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Bad Roleplaying Games
Nov. 18th, 2004 12:20 pmI have a list of really bad RPG games. I have played the ones I have listed below, and each and every one of these left me cold at some point.
I thought DragonQuest by SPI read rather like a college thesis on metaphysics. I lost my copy of the book for a time, got nostalgic, then rediscovered it. Read it, and promptly put it back where I'd lost it.
How it sucked: restrictive rules, lack of setting.
Odd thing is, it was the first FRPG I encountered to bring in, erm, you know, the ladies ... ;)
I liked Traveller, but I hated the Judges Guild crap they put out - and I could not believe what they did to the setting with Traveller 2300 and *choke* Traveller: The New Era, all of that dreck about bringing the Third Imperium down, the Vampire Ships, the Virus etc etc. Hated it.
The early FASA Traveller stuff was nice, though, especially the Sky Raiders trilogy - very Indiana Jonesish, with a Traveller twist in the tale when it turned out that the "ancient home of the Sky Raiders" turned out to be spaceborne.
Hated the K'Kree. Oh, and it also sucked that the Solomani (Terrans) were a slave race.
I kind of gave up on D&D when they brought out Spacejammer. That just blew chunks.
I thought the Middle Earth Rolemaster setting was a child's game. I still wouldn't dream of setting a game in Middle Earth, regardless of the game engine. The setting leaves me cold.
Chaosium's Superworld also left me cold. It was dry as dust. So, sadly, was Ringworld, in spite of its promise - the game was waay too overpriced, the sourcebook was replete with typos, and nobody here had heard of Larry Niven's Future History.
Oh, and the author of that game was Larry DiTillio, who went on to Babylon 5 via Captain Power and The Soldiers of The Future.
Spacemaster was a hard game to figure out. The rules hurt my eyes. Part of the setting was kewl, especially the Transhumans and the Kashmere sourcebook - but the game engine itself was agony.
I liked Chivalry and Sorcery, the original game, because that contained the first detailed magic system that gave mages a decent treatment. C & S paved the way for Ars Magica, the Order of Hermes, and ultimately, Mage: the Ascension ... but argh, the chargen went on forever.
Similarly, Space Opera required a full session just to chargen. But once again, I was enamoured of Transhumans in that game.
Maybe I'm just fixated by huge, buff Amazonian women with smooth bodies, not too muscly, but not flabby ... just right, sleek and graceful ... *glances around, sees everyone staring* *ahem* Space Opera - lacked a decent setting, the aliens were silly, and the rules were unbelievable.
But the biggest disappointment I faced, and a huge disappointment it was, too, came when, with enormous fanfare, R Talsorian released the "sequel" to the first, and best, cyberpunk game going ... and they gave us Cybergeneration.
Where you have to play kids.
By the time I got this game, I was already an adult. Hells, I was an adult when I first bought D&D. And kids were, and are, far more interested in other things than tabletop RPG. The video games market, for one thing, has undisputed control over the prepubes market, and this game could not hope even to make a dent in that.
So, that was a game which sucked in spite of the hype, the "kewl r00lz" (simplified to the point of condescension), and the "kewl new setting" (which sucked big time, because I'd gotten used to the old Cyberpunk 2020 setting and this one was just awful) and certain elements of that ugly game (like the Final Solution, where the kids' own parents turned against the PCs and shipped them off to concentration camps.)
Think about it.
A game which featured children being shipped off, by their own parents, to concentration camps, under a corrupt regime where the President of the US is the puppet of the oil corporations and the Religious Reich ...
I'm too depressed with the awful reality of this world, thank you very much. I don't want my RPG to be set in it ...
I thought DragonQuest by SPI read rather like a college thesis on metaphysics. I lost my copy of the book for a time, got nostalgic, then rediscovered it. Read it, and promptly put it back where I'd lost it.
How it sucked: restrictive rules, lack of setting.
Odd thing is, it was the first FRPG I encountered to bring in, erm, you know, the ladies ... ;)
I liked Traveller, but I hated the Judges Guild crap they put out - and I could not believe what they did to the setting with Traveller 2300 and *choke* Traveller: The New Era, all of that dreck about bringing the Third Imperium down, the Vampire Ships, the Virus etc etc. Hated it.
The early FASA Traveller stuff was nice, though, especially the Sky Raiders trilogy - very Indiana Jonesish, with a Traveller twist in the tale when it turned out that the "ancient home of the Sky Raiders" turned out to be spaceborne.
Hated the K'Kree. Oh, and it also sucked that the Solomani (Terrans) were a slave race.
I kind of gave up on D&D when they brought out Spacejammer. That just blew chunks.
I thought the Middle Earth Rolemaster setting was a child's game. I still wouldn't dream of setting a game in Middle Earth, regardless of the game engine. The setting leaves me cold.
Chaosium's Superworld also left me cold. It was dry as dust. So, sadly, was Ringworld, in spite of its promise - the game was waay too overpriced, the sourcebook was replete with typos, and nobody here had heard of Larry Niven's Future History.
Oh, and the author of that game was Larry DiTillio, who went on to Babylon 5 via Captain Power and The Soldiers of The Future.
Spacemaster was a hard game to figure out. The rules hurt my eyes. Part of the setting was kewl, especially the Transhumans and the Kashmere sourcebook - but the game engine itself was agony.
I liked Chivalry and Sorcery, the original game, because that contained the first detailed magic system that gave mages a decent treatment. C & S paved the way for Ars Magica, the Order of Hermes, and ultimately, Mage: the Ascension ... but argh, the chargen went on forever.
Similarly, Space Opera required a full session just to chargen. But once again, I was enamoured of Transhumans in that game.
Maybe I'm just fixated by huge, buff Amazonian women with smooth bodies, not too muscly, but not flabby ... just right, sleek and graceful ... *glances around, sees everyone staring* *ahem* Space Opera - lacked a decent setting, the aliens were silly, and the rules were unbelievable.
But the biggest disappointment I faced, and a huge disappointment it was, too, came when, with enormous fanfare, R Talsorian released the "sequel" to the first, and best, cyberpunk game going ... and they gave us Cybergeneration.
Where you have to play kids.
By the time I got this game, I was already an adult. Hells, I was an adult when I first bought D&D. And kids were, and are, far more interested in other things than tabletop RPG. The video games market, for one thing, has undisputed control over the prepubes market, and this game could not hope even to make a dent in that.
So, that was a game which sucked in spite of the hype, the "kewl r00lz" (simplified to the point of condescension), and the "kewl new setting" (which sucked big time, because I'd gotten used to the old Cyberpunk 2020 setting and this one was just awful) and certain elements of that ugly game (like the Final Solution, where the kids' own parents turned against the PCs and shipped them off to concentration camps.)
Think about it.
A game which featured children being shipped off, by their own parents, to concentration camps, under a corrupt regime where the President of the US is the puppet of the oil corporations and the Religious Reich ...
I'm too depressed with the awful reality of this world, thank you very much. I don't want my RPG to be set in it ...
