Quote from: GRIMHmmm... in no special order...

Rolemaster (though I like MERP, which was RM 'lite').
Star Wars d20 (In fact, d20 for anything other than D&D really).
Obsidian
OWoD Demon the Fallen
NWoD Vampire
NWoD Mage
CP3.
Manhunter
RIFTS (In fact, all Palladium, though we managed to have fun with TMNT for a while).
Heroes Unlimited deserves special mention for 'teh suxxor' as well.

OK, but bear in mind I can't incorporate your vote if you don't put them in order.

The two words that best describe Lev Lafayette are, "fuss" and "budget".

My truncated list.

1. FATAL. If it was just the infantile approach to sex, that would be one thing. But it also has the distinction of being boring, tediously written, and offering nothing that makes it stand out. It is relentlessly ordinary.

2. RaHoWa. A circle jerk for redneck fratboys with tertiary Syphilis centered in the brain.

And there I'll stop, because I've got standards. On any list going from worst at #1 on up, the third worst would have to be Cyborg Commando at #25. Nobody has yet written an RPG that fits into any slot from #3 to #24 inclusive.

Right, now that I've had times to think things over here's my vote:

10: Synnibarr: In its defence, it was a homebrew system that some guy designed and had published by his local game store. I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and suggest that it reflects the idiosyncracies of the local gaming culture there and that, if you come from the place it was designed, it's pretty fun. For outsiders, though, it stinks.

9: BESM: Anime is a medium, not a genre, so this is just a generic Tri-Stat system. And I don't like Tri-Stat.

8: GURPS 3rd Edition: The system is absolutely flavourless. It's like gruel: it's got the essentials to keep you going, but it has no spice, and in the long term you'll get scurvey.

7: D&D 3.X: It actually doesn't work at high levels - game sessions degenerate into players of clerics and mages spending ages consulting and tweaking their spell lists, and then going off and defeating all the bad guys, while the warriors and thieves sit around playing dice waiting for the fireballs to die down.

6: Kult: A big "so what". The designers had an interesting vision of the universe, but neglected to come up with anything for the PCs to do once they achieved enlightenment. Also, the enlightenment system is set up to encourage random acts of sickness and depravity. Grow the hell up, Kult.

5: AD&D 2e: I feel like a bit of a Judas voting for this one, since it was the first RPG I played, but still... there really wasn't many improvements (or even changes) from 1st Edition in this one, and the attitude to gaming had completely changed. This is the closet case of the D&D family: it's D&D, but it wants to pretend it isn't. I ran some awful story-based wankery based off this ruleset because of the GMing advice. If only I'd listened to my trusty Rules Cyclopedia...

4: Sorcerer: For the game which supposedly kick-started the indie RPGs movement, this really isn't very innovative. It's desperate to be a World of Darkness Game, but the evil White Wolf wanted too much creative control...

3: AD&D 2e Player's Option: Take these rulebooks on and you have a whole new game. By which I mean a whole new dimension of suck.

2: Vampire: the Masquerade: A system which actually hates players. You can play a fun game if you drop the pretentiousness and just run around with a gun, but the rules system is a) clearly designed to prevent player characters from being competant enough to derail the GM's plot and b) not very well designed - a Brujah with celerity and potence can beat just about anything.

1: FATAL: The designers are actually evil, terrible human beings. If you doubt me, check out the racist magical armour types.

Quote4: Sorcerer: For the game which supposedly kick-started the indie RPGs movement, this really isn't very innovative. It's desperate to be a World of Darkness Game, but the evil White Wolf wanted too much creative control...

That´s interesting: Is there a backstory? Did Ron try to market Sorceror to WW?

Quote from: Warthur1: FATAL: The designers are actually evil, terrible human beings. If you doubt me, check out the racist magical armour types.

?

I'm not buying to find out, so: how? what?

Thanks,

V.

mythusmage, Warthur:  You've played FATAL?  Duuuuude ... :eek:

Quote from: Volkazz?

I'm not buying to find out, so: how? what?

There are racist armour types in FATAL (or at least there was in the 1st Edition - you can probably still track down PDFs of it online). They were cursed items that turned you into racial caricatures.

Yes, it's as bad as it sounds.

Elsewhere, the authors have proudly stated that their sole deviation from historical accuracy is the removal of all non-European influences from the game. That's crazy on so many levels:

- FATAL isn't historically accurate, at all.
- If you remove non-European influence from medieval Europe - including Christianity - you have to ditch historical accuracy, because Europe would be fundamentally different.
- Why in God's name would you want to ditch non-European influences unless you were some kind of Nazi?

Quote from: TonyLBmythusmage, Warthur:  You've played FATAL?  Duuuuude ... :eek:

I made a valiant attempt to create a character once without the help of the character generator program. Mistake.

The fact that I'm still yet to play it speaks of the game's uselessness as a system, if you discard the "rape is cool"/"racism is funny" bullshit. Some friends and I keep intending to run a playtest, but the system is so monumentally vast that we still haven't gotten around to it and probably never will.

Since we're going from actual play experience, my list is going to be rather small.  From worst to, uh, less worst:
1) AD&D 2nd - I played this game for something like 5 years and literally every time I came to the table there was something new I didn't like about the system.  I don't think I would have stuck around that long if I didn't have a killer DM.
2) D&D 3e/3.5 - A definite improvement over AD&D, to be sure, but it lost something in the change.  I'm not sure what, there's just something missing.
3) Starwars d20 - It came close to being good, which might be why it's so disappointing.
4) Shadowrun 3 - The worst layout I've ever seen in a game.  You know all those tables and rules and stuff you need to run a combat?  It might be a good idea to put them all, y'know, in the same place.

Quote from: mythusmageThe two words that best describe Lev Lafayette are, "fuss" and "budget".

How about we let people have their say without attacking them or their choices? I'm surprised at some of the things that made people's lists, but...shrug.

Seanchai

You know, it really would be impossible for me to quantify these kinds of things, but given that there are a lot of people here making ridiculous votes like "D&D", here's a list just for their sake:

1. Nobilis
2. Dogs In the Vinyard
3. World of Darkness
4. My Life With Master
5. Gamma World D20
6. Sorcerer
7. Shab al-hiri roach
8. Weapons of the Gods
9. The D6 system
10. your favourite game

RPGPundit

I kinda like Pundit's list, though I've four objections:

1) Nobilis is not the worst of them. That would be the steaming coil of MLwM.
2) WoD is full of stuff I can mine for Nemesis games.
3) I hear really good things about the d6 system.
4) What, no Noumenon?

Also, I'm not sure if you noticed, but you've just gone so far as to declare things like MLwM or Shab al-hiri as roleplaying games.

I've long since transcended resentment for serenity (yeah, right), but the games I do recall not liking were:

1. AD&D 2E (sucked all the fun out of the game for me, very hard to quantify exactly how and why, but everything about it, from the art to the Bard (hey, that rhymes) was just dull as dishwater)

2. Aftermath! (thx to P.Amthor for bringing it up and reminding me how I couldn't make a character; weaned me off hit-locations dolls. If only we had played T2K.)

3. Chivalry & Sorcery 2E (this would probably be playable... if it were readable, which at a 4-point font or so it is not; also, magic rules:)

Quote from: WarthurWhere possible, base your votes strictly on bad gaming experiences you have had with a particular rules set.

Based on this, and this alone:

• Burning Empires
• D&D 3.x
• Champions 3rd ed.
• Villains & Vigilantes
• Spaceship Zero
• Bureau 13
• Call of Cthulhu 3rd
• Primetime Adventures
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Serenity RPG

Runner-up: Terran Trade Authority

These are not merely games where I had a crappy GM, but where I found the system and/or official setting unenjoyable.  In some cases (e.g., CoC, TMNT), I did enjoy the GM's work but the system was very aggravating.  Some of those settings (e.g., Bureau 13, Firefly/Serenity) were later rescued by porting over to other systems.

I'm going to go to my room and cry, as my beloved Rifts has already appeared on too many (though not as many as I feared) lists.
 
But rest assured, they will be tears of Mega-Damage.