The worst Pen & Paper RPG's. Make your nominations here!

Cafe Society
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OK, I wasn’t sure if this had been done before, but i couldn’t find any threads about it. So here is the thread for nominating the worst pen n’ paper RPG. No mention of computer RPGs will be made, anyone who does shall recieve the cattle prod.

I’m going to seperate the nominations into two categories: The bottom of the heap, and the creeping flaw. The former will simply be the worst game ever read or played. Explanations will be required.

The creeping flaw is an otherwise well-made game that has some fundamental flaw in its design that causes a problem in trying to play it. It can be a murphy’s rule situation or something wrong with part of its design.

My nominations:

The worst: Fantasy Wargaming by a few arrogant British blokes in 1982. many game critics place it at the bottom of their lists if they have heard of it. I personally cannot beleive I have this on my shelf, but someone gave me a copy as a gift. Its a game written late in the era when everyone was trying to get an RPG out. It has flaws in almost every aspect of its design.

What flaws? Well its one hardcover book. Digest size. Now in most RPG rulebooks there is some kind of intriduction followed by some actual rules, usually starting with character generation or something. But not Fantasy Wargaming, they ramble on for almost 100 pages before getting to any rules! Most of that 100 pages is background material that reads more like a medieval history major trying to show off.

And when you get to the rules, are you rewarded with an excellent system? No, the system is vauge, characteristics are poorly defined, mysogyny rules the day (folks wanting play female characters are awarded with a host of negatives to all characteristics). Oh, and tables, tables tables. These guys have a table fetish and anyone who actually tried to run this game would destroy the spine of the book trying to locate the various tables. Even worse, sometime the rules pile on modifiers not as a list but as a paragraph, making it impossible to easily locate the appropriate modifier. Cost of adventuring equipment is presented in the same manner.

Even worse is the authors’ arrogance. In between their rambling comments they take swipes at other game systems, apparently feeling theirs to be the pinnacle of development. Shots are taken at D&D (for having ‘dungeons’ …a fatal flaw according to them). T&T and C&S are also blitzed. Of course, this negative campaigning does little to save the mess these folks have made.

The Flawed: The original Top Secret. Amidst a host of great rules of this epsionage game there are several pages of rules on characters using their assorted skills to impress NPCs. Much in the way that James Bond impresses other with his wordly knowledge.

The problem was that the system was set up so that you would need to be the fount of knowledge for a particular skill to get any decent reaction. Even the example given of PC to NPC interaction using his culinary skill resulted in a negative reaction. THe result is that most players frogo the non-combat/espionage skills and turn themselves into walking gun racks.

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http://www.fatalgames.com/

What do I win?

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You magnificent bastard, I read that book!! It has rules for penis size as well as vaginal capacity. You want an RPG that’s down on women there’s your game. Hands down the worst RPG ever created.

There are of course several flawed RPGs out there. d20 Rokugan is a game flawed by poor mechanics as was Deadlands d20.

Marc

PS: Uh, not that my hat of d02 knows know limit or anything.

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Rifts is pretty bad, for a fairly popular one. I’m sure it’s not the worst.

I read about one not too long ago, I wish I could remember the name of it…it was a pseudo-science-fiction/fantasy one with some incredibly unbalanced and bad rules…

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Their character creator gave me a 1.15 inch penis! No wonder elves are so effeminate, might as well call it a clit :frowning:

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Can we be any more vague? :wink: Maybe it was Shadowrun, cyberpunk future populated by elves, dwarves, ocs, and the President of the United States was a dragon.

Marc

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Just in case you thought I was fibbing. From the FATAL site.

"Similarly, characteristics of genitalia are often determined and utilized, such as penis size or maximum vaginal circumference. "

:eek: :eek: :eek:

I’ve never ever played a game where these things were important. Not that I’ve never thought of it. How in the hell do they make half-giants? The female has got to be the giant in that relationship.

Marc

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Damn. JDeMobray beat me to mentioning Fatal (AKA the game that shall not be named). The game is flawed on so many levels. First, there’s the author’s obsession with sexual deviation and unnecessary sexual attributes. Second, there’s the constant assertion that the game’s based on life in the middle ages, but the author doesn’t even know the difference between a brasier and a brasserie or that brasseries weren’t invented until much more recent times. Third, the mechanics are abominable. Creating a character takes hours, and there’s no grantee that character will be able to take a half decent profession. Combat is a mess of dozens of rolls on dozens of tables.

I’ll also nominate World of Synnibar, and SenZar, the two other perennial contenders for worst game ever.

For a creeping flaw, I nominate the Call of Cthulhu skill system, and I use “skill system” in the loosest possible sense. For example, a character has a chemistry skill of 50%. That character has the same 50% chance of making a baking soda volcano and TNT. I’ve always patched things off the cuff when I GM it, but there really should be a better system.

Now, I must defend my first RPG. I kinda like Fantasy Wargaming. Sure, there are some flaws, but there are lots of good ideas in there. The magic system is one of the better and more interesting I’ve seen. I like the take on religion; you can call on a deity (God, Mary, Satan, etc…) do help you. Success is based on how pious your character has been.
The rules should be streamlined and reworked so you don’t have to refer to a different table to resolve each task. The game’s twenty years old and needs to be brought into the new century, just like most of it’s contemporaries (see Traveller, DnD).
I agree with a lot of the author’s points about flaws in DnD (which I play regularly). There are a lot of logical inconsistences and I try to never think about how the Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms economies would work for fear my head would explode. For example, I recently wrapped up a “classic” campaign after which my character had enough cash to buy a small empire. Never mind the value of gems and magic items. By the end of it, the party was giving away +2 items. Yes, this was an official boxed set. No, it’s not the first time it’s happened.
The background information in Fantasy Wargaming is useful. I don’t find any major difference between what’s done in FW and what’s done in most White Wolf books. There’s a lot of background information in with the crunchy rules section.

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I’m pretty sure this is the vague one I was talking about.

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There’s a d20 CoC out. Has been for better than a year. WotC did it, but I think Chaosium’s supporting it now (much like WotC was behind Rokugan d20 at first, but now AEG’s doing it all. IIRC, WotC bought the rights then sold them back in the case of L5R/Rokugan, assume the same in the case of CoC.)

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Don’t recall if it was a TSR game or not (though I think it was) but there was this little gem called Cyborg Commandos…
Eeesh. The rules cover character generation, and numerous “samples” of gameplay, and a fairly detailed background story.

See, there’s these bug-like aliens invaded Earth, and the only way humans have a chance in face to face combat with them is to get a robotic body, with the human brain jammed into the chest cavity. The robo-bodies can have all sorts o’ interesting modicfications made to 'em. These mods are covered in exquisite detail.

Just one or two minor problems.

See, for one thing, there are no stats given for the aliens. Just a physical description. How they actually interact with the characters, or engage in combat with 'em, is completely left up to the GM’s imagination.

And they forgot to actually include any information on weapons. Any weapons. How you combat the invading alien hordes, and specifically how much damage your weapons dish out to 'em with the overly complicated combat system, is, once again, up to the GM to puzzle out.

I suppose it has the advantage of well, err…

Let me get back to you on that one.

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Paranoia, Fifth edition. Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck. Why’d they skip the third and fourth editions for this wreck?

(Or maybe it’s a yin-yang thing, since Paranoia Second Edition was unarguably the best RPG ever created :wink: )

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Worst: Gamma World. The idea of a random mutant character generator is a party game in itself, not the beginning of a fun campaign. Same goes for Spawn Of Fashan, which might actually have been the first RPG written as a joke.

Creeping Flaw: “Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes,” an otherwise not-bad pulp action game… had no rules for movement of any kind…

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My og. Even the WEBSITE can win prizes for bad design. I highlighted and read a few items, but I’m gonna have mercy on my poor old eyeballs and just declare that this is, indeed, the winner.

The stuff that I did read made me wonder…how old are the authors? Are they still living in their parents’ basements? Have they ever actually had sex with another human being?

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** Master Wang-Ka,** why are you in violation of our “one screen name per user” policy? Can you give me a good reason why I shouldn’t ban both your names right now?

Lynn
For the Straight Dope

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While I haven’t played as many as others, especially the really bad ones, of those that I have played I have to vote for Rifts.

Any game that takes you literally hours to write up a character and only a single die roll for him to be utterly annihilated during the first round of combat has got serious friggin’ problems.

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Worst: Avalon Hill’s Lords of Creation – Avalon Hill was essentially the founder of the board wargaming hobby, and always remained its classiest act. During the D&D boom of the early '80s, though, it felt compelled to get into the act with a number of fantasy-themed board games of varying quality, and two role-playing games. One, a stock medieval fantasy world with a little extra Celtic flavoring, called Powers & Perils was highly complicated and chart dense, but had some interesting attributes. The other, the previously accursed Lords of Creation was truly an embarrassment. It seemed to be meant as an “entry level” game, with extensive explanations of the most basic concepts, and an attribute/skill/combat resolution system so rudimentary as to make Space: 1889 look like rocket science. It’s not that I think a role-playing game needs to be complicated, but a good system should help bring characters to life – make their abilities and lives and personalities more vivid (I use GURPS for just about anything I run anymore). This system was so empty as to be barely there.

The campaign conceit seemed to be that the players were some sort of minor pseudo-deity/demiurges, each of whom could potentially create their own world/universe (thus encouraging all the players to run a game… Get it? <sigh>). No rules were actually provided for doing this, however. Nor were there rules for travelling from world to world. A few sample worlds were provided, with the most rudimentary of adventure hooks. A “Book of Foes” accompanied the main rulebook, with single paragraph descriptions and “attributes” for an alphabetically arranged hodgepodge of “monsters” from Angels to Zebras. Again, no real context. No flavor. Sure I can create all of that from my own imagination, but then why do I need your “game”?

These two staple-bound rulebooks, totalling probably less than 200 pages, in a standard Avalon Hill gamebox, were priced, as I recall, higher than many Avalon Hill board games (whose laminated boards and high quality componants generally commanded higher prices than most wargames anyway). I got my copy at a sidewalk sale in the late '80s for $4.00, and I still felt kind of ripped off.

Creeping Flaw – My memory is a bit sketchy on the details, but I seem to recall Fantasy Games Unlimited’s Daredevils '30s pulp game required, when calculating either hit probability or bullet damage (I don’t remember which), the application of a formula that included a cube root! Granted that role-playing gamers were more likely than the average citizen to have a scientific calculator handy, but jeez! Doesn’t RPG combat drag enough already?

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Man… Fantasy Wargaming… that really bring me back.

I picked it up at the library as a kid, thinking it was about RPG’s in general. You know, like a guide to flavor and successful DMing. And it pretty much was for the first 100 pages or so. Then BAM! a whole new game when you least expect it. :slight_smile:

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Space Opera

It had a great science fantasy background, but the rules were so kludged together it was unworkable. And characters had about 15 or 20 basic attributes, all calculated differently.

I finally met someone else who’d played it all those years ago. He loved the setting as much as I did and, more importantly, had all the supplements still. We converted the whole thing to GURPS and are the happier for it.

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There’s somewhere on the net a review of Synnibar that had me in stitches. I’ve never played the game, given the review (apparently you can get mutations in it like “neat-freak”, and other mutations that kill you off during character creation), but any gamet hat can produce such an incredibly funny review is worth any pain it’s inflicted on other people.

Daniel