Worst RPG System You Ever Palyed?

[Steel_Wind]

Aftermath.

A ruleset so bizarre and poorly put together that it pretty much quashed my interest in what I considered my favortie genre (Post APocalypse) for years.

A different rulesystem for everything, an entire book of gun stats without the names or descritions of the guns included, Mutations so miniscule and weak as to be pointless.

Just a huge, idiotic mess from beginning to end.

Agreed. This is the worst.

To the preceding poster - I played Rolemaster for 20 years. It had a lot of fans in its heyday and gave Monte Cook his start in the business. While it may not be your cuppa tea - the worst? Not even close.

I will admit that that character generation system in RMSS was broken though. RMSS was the death knell for RM.

RM2 though - was a fine and fast system with a universal mechanic - just like D&D has now.

 

[Orius]

I have a baaad feeling about this thread.

Just starting this thread myself, and I'm getting the feeling that it's gonna be dominated by Palladium/Rifts and Synnibar.

 

[Akrasia]

...
Warhammer the RPG never impressed me. I guess I didn't understand why I had to start the game as a peddler or some other strange profession.

Ummm ... because the whole premise of the game is that the PCs are part of the world, and thus are trained in professions that would really exist in that world? WFRP assumes that people had jobs *before* they started adventuring, rather than assuming that adventurers leap from the heads of players into the world fully armed.

The career system really adds flavour to the world. I love WFRP 2e, and one of the coolest things about it is the career system. The fact that a PC can go from a rat catcher to an important knight can make for a really compelling campaign.

There are many other things about the game that I really love: the magic system, the gritty combat system, the rules for disease and insanity, etc. But the career system if probably my favourite aspect of the system.

It's great that Green Ronin and Black Industries will be producing lots of cool new stuff for WFRP!

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Dangerous Journeys, by Gary Gygax. After playing with this, I made a vow that I would never buy another book by Gary Gygax unless someone hires a highly competent editor for him.

An editor with a big stick.

A stick with a Nail in it.

To this day, I don't know if I calculated the correct number of magi^H^H^H^H heka points for my mag^H^H^H dwæomercrafter.

 

[Zelligars Apprentice]

This is an obscure one, but...

The official worst game I have ever (attempted to) play is a little stinker called High Fantasy. Now, usually, I can find something of value in games (even if just an interesting piece of art). But this, it had ABSOLUTELY NO redeeming values. The character generation system was literally unusable (and I HAVE made characters in both C&S and Space Opera). The combat system had the worst combination of chart-based and formula-based rules I have ever seen. I don't remember the magic system, if it even had one (maybe I blocked it out with hysterical amnesia). And yes, the art was also bad. Ugh! This has become our group's synonym for "bad game system".

Fortunately for the rest of the world, this game died a quiet death in the '80s after putting out a grand total of ONE supplement.

"Honorable" mention goes to another obscure '80s game called Fantasy Wargaming. Horrible mechanics, but it had some decent information about feudalism, and it is the only game I have seen which has game statistics for both God (as in, the Christian God) and The Devil. It also had a system for determining what happens to your character's soul after they died! That is, whether they go to Heaven or Hell or spend some time in Purgatory! Those things give it some points for audacity, if nothing else.

A few others that stand out:
Synnibar - Designed by someone with a SERIOUS shotgun fetish, among other things. Scary.
Lords of Creation, Powers and Perils, and TimeMaster: All suffered from a common fault: good setting ideas, horrible game systems. Many other games suffer from this, even today. It's sad, really. Even one of my favorite settings (Tekumel) suffered from this for most of its life. I don't know about the current version, as my gaming budget is very limited these days.

As far as RoleMaster and Palladium go: They have some major flaws, but are far from the worst games out there. The complexity of Rolemaster is daunting, but it has some great ideas, and is quite playable. I will probably stay away from Palladium, mostly because the game (especially Rifts) seems to attract far too many munchkins for my taste. The game system is playable, if the GM tones down and evens out the power level.

OK, enough rambling. What I really want to know is: Does anyone actually OWN that holy grail of terrible games, the legendary, semi-mythical Spawn of Fashan?

 

[wingsandsword]

There was another awful game I played once. RedShift. It started out as a abominable homebrew derivation of GURPS, but more complex. Some gamers I knew a few years ago through the local gaming club brewed this up, trying to make a realistic, futuristic hard-sci-fi setting. However, the documentation was a disaster, the rules were contradictory, and I kept getting the impression that the game was made by a gamer who had a serious obsession with "realism" and being a "real roleplayer" and didn't thing GURPS did it quite enough, so he added more rules to increase realism and "roleplaying", but only he knew what they were all supposed to be.

I didn't want to judge it by the same standard I'd put an actual published product, but given what I found: http://www.gamingreport.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reviews&file=index&req=showcontent&id=724

Apparently he publsihed this homebrewed game, and the review I found at Gaming Report pretty much sums up the game really well (I didn't write the report, but I can say that it's pretty accurate).

 

[Evilhalfling]

Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles/ heros unlimited crossover.

My slightly insane mutant Otter with an Axe, and his companion a Cyborg with 1d4x100 dmg gernades.
Did anyone else just assume that all mutants rolled on the random insanity tables? they were right after the char gen, and there was no obvious break.

I would say Rifts but I after finishing a character who had a MegaDamage knife I walked away.

GURPS Discworld - comic games should not have that level of minutia

Marvel Super Heros - ah the joy of random powers and power strength.
monstrous fighting ability(60), good strength(10) (sigh)
Amazing damage force bolts (30) Fair armor/shields (6) just call me paper tiger.

 

[James Heard]

"Honorable" mention goes to another obscure '80s game called Fantasy Wargaming. Horrible mechanics, but it had some decent information about feudalism, and it is the only game I have seen which has game statistics for both God (as in, the Christian God) and The Devil. It also had a system for determining what happens to your character's soul after they died! That is, whether they go to Heaven or Hell or spend some time in Purgatory! Those things give it some points for audacity, if nothing else.

But have you played it? I mean, I have the game and once or twice tried to knock out some characters in it but I think I remember that there really weren't any mechanics beside character creation. Basically what I remember about it was that it was the one gaming book I decided that I'd better hide from my religious grandmother, that it had a lot of nice things to say about other gaming systems, and that I think I remember a percentage chance based upon your zodiac sign for being a pervert? Ah, what we won't buy when we're young.

Lords of Creation, Powers and Perils, and TimeMaster: All suffered from a common fault: good setting ideas, horrible game systems. Many other games suffer from this, even today. It's sad, really. Even one of my favorite settings (Tekumel) suffered from this for most of its life. I don't know about the current version, as my gaming budget is very limited these days.

I've actually played Timemaster and didn't have that much of a problem with it, except that expecting gamers to engage in ethical timeline behavior was pretty much DOA upon proposal as far as a bunch of teenage gamers were concerned. Lords of Creation though, was just...bizarre. I wish I could find my copy of it so that I could quote to everyone just HOW bizarre it was. It's another game that I don't know how anyone could manage to start a game out of it.

As far as RoleMaster and Palladium go: They have some major flaws, but are far from the worst games out there. The complexity of Rolemaster is daunting, but it has some great ideas, and is quite playable. I will probably stay away from Palladium, mostly because the game (especially Rifts) seems to attract far too many munchkins for my taste. The game system is playable, if the GM tones down and evens out the power level.

Mechanically they work, sometimes - but in general Palladium games are just horrific to actually run and play in IME. Rolemaster I've had some better experiences with, but in general everyone who was running Rolemaster that I've played with eventually switched to GURPS - which is another game I just don't enjoy at all, no matter how much I covet some of the supplements.

Tri Tac Systems game, Fringeworthy, meets the subtheme of this thread for me though. It was absolutely brilliant and I've used it's fluff over and over again without ever actually being able to make much sense of the mechanics of the game - making it the best game that has the worst system I won't ever play with. Usually when I run a Fringeworthy game I use the Interlock D10 system, the one that's used in Mekton and Cyberpunk. It's certainly not perfect, but it's less crunchy than d20 and more crunchy than Storyteller. It's the Goldilocks of gaming systems as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Professor Phobos]

I'd like to pitch in a defense for Warhammer FRP, if I might.

The career system is there for several reasons. One, it is to reflect the harsh and capricious nature of the world. You've got no real control over where you end up (until the game begins, o'course)- if you're lower class, you're lower class, and if you're a noble, well, good for you.

The Warhammer universe is not a romantic or heroic one- it is mostly about the peril. Lots of peril.

The other bit is to emphasis the fact that 'adventurers' tend to be psychopaths, mercenaries, criminals, fugitives or just plain crazy. Otherwise, why wouldn't they just live in a town and try to get by, like everyone else? Something- which might well be the career you start with, oh ye who rolled a Rat Catcher, Gong Farmer or Bone Picker- drives your characters to adventure, and unlike most other games, it isn't necessarily because you want to be adventuring.

Part of it is also that there's an expectation of downtime. A WFRP campaign doesn't look like..."And then they defeated the Lich King, and travelled south, and defeated the Dragon King, and then went West, and defeated the Dragon Lich King..." WFRP characters are not constantly adventuring. Adventuring is what happens to them in-between doing normal (for their career) activities. Unless you're on one of the epic deals, like Paths of the Damned or The Enemy Within.

So, you might find your Thief, Noble and Bone Picker thrown together for some crazed adventure, and a year later they find themselves together again...

Regardless, the career system takes a lot of getting used to. I think if you give it a shot, you'll find it uniquely entertaining and downright charming. Just forget about having powerful characters, and focus on having characters who have all their limbs. It's closer to Call of Cthulhu than D&D in many respects.

As for "getting used to the horror", well, the Ruinous Powers are Lovecraftian; fundamentally poisonous to the reality in which your characters belong. You can't get used to them just like you can't get used to toxic waste.

As for the worst RPG I ever played, it'd have to be Shadowrun. Don't get me wrong, I dig the setting- it makes no sense, but in a kind of goofy, Hey-it-was-the-80's way, it's just the system...can't wrap my head around it to this day. Much too clunky for my tastes.

 

[Akrasia]

I'd like to pitch in a defense for Warhammer FRP, if I might...

... It's closer to Call of Cthulhu than D&D in many respects....

Great explanation of WFRP, Professor!