Hmmmmm...

1: castles and crusades - I walked out of play at a con half way through because it reminded me of all the painful reasons why I no longer played "D&D".

in no particular order:

2: agone
3: shock
4: universalis
5: princes kingdom

all "indie" games - and the reason why I don't like indie games. But, at least I can say my opinion is based on actual play experience. I now know that  the traditional GM/player separation in rpgs is a must for my enjoyment of a game.

IMHO if you want to add story elements beyond those that would occur by playing your PC, then you should GM.

6: Shadowrun 1-3. I wanted to like... but the fucking rules!? I tip my hat to anyone who actually played these editions as written, with no house rules.

7: burning wheel - a fantastic game... that is utterly fucked up by the "scripting" mechanics. But my opinion in this matter seems to be in the minority

8: Vampire/a World of Darkness. Why all the pseudo goth pretensious crap? why can't I just play a traditional vampire or werewolf without spirit world battles and fighting my inner beast?

9: a Game of Thrones rpg - must everything be d20/OGL? Fuck.

10: When I actually read all the rules after 10 years - D&D from origional to 3.5

 After returning to the hobby after ten years I found that me and my friends never played D&D as it was written - we tweaked and houseruled it into a totally different game. My fond memories were never of D&D the actual game at all.

Quote from: David JohansenYou know, I could probably make a case for both Universe games to fit in the top ten.  One because it never was complete enough to play...

Presumably SPI's game.

I'd like to hear a little more of your opinion on this. I have the game (maybe two copies), but never played it. I remember one thing that seems half-baked is the the starting resources of some characters, something like a retired Admiral would be living in skid row (I'm exaggerating). Otherwise, in my recollection the mechanics seemed reasonably complete compared to, say, the Traveller LBB's. Yet I've heard this criticism from others.

So what's missing? An extensively detailed background? (Some of it was adumbrated in SPI board games such as Star Trader.) Prewritten modules? Traveller-like system generation mechanics? (I don't remember if it has something like that or not.) More ships & gear? Alien races (besides the Sh't'kl'p that appeared in Ares)? More critters?

I'd like to give the game a whirl one of these days, (though I get the impression that 2300 AD, Cold Space/FTL Now and perhaps Blue Planet cover similar territory). Of the possible deficiencies I list above, some are more serious than others for me, so I'm wondering what really stands out as problems.

Quote from: RockViperMy point is you cannot use house-ruling as a valid attack.

I never used it as an attack. Settembrini was using it as a defence.

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

I´d say Ceasar Slaad is corect:

This thread is about bad experiences, and not about defending a system.

Still, 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.

So, if you are turned away by Palladium/ Rifts during the reading of the book, please say so. If it didn´t talk to you, if you couldn´t find anything: say so.
All valuable data points on the books, but not neccessarily on the systems.

General bashing is of no use. Critizize what was wrong, not what you heard other people say what could be wrong.

Well first off, we'll do Palladium.  For me it comes down to this.  Mechanoid Invasion had two pages of rules and I can't think of one thing Rifts does better.  You could make a Mechanoid Invasion character in 10 minutes flat.  Rifts, between all the physical skills and the weapon skill bonuses hidden in the text instead of in nice clear charts, takes a good hour, at least to do a character.  Never mind the power creep from book to book, which could be a feature or a flaw depending on what you do with it.  Also, I really don't like kitchen sink settings.

Giving people SDC made a tiny mote of sense in Heroes Unlimited, but in Fantasy and Rifts?  What a pain in the ass.  Also Mega Damage, look Kevin, if it's there to make tanks immune to small arms fire great, but in Rifts lacy doilies and nail files (okay, partial body armour and laser pistols, but still sheesh) are mega damage weapons, what's the point?

On the upside, I think the treatment of vehicles and battle suits as extra hitpoints is a good way to do things, weapon stats, while not as good as they were back in the charts do make a nail file differnt from a pebble.  Palladium isn't even in my bottom 20 and I'll confess to having been as paranoid about IP theft as Kevin is.

Okay now to

Universe

I used to own the SPI game and currently own the Tower Ravens game.

Universe was even more chart happy than Classic Traveller, if I remember right, which gave it some horrible limitations when it came to things like expanding the weapon lists.  Even the combat sequence was less clear.  There was no starship combat in the core book, though it did cover robots in a limited fashion.  The characters were pretty limited in their abilities, and poor, from what I recall.  The world creation thing was neat but there were like 20 pages of planetary mapping templates in the back of the book.

I've heard that Delta Vee, the starship combat game was excellent but never got to play it.  It's one of those games that got lost in a downsizing, but I regret the loss, I wonder if The Sentry Box still has a copy.

Tower Ravens Universe

Now here's another kettle of fish.  I think the core rules are pretty clever and I've always had a fondness for universal tables.  It's an interesting game really, though I haven't played it.  The psionic system makes my head hurt, so they might be onto something there.  I'd have traded the worlds they detail in the book for vehicle and starship rules in a heart beat.

But I feel bad for the guys.  They go to Gamma with their hot new game and get told that the only way any distributors will pick it up is if they do a starter for under $30.  So they print a starter and a couple adventures and the quality's pretty good for a first run game.  But given the price tag and lack of advertising, they never did much more than the initial stuff.

It's really too bad, I think they made something pretty nice but just didn't hit the market well at all.  Even so, they've got a Universe Kids game out that simplifies things, that I may have alook at.

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.

I've seen this locally a lot.  Tons of Palladium bashers around here that if you ask them the exact parts of the system that makes them burn with hatred they can't answer.  Basically just repeating what others say is bad.

Our group played Beyond the Supernatural for a while and TMNT as well.  Never had any bad experiences with it at all.  We tried Rifts but most of us decided that we didn't much like that setting and shelved it.  Now I haven't picked up a Palladium book in years, just nothing that interested me has come out from them.

Quote from: SettembriniI´d say Ceasar Slaad is corect:

This thread is about bad experiences, and not about defending a system.

Still, 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.

So, if you are turned away by Palladium/ Rifts during the reading of the book, please say so. If it didn´t talk to you, if you couldn´t find anything: say so.
All valuable data points on the books, but not neccessarily on the systems.

General bashing is of no use. Critizize what was wrong, not what you heard other people say what could be wrong.

Yeah, and the same holds true for any other system, such as (and perhaps especially) D&D/d20. It seems d20 is the system of choice to hate for the terminally pretentious, those who would never sully their minds and hands by actually, y'know, playing the goddamned game before pronouncing judgment. Oddly enough, though, out in the real world I seem to run across an awful lot of people who play and enjoy one iteration or the other of d20, despite how vastly unplayable it is, according to any number of internet philosophers.

OK, now that I've got my editorializing out of the way, yeah, it'd be nice if people came clean and told whether they'd actually played the games they put on their lists. Relating some experiences that specifically highlight why this or that game sucks ass would be really interesting to me.

Take my experiences with MERP. The wound charts can be fun to read (and yeah, I know they're truncated RM charts), but they simply do not fit the tone of the setting at all, in any way, shape, or form. In another context, I suppose they would be fun, and God knows we tried house-ruling them for use in D&D back when we were kids, but they ultimately got a little old after a fairly short while of use.

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.

Yep.  I played Palladium for some time.  

Personally, I don't see how anyone who has ever played Palladium's system could not have the attitude I have about the system and products.

Quote from: peteramthorI've seen this locally a lot.  Tons of Palladium bashers around here that if you ask them the exact parts of the system that makes them burn with hatred they can't answer.  Basically just repeating what others say is bad.

I've enumerated my problems with the Palladium system on numerous occasions.   So, I hope I'm not being lumped in that category.

Quote from: Elliot WilenWhich one? Tower Ravens, or SPI?

SPI.  I have the second edition, which is just the rulebook and without Delta Vee.

It's neat for the starmap.  And it was my first realization that RPGs didn't have to be class and level based.  Beyond that.  ick.

I started playing Palladium's games with Mechanoid Invasion book one bitch!

Seriously though, $3.50 was much more in my budget range than $15 - $20 Back in '82.

Quote from: RockViperMy point is you cannot use house-ruling as a valid attack.

RPGs exist for one reason, and that reason is to give everyone at the table a valid language and method of communication to everyone else at the table.  Houserules are like slang.  Some slang is widely understood.  This type of slang is like minor houseruling.  Critical hits on a natural roll of 20 doesn't automatically hinder anyone else's understanding of the game.

But there comes a point where the slang becomes it's own language.  Have you ever seen one of those humor skits where someone is talking "jive" and another person can't understand what they're saying at all?  Excessive houseruling is about the same thing.  There comes a point in houseruling a system where you've eliminated the point of using the system in the first place.  You've added so much slang, you're talking a different language.

And you can definitely hold that against a game.  When a game requires that much houseruling to make it work, it can certainly be attacked for it.  A customer should be able to expect a certain amount of functionality "out of the box."

Quote from: SettembriniSo, if you are turned away by Palladium/ Rifts during the reading of the book, please say so. If it didn´t talk to you, if you couldn´t find anything: say so.

Actually if they haven't played it I think they shouldn't be in this Bottom 10 list at all, according to the OP. I've noticed a couple of entries on people's list that specifically mention they haven't played the game.

I mean I've flipped through Synnibar and said "nope, not my bag"...in a BIG way. Same with Rifts I took a look and thought "nah", although in the later it wasn't really the rules (I'm not going to comment on them one-way or another as I haven't even really read the rules). And I don't mean it in a Looking Down On It way. The setting just doesn't have the right kind of AWESOME for me. *shrug*

Since we're derailed anyways, I'll chime in...

I run Rifts.  I like Rifts.

I also think that the Rifts rules are something of a mess and could use a real re-tooling of a 2nd edition.  The current level of layout/presentation is quite subpar as well.

On the other hand, I think they are perfectly usable right now (just very "inelegant").  I don't really houserule much of anything.

What I usually do is use GM fiat a lot to know when to bend the rules or ignore them.  But I'd do that regardless of the system.

Quote from: jgantsSince we're derailed anyways, I'll chime in...

I didn't mean to.  I was just being my normal loveable self.