Response to jgants moved to an appropriate thread....

Quote from: blakkieI'm confused by these two sentences? Especially given the two words I underlined. Because you don't write it down you think it is something that is different than a "house rule"?  EDIT: I don't mean this sarcastically. I'm just really puzzled about your apparent definition and understanding of "house rule", trying to figure out how and on what grouds you differentiate the two.

A house rule is a standing change to the rules, that persists over time.

GM fiat is an ad hoc change to the rules, that may or may not be followed on future occasions.

Accordingly, I would say there is a difference, and indeed this is why I prefer house rules to fiat.

Oops, I just realized and had come back to correct my mistake of not transfering this over to the "House Rule thread. Only Balbinus had already posted a reply.  I'm going to transfer my post if you could follow up Balbinus with your reply there instead....to try save Warthur some time sifting this thread when tallying votes....

Here's my on topic list, in order from crappiest to less crappy:

1. Powers and Perils
Perhaps the best example of terrible art and a layout only Jesus could love.  Not that there weren't any good pieces to it, but I can't even say I'm sure I ever did character creation right, much less anything else.

2. Daredevils
The adventure modules looked ulta-cool and were the first things to make me think I might like to play a pulp game.  Then I got the actual rules.

3. Ghostbusters
I was looking forward to something a bit less wacky.  Things like "brownie points" completely put me off of the game.

4. Dangerous Journeys
The Necropolis adventure module was cool.  The actual game sucked.  And the hokey terminology (heka, etc) was a big turn off.

5. Bureau 13 - Stalking the Night Fantastic
Me and a buddy played a really fun game of this at a con.  Bought a copy.  Then we realized the con guy was pretty much ignoring 90% of the rules.  The vast, vast rules.

6. Werewolf the Apocolypse
At least VtM tried to emulate parts of the genre - Werewolf was about furry hippie eco-terrorists that live in Native American tribal compounds.

7. Savage Worlds
Didn't like it.  Bennies flying back and forth to everyone all the time was like a distracting subgame.  And combat seemed to work just as slow, if not slower, than any other game.

8. Shadowrun 3rd
Besides adding crap like elves and magic to cyberpunk (which I didn't like), the combat system seemed to require buckets of d6s.

9. GURPS
There's just too much there.  I spend too much time trying to filter out all of the rules, character options, etc.  Plus, I find 3d6 roll-under to be an incredibly bland and anti-climatic dice convention.

10. Tunnels and Trolls
Not necessarily bad, but just that it seemed like a blander, sillier version of basic D&D.

Honorable Mention: Fudge

Can sillier = blander?

Anyhow, I had a group that refused to play anything other than Powers and Perils for a while.  So I gamed with other people.

Also played Daredevils for a session or two.  It was...just not as exciting as GURPS.

GURPS 1st edition had the great advantage of less stuff.  Fourth works better but man does it need a intermediary step between lite and characters.  Also, I always feel that they dropped the ball again on Super Strength.  Yes there are ways to do it.  Yes Hybrid is more elegant.

Quote from: WarthurI never used it as an attack. Settembrini was using it as a defence.

Read the damn thread properly before you start arguing with me.

You need to read the fucking thread!

Quote from: RockViperYou need to read the fucking thread!

He can't, the thread's too busy fucking.

Quote from: RockViperYou need to read the fucking thread!

If you hadn't noticed, I am. I need to in order to tally the votes.

I don't know what the deal is with you but your ability to understand and follow an argument and come up with a decent response is possibly the worst I've seen on here. I don't know what the worst RPG is but you sure as fuck are the Worst Poster.

I've played Palladium Fantasy, Heroes Unlimited, Ninja's & Superspies, Robotech, TMNT, and Rifts.  If Palladium was broken as a system, it was Rifts that truly highlighted the deficiencies for us.  Which was odd because it seemed to work in Robotech, Heroes Unlimited, or Fantasy just fine for us.

Well, let's see...

If we're limiting it to gaming experiences, mine would be a D&D2 and a D&D3 campaign, but seriously - those have also been some of my best.  Those were because of bad gamemastering, not bad system.  (The 2e guy, for example, had us keep track of XP to the nearest hundredth and micromanaged spell components...  The 3e guy just had no grasp of any rules and geared the whole game towards 2 broken fighter-types, while the rest of us picked up their scraps.)

So, I'll try to stick to worst gaming due largely to system issues...

(1) Powers & Perils.  I tried to love this game, I really did.  It has a neat vibe to it, and all kinds of exotic elements.  Still, it's over-complex and just plain not so good.

(2) Immortal.  I tried to make a character, but I couldn't figure out where all the rules were.  Never actually got to gameplay.  Neat idea, but it was too much style and not enough substance.  The impenetrable vocabulary didn't help, nor did the requirement of 7 different-colored dice.

(3) GURPS.  I tried to run a very short-lived campaign.  Doing everything just took too long.  Character generation resulted in too many colorblind humpbacks, too.

(4) Ghostbusters International.  "So let me see if I get this straight... 1 out of 6 times I try to do something, an unfavorable result always happens 'by chance.'  1 out of 6 times a ghost tries to do something, it will miraculously work and bad stuff will happen to me?"  The Ghost Die was just too much chaos with too high a chance.

-O

Oh, I forgot a big one...

(5) Mage (1e).  Maybe our GM was running it wrong, but seriously, I thought this was about the most jackassed system I've ever seen.

First off, it took four freaking rolls for every attack.  FOUR.  All of them had variable numbers of dice I needed to roll (sometimes getting absurdly high) and the target numbers varied, too, depending on how my stats compared to my target's.  Roll to hit.  Roll to damage.  Roll to dodge.  Roll to soak.  And then there were the dice pool allocations...  sheesh, forget it.  I've been gaming for over 20 years, played this system for several months, and still don't get the combat.  (Granted - I never read the book.  That may have helped.)

Second, the botch rules were just plain fucked up.  Every 1 you roll takes away a success.  It made it pretty tough to get anything done.  Given enough dice, that's quite a bit of trouble.

-O

This will actually be a fairly short list, because for the most part I've managed to avoid playing games I disliked.  Still, here's my list of games I've actually played that I disliked:

1. AD&D 2nd ed.
2. GURPS
3. Hero
4. Exalted

I'll actively avoid the first three.  I can definitely enjoy Exalted, but dislike the mechanics.  At the moment, I can't think of any other games that I've actively disliked.

Quote from: obrynSecond, the botch rules were just plain fucked up.  Every 1 you roll takes away a success.  It made it pretty tough to get anything done.  Given enough dice, that's quite a bit of trouble.

Yeah, that was probably the worst aspect of the old Storyteller system - I can't believe it was retained for as long as it was.

I believe the current Storyteller system has a setup where you botch only if you roll no successes *and* you roll a 1 - no more "total the successes and subtract the 1s" slowing the game up, and botches are much rarer as a result.

Quote from: SettembriniStill, sometimes I wonder if those Palladium bashers ever played the game. When I see sentences like the one made earlier, I get the impression that the person making the statement hasn´t any hands-on experience. And hands on experience should be paramount in this thread.

Are you refering to my criticism?  If so, I can assure you I have actually played Palladium (well, Rifts).  Admittedly, it wasn't for very long.  We took two sessions for character generation - partly because we weren't familiar with the rules and partly because the rules are so damn badly written.  In between those sessions, we did as much research on the 'net about the game and downloaded the pages and pages of errata (which was a pretty bad sign).

Then, in the third session, we actually got started with the game.  About 20-30 minutes into the game, the group decided the system was a steaming pile of shit.  

Now, defenders of the system will undoubtably suggest that we should have given it more of a chance.  Maybe they're right.  I feel that we certainly put plenty of effort into learning the game - two sessions to familiarise ourselves with character generation and the rules, countless hours on the net reading the forums and several hours trying to understand the errata.  I think we gave it a fair chance.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkWe took two sessions for character generation - partly because we weren't familiar with the rules and partly because the rules are so damn badly written.

In the latest version of the Palladium system rules (Rifts Ultimate Edition), KS himself writes that the extended and outright overlong character generation is a conscious design decision.  He equates length of time spent searching for skill percentages and such with character depth, and feels that any character made up quickly will lack any play value.