Worst Value for Money RPG Purchase


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GoblinMasquerade said:
Epic Level Handbook . . . or maybe the Planar Handbook. Neither are really bad books, I've just never had any use for them, probably because I generally dislike all high-level games.


amen :)
 

The Babylon Project.

It was the original Babylon 5 RPG, I bought a copy in February 1998. It was just as I was getting into gaming, and being a big B5 fan I thought it would be really cool to have a Babylon 5 RPG, especially since the first RPG I ever played was the old d6 Star Wars RPG and I had high expectations for a licensed RPG.

I was extremely disappointed. The $24.95 price tag is still on the book, taunting me. As an actual reference about the setting, it had very little you wouldn't know if you watched he show regularly (it didn't reveal much new about the setting at all), the only really new thing it introduced was a very limited jump-route map of systems in Earth Alliance space (a tiny fraction of the route map later published by Mongoose's B5 RPG). The system was an utter disaster, I never was able to figure out exactly how it worked, as some odd blend of roleplaying-encouraged character traits and really complicated hit location tables and 13 ability scores and no system for starship combat at all, not to mention very limited support for telepaths (most of the telepaths actually portrayed on the show couldn't be duplicated in the game, the telepathy system was far weaker than telepaths on the show), and the book said in no uncertain terms the game could not and should not be used to play anything during the run of the show, it should only be set before the construction of Babylon 5 (the sample adventure was about investigating the destructiobn of Babylon Station, aka Babylon 1).

The illustrations were all color drawings that looked like good fan art, not a single still from the show or anything else I'd expect from a licensed product. In fact, it didn't even have any stats for the characters from the show as examples, instead it had some prefab starting PC's for the sample adventure and some sketchy half-writeups of NPC's for the adventure as the only example characters. There was a curious little disclaimer in the book that said that "Original illustrations in this book are not intended to represent specific characters from Babylon 5", which combined with everything else made me wonder what kind of crippled license it was made under.

I quickly realized that I could have made a more playable B5 RPG, by just quickly cobbling something together with the d6 system I knew and using what I knew of the setting already in my head, with maybe that jumproute map as the only thing to keep, and that map wasn't worth $25.
 



jmucchiello said:
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Deities and Demigods.
I would, but I didn't actually pay any money for my copy.

And Fishbone, I'm glad to know that someone finds the Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary useful. I'll stick to Denizens of Avadnu and the ToHs, myself.

Demiurge out.
 

For me, the top five stinkers would be:

World's Largest Dungeon
Epic Level Handbook
Deities and Demigods
Iron Heroes- not all that bad, just clunky and not what I was looking for in a low-magic game
Most of FFE's stuff (the only good book they had was the Dangerous Creatures Tome- I've used quite a few beasties, and they all worked out well).
 


I'd have to say my 2E core books. I bought them when 2E came out, but almost never used them at all; I ended playing a lot of MERP/RM and classic D&D (BECMI) through that period. I have other gaming books I've purchased and not used (or not not used much), but those I enjoyed reading, at least.

Another waste-of-money was Dragon Lords of Melniboné. Terrible book. I'm a big Chaosium fan, usually, but that one was a real stinker. I had the first edition Stormbringer game, and it was MUCH better.

Edit: Wow, William Ronald, you mentioned that book at exactly the same time I did -- weird.
 

The Arms & Equipment Guide. Even if your bear in mind I got it for less than a tenner off ebay. And even at a fiver the Creature Collection was pretty awful.

Come to think of it I've bought quite a few of Dragon's crappier issues, as well. :(
 

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