Worst RPG mechanics - combine them into something worse!

[Quertus]

Some RPGs feel like the developers had some good ideas, and shoved them together into a game with little thought as to overall coherence.

For this silly little thread, instead take some of the worst rules you've ever heard of, and cobble them together into an unholy Frankenstein.

So, for example, imagine a game with all the options and splat-diving and range of capabilities between builds of 3e D&D*, but with the random character generation of, say, Traveler. So I'm a (roll) plains elf (roll) barbarian (roll) from Myth Dranor (roll) with (roll) unreactive, (roll) dodge and (roll) aberation heritage, trained in (roll) history and (roll) Arcana, and (roll) Kukri? Then I (roll) discovered my Sorcerous blood and (roll) learned True Naming? Well, at least I didn't die during character creation this time.

Next, imagine that actions took heaping piles of rolls to resolve (like 4e D&D skill challenges & padded sumo combat), but with the pile of dice and counting of White Wolf systems, and the failure rate of, say, Warhammer. Plus lots of ever-changing fiddly bits. So, we know from the start that we'll beat this gargoyle eventually, as soon as we accumulate 20 unsoaked damage successes, but I need to roll 7d10, +1 for flanking, -1 for airborne target, +1 for battle blessing, -1 for unfamiliar enemy, +1 for rage, against a difficulty of 6, needing 5 successes to score a hit, then rerool any extra successes, +2 for strength, +1 for my kukri, target number 5 because of rage, and then the gargoyles subtracts from my successes however many successes it gets on its 5d10 soak, +1 because of looking up kukri vs stone in the weapon vs materials table, difficulty 5 because aerial roll with it.

What unholy abominations can y'all dream up by combining horrible mechanics?

* which I personally mostly love

[Lord Raziere]

Exalted 3e crafting with Mage: the Awakening's paradox rules for magic items.

[Cluedrew]

Isn't the system that should not be named already this?

Different Resolution Systems: Attack uses some table based hit-rate system like THAC0, most skills use dice pools, except internal skills (like knowledge or magic) which use a percentile dice system and things that center on equipment, like driving and animal skills (broad definition of equipment here) that use a role and keep system.

[Anonymouswizard]

So, for example, imagine a game with all the options and splat-diving and range of capabilities between builds of 3e D&D*, but with the random character generation of, say, Traveler. So I'm a (roll) plains elf (roll) barbarian (roll) from Myth Dranor (roll) with (roll) unreactive, (roll) dodge and (roll) aberation heritage, trained in (roll) history and (roll) Arcana, and (roll) Kukri? Then I (roll) discovered my Sorcerous blood and (roll) learned True Naming? Well, at least I didn't die during character creation this time.

Next, imagine that actions took heaping piles of rolls to resolve (like 4e D&D skill challenges & padded sumo combat), but with the pile of dice and counting of White Wolf systems, and the failure rate of, say, Warhammer. Plus lots of ever-changing fiddly bits. So, we know from the start that we'll beat this gargoyle eventually, as soon as we accumulate 20 unsoaked damage successes, but I need to roll 7d10, +1 for flanking, -1 for airborne target, +1 for battle blessing, -1 for unfamiliar enemy, +1 for rage, against a difficulty of 6, needing 5 successes to score a hit, then rerool any extra successes, +2 for strength, +1 for my kukri, target number 5 because of rage, and then the gargoyles subtracts from my successes however many successes it gets on its 5d10 soak, +1 because of looking up kukri vs stone in the weapon vs materials table, difficulty 5 because aerial roll with

You haven't been introduced to FATAL I take it? It manages to take random character generation to insanities Traveller can only dream of, and appart from not having the lifepath setup is depressingly similar to what you described. It is of course vital to know how many siblings your character has, what their order in the birth number is, if their birth was legitimate, if they're married, their most and least attractive features, what sexual acts they're willing to perform, their chest size, and so on. All to be rolled randomly, along with their race, age, stats (five each determined by four sub stats, and modified by age), social class, their parent's profession, and so on. You of course get to choose your characters gender, as otherwise you might be saddled with the worst thing of all, playing a woman!

Spoiler: It gets worse

Show

Don't forget you can also randomly generate your head and foot size, as well as the size of your genitals, the infamous anal circumference, and hymen resistance. I mean, I got the authors weren't mature when they refused to use the word penis in the book, but it gets to the point where this obsessive random stat rolling for everything gets ridiculous, in a system more deadly than first level AD&D.

Don't forget the random miscast table, which has a chance of destroying the world (the best result, because you don't have to play FATAL anymore), as well as a chance of summoning randy gay ogres (no word on gender distribution).

[Quertus]

Exalted 3e crafting with Mage: the Awakening's paradox rules for magic items.

Wait, what? Mage: the Ascension had creating magic items cost you, eh, from 5-100 sessions worth of XP per item created* - and those items couldn't do anything you couldn't do already, so they were worthless to you (but not to other characters). Whereas Exalted (edition?) crafting was the only way to make money in the game. So... How is Mage item creation possibly made worse by adding/using Exalted rules?

* for most of the items I wanted to make, at any rate. Although I did create one-shot "cyst of transformation" for, IIRC, half an XP each.

Isn't the system that should not be named already this?

Different Resolution Systems: Attack uses some table based hit-rate system like THAC0, most skills use dice pools, except internal skills (like knowledge or magic) which use a percentile dice system and things that center on equipment, like driving and animal skills (broad definition of equipment here) that use a role and keep system.

You haven't been introduced to FATAL I take it? It manages to take random character generation to insanities Traveller can only dream of, and appart from not having the lifepath setup is depressingly similar to what you described. It is of course vital to know how many siblings your character has, what their order in the birth number is, if their birth was legitimate, if they're married, their most and least attractive features, what sexual acts they're willing to perform, their chest size, and so on. All to be rolled randomly, along with their race, age, stats (five each determined by four sub stats, and modified by age), social class, their parent's profession, and so on. You of course get to choose your characters gender, as otherwise you might be saddled with the worst thing of all, playing a woman!

Spoiler: It gets worse

Show

Don't forget you can also randomly generate your head and foot size, as well as the size of your genitals, the infamous anal circumference, and hymen resistance. I mean, I got the authors weren't mature when they refused to use the word penis in the book, but it gets to the point where this obsessive random stat rolling for everything gets ridiculous, in a system more deadly than first level AD&D.

Don't forget the random miscast table, which has a chance of destroying the world (the best result, because you don't have to play FATAL anymore), as well as a chance of summoning randy gay ogres (no word on gender distribution).

Are the two of you talking about the same system? If so, that might actually be worse than what we can cobble together, intentionally trying to make a bad game...

[Knaight]

Are the two of you talking about the same system? If so, that might actually be worse than what we can cobble together, intentionally trying to make a bad game...

It is. They* haven't even touched on the worst aspects of it - the mechanics of FATAL are the best thing about it, not because they're good mechanics in any way (I've never seen worse), but because the rest of it is so incredibly vile as to be worse.

Said mechanics include 20 attributes, each of which is randomly generated by rolling (10d100/5)-1, as a first step. Later steps include taking various averaged for composite attributes, and then going through table after table about how attributes change other attributes. These tables bring up some of the worse aspects of FATAL, which is where you get things like the "Retard Strength" table for getting a strength boost for low values in intelligence. Both of the stats are named a bit differently than that, the table name is verbatim. It's also restrained and inoffensive by FATAL standards, which says nothing good about those standards.

*I don't think the different resolutions post was actually about FATAL, but it still applies to it.

[Pex]

While taking damage because you are being attacked by a monster with at least three attacks to your one, you want to use a class ability such as cast a spell. To use your class ability you have to spend some of your hit points, taking more damage. After using your ability, for which you may miss the monster if you roll to hit or the monster makes the saving throw or you fail to get through Ability Resistance, you need to roll a die to hit some target number. Failure means you take penalties to game statistics, more hit point damage, and/or the inability to take further actions for at least a round.

All in the name of "balance".

[Lalliman]

It is of course vital to know how many siblings your character has,

But can you be the 8th of 5 children, as in Ninjas and Superspies?

The atrocity that is FATAL aside (bringing that game up in a discussion about bad mechanics is almost cheating), most Paladium systems (to which the aforementioned Ninjas and Superspies belongs) are also hilariously bad. If you love hearing about bad mechanics, this guy did an in-depth analysis of it. It's not technically as bad as FATAL, but it's made much funnier by the fact that the author actually tried, and by the fact that these systems are somehow in use.

[Knaight]

But can you be the 8th of 5 children, as in Ninjas and Superspies?

The atrocity that is FATAL aside (bringing that game up in a discussion about bad mechanics is almost cheating), most Paladium systems (to which the aforementioned Ninjas and Superspies belongs) are also hilariously bad. If you love hearing about bad mechanics, this guy did an in-depth analysis of it. It's not technically as bad as FATAL, but it's made much funnier by the fact that the author actually tried, and by the fact that these systems are somehow in use.

Plus, Megadumbcast is absolutely hilarious.

[Cluedrew]

To Pex: Of course if we are to capture both sides of that issue, that long, complex and self-hurting subsystem must be more effective than straight forward option. Oh wait that suggests there is a straight forward option. Never mind comment withdrawn. I will tack on: has semi-random and not always helpful effect even when it does work.

To Lalliman: Is there a filter or some pointer to the episodes you are talking about? I'm not sure what ones you mean.

Fumble Rules: Because of course we need fumble rules. And not just any fumble rules, it should combine automatic failure of the task, secondary negative fallout and an occurrence system that either is not effected by your skill or (for bonus points) gets higher as you get better.

[Knaight]

To Lalliman: Is there a filter or some pointer to the episodes you are talking about? I'm not sure what ones you mean.

Pick an episode, any episde (the first few are a bit thin). The conceit of the show is that every episode analyses one page of Ninjas and Superspies and identifies the dumbest thing on it. Just about every page there's something really dumb.

[Anonymouswizard]

Are the two of you talking about the same system? If so, that might actually be worse than what we can cobble together, intentionally trying to make a bad game...

Oh, that's not even the worst mechanics in it. There's one roll that requires a million sided dice, and then the infamous quadratic equations (which annoyingly can easily be put so that you just need to do arithmetic, but aren't). Then you get to the fluff, which stops being hilariously bad and just becomes bad.

It is. They* haven't even touched on the worst aspects of it - the mechanics of FATAL are the best thing about it, not because they're good mechanics in any way (I've never seen worse), but because the rest of it is so incredibly vile as to be worse.

Said mechanics include 20 attributes, each of which is randomly generated by rolling (10d100/5)-1, as a first step. Later steps include taking various averaged for composite attributes, and then going through table after table about how attributes change other attributes. These tables bring up some of the worse aspects of FATAL, which is where you get things like the "Retard Strength" table for getting a strength boost for low values in intelligence. Both of the stats are named a bit differently than that, the table name is verbatim. It's also restrained and inoffensive by FATAL standards, which says nothing good about those standards.

*I don't think the different resolutions post was actually about FATAL, but it still applies to it.

Let's be honest, any attempt we make to design a bad game will still be better than FATAL and RaHoWa (opinions vary on which is worse, both have terrible fluff, FATAL has horrific mechanics and RaHoWa has gigantic holes in it's mechanics) purely through succeeding at it's design goal of being a bad game.

[Knaight]

Oh, that's not even the worst mechanics in it. There's one roll that requires a million sided dice, and then the infamous quadratic equations (which annoyingly can easily be put so that you just need to do arithmetic, but aren't). Then you get to the fluff, which stops being hilariously bad and just becomes bad.

The infamous review is hilarious. The actual source material...not so much. I'd recommend reading the review, and stopping right there.

Let's be honest, any attempt we make to design a bad game will still be better than FATAL and RaHoWa (opinions vary on which is worse, both have terrible fluff, FATAL has horrific mechanics and RaHoWa has gigantic holes in it's mechanics) purely through succeeding at it's design goal of being a bad game.

Plus, I doubt anyone here's best hateful scumbag impression can match the actual belief systems, senses of humor, and points of fascination of the authors of those items. I've got source materials (some real douchebags I've dealt with, trying to keep abreast of extremist jerks, heck, experience playing NPCs who were terrible people as villains), but the sort of research it would take to grok the mindset well enough to ape it just seems deeply unpleasant.

[Max_Killjoy]

Plus, I doubt anyone here's best hateful scumbag impression can match the actual belief systems, senses of humor, and points of fascination of the authors of those items. I've got source materials (some real douchebags I've dealt with, trying to keep abreast of extremist jerks, heck, experience playing NPCs who were terrible people as villains), but the sort of research it would take to grok the mindset well enough to ape it just seems deeply unpleasant.

Once in a while, it really is better to just use a caricature of a villain and move on.

[Cluedrew]

To Knaight: (and Lalliman) Might try a few.

I suppose we could have the most socially enlightened RPG with terrible mechanics. (Role for your gender only a much larger than necessary table, and role for your sexuality separately.) ... But somehow I don't think it would be worth the effort... or the irony.

[Honest Tiefling]

Are the two of you talking about the same system? If so, that might actually be worse than what we can cobble together, intentionally trying to make a bad game...

They are. For a quicker look, An Enemy Spy made a character. I don't think they got any farther than that because 1) forum rules regarding decency 2) their own sanity.

I think combining this with any system would result in pain and misery. Let's do it!

[Anonymouswizard]

The infamous review is hilarious. The actual source material...not so much. I'd recommend reading the review, and stopping right there.

I have a strange sense of humour, I actually do find the insane rolling hilarious, with the stats optimised for completely average characters in a way even early D&D didn't try to enforce, the fact you have to roll a d1000000 at one point, and the simple fact that the number of skill points you get is based on how much the author likes your randomly generated species.

Plus, I doubt anyone here's best hateful scumbag impression can match the actual belief systems, senses of humor, and points of fascination of the authors of those items. I've got source materials (some real douchebags I've dealt with, trying to keep abreast of extremist jerks, heck, experience playing NPCs who were terrible people as villains), but the sort of research it would take to grok the mindset well enough to ape it just seems deeply unpleasant.

Sure, this is why we'd utterly fail. Sure, we could make a game that it mechanically worse than FATAL, but we couldn't drag the mechanics down through the most offensive fluff anybody could write.

They are. For a quicker look, An Enemy Spy made a character. I don't think they got any farther than that because 1) forum rules regarding decency 2) their own sanity.

I think combining this with any system would result in pain and misery. Let's do it!

Alright, let's start by moving things around.

First roll for your sex on a d100, 1-50 is male, 51-99 is female, and the rare 00 means you're intersex in some fashion. Then roll for your gender, for this we need a big table including male, female, agender, attack helicopter, genderfluid, and other identities. Each sex-gender combination has a percentage chance for your culture to accept that combination, roll it now. While we're at it let's roll our sexuality, we can work out proportions later.

Now roll for your genre. You see we're going one better than FATAL, our game isn't limited to fantasy. Once you've rolled your genre you can then go to the genre species table and roll your species, applying modifiers for sex, gender, and sexuality. Then roll for your height and weight, as this will provide modifiers to your physical stats.

Now we can roll our stats, the formula is to roll one of every polyhedral die in a standard D&D set and take the average (or (1d4+1d6+1d8+1d10+1d12)/6). Don't forget to apply modifiers for height, weight, and species. Next roll for your age according to your species, and apply the percentile modifier for your species. If you rolled elf I hope you have a ten thousand sided die.

Now we need to give this character their classes. Of course, why limit ourselves to ideas from one system, every class is Gesalt! This means that you first have to roll on the upbringing table, to determine the base benefits that every year of life has brought you. Don't apply them yet though, because you then have to take your genre, find the correct professions table, roll on it and apply the modifiers for your species, upbringing, and stats. Then for each year of your life roll on the profession's d% events table to discover what happened (remember to apply any modifiers!), which will then send you to the correct skills table to roll on twice, once with your skill die from your species and once with your skill die from your upbringing, to generate two skills your character improved this year. Also make note of any equipment you get from events, as this is free. Finally, once you have generated your starting skills, roll the listed money dice for your upbringing and profession to determine how much you have to spend on additional equipment.

That's me done with character creation for today. I will note that the profession events tables can cause you to change professions, because of course they can.

[Ignimortis]

Add VtM Humanity into the mix. Roll for it every time you do something that can remotely resemble anything on the hierarchy of sins. Disallow Paths of Enlightenment.

[Cosi]

I think mechanics that are offensive are distinct from mechanics that are bad. You can make an arbitrarily bad game by layering on references to increasingly taboo or disturbing topics (for the sake of good taste, I would avoid actually doing that, but you can -- see FATAL). But that's not really mechanically bad. Yes, FATAL has you roll for stuff that is dumb and offensive and not something you want to talk about with your friends. But the ultimate result of that is just that you have a bunch of extra stats with stupid names and minimal relevance. The roleplaying implications are bad, but it's easy to get something just as bad (if not worse) on that front with less work. For example, you could have a random heroic backstory table that gave each first level character a direct oppositional relationship with an epic level NPC (and also determined things like their family status, gender, and life story).

[Knaight]

I think mechanics that are offensive are distinct from mechanics that are bad. You can make an arbitrarily bad game by layering on references to increasingly taboo or disturbing topics (for the sake of good taste, I would avoid actually doing that, but you can -- see FATAL). But that's not really mechanically bad.

FATAL is infamous for having both. Attribute generation by rolling 10d100/5-1 twenty times as the first of several steps is a bad mechanic all by its lonesome. "Retard strength" makes it worse.

[Guizonde]

FATAL is infamous for having both. Attribute generation by rolling 10d100/5-1 twenty times as the first of several steps is a bad mechanic all by its lonesome. "Retard strength" makes it worse.

with the exception of exploding dice (which i like), i find having to roll many dice one after the other a poor mechanic. it's ok with d100's, but in dnd it got brutally annoying. d20 for this, d20 again to confirm, d8 +d6 + modifier for that, add in a d4 because the dm forgot my character had a bonus...

one example that i'll never live down was turning undead in dnd 3.5... i swear, when you start with the channeling of pf, turning undead takes ages to get used to. that said, i think i remember reading that the original dnd 3.0 rules were changed because turn undead was even more unpleasant and was frequently houseruled on these boards.

[Anymage]

Ripping on FATAL will almost inevitably lead to ripping on its more board unsafe issues, which in turn tends to get topics closed. Plus, densely packed singularities of badness tend not to allow broader discussion as to rule ideas that are specifically bad wherever they pop up.

Some of my favorite bad rules actually popped up in some of the earlier White Wolf supplements. Both oddly specific merits that had no direct connection to what should be obviously associated game traits (you had to spend build points to own a mansion, but there was no necessary tie between the "owns a mansion" merit and the "how rich are you" background trait), and oddly specific skills being regularly brought out. It's a reasonable assumption that if a skill exists in a game but you don't have said skill on your character sheet, you're unskilled at doing that task. If skills like "research", "botany" and "history" all exist, they carve out space (and eat up build resources) that used to be bundled under "academics".

The only remotely modern gameline to still use oddly specific skills combined with a limited number of lifetime skill picks is, unsurprisingly. the palladium line.

[Eldan]

Exalted 3e crafting with Mage: the Awakening's paradox rules for magic items.

You monster.

[Lord Raziere]

You monster.

Yup. you spend all that time doing pointless crafting on things you don't want to get silver points to get gold points until you can get an artifact weapon to try and use- only for using it to make all its magic disappear from people seeing the magic you worked so hard to craft.

[Eldan]

And then you get time-fragged by narcissists. Just because.

[Guizonde]

ok, so sleep really does bring counsel, it seems. i just thought up something that made my wargaming days shiver in horror.

dice pool mechanics with multiple dice types. my friend always ragged on shadowrun due to certain builds needing to roll 12+ d6's for attacks or evasion (something about an elf street sam? it was a long time ago). now imagine that you get a 12d6 pool, on 4+ you roll d8's for beating dr, on 3 or less you roll d4's and add the total each time. naturally, this would be an opposed roll versus successes achieved by both sides. exploding dice mechanics are in full effect, allowing you to stack and reroll successes with no hard cap. this would get very tiresome very fast, methinks.

this is in direct response to quertus' original thread idea. it's clunky, it's slow, it serves probably very little mechanical purpose, and even if you like rolling dice, bookkeeping will become a nightmare without at least some loose-leaf paper. i've never used roll20, but i don't know if roll20 would even allow that.

[Knaight]

One of the worst mechanics I've ever seen was a needlessly convoluted way of doing something simpler. In this case it was a luck roll that was basically flipping a coin (technically the success odds were 50.5%).

This luck roll was handled with two sequential d100 rolls. The first one was rolled, and set the difficulty for the second one. Then the second one was rolled to determine success or failure. Unless that 0.5% chance was supposed to actually matter you could literally just flip a coin. The principle behind this, specifically making needlessly convoluted ways of doing something similar that are also relatively opaque in terms of probability (mathematical intuition will get you 50%, which is close, but that 50.5% involved being decent with summations) could be widely applied. Even the specifics of the double roll could be applied elsewhere, although most of the time doing that without warping the probability in actually meaningful ways will be tricky.

[Lalliman]

In addition to needlessly-specific skills, I like the idea of having stats that are so specific that you can't intuitively determine the difference. I used to run a homebrew system that had Dexterity and Agility as separate stats. It worked well, but it took some explaining before the players could consistently figure out which applied to what.

Now imagine having Agility, Dexterity, Swiftness and Nimbleness all as separate stats on your sheet.

Agility is your full body coordination.
Dexterity is your fine motor skills.
Swiftness is the speed at which you can move your body.
Nimbleness is the flexibility of your body.

Naturally, these different stats apply to different things, but also commonly overlap. You use Dexterity and Swiftness for attacking, but Agility and Swiftness for dodging. You use Agility and Nimbleness for climbing, in addition to one of the several strength-like stats. Sneaking uses Agility and Dexterity, and doing a back flip uses Agility, Swiftness and Nimbleness.

Then you just add your highly-specific skill bonus from one or multiple sources, and you're good to go.

[RazorChain]

In addition to needlessly-specific skills, I like the idea of having stats that are so specific that you can't intuitively determine the difference. I used to run a homebrew system that had Dexterity and Agility as separate stats. It worked well, but it took some explaining before the players could consistently figure out which applied to what.

Now imagine having Agility, Dexterity, Swiftness and Nimbleness all as separate stats on your sheet.

Agility is your full body coordination.
Dexterity is your fine motor skills.
Swiftness is the speed at which you can move your body.
Nimbleness is the flexibility of your body.

Naturally, these different stats apply to different things, but also commonly overlap. You use Dexterity and Swiftness for attacking, but Agility and Swiftness for dodging. You use Agility and Nimbleness for climbing, in addition to one of the several strength-like stats. Sneaking uses Agility and Dexterity, and doing a back flip uses Agility, Swiftness and Nimbleness.

Then you just add your highly-specific skill bonus from one or multiple sources, and you're good to go.

I think you can do better

Agility
Coordination
Dexterity
Manual Dexterity
Nimbleness
Swiftness
Speed
Reflexes

Then you explain in very vague terms what's the difference between the stats.

[Florian]

Well, ok, challenge accepted. This is based on a game system that I actually own the core rules and tries to marry the swingyness of SaWo with the precision of FATE aspects.