How about Senzar?

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_3161.html

Reviewers Quote

"Almost every gamer online seems to have heard of this game, and they've all heard that nothing is comparable in its badness."

red_bus wrote:1st edition, Chivalry and Sorcery magic system.  Basically, "sit at home and play with alchemical test tubes and herbs".

To validate your point a copy was just listed on eBay under

Games->Role Playing->Horror  




** expired/removed eBay auction **

prismatic_dm wrote:

deadlord wrote: 3E

1st edition was known for having killer DMs. 3rd edition is known for killing DMs.  

Steve

  Good one, and I have had a few close brushes with death at that! Imho, I do not think 3/3.5 E is the worst, but to each his/her own. I find it is more the way the system is represented by, say, the covers of the books, some of the sytlised art work (which can really blow) and so on, but I do believe the system is playable.  
       Anyway I digress, and the worst system I ever played was......... this crazy rpg which I can't quite recall the name of, but the premise was America was taken over by Communists, and you played a "rebel" against  the Reds. Garbage imho. The worst experience I had for an RPG was the Star Wars D6 game. Just poorly run, and it completely turned me off of it.

America was taken over by Communists, and you played a "rebel" against  the Reds.

Is that "The Price of Freedom?"

I don't have as wide a field of experience playing various role-playing games.

I have mostly played all the editions of D&D, and some wargames.

But, the one RPG I have a lot of experience in other than D&D is 1st and 2nd Edition Shadowrun.

Although the background and the overall feel of the game were quite compelling, the actual rules were the clunkiest set of lead feet anyone ever had to walk around on.

The accumulation of d6's...the unbalanced magic system...the arcane rules for decking...the mind-numbing calculations to accomplish essentially any task...

Fighting with a sword or hand-to-hand in Shadowrun required the use of a system easily as clunky as the D&D grapple rules.

Nothing in the game just worked.  Every spell, every skill, every attack, every machine, every everything was adjudicated by complicated algorithms that sometimes defied logic.

For instance...try blowing somthing up in 1st edition Shadowrun.  The power of an explosive could increase the size of a blast, but not the damage.  Consequently, any given ordinary person could easily survive a grenade blast...even from a grenade stuffed in one's own pants!

A ton of TNT, dropped right on a street samurai, might leave him with a moderate wound.  However, the explosion of a number of very tiny blobs of TNT could blow him to Hell.

A street samurai, sitting on a block of dynamite, could have his car blown away around him, but he would survive...sitting on the street amidst the remnants of his car seat...with only a moderate wound.

Any mage capable of reading the rulebook could instantly control the mind...including knowing and dictating all the thoughts and memories of any person...simply by using an easily accessible spell.  Bind a few elementals and burn them to buy successes and it became essentially impossible to resist such an attack....laughable to even try.

It was perfectly possible for a stationary car to dodge bullets.

Computer security was absolutely air tight...except that even an incompetent decker character could easily overcome the maximum level 10 Black ICE security.  Not even a close battle.

Then, in the midst of all the chaos, FASA introduced a series of what amounted essentially to splat books that tinkered with game balance and added equipment and game features that would periodically send game balance spinning.

It says something about the compelling storyline and feel of Shadowrun that so many people played it.  We loved it and played it for two years.

I quit when my players no longer bothered to even have their characters investigate anything....they just opened fire on virtually any target, and I had become too jaded to want to do anything about it anymore.

Shadowrun was especially ludicrous in the hands of a GM who could not understand how the game was supposed to work.  I played with one GM who mistook the Shadowrun character progression system for a level-oriented system.  He basically ran Shadowrun as a superheroes game...with the player characters as low level superheroes.

I once participated in a "run" with that GM where "Mr. Johnson" died during our initial meeting...before he could tell us what the run was.  A restaurant wall blew out, bio-ware (splatbook) superheroes ran in, killed Mr. Johnson and absconded with his body (literally) before my character could even move...and it was all legal according to the splatbook rules.

I stayed with the game anyway, and developed my character by putting all of his efforts into being insanely good with one specific type of heavy pistol (with a "reactive trigger.")  My character couldn't do anything else...but when one of the GM's pet superheroes appeared on the scene I would do nothing but shoot at him.  I would blast the NPC with the first shot and watch while the GM used all of his "combat pool" (2nd edition) to take only moderate damage.  Then, with my opponent's combat pool expended (and mine still to be used), I would say, "OK...second shot..."  I don't think that GM ever realized that I was playing mostly just to thwart him by slaying his darlings.

I loved Shadowrun, but it was like loving a beautiful but exceptionally  contrary, willful and high maintenance woman.

Mark  

FormCritic wrote:Shadowrun

... the actual rules were the clunkiest set of lead feet anyone ever had to walk around on.

Nothing in the game just worked.  

*fixes*

Ah, that's better.

Shadowrun ruined two game groups I played in at college. One as a player, the other as GM. It should have made my first post as one of the worst games. I guess I blocked it from memory. Oh, the fights between players ...

*assumes fetal position*

Steve

g026r wrote:

In that case, you'll surely want to bid on this auction.

Holy crap, that's it!  Man, I gotta say, it's been at least...nearly 16 years since I played that, so maybe the rules didn't really suck or maybe, the GM really blew (this was the same fellow who ran the craptacular game of Star Wars...also made by WEG iirc), but it certainly left an indelible mark on me...."Better Dead Than Red" game was how we referred to it.

Xaxaxe wrote:Honest answer: the worst system I ever tried to play was 3E. It was a complete nightmare ... 45 minutes to resolve one encounter between six goblins and four first-level delvers. That was my first and last session.

One of the best systems I've ever played, though, was also 3E ... but it was on a computer. Neverwinter Nights, baby! Complete proof that 3E, is, in fact, a video game.

I guess I've been lucky in that we very infrequently branched out into different systems than AD&D, or other TSR RPGs. Although it was fun, 1st edition Top Secret could be a mess.  There were so many numbers and calculations needed for any combat, that a calculator was required.  At one point of running a scenario, I remember everyone at the table using one of the new clunky T.I.  portable calculators during the game to calculate chances to hit and damage....

Plus the HTH combat just plain didn't work.  And the progression system was completely ridiculous (a nod to AD&D, didn't work in an espionage game).  And other stuff.  Still, a fun enough game IMO to overcome a lot of the mess.

Mike B.

If I felt up to it, I'd be throwing in the defense for SR1, but that's alright... there are quirky problems with it but SR2 fixed a lot of them (and then introduced a bunch more.) Anyway, after the one I already mentioned, I'd have to say that RIFTS (actually, the Palladium universal game system itself) is the worst game ever. Great ideas, and lots of them, but things are so all over the place, so over-the-top on one side, backhanded on the other, with mixes and matches of pure imbalance and "oh sweet Jesus" as to make it a virtual nightmare to DM without having first combed every book, made a list, and then checked it twice to make sure you're not letting the PCs get away with something. I, also, have a problem with any hit roll over 4 being a success. I guess it makes sense, and helps make combat faster... but, still. And then there are like 5 types of damage: MDC, SDC, HP, PPE, ISP, and on and on, and some have some, most have most, and few have few. I haven't even mentioned that it takes like 5 hours to create the character, cross-reference all the skills, add in every bonus, flip through all 50000 books, and by the end of it, you can get killed by a single natural 20. Yay! Put me down for that!

I do love the books as a resource, though, for all kinds of games... I just hate the mechanics.