Worst RPG System You Ever Palyed?

[WayneLigon]

...
K.A.B.A.L. (Knights and Berzerkers and Legerdemain).

Your stats are percentiles, and your stat modifiers are the square root of your stats.
...
Now set the two numbers as a ratio... 9.798 : 8.426 = 53.76 : 46.24

Sweet baby Jesus, I think we have a winner.

I can't really think of a game I've actually played that I despised purely for the system. Usually if I dislike a system, it's because it is inadequate instead of some idiotic mess like the above.

I remember playing RIFTS a handfull of times and not really caring for it - the power disparity was very obvious.

Harnmaster is another case of a wonderful background hampered by some (IMO) unnessesarily complex rules. I can't really say I played it enough to call them 'bad' rules but the system just felt ... odd, for some reason. It's been several years since I played it, though, so I probably don't remember what specifically I disliked.

One system I never have played, mainly because I never could figure out how to play it much less run it, was the original DC Heroes system. I actually was burned twice by this, as I picked up the D6 version of it as well and found that to also be almost indecipherable. At least I could eventually puzzle out character creation in the original system but I never did manage to do even that in the D6 (or whatever they were calling it at that moment) version.

I never really did figure out Chivalry and Sorcery, either (first ed) but then I'm nor certain I was ever suppossed to. There was a lot of other very useful stuff in the book, though, so I was actually pleased to own it at the time.

I never did find Rolemaster to be hard or particularly vexing to play or GM.

 

[Rydac]

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.

Another second here for Teflon Billy's thoughts on Aftermath. In fact wasn't it FGU that made Aftermath along with Space Opera and Chivalry and Sorcery ? The latter two were one and done sessions...Aftermath I tried twice because I too like the genre.

 

[Silver Moon]

I realize you are probably exaggerating for effect, but as I recall, even a Red/"Kill" result by Aunt May [for a big 4 points damage...hell, give her a gun and make it 10] would not help her get through Galactus's Body Armor.

Ah yes, Aunt May vs. Galactus. Marvel Team-up #137, a classic!



Worst RPG I've ever played? Don't remember the name of it but it was a D&D knockoff back in the early 80's that required dice rolls and cross-referencing seven different charts for every single combat move, and each chart used a percentile roll with 100 different possible outcomes.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

HârnMaster is another case of a wonderful background hampered by some (IMO) unnessesarily complex rules. I can't really say I played it enough to call them 'bad' rules but the system just felt ... odd, for some reason. It's been several years since I played it, though, so I probably don't remember what specifically I disliked.

I'll have to leap to the defence of HârnMaster. There are, unfortunately, two current versions HârnMaster Gold (based on first edition HârnMaster) and HârnMaster3 (based on the much simpler second edition). Gold is too much for me to much detail and too many tables. HM3 is a much simpler system. Skills, make one roll, combay is a hit vs. parry matrix followed by a location & damage roll. Easy (nd no Hit Points)

 

[Glyfair]

Empire of the Petal Throne.

I played this back around 1983 when my (now ex-)husband [the same one who once played a phraint in a MERP game] was obsessed with it. Actually I don't remember anything about it except maybe unpronounceable names. It just leaves a bad taste in my mind.

Empire of the Petal throne usually gets mentioned as the RPG setting with the most depth. Usually people would argue the crown went to EPT or Glorantha.

My problem with it was it wasn't very approachable. It was in the category of campaigns I hate - the "let's make everything different so players have to spend as much time reading the setting as I did designing it."

 

[SWBaxter]

<hijack>Actually, has anybody played the CODA Lord of the Rings game? Is it any good? My impression from reading it was that it boiled down to the d20 system with the serial numbers filed off and 2d6 put in.</hijack>

Or in other words, a lot like the MegaTraveller system, which predates d20 by around 15 years IIRC.

CODA's LOTR is pretty decent, given that they had to stick to the movies. ICE's MERP has generally better supplements, but their license was apparently a lot more permissive so they could flesh out lots of places and time periods only briefly mentioned in the books.

 

[Aristotle]

1.) Palladium's (I played Rifts specifically) game mechanics just kill me. Sorry palladium fans. I really wanted to like this game, and have a ton of the books as I did enjoy some of the setting ideas, but I just couldn't get past the horrible (in my opinion) game mechanics.

2.) GURPS runs a close second for me. I just "didn't get it". I have various GURPS products and find them to be some amazing tools for developing campaigns... that I end up running with other game systems.

 

[spectre72]

Dr. Who.

One person gets to play a powerful Time Lord. Everyone else gets to play a wimpy sidekick. There was a huge gulf in Time Lords and humans. Think of a d20 game where one guy got to start at EL +10 and everyone else had to be EL +0.

Another Vote for Dr. WHO

And to add to the pain was only a true Dr. WHO fan has any idea what is going on.

When it is the DM who is the fan everyone else is in serious trouble.

 

[Ronin84]

So were we like the only three people who tried K.A.B.A.L. (Knights and Berzerkers and Legerdemain) that game was such crap!

I was going to nominate anything Palladium, the idea and background is usually good, but the mechanics are horrible.

So KABAL 1st

Palladium/Rifts 2nd

 

[SWBaxter]

It's easy to find bad free games. The only game I've ever paid money for and tossed in the trash a day or two later was a superhero RPG I picked up around 1990, called something like Enforcers IIRC. The text spent a lot of time dwelling on how simple and intuitive the rules were, while also giving instructions for increasingly complex calculations of up to quarternary* stats and combat rules that required on the fly calculation of square roots to two decimal places. I'm a math geek who's not afraid of a decent amount of rules crunch, and it was far too much even for me.

Honourable mention for a game I liked in concept but hated playing was first edition Shadowrun. I thought the basic idea was pretty cool, but both the really unbalanced rules and the metaplot where all the really cool characters were NPCs rubbed me the wrong way. That's a game I only played rather than GMed.

* i.e. your primary stats were rolled, secondary stats calculated from primary, tertiary stats calculated from secondary and primary, and quarternary stats calculated from some combination of the first three sets. Just crazy.