Yeah, in retrospect GURPS 2e felt like a very serviceable system centered around fantasy--not surprising given its TFT roots. Unfortunately I lent my copy to somebody who moved away and never returned it, and I didn't think it was much of a loss because I believed that 3e was an improvement. However in practice the additional clutter was an encumbrance. I bow to David's judgment of the various tweaks (such as using IQ for guns); some of them probably did lead in wonky directions but I didn't play the game enough to know for sure. I will say that the new ranged weapon rules made a great deal of theoretical sense compared to the original, basically by unifying the effects of target size, range, and movement. In practice, I don't know.

High Tech was a pretty useless supplement from a game perspective, introducing way too many special rules for firearms, but a good historical/technical reference (as far as I can tell).

Ultimately, though, I gave the game a negative rating because the clutter which had already accumulated by the release of 3e, combined with lack of focus, made it hard to get really enthusiastic about playing. This may have been partly mitigated by excellent supplements like Japan and Swashbucklers. However, the one time I tried to play 3e, it was ruined by a severe personality/paradigm clash between me and one of the players. In some ways the complexity of 3e may have contributed at least indirectly (e.g., it induced me to try to streamline the process by making pregens, which led to some "push-back" by the players), in others I was just unlucky. But the survey asked for actual play, so I voted based on that experience.

Quote from: RPGPunditWouldn't the "bottom 10 RPGs of theRPGsite" actually be the ones that no one has even brought up, either way?

I'd argue that that'd be the "Most Forgettable 10 RPGs", although you are right that a game which gave you a lousy playing experience is a game which you at least bothered to play.

Then again, polling for Most Forgettable Game would be really difficult. "List 10 RPGs which have completely failed to make any impression on you" - not an easy question to answer!

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Blue Rose in either context, given how much heat it attracts around here.

I don't think the Blue Rose rules are what upsets people about it.  It's a lot more the my little pony rpg aspect.

I like the rules of Blue Rose, despise the writing/setting.

But the poll wasn't about RPG rules, it was about RPGs as a whole. RaHoWa could have the best system ever devised and it would still be a loathsome, poisonous bit of racist bullshit.

Quote from: WarthurBut the poll wasn't about RPG rules, it was about RPGs as a whole. RaHoWa could have the best system ever devised and it would still be a loathsome, poisonous bit of racist bullshit.

I know.  But I'd give the Blue Rose rules a B+, and the setting an F.  Overall as an RPG, that'd even out to somewhere a bit south of a straight C--not good enough that it would have made my personal list.

It's kind of funny that Cyberpunk 2020 edges in at #10 best, and the "fixed" version of the Interlock system, Fuzion, pops up at the #10 worst.

Fuzion really took an excellent game system and overcomplicated it.  The worst thing is that the reasoning behind the most questionable changes was to make the game less abusable, but it actually does the complete reverse.  In practice, players have many more ways to munch out their characters than before.

I think the biggest problem skewing the results was the requirement that you've actually played the games.

There are dozens of games I think are worse than GURPS, for example, but I couldn't list any of them because I haven't actually played them.

If a game sucks on the shelf, and no one is around to play it, does it really matter?

Quote from: jgantsI think the biggest problem skewing the results was the requirement that you've actually played the games.

There are dozens of games I think are worse than GURPS, for example, but I couldn't list any of them because I haven't actually played them.

I specifically wanted to avoid people voting for games that they hadn't played, because then the poll would be far too predictable. Hybrid, Synnibarr, FATAL, and RaHoWa would all be in the top 10.

Quote from: GabrielFuzion really took an excellent game system and overcomplicated it.  The worst thing is that the reasoning behind the most questionable changes was to make the game less abusable, but it actually does the complete reverse.  In practice, players have many more ways to munch out their characters than before.

Yeah, I think Fuzion suffered because the major balancing factor in the Cyberpunk rules - the Humanity mechanics - isn't universal enough to apply to other genres, so they had to come up with other balancing factors. (It doesn't necessarily fit the cyberpunk setting perfectly - people with prosthetic legs these days don't run the risk of becoming sociopaths - but that's an argument for another time.)

Ever see that clinical study that was put out a while ago? I think it was call The Fugitive?