What is your worst roleplaying game?

[Earthwalker]

I have two games to add to the list. I don't think they are bad games just games me and my groups have tried and been a really bad fit.

Call of Cathulu

As a player I just found it difficult. I have only played it as a series of one shots with different Keepers (I think that's the word).
I make a character say a history student.
Get into a situation where my reaction is to get out.
Fail to get out and die.

It might be the Keepers or the Adventures. I just had no idea what I was doing. What I was suppose to investigate. If I did find something my reward was to go insane for a few hours.


Mage OWOD flavour

I ran this once for my normal group. Man was it such a bad fit.
The fluffiness of the rules just didn't work for my group. The entire concept just left them lost. I loved the idea of subtle magic but two of the players just didn't get it.
One other player choose forces and then spent most of his time on what it meant scientifically if you could see infra red.... and other spectrums.
I gave up before the end of the session.

[Tentreto]

I have one offering for people: the system known as 'Dungeoneer'-aka fighting fantasy multiplayer.
It was ok for an introduction, but it was so easy for any character to die- everyone and everything had a 1/36 chance to be taken out in a single hit.
Also, if you rolled poorly at creation, you were screwed- your hp could never increase, nor could armour.
Funny that arguably the simplest rule system I know is also the most nihilistic.

[Zavoniki]

I think I have a three way tie for worst roleplaying games I've played between FATE, Call of Cthulu, and DnD 3.x.

[Earthwalker]

I think I have a three way tie for worst roleplaying games I've played between FATE, Call of Cthulu, and DnD 3.x.

Do you mind if I ask why they were the worst ?

Didn't fit your group ?
Bad mechanics ?
Too much separation from mechanics to fluff ?

[Sith_Happens]

Do you mind if I ask why they were the worst ?

Didn't fit your group ?
Bad mechanics ?
Too much separation from mechanics to fluff ?

What makes me curious is that that is a very diverse selection, especially Fate and 3.X which are in a lot of ways polar opposites.

[Knaight]

What makes me curious is that that is a very diverse selection, especially Fate and 3.X which are in a lot of ways polar opposites.

It makes sense to me. I wouldn't put any of those three on as an actual worst, but all three aren't particularly high up the list. There's a lot of different ways for things to be unappealing, much like there's a lot of different ways for things to be appealing.

[Nennafir]

Worst dm, not game...

[JoeJ]

Ad&d 1e. I had a horrible GM (hi Rob!) who did lots of crazy stuff. The most crazy thing he did is that we had fought the BBEG and my guy escaped because it wasn't going well. This isn't unique, as the rest of the party escaped as well.

I also took potions of Cure XXX wounds to get to full hp and slept in a tree. And I was invisible due to an item I had. Everyone else was okay. I had a rogue who succeeded at stealth check and was invisible and up a tree. And no one else was targetted.

But I received an email from the GM saying that either: (1) I was dead; or (2) I was alive but all of my items were gone. I received this email in a dead time zone when we were not adventuring.

So yes, my GM killed me for no reason by email. I ended out not playing in his campaign any more. Nevertheless, he should go down in history as the worst (and I am almost 50 years old) GM I have ever had ever.

So RIP 1st ed ad&d.

Love,
nennafir

PS: Hi Rob. I hope you have a good life...

That doesn't sound like there was anything wrong with the game, though, just the DM.

[Nennafir]

That doesn't sound like there was anything wrong with the game, though, just the DM.

You are right! Sorry!

[RazorChain]

I have one offering for people: the system known as 'Dungeoneer'-aka fighting fantasy multiplayer.
It was ok for an introduction, but it was so easy for any character to die- everyone and everything had a 1/36 chance to be taken out in a single hit.
Also, if you rolled poorly at creation, you were screwed- your hp could never increase, nor could armour.
Funny that arguably the simplest rule system I know is also the most nihilistic.

You are talking about Advanced Fighting Fantasy. A brilliant system...as long as you are not traveling alone and someone rolls double 6's on attack on you :)

[FunSize]

Big Eyes Small Mouth, at least the first edition and its various derivatives (including Silver Age Sentinels, etc)

It's like they threw together the character creation mechanics without actually play testing anything and it's way too way too easy to make a character who utterly breaks the game, or who is absolutely **** at everything, without even trying to do one or the other.

Mutants and Masterminds did the same genres the -right- way

[Winter_Wolf]

Big Eyes Small Mouth, at least the first edition and its various derivatives (including Silver Age Sentinels, etc)

It's like they threw together the character creation mechanics without actually play testing anything and it's way too way too easy to make a character who utterly breaks the game, or who is absolutely **** at everything, without even trying to do one or the other

"It's a feature!" But you're absolutely right, BESM is stupidly easy to break without trying. Which is why I just smile to myself and/or mentally roll my eyes when people talk about how broken D&D in its various iterations is. Not saying they're wrong, but it does take a little effort. BESM you can do it by accident.

[Stormbow]

I think the 'worst' experience I ever had with a roleplaying game was when I was around 15 and I was trying to figure out the rules for RuneQuest (1st Edition). As I was trying to make a character, the book told me I had something like 1,500 percetiles to put into the few skills and attributes of the game. I thought: 'I have to roll 1d100 1,500 times and put them into the stats and skills?!' and I must have read that single paragraph a hundred times trying to figure out what it meant, and I never did figure it out. So I stuck with BECMI and D&D 2E.

[Knaight]

I think the 'worst' experience I ever had with a roleplaying game was when I was around 15 and I was trying to figure out the rules for RuneQuest (1st Edition). As I was trying to make a character, the book told me I had something like 1,500 percetiles to put into the few skills and attributes of the game. I thought: 'I have to roll 1d100 1,500 times and put them into the stats and skills?!' and I must have read that single paragraph a hundred times trying to figure out what it meant, and I never did figure it out. So I stuck with BECMI and D&D 2E.

Your stats are rated between 0 and 100. Put 1500 points into them, splitting them up as you see fit. It's a little more complex than that, but the reason you couldn't understand it is an assumption about rolling for stats that causes percentiles to be read as d100 rolls and not points in a skill.

[mpclardy]

I remember we were trying to set up a fresh D&D game at Summer Camp, only got through the character sheet :))

[Sith_Happens]

Your stats are rated between 0 and 100. Put 1500 points into them, splitting them up as you see fit. It's a little more complex than that, but the reason you couldn't understand it is an assumption about rolling for stats that causes percentiles to be read as d100 rolls and not points in a skill.

That still seems needlessly tedious at best.

[Knaight]

That still seems needlessly tedious at best.

I don't disagree - 1500 points is pretty excessive to say the least - but it's not particularly hard to understand, and it's nothing on 1500 rolls.

[Anonymouswizard]

That still seems needlessly tedious at best.

Yeah, there's a reason most games don't just give you a big lump of skill points anymore (if there's one thing that annoys me about CoC 6th edition it's the couple of hundred skill points you have to assign). I mean, I've played GURPS, where if the group doesn't know the rules then it can take three or four hours to finish everyone's characters (and that was with 3/5 mostly finished), so I can deal with such inefficient methods of skill generation (here a quick calculation tells me that by splitting my points into sets of 80 with one of 60 I can just pick 19 skills), but it's still annoying and tedious so I've started to move towards more structured systems (such as Fate* with it's default Skill Pyramid).

Of course, by the end it's no more difficult or tedious than choosing your race+class+feats in D&D 3.5 and spending your skill points, but the sheer number is a very large barrier (how much more difficult would Fate be if it told you 'generate 5 Aspects' instead generating one at a time?)

* I've looked at Fudge, and agree that it's a great system, it's just a touch too poorly explained to me, while Fate Core sold me on the game with the strength of the Character Creation chapter alone.

[2D8HP]

Yeah, there's a reason most games don't just give you a big lump of skill points anymore (if there's one thing that annoys me about CoC 6th edition it's the couple of hundred skill points you have to assign)

Their was a supplement to 1e Call of Cthullu (I think it may have been "The Companion", anyway it had an alternative way of assigning skill points partially based on backgrounds (kind of like "Traveller"), and you would almost always wind up with a PC that was more skilled in "Accounting" than would likely otherwise by the case, which kind of made sense, in that it just didn't seem credible that all these erudite professors of ancient languages would not be able to add and subtract, but no player would likely waste skill points in something that would never enter play.
This helped me realize that the 1980's goal of "realism" was probably unachievable and actually undesirable in RPG's.

[Anonymouswizard]

Their was a supplement to 1e Call of Cthullu (I think it may have been "The Companion", anyway it had an alternative way of assigning skill points partially based on backgrounds (kind of like "Traveller"), and you would almost always wind up with a PC that was more skilled in "Accounting" than would likely otherwise by the case, which kind of made sense, in that it just didn't seem credible that all these erudite professors of ancient languages would not be able to add and subtract, but no player would likely waste skill points in something that would never enter play.
This helped me realize that the 1980's goal of "realism" was probably unachievable and actually undesirable in RPG's.

I just did the maths, an average 36 year old PC in 6th edition has to spend 400 skill points, 300 of which must be on occupation skills. Which is roughly equivalent to a RuneQuest character, because CoC has higher base values for many skills (and weapon skills are less important). Oh, and the reason you generally don't put points into accounting is because a successful roll on a maths-based skill causes a SAN check as you realise the horror of multiple dimenions

And yeah, I like assigning skills based off a character's background (it's why I prefer advanced RuneQuest 3e character creation to the basic 'get X skill points and X points of magic each year). I might look up that book at some point.

[2D8HP]

I just did the maths, an average 36 year old PC in 6th edition has to spend 400 skill points, 300 of which must be on occupation skills. Which is roughly equivalent to a RuneQuest character

As a 48 year old IRL, I. feel that I have a lot less skill points than I had at 36, but I make up for it by my increased ability to tell long rambling stories that don't go anywhere, like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em.*Give me five bees for a quarter,*you'd say.

Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

[Knaight]

Yeah, there's a reason most games don't just give you a big lump of skill points anymore (if there's one thing that annoys me about CoC 6th edition it's the couple of hundred skill points you have to assign). I mean, I've played GURPS, where if the group doesn't know the rules then it can take three or four hours to finish everyone's characters (and that was with 3/5 mostly finished), so I can deal with such inefficient methods of skill generation (here a quick calculation tells me that by splitting my points into sets of 80 with one of 60 I can just pick 19 skills), but it's still annoying and tedious so I've started to move towards more structured systems (such as Fate* with it's default Skill Pyramid).

Of course, by the end it's no more difficult or tedious than choosing your race+class+feats in D&D 3.5 and spending your skill points, but the sheer number is a very large barrier (how much more difficult would Fate be if it told you 'generate 5 Aspects' instead generating one at a time?)

* I've looked at Fudge, and agree that it's a great system, it's just a touch too poorly explained to me, while Fate Core sold me on the game with the strength of the Character Creation chapter alone.

It really depends on the number of skill points. For instance, REIGN has you assign 85, and it goes pretty quickly because you're often buying things in big lumps. HERO meanwhile has you assign 600, except for it's effectively 2400 because it quantizes to the quarter point - even the people who like HERO admit that it takes about an hour to do character creation after you know the game while you have assisting spreadsheets.

As for the Fate example, the skill pyramid is an excellent method, and it's one of several methods that originated in Fudge precisely to avoid the big clump of points. There's 5 point Fudge, where you buy up skill categories, spending up to 4 points in a category then filling in skill slots that correspond to points spent; there's the aforementioned pyramid; there's some life path systems scattered around, etc. Fate also used to have you just generate a number of aspects at once, with the actual number bouncing around a bit, and it really doesn't make it any more difficult.

[Anonymouswizard]

It really depends on the number of skill points. For instance, REIGN has you assign 85, and it goes pretty quickly because you're often buying things in big lumps. HERO meanwhile has you assign 600, except for it's effectively 2400 because it quantizes to the quarter point - even the people who like HERO admit that it takes about an hour to do character creation after you know the game while you have assisting spreadsheets.

Oh, yep, in percentile systems you're never working in chunks of less than 5 at character creation, probably chunks of 10 and 20. Eclipse Phase gives you 1000 points to build you character (after an effective 'free' 1220 points to get your basic character), but as you'll be mostly spending them in blocks of 5, 10, or 60/65 it's fine with me (although the system has different options for people who don't like 1000 points to spend).

As for the Fate example, the skill pyramid is an excellent method, and it's one of several methods that originated in Fudge precisely to avoid the big clump of points. There's 5 point Fudge, where you buy up skill categories, spending up to 4 points in a category then filling in skill slots that correspond to points spent; there's the aforementioned pyramid; there's some life path systems scattered around, etc. Fate also used to have you just generate a number of aspects at once, with the actual number bouncing around a bit, and it really doesn't make it any more difficult.

I have lots of respect for FUDGE, I just don't use it for examples as the text makes me reluctant to slog through it. There's also a lot less examples and advice than in Fate, so while it's more flexible I can't use it.

[TerrickTerran]

The only RPG I could never get into was 4th edition. I don't think it was necessarily bad, just never worked for me.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'd have to say Apocalypse World, I think, purely out of personal preference. The one time I played it everything lined up right- good DM, good players, understood the rules- but I can't stand the "fail your way through a story" nature of the beast.

I have a love-hate relationship with Fate, which waffles back and forth between amazing (Aspects and roleplaying! Teamwork!) and frustrating (interacting with the world! Mechanical repetativeness! Trying to figure out how powers should work!).

Exalted 2e was I think the only system I played and could not figure out the mechanics of, and certainly the only one I disliked combat in. Playing a sorcerer probably didn't help.

Whatever edition of Traveler I played gets an honorable mention for having a skill list approximately ten times too large for the number of points you have to invest.

[Telwar]

I'd have to say Apocalypse World, I think, purely out of personal preference. The one time I played it everything lined up right- good DM, good players, understood the rules- but I can't stand the "fail your way through a story" nature of the beast.

I've never played that, but I saw some stuff posted from their 2e kickstarter, and when I saw the "Fly At" action, I just lost it, with the image of PCs/NPCs circling each other, all yelling "FLY AT ME BRO!" I giggled, possibly even chortled.

I'm sure it's a good game with the right audience, but I strongly suspect I'm not that audience.

[Arbane]

Yeah, the whole cynical grim & gothy style that pervaded not just 90's RPGs but also 90's comics/novels/etc. is seen as rather passe now. That's not to say you won't find it, but you have to look a lot harder. Heroic gaming is back in vogue.

I'd argue it's not so much 'passe' as 'rendered completely redundant by real life', but I'm a bitter cynic.

Worst game I've actually played? Hm...

Rifts has an overpowered gonzo mishmash of a sci-fi/fantasy setting with rules that started as someone's AD&D houserules and haven't been cleaned up in over two decades. (There's a Savage Worlds version due out Real Soon Now, which was a huge surprise to me when I heard about it, given the owner's legendary stubbornness about updating the game.)

TORG had an interesting multigenre setting (other dimensions invading Earth and over-writing our reality with their own rules), but the rules were overcomplex (you needed a pack of the game's Drama Cards to play, it had three different types of damage you could take in a fight, you had to worry if your weapon violated the regional laws of physics...), a heavy metaplot (which ended with the PCs munching popcorn as the Big Bads of the setting self-destructed), and it used XP as Luck Points (one of my pet peeves in game design.). Also, the GM I played it with didn't seem to get the setting(s) at all.

Rolemaster has a justly-deserved reputation for its HILARIOUS critical hit/fail charts (which allowed you to kill yourself by tripping over your shoelaces, or would let a normal rabbit re-enact a certain Monty Python scene), and a generally-deadly combat system. (A friend of mine had his party get tramped to death by sheep. Regular sheep.) ISTR it also had amazingly inept starting characters, but it's been a long time since I glanced at it.

[BayardSPSR]

I'd argue it's not so much 'passe' as 'rendered completely redundant by real life', but I'm a bitter cynic.

I recently ran a cyberpunk game. All the players felt like it was the present day.

Worst game for me... D&D 3.5, specifically. It's literally the only RPG I've played at all that doesn't seem to have any connection between what it is and what it seems to want to be (or alternately, between what it says it wants to be and what the people who like it like about it).

[2D8HP]

I recently ran a cyberpunk game. All the players felt like it was the present day.

Very much this.
Well said Sir!
Thank you!!

After lots of time playing RPG's in the 1970's and 80's, the last table-top game I played for over two decades was a few sessions of "Cyberpunk 2020" in 1992.
It just seemed too much like real life to be much fun.

[Arbane]

Some other amusingly bad RPGs I haven't had the dubious pleasure of playing:

Vampire: Undeath: As you might guess from the name, it's a Vampire: the Masquerade ripoff. The most notable thing about it is the sheer BLATANCY of the ripoff, the writer seems to have literally search-and-replaced some names and terminology.

DeadEarth: "Like Gamma World, only even MORE implausible." Yes, that is a thing that is possible, somehow. And with even LESS playtesting. Which is also possible, somehow. This guy tried to make characters in DeadEarth, and FAILED. (Of the three characters you're 'allowed' to make, none survived rolling-up in a playable state.)

If you have the right sort of sense of humor, the folks at Something Awful have been review/recapping a lot of notably bad, obscure, or just easily-mockable RPGs.