The Gaming Den

I'm just curious what people think is the worst RPG.

I would say Racial Holy War is the absolute worst, between it's truly abominable premise, and being literally unplayable. Then Wraeththu, because it innately has a horrible premise, but is ostensibly playable. FATAL takes third because it is technically possible to play it without playing horrible sexual predators.

If I recall, Black Tokyo is a supplement, rather than it's own game, right?

We've had this discussion before. Like, multiple times.

Have we? I know these things come up occasionally, but I don't recall a comparison of the shittiest of the shittiest RPGs to declare one the absolute worst one.

Here's one.

Worst RPG = This thread.

Prak wrote: If I recall, Black Tokyo is a supplement, rather than it's own game, right?

It's kinda weird where this game lies. It's touted as a "Hentai SRD", but it really isn't. Also Black Tokyo has it's own supplements the latest being Back to School in Black Tokyo. So I would say that it's a d20 Modern OGL 3rd party Campaign setting.

The fuck is Black Tokyo? how much would I regret googling it?

Rawbeard wrote:The fuck is Black Tokyo? how much would I regret googling it?

It's a supplement setting thing that's basically The Dark Side of Anime: The Game.

Fucked-up anime, fucked-up hentai, they both get representation.

Leress did an OSSR of it, I think.

Maxus wrote:

Rawbeard wrote:The fuck is Black Tokyo? how much would I regret googling it?

It's a supplement setting thing that's basically The Dark Side of Anime: The Game.

Fucked-up anime, fucked-up hentai, they both get representation.

Leress did an OSSR of it, I think.

Yes I did, and here it is:

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=50731

You forgot pretty shitty supplement mechanic wise as well. I still have to get on reviewing the other products from that game company.

I feel violated for knowing this exists. and not in a good way.

Prak wrote:I'm just curious what people think is the worst RPG.

"What is the worst RPG in the world" and "what is the most morally repugnant game in the world" are not the same question and do not necessarily have the same answer. It wouldn't surprise me if they did in fact turn out to have the same answer, for a variety of reasons, but I don't think it's necessarily the case.

World of Synnibar is probably the worst game that I personally have ever attempted to read, but its premise is not noticeably more repugnant than that of, say, Dungeons and Dragons.

Also, there should probably be some sort of consideration given to publication and distribution. A terrible game printed by an actual game company is a more impressive achievement in badness than an equally terrible game written by some guy in his basement and distributed by PDF. Even if the game company in question exists solely because basement guy wanted to have his PDF game exist "in print", I'd still rate that as "worse" if all other things were equal. A terrible game printed by a real game company is more impressive than one printed by Your Mom's Credit Card, LLC. And so on.

Yeah, don't care. These are shit things by shit people for shit people, and basically have no impact on the world of rpgs, and no one could have expected anything but shit from them.

I'd rather see a discussion of rpgs that are mechanically shit and should have been better. I have a vague memory of the circa-2003? Star Trek RPG where starting characters generally couldn't regularly succeed on basic tasks. Dice pool system, and starting characters had 4-5 dice and target numbers around 25-30. Getting out of spacedock and navigating to the next system over were tasks that new characters would generally fail.

The enterprise crew were stated up and failed the sort of tough challenges that came up on episodes on a pretty constant basis. It was sad, as a bridge crew turned away team is roughly the right size for a standard-to-largish rpg group, and have a basic reason to work together.

Voss wrote: I'd rather see a discussion of rpgs that are mechanically shit and should have been better. I have a vague memory of the circa-2003? Star Trek RPG where starting characters generally couldn't regularly succeed on basic tasks. Dice pool system, and starting characters had 4-5 dice and target numbers around 25-30. Getting out of spacedock and navigating to the next system over were tasks that new characters would generally fail.

You're thinking of the one by Last Unicorn? I have a copy of that somewhere that I kept solely because it had really nice production values.

Nice hardbound book, full color, lots of photos, even the graphic design was reminiscent of the TV show. I mean, it was beautiful. The fact that I was able to buy it for half of the suggested cover price was enough to clue me in that it probably wasn't a very good game, though.

Voss wrote: I'd rather see a discussion of rpgs that are mechanically shit and should have been better. I have a vague memory of the circa-2003? Star Trek RPG where starting characters generally couldn't regularly succeed on basic tasks. Dice pool system, and starting characters had 4-5 dice and target numbers around 25-30. Getting out of spacedock and navigating to the next system over were tasks that new characters would generally fail.

The enterprise crew were stated up and failed the sort of tough challenges that came up on episodes on a pretty constant basis. It was sad, as a bridge crew turned away team is roughly the right size for a standard-to-largish rpg group, and have a basic reason to work together.

I tried playing Tri-Stat Sailor Moon once and it was that way. Starting characters were so under-powered that basically if you weren't very, very careful how you built your character you got one good attack a day and had like a 30% chance of hitting with it and could do literally nothing else.

talozin wrote:

Voss wrote: I'd rather see a discussion of rpgs that are mechanically shit and should have been better. I have a vague memory of the circa-2003? Star Trek RPG where starting characters generally couldn't regularly succeed on basic tasks. Dice pool system, and starting characters had 4-5 dice and target numbers around 25-30. Getting out of spacedock and navigating to the next system over were tasks that new characters would generally fail.

You're thinking of the one by Last Unicorn? I have a copy of that somewhere that I kept solely because it had really nice production values.

Nice hardbound book, full color, lots of photos, even the graphic design was reminiscent of the TV show. I mean, it was beautiful. The fact that I was able to buy it for half of the suggested cover price was enough to clue me in that it probably wasn't a very good game, though.

I would say the same for the one by Decipher.

Worst (n): most faulty, unsatisfactory, or objectionable.

So there are several worst RPGs.

There are the games which are not even games. At it's most extreme, sometimes you are personally punished for listening to the GM tell their story and there is no other mechanic that changes that in any way. You know which one I mean.

There are games which held so much hope and delivered nothing of the sort. 4th edition D&D may well reach the best there, it was wildly unsatisfactory as a successor to 3e, or any other game in the lineage. Obviously you could use large parts of it as written and there was nothing grossly offensive, but it's such a shit D&D.

The most objectionable, clearly, is FATAL. People rightly object to that otherwise impossibly obscure RPG all the time. You have only heard of it as an objection to its existence.

I don't know about that, I'd rather play FATAL than Racial Holy War; the first is repugnant because of its execution, but the second has that and is also repugnant in its premise.

To be clear both are as terrible as they are racist, with I think FATAL being more sexist, but at least Fantasy Adventures To Adult Lechery (only later, From Another Time, Another Land) dosen't lose me at the cover.

Hicks wrote:I don't know about that, I'd rather play FATAL than Racial Holy War; the first is repugnant because of its execution, but the second has that and is also repugnant in its premise.

To be clear both are as terrible as they are racist, with I think FATAL being more sexist, but at least Fantasy Adventures To Adult Lechery (only later, From Another Time, Another Land) dosen't lose me at the cover.

Have you seen the cover of FATAL?

The problem with debates about the awfulness of FATAL is that one tends to recall was is actually in the game. Saying it's "sexist" is like saying Donald Trump used crude language, it's technically accurate but rather missing the point.

To be honest, I never really just studied FATAL's cover, but the anatomically incorrect 10 pack of abs that go to the incubus' nipples really breaks my immersion, and the Kobold isn't really pulling off those short-shorts.

You forgot Little Fears, where one of the primary antagonists is the personification of pedophilia and rape that targets children - like the PCs.

*World.

It has some of the worst game design I have ever, ever seen. And that bad game design has, appropriately enough, gone fucking VIRAL. It is damaging the goddamn "industry", which is like setting the ruins of Rome on fire after it had already been sacked and burned repeatedly.

Is it as bad as FATAL or Rahowa or DCC RPG or Shadowrun 5E or anything "published" by the hacks-would-be-doing-a-disservice-to-hacks-so-lets-not-call-them-that at Onyx Path? Probably not. But it has become the biggest, most annoying fad I can ever remember seeing in gaming. (You guys should remember that I was never part of the "scene" until around 2009-2011, and so all of my tabletop gaming happened completely isolated from the TTRPG scene.)

Let's have 42% of rolls make the GM come up with what, in Shadowrun 4E, we'd call a GLITCH BUT NOT A CRITICAL GLITCH on the fly and make that the core feature of your piece of shit game? Game of the fucking year man. System of the fucking decade.

*spits*

tl;dr i am the anti-silva

I considered nominating Apocalypse World, because while all the games presented have toxic content, Apocalypse World actively encourages toxic and abusive behavior between the GM and the players.

But *World can't be the worst RPG, because it is not a G at all.

All of the listed games sound like terrible ideas. I am not familiar with them or their mechanical resolution, however.
When it comes to my own personal "worst rpg" I would go for Traveller, though. Even though the mechanics are theoretically playable, the character creation just won't allow you to create a playable and/or satisfying character, unless you play a cyber-psyker and ruin the game for everyone else.
Given the enormous fanbase this game has, however, leaves me to consider this the worst RPG I know. Maybe I am just lucky that way.

Jason wrote:All of the listed games sound like terrible ideas. I am not familiar with them or their mechanical resolution, however.
When it comes to my own personal "worst rpg" I would go for Traveller, though. Even though the mechanics are theoretically playable, the character creation just won't allow you to create a playable and/or satisfying character, unless you play a cyber-psyker and ruin the game for everyone else.
Given the enormous fanbase this game has, however, leaves me to consider this the worst RPG I know. Maybe I am just lucky that way.

Racial Holy War is a game made by and for white supremacists that has grossly incomplete rules. From what I've heard, it's more like stats for racist stereotypes for a non-existant system.

FATAL is a game that aims for high-simulation and realism, but the attempts to emphasize those things are based on highly flawed understandings of the middle ages which are exacerbated by the author's own sexism, racism and immaturity. The system is theoretically playable, but is so overwrought, you literally roll thousands of dice just to create a character, urination is a skill, and you can fail your urination roll.

Wraeththu is a game about, like, hermaphroditic alien vampire bishies with flower-shaped dicks. You play one, and it's possible that you became one through sexual assault

Black Tokyo is a supplement for the d20 system based on really terrible hentai and rape anime.