Worst RPG System You Ever Palyed?

[mcrow]

Well, that was part of the purpose of writing it... To provide a simpler game by which to enter the ICE family of games. Now a year and half after it has been published, I do see some things that I wish that I had done differently (like the alt stats option in HB#3), and perhaps a couple of other things as well.

I hope that you do enjoy it once you get the chance to play...

Maybe my one experience with RM was a bad one, but I'm still willing to give it a shot given the chance. Like I said, I never actually read the rules so what the GM was telling me to do very well could have been wrong and I would't have know it. I may have to pick up a copy sometime just to see if I have the correct understanding of the game.

BTW I really do like HARP, and see why it won a silver Ennie, in fact when I get paid I plan on picking up some more HARP stuff. I did not mean to offend you in any way.

 

[HellHound]

Personally, I'm one of the people who thought RoleMaster was fun, if a little slow to run sometimes.

But really...

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.

To determine your chance to hit something in combat, you take your attack stat, modify it for whatever special stuff you have going on (magic weapons, two weapon fighting, etc), then take the square root of the modified stat. (Hmmm combat skill of 83, 32 points of bonuses, 19 points of penalties... total of: 9.798)

Now do the same thing for the opponent (combat skill and mods = 71 = 8.426)

Now set the two numbers as a ratio... 9.798 : 8.426 = 53.76 : 46.24

Now you know your percentage chance to hit the opponent (54%) and their chance to hit you (46%). Roll to hit!

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Tough call here. I've played a lot of bad games, but a lot of it probably has to do with bad GMing.

Didn't like Megatraveller at all. I didn't like Werewolf either, but that was mostly because the Storyteller insisted that Werewolves flip out and fight the Wyrm all the time. I got really bored with being forced into that role with almost every adventure.

The Palladium systems, if left separate, aren't bad at all. I found that things start to go haywire when people start trying to combine them. Especially when Rifts is involved.

I'm going to be contentious and say D&D 3e also could be a contender, based almost solely on the attacks of opportunity system. I hate that far more than the weapon speeds of 2e.

 

[Morpheus]

Well, as I said, the GM later said he didn't think he ran it correctly. It's probably an OK game, but I suffered through it for several sessions and each week I hated it more and more. So, for me, it was the worst role-playing experience I've had.

Wow. Just wow. Do yourself a favor and watch any (or all) of the following movies to see what is possible with Feng Shui done right:

The Replacement Killers
Hard Boiled
Hard Target
Kiss of the Dragon
Bulletproof Monk


Watch some of these; find a competent GM; find out what you've been missing. And, yes, I am a fan of Chow Yun-Fat...

 

[greywulf]

Dragonroar. Any game with giant killer hedgehogs in has to be bad. Character generation was undecipherable too.

For straight rules badness, I'd vote Golden Heroes. I never did work out the parry rules. Character generation was funky though.

 

[Akrasia]

I have a baaad feeling about this thread.

Hmmmm … I have no idea why you would say this...

Palladium is not all that bad. Another one that is reallly bad is Rolemaster, it's nickname "chartmaster" says it all.

Okay, now I do.

... Rolemaster ranks right up there as well.
...

I always find it ironic that fans of 3e criticize Rolemaster, given the overwhelming similarities between the two systems.

Having GM'ed both systems extensively, I find claims by 3e fans that Rolemaster is 'complex' strange. It is actually easier in many respects than 3e. YMMV.

...
AD&D (1e) - I hate limitations on my characters. I can only be a Monk if I randomly roll really high stats? Sheesh! (Never played 2e, so cannot comment on it). Actual play was not too bad, IMO, so long as you were not playing a magic user....

*Sigh*

I want to like HARP, but knowing that its author says stuff like this … well, not good.

... DM'ed - Flame away, but it was 3.0e. I know there are probably worse systems out there to DM but I found this one the least fun of any game I DM'ed. Of course I haven't DM'ed every system by a long shot.

I 50 percent agree with this (3e is tied with another system as my ‘least fun to GM’ system), but posting a comment like this here at ENworld … well, not a good idea.

But I have faith in my fellow humanity -- the obvious tinder has yet to ignite...

Poor Role Master always gets so much hate...

Not a perfect system, but I really enjoyed my RM games.

I agree. I really don’t get the RM hate that some d20 fans espouse. It is ridiculous, given the similarities between the two systems.

But then again, sometimes siblings hate each other with a passion that people outside the family cannot understand.

Space Opera ...

I have a soft spot for this game. I read it many times while a young lad (age 12-13). For some reason, I thought that figuring this game out would be amazing -- it would uncover the mysteries of life.

Good times.

 

[mcrow]

*Sigh*

I want to like HARP, but knowing that its author says stuff like this … well, not good.

What do mean by that? Are you saying that HARP does not have flexible character creation? it seems pretty flexible to me.

 

[Rasyr]

BTW I really do like HARP, and see why it won a silver Ennie, in fact when I get paid I plan on picking up some more HARP stuff.

Cool!!

I did not mean to offend you in any way.

Aww.. I am actually pretty hard to offend most of the time (though there are a few things that can immediately "push my buttons" as my wife calls it). So no worries there.

 

[Akrasia]

What do mean by that? Are you saying that HARP does not have flexible character creation? it seems pretty flexible to me.

Ummm ... my point was not that HARP does not have flexible character creation. It does, and I like HARP.

My point was that AD&D 1e has certain virtues as a system that have *nothing* to do with 'flexibility'.

A failure to appreciate those virtues is a pity, IMO.

But my more general point in that post was that *any* designer of *any* RPG probably should not post in this thread for purely pragmatic reasons.

Any RPG that someone criticizes is bound to be liked by some other poster (and, well, AD&D is still liked by huge numbers of people even today). It cannot help any designer to antagonize potential customers.

Pragmatics aside, though, I think that there are different virtues in a wide variety of different systems. I have attachments to both 'Space Opera' and 'Fighting Fantasy'.

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Let's see...

I've never cared for any of the WoD games, but that has little to do with the system (which a friend of mine used to great effect in his own WoD-system based RPG, "American Jihad"), and a lot to do with execution. The way the game is set up, rather than getting "horror roleplaying", you end up with a lot of politicking at best, hack and slash at worst. If I want to play a game about politics, power-mongering and social climbing, I'd much rather play Fading Suns or my own D&D homebrew. That's not to say that the premise of these games is a bad one, it just doesn't work as advertised (and, barring a miracle, probably can't).

I liked WEG Star Wars... I don't really understand what the problem people have with the template system was, given that from what I could see, they really didn't do anything except pre-assign the PC's free 6d worth of stats, make a list of likely skills that the character would have, and give some bonus equipment. Very few of my players ever even bothered with them, since there didn't seem to be any reason for them.

Though, that said, I vastly prefer d20 Star Wars. The action and Force rules are much better... my only peeve is power scaling. The problem with d6 Star Wars was that powers on par with the main characters of the films were completely out of reach for the PC's (except for, perhaps, in a few areas, if a player plunked all of his Character Points into one or two skills). d20 Star Wars suffers from the other extreme- advancement tends to be so quick that PC's can rapidly out-power the characters from the films- and, on top of that, tend to be optimized to the point that the NPC's as written wouldn't stand a chance against the PC's, who typically have piles of custom-designed equipment and higher skill ranks (one Consular 7/ Master 1 in a game that I ran boasted a "move object" score higher than Yoda's... at 8th level. Given how strong she was in all areas-the character had an 18 Intelligence, thus 11 skill points each level- at higher levels the PC would have been easily the most skilled force-user in the galaxy. It can be rather hard to challenge PC's like that for very long...)

Back on topic, however, I'm not sure what the worst RPG system I've ever played was. Maybe Fuzion... didn't impress me one bit. HOL, but that was a feature, not a bug. A friend in high school designed a "Final Fantasy" version of D&D 2nd edition that was munchkin city, and rather dull... but that doesn't count, given it was homebrew...