldier wargame. Or from the warped minds of Cali, better known as The Chaosium, as they were looking for a way to better explore Stafford's Glorantha (which originates in a late 60's wargame). Or from the SCA, which, while not a LARP, per se (no character sheets, no competency simulation mechanics), definitely spawned a couple LARP-like spinoffs in the 70's... It only takes a short wargaming hop for a LARPer to reinvent TTRPG.
A number of character per token games were in development - and came out in the early 70's. Most important to D&D is AH's Outdoor Survival. Add a GM and relax the restrictions, and it's an RPG.

But this is even more speculative than what @Snarf Zagyg is saying. I mean there were all kinds of things in the air at the time. I have tons of bookshelf games from relatives and that I picked up over the years. Many could conceivably turned into an RPG. But I am having trouble picturing a scenario where any of them do anything that takes off the way D&D did and I think a lot of that had to do with the combo of Gygax and Arneson. People can say what they want about Gary but he did do a lot of the ground work that made D&D successful. And that a business success early on is an important part of the picture.

Original D&D was a bad job editing and layout for the time; if you don't believe me, check out any of the 1965-1972 games from Avalon Hill, or 3M, or SPI, Or even the layout and editing of Strategic Review, by TSR themselves. Or Chainmail. Chainmail is FAR better written than the core. Or the Dahlun Manuscript, for that matter.

I would need to do a comparison so if you want to throw up some text that would be useful here. But my recollection is the OD&D boxed set is very much what snarf suggested, not a complete game, something that you had to reference against Chainmail. And I don't remember chainmail or anything from Avalon Hill exciting me and inspiring me the the white boxed set does. Maybe it isn't well laid out. I found it pretty simple and basic and that gives it a certain charm (certainly doens't look much worse than many of the games I have had from that time over the years. I don't think Gygax excels at the kind of writing and langaugae that have become standard and considered 'good RPG writing' today. But one thing I will say here is he is at least engaging and interesting to read. I have a much easier time reading the white boxed set or the AD&D books than any other rules system written for an RPG (because it has a conversational tone and personality). A lot ofthta old Avalon Hill stuff is written technically well but was boring as hell. I mean I loved games like Circus Maximus and Richthofen's War, but they could be a real slog to read and even to understand. The White Box can be hard because it is ground zero for a new type of game. But it has an energy to it and I feel like it is unlikely you get the hobby we have without that energy

RPG's could have arisen from the nascent LARP scene (which isn't really tied to D&D, since LARPing really starts after the SCA becomes two kingdoms and has disaffected former members... late 1960's... and some wanted to gamify it all.

Likewise, ROTC brought minis gaming to many state colleges. This, technically, is how it got to Arneson.
Kriegspiel, especially Frei Kriegspiel, was common on many US university campuses, due to exposure within NROTC.

All it takes is 1:1 wargames, which outside campuses were also starting to get some play time, and you just need to combine either Model UN or Model Senate, or either of the 1960's games, Mr President with Frei Kriegspiel to have simulationist character roleplay.... You need the FK for the "not covered by rules" freedom, especially for underhanded tactics. Or, with Outdoor Surival.

Everything invented ever seems simple in hindsight. But that is no guarantee these things are going to combine and meet with the kind of success it took for D&D to spawn RPGs as a hobby.

 

[The Soloist]

If you're looking for sourcing from that time period, I will recommend reading Game Wizards and The Elusive Shift, which should provide some better overall insight into the general gaming zeitgeist.

That said, this is why I try to avoid counterfactuals. If things had been different, maybe they would have been different. But we only have this one reality at present that we can examine, and in this reality, OD&D was the first TTRPG, and its impact cannot be overstated.

I was misremembering. Here is what T. Foster had to say on Dragonsfoot:

'Gary was worried that some of the people who had been exposed to D&D in its pre-publication form would rip it off and publish something derived from it before he could. And that fear was likely warranted when you consider the case of “the Dalluhn Manuscript,” where one of Arneson’s players in the Twin Cities (a guy named Mark Bufkin) took the pre-publication D&D manuscript (a few copies of which were floating around the Twin Cities from the summer of 1973), made some modest changes and additions and organizational edits, added some illustrations, and distributed it as his own work. That was privately distributed and apparently only a few copies were ever made (one of which ended up in the hands of MAR Barker and eventually to a collector named Keith Dalluhn), but that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t have done the save thing on a wider and more ambitious scale.'

ME: So, no one was working on a similar idea, without prior (or any) knowledge of OD&D?

It’s likely that some people were (the Hyboria wargame campaign that Tony Bath ran in the UK in the 60s is very similar to an rpg in a lot of ways, for one example) but what Gary was more worried about was “closer to home,” because while the idea of D&D was revolutionary, once you’re exposed to it, it’s pretty easy to duplicate - and by late 1973 a fair number of people in the upper Midwest had been exposed so Gary felt like the clock was ticking and he needed to move fast to prevent someone else (like Mark Bufkin) from doing so first.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I wonder how VTTs affect one's feelings for a game.

They absolutely do for me. I won’t run 5e online because the perceived need for a VTT and how much the need for prep clashes with my approach to 5e.

I’ll only run games online that don’t require a VTT. Though I’ll play in a game on a VTT… but I don't prefer all the dynamic lighting and fog of war and all that. Invariably, someone’s computer can’t handle that stuff so I prefer we not even bother.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I was misremembering. Here is what T. Foster had to say on Dragonsfoot:

'Gary was worried that some of the people who had been exposed to D&D in its pre-publication form would rip it off and publish something derived from it before he could. And that fear was likely warranted when you consider the case of “the Dalluhn Manuscript,” where one of Arneson’s players in the Twin Cities (a guy named Mark Bufkin) took the pre-publication D&D manuscript (a few copies of which were floating around the Twin Cities from the summer of 1973), made some modest changes and additions and organizational edits, added some illustrations, and distributed it as his own work. That was privately distributed and apparently only a few copies were ever made (one of which ended up in the hands of MAR Barker and eventually to a collector named Keith Dalluhn), but that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t have done the save thing on a wider and more ambitious scale.'

ME: So, no one was working on a similar idea, without prior (or any) knowledge of OD&D?

It’s likely that some people were (the Hyboria wargame campaign that Tony Bath ran in the UK in the 60s is very similar to an rpg in a lot of ways, for one example) but what Gary was more worried about was “closer to home,” because while the idea of D&D was revolutionary, once you’re exposed to it, it’s pretty easy to duplicate - and by late 1973 a fair number of people in the upper Midwest had been exposed so Gary felt like the clock was ticking and he needed to move fast to prevent someone else (like Mark Bufkin) from doing so first.

As I wrote before, you may be interested in the books I mentioned. I tend to prefer source evidence. For the Dalluhn manuscript, might I suggest you read the following, which may provide a different perspective-

https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1454/51/1454516675578.pdf

 

[SteveC]

This is an interesting discussion and unfortunately it has sort of devolved into a "what's a popular RPG that I don't like."

I think it's interesting because the answer shifts over time. Back in the early days, when we didn't really understand what RPGs were, there were a ton, and I mean a ton, of bad games that were people who were excited by the idea and somehow put together money to get something into print. Every once and a while I come across PDFs of them. The last one I saw was from a game called KABAL. "Knights and Berserkers and Legends." It was terrible. But it was a different time.

As time went on and desktop publishing became a thing, we had things like Synnibarr and Senzar. Back in those days I was a keyboard warrior and some friends and I all but got into a fight with the creators of Senzar. We had the joy that is Cyborg Commandos, too.

And then in the D20 period, there were terrible D20 games like Foundation, which weren't really even fully realized games.

But for today, it's a really hard question, because I haven't seen games that are just as bad as those games. We sort of need a new standard for the concept because games look better, and have decades of established design to work from. I'd really like to see something on the level of those early bad games in the last five years or so. I honestly can't think of something that's been that bad.

 

[Jahydin]

Thought of another one!

Loved the setting and the imaginative ideas, hated the ultra-simple mechanics.

 

[MGibster]

Although it's been a very long time since I've played it, I quite enjoyed the TSR Marvel FASERIP system for what is was back in the '80s. Weirdly, it was panned by a lot of reviewers when it came out, as it definitely bucked the Phoenix Command style of game design that was gaining ascendance at the time, instead opting for simple, fast, and uncomplicated (or as some put it, "for kids.").

I'd rather solve quadratic eqations than play anything with the Phoenix Command rules. It'd be more fun at least.

I would love to find an old copy to see how it holds up for me. I LOVED gamma world back in the 80s. But there were a lot of games I played in the 80s that I would have no interest or patience for now, including AD&D.

The only thing I remember about Gamma World is a fellow player's character we named Fumbles the Scorpion. He was a mutant animal, scorpion, and was constantly rolling now for physical tasks of all kinds at critical moments. Whatever his name might have been, we started calling him Fumbles.

 

[Carnun]

I haven't even tried playing some of the games in this thread, like Cyborg Commando or modiphius games (for some reason the 2D20 system turns me off completely, I don't even want to check it out). But from my personal experience here's a few thoughts:

Y'all remember that old FFG game "Fireborn"? I wanted to like it. Seemed a cool setting with cool ideas, but my buddies and I literally couldn't figure out how to play it. We got together for 2 sessions to try and figure it out, lol. Never figured it out. I suppose this would be my pick for most incomprehensible game.

For the most overrated game I've tried, that would be FATE. For reasons mentioned in this thread; to me it's the epitome of the old saying, 'reads great but plays terribly.' For a self-proclaimed 'narrative' game, I've never played something that took players OOC to chase bonuses, as bad as this game. It becomes a game of how to con your GM into using your best skill/approach for everything, and as many Aspects as you can stack. The actual dice mechanic, having such a sharp curve, only exacerbates the issue.

For favorite game I'll never play again, it's got to be the Palladium System, for reasons already covered in this discussion. But man, that's good 14-year-old nostalgia.

 

[aramis erak]

For the most overrated game I've tried, that would be FATE. For reasons mentioned in this thread; to me it's the epitome of the old saying, 'reads great but plays terribly.' For a self-proclaimed 'narrative' game, I've never played something that took players OOC to chase bonuses, as bad as this game. It becomes a game of how to con your GM into using your best skill/approach for everything, and as many Aspects as you can stack. The actual dice mechanic having such a sharp curve only exacerbate the issue.

Not all fate games are the aspect fests - but also note that aspects are not free to use. Spend a fate point per. Some, such as Diaspora, specifically limit aspects to one per scope.

So, in diaspora, if you have two personal aspect that apply, only one comes into play. One from the scenery, one from the opponent (if you can justify and afford it), one from the mission, one from the adventure, and, if set, 1 from the campaign. Oh, and one from a tool if it has one.