What is your worst roleplaying game?

[Rakasta]

Everybody has a favourite roleplaying game such as:d&d(ad&d),Call of chutulu or Gamma world,and and some have a bad roleplaying game that is too complicated,boring or make you angry. My worst roleplaying game has to be Ars magica fourth edition. But what is your worst roleplaying game? I would love to hear your opinion. (Excuse me for my bad english I come from Norway.)

[Anonymouswizard]

That I've played? Mechwarrior 3rd. Unless you cheese the lifepath you'll begin with likely no more than +3 go your skills, +2 for most of them, in a system where checks are 2d10+skill and the standard difficulty is 15. I've never felt so incompetent.

That I've read? FATAL for being insanely overcomplicated and badly researched. I want to hit the designer upside the head with my copy of Ars Magica, which fufils his claims better than FATAL does. Realistic!

That I've heard of? RaHoWa apparently didn't come with rules and was more offensive than FATAL.

[Yora]

The worst system I've actually encountered in action would easily be Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition. So many rules that only get in the way and constantly direct you down a narrow path of endless dice rolling.

[Fri]

Yeah, there's a difference between the theoritically worst roleplaying game you've encounterd, or worst roleplaying game you've actually played.

[Rakasta]

Yeah, there's a difference between the theoritically worst roleplaying game you've encounterd, or worst roleplaying game you've actually played.

I mean those you have played with.

[AMFV]

My personal worsts are FATE, Torchbearer, and Apocalypse World. Which are all fairly exceptional systems, they've just got aspects that make them less enjoyable for me personally. All of them have ideas that I consider to be absolutely awesome. I just wind up disliking enough of the implementation or certain other aspects enough that I'm extremely not fond of the games. Although again, they're well-designed, but that's my personal preference. For me the things that are worst, are the things I can recognize good design, and exceptional quality of work, that I wind up disliking.

[themaque]

I hated Alternity. That 2nd edition Sci-Fi game TSR put out? Ugh I really hated it. I liked the world but there where just a million little things that I could stand in the system.

The big one was it felt like it WANTED to be a classless skill based system at times but it was rooted in the TSR skill based context.

[hamlet]

Champion. I can't quite claim to have played it since I wasn't really able to get past building a character and getting things working.

The thing is so obtuse and nearly impossible to understand and so insanely complicated.

[johnbragg]

EverQuest put out a d20 RPG. The mechanics were not too terrible, but the fluff was very silly, arranging the entire cosmology to validate having save points/"bind altars".

[ComaVision]

I guess my worst is All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

Not because I dislike the system, I just have a very small sample size.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Of one's I've actually played at all, the Serenity RPG and old WoD - rules-heavy mathsy rpgs by writers who don't like maths or rules tend to work out badly.

I've also heard horror stories from good sources about Shadowrun 5th and Exalted 2nd, but nothing first hand.

[Drynwyn]

The least favorite I've played is probably the Cortex RPG. The game just doesn't seem to have a point to it. It's not particularly good at any one thing, nor does it have enough material to allow for a lot of different things. It's basically a needlessly long guide to making your own RPG under a set of needlessly swingy mechanics.

[obryn]

It's tough for me to pick any, because I have enjoyed most of the RPGs I have played of late... But! With that said...

(1) Recent - Despite fond memories, I tried to run Marvel FASERIP not too long ago and it was a huge mess. Not in a good way. It's too bad because I remember loving the system. In practice, the charts are cumbersome and the status effects are too potent.

(2) Never played - Burning Empires. I was really excited for it and loved the comics, but I couldn't understand what the game was that the book was trying to describe.

(3) Honorable mention - After running the game for 8 years, D&D 3.* is the only game I can think of where I would not voluntarily run it again, and would hesistate to play it.

[BWR]

That I've heard of? RaHoWa apparently didn't come with rules and was more offensive than FATAL.

Sort of. It is less offensive than FATAL in that your head won't explode trying to understand the thought processes that lead to that monstrosity. The 'game' is simple, clear and straightforward and perfectly understandable in all its proud horridness. It's kind of like the Hemmingway of bad game design: nothing extraneous distracting you from thinking about how offensive it is.

Worst I've played: Dogs in the Vineyard or FUDGE. I absolutely detested the mechanics in those. At least in the fudge game we mostly ignore dice if at all possible and had a great game otherwise. Dogs was just 2-3 hours of frustration and annoyance with no redeeming features. And it was run by someone who, when he wants to be, is an excellent GM. He just gets too distracted by indie games and game theory and CONFLICT and whatnot and forgets to focus on what makes things fun sometimes.

[Anonymouswizard]

I guess my worst is All Flesh Must Be Eaten.

Not because I dislike the system, I just have a very small sample size.

I hated the game when I played it, but I looked in the book and, if you get past the zombie-bashing mindset and don't have a GM who literally refused to read the book (*insert rant number X about that campaign here*) it looks like a fun system for an action-investigation game where you fend off basic and special zombies while looking for a solution. Which is exactly the kind of game my second character was prepared for (the first, prepared to do well in any campaign, was vetoed for being a priest using the Inspired rules*).

*I can't remember the powers I planned to take, I think I bought Inspired with positive quality points as the game had so few qualities I was interested in, and I remember definitely taking Visions and being interested in the Strength-increasing one. I was specifically going for an Anglican priest who had deluded himself into thinking the apocalypse had made him a prophet, he was all set to be a fun character.

Sort of. It is less offensive than FATAL in that your head won't explode trying to understand the thought processes that lead to that monstrosity. The 'game' is simple, clear and straightforward and perfectly understandable in all its proud horridness. It's kind of like the Hemmingway of bad game design: nothing extraneous distracting you from thinking about how offensive it is.

Let me put it this way, it's more offensive, but FATAL is much better snark bait. RaHoWa is saved from being such a great target because it forgets to include any rules that would make it complex, while FATAL's offensiveness is literally that it's poorly researched and the rules have been known to fry computers through their complexity. At the very core of FATAL is an average fantasy heartbreaker, it just had so much bad research and overcomplicated rules piled on top of it.

[Sith_Happens]

At the very core of FATAL is an average fantasy heartbreaker

Really, because personally I'm not aware of any "average fantasy heartbreakers" that feature such things as Randy Gay Ogres^TM or cursed swords that forcibly impregnate people with new swords.

As for the actual thread topic, I had a hell of a frustrating time trying to build a character for Worlds in Peril (a third party Apocalypse Engine superhero game) not too long ago. It's got some neat ideas (mainly where its "Bonds" system is concerned) but holy crap are its playbooks overly specific and poorly designed. Like, I could write quite a long list of popular superheroes that aren't properly buildable usable the Worlds in Peril playbooks or even by building a custom playbook from cherry-picked moves... And when Superman of all people is on that list you've got yourself a problem.

[Anonymouswizard]

Really, because personally I'm not aware of any "average fantasy heartbreakers" that feature such things as Randy Gay Ogres^TM or cursed swords that forcibly impregnate people with new swords.

Sorry, by 'very core' I mean the basic idea. I thought we could probably exclude the giant lists of things from the 'very core'.

Now that wrestling move is a more legitimate point.

[LibraryOgre]

Everybody has a favourite roleplaying game such as:d&d(ad&d),Call of chutulu or Gamma world,and and some have a bad roleplaying game that is too complicated,boring or make you angry. My worst roleplaying game has to be Ars magica fourth edition. But what is your worst roleplaying game? I would love to hear your opinion. (Excuse me for my bad english I come from Norway.)

I'm kinda curious as to why Ars Magica is your worst game, myself.

For worst in play? I'd kinda have to lean towards 3.x, though 4e has some strong arguments for it. They gamify character creation in ways I don't enjoy, and get bogged down in too many rules, IME.

[Telwar]

That I've actually played?

I'm going to have to say Amber. It might be good in the hands of a GM who knows and pays attention to the rules (such as they are), but mine...was not. And I'm not a fan of "mother may I?" games, either.

Which is why my second-worst game I've actually played is 5e D&D.

[MeeposFire]

I did a lot of 3e D&D back in the day taking a group from level 1-20 and by the end I had essentially decided I would not DM that edition again. The system is just so much work for so little gain. Every other edition I will DM because they require a lot less work to make the game run well (4e, 5e, AD&D, basic etc all are fine).

As for playing I will play 3e but I will either need some house rules (for instance on eliminating the full attack action or find some way to get full attacks or similar on an attack action) or I will only play certain classes.

[Yuki Akuma]

If "chargen" counts as playing, FATAL - it's the only game that made me cry out 'Oh God why?!' at several chargen steps!

If you're requiring actual roleplaying, then... Synnibarr I suppose? It's way too oldschool for my tastes.

[Rakasta]

I'm kinda curious as to why Ars Magica is your worst game, myself.

For worst in play? I'd kinda have to lean towards 3.x, though 4e has some strong arguments for it. They gamify character creation in ways I don't enjoy, and get bogged down in too many rules, IME.

Its a long story. Will you really know it my good friend?

[Knaight]

Restricting this to games I've actually played, I'd have to go with Torchbearer. I think it's probably a good game, but it requires a dedicated group who all put time into learning the system, and even then will play a bit roughly until there's some system mastery there. I had absolutely the wrong group of people for it, and the game sucked as a result.

With that removed, things like FATAL and Racial Holy War quickly top the list. There's a lot of games I've seen where I've had ample reason to think the people that made it were terrible game designers, and thus avoided them. FATAL and Racial Holy War on the other hand, provide ample reason to think that the people that made it are just terrible people in general. Not that they aren't also terrible game designere.

[Anonymouswizard]

With that removed, things like FATAL and Racial Holy War quickly top the list. There's a lot of games I've seen where I've had ample reason to think the people that made it were terrible game designers, and thus avoided them. FATAL and Racial Holy War on the other hand, provide ample reason to think that the people that made it are just terrible people in general. Not that they aren't also terrible game designere.

Although FATAL is one of my suggestions for those interested in TTRPG design, specifically to show why too many rules is bad. I tend to suggest they look at good rules heavy and rules medium games as well (because I'm not a rules-light fan), but I want to make certain they avoid the more obvious mistakes.

[LibraryOgre]

Its a long story. Will you really know it my good friend?

Sure. PM me if you don't think others will be interested. I've always liked the game, but can see how it wouldn't be someone's favorite.

[Telok]

I can see how people don't enjoy Champions. The character creation can get complex if you don't get the basis for it and understand the powers and the dice rolling isn't well explained. The character building should go "character idea->power effects->mechanics" and simpler is better but that's never quite explained. The dice are just 3d6 under target number, roll ~10d6 for effect, subtract defenses, take the effect. I feel it's a bit like D&D, give the new guy a prebuilt fighter, help them build their first spellcaster, after that they're fine.

My group recently bailed on a Champions game. None of them read the rules or built a character, they just played some pregens I put together. Two typed pages of rules was too much to read but the D&D 3.5 Spell Compendium was considered casual reading. Oy. Plus they're very much locked into the Anonymous Homeless Orphan Murder-HoboHero mode of play, having contacts, dependent NPCs, and codes of conduct was too much for them. They were killing and hospitalizing more people than the villains were.

My personal dislike is D&D 4e. Our group actually had the problems most people only read about, the four hour combat slogs, monsters being so "re-fluffable" that we didn't know or care what we were fighting, nobody being able to track all the +1's and save ends without a gridded whiteboard, having a PC and a monster to change sides during a fight and the crap that spawned from that. By the end of that year I'd read two books in combat between my turns and my turns were still under 30 seconds.

[The_Snark]

Scion. The basic premise - gods and their half-divine children having mythic adventures in the modern world - is fun. The execution, though...

It would not win the label of worst RPG I've played for setting alone, but I do have a few gripes. The authors' grasp of mythology seems a bit shallow, like it's gathered mostly from Wikipedia (or, in the case of one sourcebook, American Gods). The premise is very Greek - gods have lots of bastard children, who grow up to do heroic things - and that doesn't always generalize well with other flavors of mythology. The world suffers from the classic urban fantasy flaw of "magic exists, but it's secret for... some reason... and history basically all happened the same as in the real, magic-less world".

Mechanically, it has my nomination for the worst rules White Wolf has ever written. Like most (all?) of their games, it's based on the Storyteller system; as best as I can tell, this particular iteration is an awkward muddle of oWoD mechanics and early Exalted. The supernatural powers are wildly unbalanced (in both directions); my favorite example is the juxtaposition of a power that gives you infinite ammunition for a scene with one that turns you into a 50-foot metal colossus with massive physical boosts. (To add insult to injury, the former is slightly costlier.)

Combat tends to be either one-sided, an interminable drag, or both at the same time; the game's habit of handing out lots of passive, always-on bonuses does not play well with the d10 system's probability curves, and on top of that the soak rules have been tweaked to make characters more reliably and imperviously tough than any other iteration of the system I've seen. It's very easy to end up in a situation where one party can't hit the other without an improbably good roll. It's also very easy to end up in a situation where one party can't damage the other without an improbably good roll. And if one of your players gets fed up and buys enough Epic Strength/Dexterity/whatever to reliably overcome this problem, they'll steamroll anything which can't match them. This isn't a matter of a few broken abilities (although there are some of those too), these are the basic building blocks you use to make a hero character.

Speaking of which, the game scales absurdly: those passive, always-on bonuses I mentioned scale non-linearly, so that you get increasing returns for focusing on a single thing. Eventually, you reach the point where there's no longer any point to rolling except as a tiebreaker: it's mathematically impossible to beat someone with a higher (equivalent score) than you, or lose to someone with lower. I can only assume the game was never playtested, because these problems become obvious very quickly - the sample PCs are incapable of fighting many of the antagonists statted in the books...

The rules for non-combat situations are all but nonexistent; oh, there are plenty of mental/social Attributes and Skills, but using them boils down to "um, just roll dice and the GM will tell you if you succeed or fail." No subsystems, no suggested difficulties, no advice for the GM on making challenges interesting. This would be fine in a rules-light game, where you only need a quick confict-resolution system, but Scion isn't trying to be that. If you're going to have complex, detailed rules, they need to be interesting, or why bother?

The game is broken in the most literal sense of the word: it doesn't work.

[Anonymouswizard]

Scion. The basic premise - gods and their half-divine children having mythic adventures in the modern world - is fun. The execution, though...

It would not win the label of worst RPG I've played for setting alone, but I do have a few gripes. The authors' grasp of mythology seems a bit shallow, like it's gathered mostly from Wikipedia (or, in the case of one sourcebook, American Gods). The premise is very Greek - gods have lots of bastard children, who grow up to do heroic things - and that doesn't always generalize well with other flavors of mythology. The world suffers from the classic urban fantasy flaw of "magic exists, but it's secret for... some reason... and history basically all happened the same as in the real, magic-less world".

Eh, the game's ambiguous on the 'mystic stuff is secret' part. Partially because the setting assumes that all this heroing started fairly recently.

Also, due to Fatebinding it's going to be a world where most of the population know. It depends on how you see it working, but I see it as pushing Scions towards archetypal stories in intent. So say you have 100 Scions in London. After a few months each is going to have several Fatebound mortals, some lovers, some enemies, some allies, some rivals, maybe a reporter or two on their tail, and Bob, the homeless guy who isn't fatebound to anyone but is in the know.

I agree that this all should have been specified, but the number of Scions receiving visitations shot up recently.

Mechanically, it has my nomination for the worst rules White Wolf has ever written. Like most (all?) of their games, it's based on the Storyteller system; as best as I can tell, this particular iteration is an awkward muddle of oWoD mechanics and early Exalted. The supernatural powers are wildly unbalanced (in both directions); my favorite example is the juxtaposition of a power that gives you infinite ammunition for a scene with one that turns you into a 50-foot metal colossus with massive physical boosts. (To add insult to injury, the former is slightly costlier.)

Mainly agree here, except the base mechanical system is much nicer than oWoD. It's all the add ons (literally all of them).

Combat tends to be either one-sided, an interminable drag, or both at the same time; the game's habit of handing out lots of passive, always-on bonuses does not play well with the d10 system's probability curves, and on top of that the soak rules have been tweaked to make characters more reliably and imperviously tough than any other iteration of the system I've seen. It's very easy to end up in a situation where one party can't hit the other without an improbably good roll. It's also very easy to end up in a situation where one party can't damage the other without an improbably good roll. And if one of your players gets fed up and buys enough Epic Strength/Dexterity/whatever to reliably overcome this problem, they'll steamroll anything which can't match them. This isn't a matter of a few broken abilities (although there are some of those too), these are the basic building blocks you use to make a hero character.

Speaking of which, the game scales absurdly: those passive, always-on bonuses I mentioned scale non-linearly, so that you get increasing returns for focusing on a single thing. Eventually, you reach the point where there's no longer any point to rolling except as a tiebreaker: it's mathematically impossible to beat someone with a higher (equivalent score) than you, or lose to someone with lower. I can only assume the game was never playtested, because these problems become obvious very quickly - the sample PCs are incapable of fighting many of the antagonists statted in the books...

This is what I mean by every add-on is horrible. For powers, look at Jotunblut (basically worthless after the first few dots, and even those are questionable), then look at Arte (very useful, but not the best) and something like Heku (which I love) or the Loa PSP. No thought into balancing at all.

The scaling is horrid, I'll give you that. Firearms fall behind at higher Legend (also, seriously, Donner didn't ask Thor if he could reforge this into a useful form), and even then combat is decided mainly by 'who can nab the most Epic Dexterity'. Which sadly could be fixed if Epics were just +1 bonus success, or even just getting rid of them entirely.

The rules for non-combat situations are all but nonexistent; oh, there are plenty of mental/social Attributes and Skills, but using them boils down to "um, just roll dice and the GM will tell you if you succeed or fail." No subsystems, no suggested difficulties, no advice for the GM on making challenges interesting. This would be fine in a rules-light game, where you only need a quick confict-resolution system, but Scion isn't trying to be that. If you're going to have complex, detailed rules, they need to be interesting, or why bother?

Yeah, this is just WW not realising they were making a combat game, just generally poor form.

The game is broken in the most literal sense of the word: it doesn't work.

Okay, not denying this. Das Spiele ist kaput. (Excuse my awful German). That's why I have various houserules (in fact, I should make my own game, but I'm short on blackjack and hookers).

[Scots Dragon]

Probably Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition for reasons both gameplay related and not.

I won't go into detail as to why because, y'know, edition wars. On the other hand 5th edition is amazing and I've been able to forgive WizBro for a lot simply due to how much they managed to fix.

[sktarq]

Scion. The basic premise - gods and their half-divine children having mythic adventures in the modern world - is fun. The execution, though.......

The game is broken in the most literal sense of the word: it doesn't work.

This...or Mage...Scion just doesn't work and mage just doesn't work for me. Both are ridiculously twisted it totally different ways.
Scion just had so many logical holes as to not hold up any weight.

and oWoD Mage....casting self created equivalencies is just so so so broken. 1-2 dots in a half dozen things (the cheep way to buy magic due to the logarithmic cost system) and then proper application of logic made the world a chew toy.