No, not intentionally anyway. I mean I've played games once or twice before deciding they were beyond redemption, but we stopped after finding that. I've read a lot more games that were not worth playing.


I've played many rules heavy games, but I like some rules heavy games. I've played unpopular games, but again I actually like them.

I have no idea why one would play a game they disliked I have better things to do with my time.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1015778I'll cop to a version of this, though I don't do it out of any sense of perverse enjoyment of badness. I think 1E Chivalry and Sorcery is such a great game that I just can't walk away from it. But it also a toxic waste disposal site of indecipherably complex rules, mostly printed in 6 point font. It is pretty shocking to anyone who hasn't prepared themselves with decades of meditation on the game's finer qualities.

This I've done. There are some poorly written games with cool concepts that make it worth the trouble, at least for awhile.

Honestly, if you can make yourself read it, and are smart enough to just skip the unplayable stuff like the mass combat system, 1E C+S is very worth your while. The magic system is bat shit crazy, in the best way; combat is really interesting and fun; lots of social caste structure to give shape to your campaign setting. It is just a cool system. But it is super hard to understand how it is supposed to work, so most people just give up. A classic ca. 1980 rules-heavy game...

Quote from: The_Shadow;1015656Some games are notorious: rules-heavy, or offensive, or just plain bad. Have you ever knowingly chosen one of them and actually played through a session or more? How did it go?

Not a game per se, but a system-- GURPS 3e Vehicles (and robots). For a while in the 90s (before I had my interest in complex games completely burned out of me by D&D 3e) I really enjoyed how this system let you calculate vehicle size and weight and performance with a semblance of realism (or at least verisimilitude). I knew darn well that the 20 hours it took to design a futuristic hover-tanks and spaceships would never pay off for the players, but it filled a need to have something that systematic.
Well, then I guess my time got precious or something. So no, never again. Helped my friend GM a sci fi Hero System game recently and then helped design a homebrew Mad Max-style game, and both of them were as vaguely-entertaining favors, not something I'd personally choose to do.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1015717I ran D&D 3.5.
It wasn't so bad though, since I banned all the classes from the core book and allowed XPH/ToB/MoI classes only.

The difference with D&D 3e is that it does play (yes, despite what I said just a moment ago). The very reason that it had all these balance issues and problems where you scratch your head and wonder how they missed it in play-testing and so forth is because you can people played the playtests like they were playing 2e AD&D and it worked for quite a while. So apparently if you play like that, the game works (for a while, and at certain levels, and so forth). You just roll up some direct-damage-heavy wizards, some cure-heavy clerics, maybe some fighters and rogues that you think are vaguely optimized (I know first time I played a fighter I figured out reach weapon, combat reflexes and quickdraw, which seamed awfully awesome until I saw what a spiked-chain trip build would do) and go play low-level adventures against mostly humanoid opponents and it worked--probably not better than the heavily modded 2e games we'd played the previous year. Certainly not the hope that 3e was the perfectly designed system which 'fixed' whatever we thought was broken about the game, and certainly all the issues with the game were certainly in our future. But the game played.

Quote from: Cave Bear;1015717I ran D&D 3.5.
It wasn't so bad though, since I banned all the classes from the core book and allowed XPH/ToB/MoI classes only.

It's not too bad if:
-The DM knows the game well.
-You're at low levels.
-You use the Mongoose Conan d20 instead (2nd edition), far and away the best 3.5ed hack. Still 3.5ed though so expect a lot of the standard warts except everything magical has been replaced with a far better system.

The GM should always be able to include players who can't keep track of rules and translate what they say they want to do IC into rules terms and tell them what to roll. Some games work better that way as it keeps the wizard behind the curtain and helps with immersion, with some games the GM has to really bite a lot off in terms of rules knowledge in order to do this role.

I tried playing Aftermath in the late 80's. But I never made it beyond the character generation. It was just too much.

I consider it as a missed opportunity. Because I really loved cheesey 80's post apocalypse movies like 'World Gone Wild' starring Bruce Dern.

No, but I did win one as a prize at a con once. I got "Best & Fairest GM", and they gave me a little trophy and said, "you were the best GM so we gave you the worst roleplaying game."

HoL.

I discarded it shortly after.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1016724No, but I did win one as a prize at a con once. I got "Best & Fairest GM", and they gave me a little trophy and said, "you were the best GM so we gave you the worst roleplaying game."

HoL.

I discarded it shortly after.

All I know of that is there was a time when liking it on TBP showed how edgy you were.

I don't believe HoL is actually intended to be played.

It predated storygames in that respect.

Uh huh. :rolleyes:

Q: Have you ever chosen a "bad" game out of sheer masochism?

A: No, but I have tried running games I didn't care for with the hopes that I could turn players on to better games later. Never really worked out that way, so now I only offer to run games I personally enjoy and have interest in running. If someone asks me to run another game, the answer is no, but I might be dubiously willing to try it as a player if someone else runs the show.

I did an interest check for a pbp game of Fantasy Wargaming.  Thankfully I thought better of it before starting actual recruitment.  Probably as close as I've come.

I also had the ARIA books, but of course I never ran it. No one actually did, because it was unplayable.

I have a big stack of Hero 5ed books that I wonder I must have  been on something to buy at one point.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1017212I also had the ARIA books, but of course I never ran it. No one actually did, because it was unplayable.

And unreadable to boot. I still can't git rid. Mint condition and yet no interest on ebay. Absolutley nuthin.