Quote from: Plotinus on January 08, 2022, 07:50:38 AM

Quote from: mudbanks on January 08, 2022, 05:46:41 AM
Tiny Dungeons. I would not have believed a game could be this bad, until I ran it. Not once, but twice. First time, I thought I might have misread certain rules. Second time, I made damn sure I got all the rules down. Nope it's still a pile of garbage.

What was so bad about it?

The traits system was cool, but you were only ever rolling 1d6, 2d6 or 3d6 at any point in time, and only a 5 or 6 would count as a success unless you Focused. We had entire rounds where everyone was missing. I also pitted a draco-lich against newbie PCs and they were able to whittle it down to 15HP or so. Meanwhile, my Draco-lich was only doing 1 damage to them (and that's provided it hit). I'm not a fan of overly swingy damage, but this was way too far on the other end of the spectrum. I also didn't like the magic system. Too restrictive.

I think the absolute worst TTRPG rule set I ever used is questionable for this list, because it was a sort of an online, fan-published sort of thing called 'Big Breast, Small Waist' or BBSW as a play on BESM. It touted itself as the 'Hentai RPG' and it was just a mess. Granted, that may have been because my friends and I were a group of immature high schoolers, but I just feel like the traits were unbalanced, and it was a game that was supposed to translate... what, exactly? The deep, nuanced themes and characterization of a school girl getting plowed by a tentacle demon, into a game for you and three to five friends to enjoy around pizza? It was a terrible concept, a slapdash rule set, and I think it has mostly died out.

I want to give a personal honorable mention to Immortals: The Invisible War. I can't say if it's the worst, or even bad really. I still have no idea how to play it. The rulebooks front-load so much lore and lexicon that trying to get through it all is a soul-crushing slog. Or maybe I'm just lazy and seek instant gratification. If you know the game and like playing it, good on you. Me, I tried and just couldn't get there.

Quote from: Mistwell on January 08, 2022, 11:39:13 PM

Quote from: 3catcircus on January 08, 2022, 03:23:39 PM


d20 Modern.  Class and Level based system with too much trying to be generic to fit every genre.

Oh man I loved d20 Modern!

Spycraft did d20 Modern better than d20 Modern...

Not saying it's the worst, but I didn't like 3.5 or Pathfinder. Far too fiddly for me...

I always point to Knights And Berserkers And Ledergermain as the ultimate kid wrote a game and parents mortgaged the house to publish it.  6d20 for a dozen attributes one of which you use the square root of divided by the target's attribute times 100 to find the chance to hit.

The parchment floor plans did look nice.

Quote from: Jam The MF on January 07, 2022, 09:03:04 PM
D&D 4th Edition, because it claimed to be D&D; while changing the lore, the rules, the PC roles, and the entire experience of playing D&D.  The very next edition reverted to the 3rd Edition lore, and tried to pretend that 4th Edition never happened.

Agreed. I still can't believe WotC did that. Almost as bad as what Disney did to SW.

The Adventures of Indiana Jones by TSR was long held as the example of worst RPG ever. I always thought that was unfair. It is a fine system, very evocative of the setting, and had good production values. As for the "missing" PC creation rules, you could use the NPC creation rules in the back or the IJAC1 Judges' Survival Pack supplement.

d20 Modern had flaws, but I found I could hack in custom rules and make it work for several different genres. Almost like a proto-Savage Worlds.

One of my BIG beefs with 3.5E and PF was that the developers seemed willfully blind to the problems tied into the game mechanics, particularly multiple attribute dependencies and the action economy. Pathfinder is particularly guilty of this, considering it started out as a house rule package for 3.5E.

I stand by my assertion that 4E would've gotten a better reception if it was marketed as a squad-tactical RPG/minis game, a la 40k's Kill Team. Call it D&D Tactics and go from there. Hell, D&D grew out of the old Chainmail tactical game, why not a hop back to its roots?

Starfinder... makes no sense at all. The weird level based gear and the jank mechanics (why do I need to keep making skill checks for my sneak attack?) just sat poorly with me. You can see where they were testing possible rules permutations for later incorporation into PF2, as well.

Quote from: David Johansen on January 09, 2022, 03:57:15 PM
I always point to Knights And Berserkers And Ledergermain as the ultimate kid wrote a game and parents mortgaged the house to publish it.  6d20 for a dozen attributes one of which you use the square root of divided by the target's attribute times 100 to find the chance to hit.

The parchment floor plans did look nice.

Yeah, in absolute terms, the worst games are likely self-published dreck that no one other than their creator ever played. And there's a significant number of those.

But the more interesting, I think, are games like Cyborg Commando that had stuff going for them and real backers - plus the name and experience of Gary Gygax - that still managed to be terrible. Games like D20 Modern at least have their share of fans (as evidenced in this thread) -- but Cyborg Commando never had a community even at the time it was released.

I'm a little surprised Raven C.S. McCracken's "World of Synnibarr" hasn't made an appearance here yet.  Maybe I'm just one of the few suckers that bought it.  It basically makes less sense than Rifts and isn't as well organized.

Several years ago, I mailed my copy to one of the mods at ENWorld on the condition that he never send it back to me.

Quote from: Almost_Useless on January 09, 2022, 07:19:09 PM
I'm a little surprised Raven C.S. McCracken's "World of Synnibarr" hasn't made an appearance here yet.  Maybe I'm just one of the few suckers that bought it.  It basically makes less sense than Rifts and isn't as well organized.

Several years ago, I mailed my copy to one of the mods at ENWorld on the condition that he never send it back to me.

Tbh i find Synnibar entainingly bad. Its a terrible game but really fun to laugh at..espevially if you can get someone else to try to play it

Was Synnibar the one where players might encounter a wounded paratrooper and then they come closer to try to help him it suddenly morphs in a frog like humanoid creature with a cheap unreliable .38 special revolver?

Or am I thinking of something else?

Synnibarr was like the gaming equivalent of one of those goofy old sci-fi movies that's trying SO hard but it's so limited by the SFX and makeup tech of its day that you can't help but smirk. All it needs is Mike (or Joel) and the bots in the audience, cracking jokes.

Wasn't Synnibar the game where the storm god played in a local rock band? That silliness is about all I remember from it.

Quote from: Ghostmaker on January 09, 2022, 05:33:27 PM

I stand by my assertion that 4E would've gotten a better reception if it was marketed as a squad-tactical RPG/minis game, a la 40k's Kill Team. Call it D&D Tactics and go from there. Hell, D&D grew out of the old Chainmail tactical game, why not a hop back to its roots?

Agreed. I've been saying the same thing. If it had been marketed as the new Battlesystem, or even a modern advanced Chainmail with a line of miniatures for skirmish battles it would have been much more warmly received.

Playing it just did not feel like D&D. To quote someone I knew at GenCon when it was released, after playing a session he just shook his head with a baffled expression and said "What the f*ck was that?!" That reaction always stuck with me and succinctly described 4e.