Inspired by Aos's best RPG name thread, I was curious what people thought was the worst RPG name?

I vote for GURPS.  'GURPS' sounds like the noise I make after consuming too much Curry Chicken and Guinness, not a game.  

(I vaguely recall a game, from very old Dragon magazines, called 'Spawn of Fashan'.  Thats a pretty cappy name too.)

Quote from: Akrasia(I vaguely recall a game, from very old Dragon magazines, called 'Spawn of Fashan'.  Thats a pretty cappy name too.)

I own a copy of that game. 4 or 5 years ago at EN World, people were discussing SoF. Piratecat, moderator extraordinaire, somehow tracked down the guy who wrote it. PC arranged for the guy to run off copies of it for those who expressed interest in it. I was one of those. The guy even included a history of the game, and what he's done since. While he seems to have a good sense of humor about it all, the legendary review of the game in Dragon had to have hit hard. Consider: he and his friends were young guys, college age, and became laughingstocks of the RPG community. Pretty unfair. Don't get me wrong; SoF is a bad game. But it pales in comparison to stuff like F.A.T.A.L., and besides, there is a sincere, naive earnestness to the writing in SoF which kinda makes it endearing. But the name is odd.

GURPS is a great choice, and I'll chime in with MERP.

At the risk of being accused of not being a "real" RPG fan, here is a list of games I feel have bad names:

Dogs in the Vineyard
Burning Wheel
Synnibar
My Life With Master

My most amusingly bad would be "Feng Shui" --

or for the lesser well-known, "GruntBuggler!" (the 1995 precursor to "Forge: Out of Chaos").

Quote from: ColonelHardissonBurning Wheel

I don't like that name. Worst name? *shrug* But it is generic system, so i'll say it has at least a bit more flair than "d20" or "Tri-stat". "Savage Worlds" is better though.

And you outlined why you don't like, "Dogs In The Vineyard". A gap in your knowledge furthered by you insistance that you have to know the game by the name before you know anything about the game.  But as a bad name? They must sell some seriously potent crack down there in Cleveland.

Synnibar? Now that's pretty damn forgetable, yup.  I'll have to think about this a bit though, because the really bad ones are IMO the ones that fall from memory.

worst name?

Gammarauders

although FUDGE always gave me a real bad *visual*

Worst name ever?

Panty Explosion.

I second GURPS, it's almost embarassing to say.

I used to support the name, thinking it was at least honest and unpretentious, but that was back before I lost all reason to cut jackson any slack.

Quote from: AkrasiaI vote for GURPS.  'GURPS' sounds like the noise I make after consuming too much Curry Chicken and Guinness, not a game.  

(I vaguely recall a game, from very old Dragon magazines, called 'Spawn of Fashan'.  Thats a pretty cappy name too.)

Yeah, it sounds very...gastrointestinal, doesn't it?  Not the best name for a system.

And could someone please tell me WTF a Fashan is?  I've been wondering about that for ages.

http://www.fallingrain.com/world/IR/28/Kah_Fashan.html ?

Or this Chinese guy from a millenium and a half back. That's what Google has to say on the matter.  I suppose if you were inclined to attempt to read Spawn of Fashan it might have a hint in there. Probably just some ass-crack spawned name though.

Like Ptolus. How I hate that name, and I even bought the book. I should have bought it in PDF form instead so I could have done a Search-Replace.

Universalis and Nobilis.

I'm not sure either is all that bad in isolation, but knowing that both exist gives an impression of a wave of pretention sweeping across RPGs.

Look, both words are just simple adjectives, almost identical in form and meaning to their English equivalents. The only apparent need for the Latin forms is just to "sound a little Latin". AFAIK there's no Roman connection.

Quote from: Elliot WilenUniversalis and Nobilis.

I'm not sure either is all that bad in isolation, but knowing that both exist gives an impression of a wave of pretention sweeping across RPGs.

Look, both words are just simple adjectives, almost identical in form and meaning to their English equivalents. The only apparent need for the Latin forms is just to "sound a little Latin". AFAIK there's no Roman connection.

well maybe they arent the worst names but they may make top of the list in the "most Pretentious"

PANTY EXPLOSION

The war is over.  We lost.

I quite like Panty Explosion as a name. It's all highly subjective, of course. I tend to like names that roll around nicely in my mouth, being rather orally inclined. I like names that conjure vague but haunting images.

So I don't like GURPS or CORPS or JAGS or HARP or EABA or anything that sounds so...generic. I don't like most of the ring-the-changes-on-D&D names, because they're unimaginative – T&T, C&S, B&B, V&V, M&M.

I do like Dogs in the Vineyard and My Life with Master and Under the Bed and The Shab-al-Hiri Roach and The Mutant Chronicles and Pendragon and Space 1889 and Burning Wheel. Among others. In some cases I like the name a lot more than the game.

I think there are a lot of ho-hum names, which aren't really bad but don't have the same mystique – Sorcerer, RuneQuest, Prince Valiant, Superworld, Spycraft, Traveller.

My vote for worst title: (thank you)... Mythic Russia!!

It's new, it's a labour of love, it's a beautiful book by all accounts –  it has the name of an undergrad textbook.

Quote from: Elliot WilenLook, both words are just simple adjectives, almost identical in form and meaning to their English equivalents. The only apparent need for the Latin forms is just to "sound a little Latin". AFAIK there's no Roman connection.

Except, you know, that in the canon of the game the Roman "gods" by and large were Nobles, and even the PCs tend to be rather like the folks on Mount Olympus. Besides, of course you could always replace the word with, say, "the Nobility" or "the Aristocracy", but that might lead into confusion if you needed to talk about both them and the mortal society at the same time. It's better to have a slightly more distinctive term.

Well, they could've called Nobilis "The Aristocrats". But that would've been just wrong...