Worst RPG System You Ever Palyed?

[MonsterMash]

I made a character for (the original) Bunnies and Burrows, but never got to play him.

-The Gneech

Bunnies and Burrows wasn't that bad in play. I've still got my copy of the original edition in store somewhere.

Flash Gordon and the Warriors of Mongo - not necessarily a bad game as such, but not the RPG that it claimed to be - too programmed and it would mean that it was boring after a couple of plays. It did have great art from the original comic strips though (Alex Raymond IIRC).

Games that I didn't enjoy (so not bad, but didn't suit me):
MERP and Chivalry and Sorcery

 

[Plane Sailing]

Space Opera

Okay, I liked it but my freinds who frankly didn't understad calculus and were not that profiecient with a graphic caculat and took art classees instead of the hard sciences were confused. "Space opera, the game written by math geeks for math geeks" is what I always called it.

Gosh, that brings back good memories. Space Opera, while not making a whole lot of sense as a game system, was the foundation for the most successful campaign I ever ran - a group of 4 or f5 friends expanded by word of mouth until in the end I was running adventures every friday evening for 14-15 people! Fantastic fun, very fast-and-loose. The adventures were a lot like pretty anarchic james bond movies, and I found it simple to take traveller adventures (especially the 'amber zones') and convert them for use.

Wow, those were fun days, and even now (more than twenty years later) some of my players still reminisce about those adventures.

I'm not saying the system was great, it certainly wasn't. But man we had fun!

Cheers

 

[Morpheus]

Great explanation of WFRP, Professor!

Best summary of WFRP I have ever heard..."Players begin the game thinking they're playing D&D, but then find out their playing Call of Cthulhu." It might have been Teflon Billy who said it or quoted it...

 

[Darkness]

Does anyone actually OWN that holy grail of terrible games, the legendary, semi-mythical Spawn of Fashan?

I think Piratecat managed to get copies for himself and some other people here a few years ago.

 

[Gulla]

I'm a bit surprised that noone yet has named Aria. It is by far the worst game I have ever tried to play. It took me over a month to read through the rules, and another one to (presumably) understand it. Granted, English is not my native language, but I had more trouble with Aria than with anything else i have read (including 'close to original' Shakespeare, Arthurian poetry and advanced mathematics and physics).

(Dis)honourable mention also to Vampire (any system where your chances of fumbling rises with your skill stinks) and Ars Magica. I have played very successfull campaigns in both, and I have GM'ed AM extensively, but the systems are very bad. (I haven't played VtM since 1. ed as I don't like the setting, and have been told that WW have fixed the system later)

My main problem with Ars Magica is that it is so easy to make a useless character. Even experienced players have had problems with this. The difference between an optimized character and a seemingly competent character is enormous. (Or it was in 2, 3 and 4. ed). And even if the idea behind the magic system is pure genius it very often bogs down as the players wonder "which of my million options should I use now, and how difficult will each be compared to my skills".

Not that anything would stop me from playing AM if a Nice GM/troup has an opening (except maybe my wife claiming I don't have time for more gaming )

Håkon

 

[Plane Sailing]

The worst game system I've owned and played was Starships and Spacemen, a rubbish star trek kind of thing with the serial numbers filed off and fun deliberately excluded from 1978.

You can see a little bit about it here http://www.sden.org/jdr/spaceopera/GB/goodies/spacemen.htm

Bizzarely, you can still buy it for a mere $9 on drive through RPG
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/catalo...d=881&osCsid=61bc245bee5fffffe647677c1a6bf3da

I strongly recommend that you don't!

 

[Bront]

I've played all of the mentioned games except Synnibar and have to say that as klunky as they were they were playable, albeit often with a bit of guessing at what the authors intended.

You played in a FATAL LARP?

My worst game ever played? Amber. Diceless just didn't work. Basicly, we could do things if the GM said we could, and couldn't if the GM said we couldn't. I think some of it may have been GM issues too, but the system just sucked horibly.

I liked rifts for a change of pace, but the more I played it, the more I realized it's suckitude. Cool concept, good for storytelling, bad for actual system rolling (I remember killing the GM's pet monster in one shot from 1.5 miles away).

Trinity (AEON, I had the origional book without the sticker) wasn't that great either. Was a dumbed down even more storyteller system.

I enjoyed Rolemaster to a point, but the charts wore on me after a while, and not everyone seemed to be able to understand the system (These same people have trouble with the D20 system mechanics too though).

 

[BigAlzBub]

I read some of FATAL, and it’s diabolical. I rolled up a character for Rolemaster and it was hard work (never played it). Space Opera...ugh...we recently played a game of it, we were desperately looking for the skill system...but it doesn't seem to have one. The Babylon project is fairly bad. Alternity (pre-errata) is dross. I don't think Palladium is as bad as everyone says (it’s still pretty awful though) but Beyond the Supernatural is the worst Palladium game I own. CODA Star Trek is appalling, it’s a bastard child of D&D 3.0 and the old ICON system from last unicorn games, except they took everything that was wrong with ICON and made it worse. Cyberpunk while it has a lot of style and a decent background, has some major flaws, like if you wear a light armour jacket you are virtually immune to small arms fire except when someone has a heavy pistol pressed into the small of your back, or 3 cotton t-shirts provide the same sort of protection as powered armour?!? Doctor Who is terrible, Hi-tech games where technology is an excuse to short circuit the plot are bad, and time travel is a recipe for disaster, so a game with hi-tech and time travel...ugh.

I would like to defend Amber however; the rules are really bad, so bad in fact that they force you to role play, but with the right GM and a good story...fond memories. As others have said if you don't have fun playing Feng Shui you’re doing something wrong.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

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?

Yep, I sure do. Darkness is right; Piratecat somehow managed to find the author, and had him print up copies for a few dozen of us. This was fairly early on in the history of this community, when it was actually still Eric Noah's site. The game is pretty bad, to be honest, and is, essentially, unplayable. Still, it was an honest, enthusiastic effort on the part of some young gamers, and they didn't deserve the public lambasting they got in Dragon, in my opinion. On the other hand, at least people still talk about the game, so I guess some good came of it.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

Unfortunately, all the article had to say on that one was a very short blurb:

"A brain-dead RPG inspired by the TV series. What sends this down the toilet isn't just the skimpy system (four - count 'em - pages of rules), but the notion that anybody'd actually be interested in playing characters as lame as Miss Ellie and Grandpa Ewing."

A cursory Googling reveals nothing more.

--Impeesa--

Heck I played it once. It seemed fine for one shots and was built for soap opera action but thaty really isn't tyhe usual genre explored by rpgs, no vampitres no cyborgs and the game didin't rotate around combar resolution. I don't recall a lot about it as it was a long time ago (20 years or so); equipment was treated as a plot device and that makes sense as folks don'ty usually wander about in soaps with back packs full of equipment. It was an odd bird but it wasn't tryingh tyo do the same thing as most rpgs.