RPGs: hall of shame

[rumble]

I can't read type that small anymore.

Maybe try Tales from the Loupe?

 

[Rich H]

Holy tomatoes, yes, Exalted! Forgot about that monstrosity.

This was, perhaps the worse one. Worse than Nobilis upthread because we started playing it and were having fun, quite a bit of fun and then I guess we hit that point where the PCs got to a certain level of power and therefore needed to really face off against other Exalted. The campaign had developed so that a circle of Abyssal exalted were required as antagonists and there were no short cuts in 1st edition to creating these or advice to running them smoothly/easily (I'm not even sure later editions adequately address it either but that's irrelevent) so after getting halfway through creating them I just got utterly pissed off with the game and realised from here on in it would only get worse - I could see purgatory stretching out as far as I could see! The options online to shortcutting this were just dumb fudges and the power differential between the PCs was significant too (even though they were all built on the same XP) so that made it even worse. In the end I just gave up in frustration. But, yeah, it was upsetting and thoroughly annoying because until then it had been pretty good. I've often thought about trying to use a better ruleset for it but really just can't be arsed. I've looked at the latest edition and it just made me laugh my arse off; if anything it looks even worse and the 'light' variant they have put out is an abuse of that word, in my opinion too.

Yep, Exalted. Into Room 101 with you.

Anyways, "thanks" so much for reminding me about this one!

 

[Ladybird]

I suspect even searching for that review would result in at least a 3 day ban over there these days

From what i heard on forums, it does sound like it crossed many lines, far too many for my tastes

But at least we can joke about it and demean it here. Awareness is always better than prohibition.

That is one cheesy cover, but I think it lets you know what you're in for, heh heh, best avoided

It doesn't really cross any lines, though. It just takes a ton of stuff that the author thought was controversial - it's an RPG with pissing and with a whore character class and with the orifice rules and stat modifiers depending on the size of your tits and it refers to character's penii as their manhood and magical effects that do things to your PC's genitals! - but it just throws it out there, with no context or meaning to it, so there's nothing to even get offended about. It's the equivalent of yelling "cunt!" in an empty room; yes, you did it, but why should we care?

At least Black Tokyo, LotFP, Gor, etc. are actually doing something with the gore and the filth. FATAL just exists.

 

[TristramEvans]

Holy tomatoes, yes, Exalted! Forgot about that monstrosity.

This was, perhaps the worse one. Worse than Nobilis upthread because we started playing it and were having fun, quite a bit of fun and then I guess we hit that point where the PCs got to a certain level of power and therefore needed to really face off against other Exalted. The campaign had developed so that a circle of Abyssal exalted were required as antagonists and there were no short cuts in 1st edition to creating these or advice to running them smoothly/easily (I'm not even sure later editions adequately address it either but that's irrelevent) so after getting halfway through creating them I just got utterly pissed off with the game and realised from here on in it would only get worse - I could see purgatory stretching out as far as I could see! The options online to shortcutting this were just dumb fudges and the power differential between the PCs was significant too (even though they were all built on the same XP) so that made it even worse. In the end I just gave up in frustration. But, yeah, it was upsetting and thoroughly annoying because until then it had been pretty good. I've often thought about trying to use a better ruleset for it but really just can't be arsed. I've looked at the latest edition and it just made me laugh my arse off; if anything it looks even worse and the 'light' variant they have put out is an abuse of that word, in my opinion too.

Yep, Exalted. Into Room 101 with you.

Anyways, "thanks" so much for reminding me about this one!

It's funny, Ive never heard aything but complaints and bad things about that game, but it got three editions. Might even still be getting published (?)

Like somebody is buying it, even though everyone (and I mean this is close to 20 years, I do mean EVERYone) hates on it. I don't believe I've ever seen it get any praise at all

 

[Rich H]

It's funny, Ive never heard aything but complaints and bad things about that game, but it got three editions. Might even still be getting published (?)

Like somebody is buying it, even though everyone (and I mean this is close to 20 years, I do mean EVERYone) hate it

Exalted Catnip: The Unfathomable!

 

[AsenRG]

wait, what? Was it the cover that drew you in?

View attachment 45219

Alas, the version I got didn't have any picture on the cover, so no! That cover would have probably acted as content warning...probably!
Or at least I'd have known to expect different content.

Thanks! Sorry to start on a negative note!

Welcome to the Pub. Most of us start on a negative note as well, I believe...usually with a variation of "I was on that other forum and it sucked, so I'm glad I'm here"!

It's funny, Ive never heard aything but complaints and bad things about that game, but it got three editions. Might even still be getting published (?)

Like somebody is buying it, even though everyone (and I mean this is close to 20 years, I do mean EVERYone) hates on it. I don't believe I've ever seen it get any praise at all

I feel neglected.
Like, you've never heard a bad thing about the setting from me. And I even like parts of the three systems...alas, not all the parts I like are in the same edition, but you get what you get...
So I can only conclude you've never read me posting in an Exalted thread.

 

[David Johansen]

So...Heroes Unlimited first edition. This is where Palladium jumped the shark. Skill selection alone took about an hour. Physical skills improved your physical stats but nothing in the universe could improve your mental ones. You only got one power if you got powers at all. No magic. It was also the best edition of Heroes Unlimited.

 

[JAMUMU]

I've been thoroughly let down by Mutants and Masterminds 3rd edition, and every edition of Exalted that came after the first. When I was a lad, I felt that 2nd edition AD&D was a huge disappointment, though my opinion on that has mellowed as I've aged.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

I find it weird that Unearthed Arcana has been rehabiliated by some elements of the OSR. I remember it being universally despised when it came out.

 

[Rich H]

To be fair, anything with a silly amount of Skills for what the game is doing is a massive NO for me, but I don't think that's quite on point for the subject of this thread!

 

[DeadBob]

I find it weird that Unearthed Arcana has been rehabiliated by some elements of the OSR. I remember it being universally despised when it came out.

I thought it was at least partially viewed negatively because so much of it was reprint material from Dragon, as opposed to new material.

 

[Psychopomp]

It's funny, Ive never heard aything but complaints and bad things about that game, but it got three editions. Might even still be getting published (?)

Like somebody is buying it, even though everyone (and I mean this is close to 20 years, I do mean EVERYone) hates on it. I don't believe I've ever seen it get any praise at all

I ran Exalted 1e and 2e weekly for almost 12 years straight, with only short breaks between multi-year campaigns. My group and I never had more fun at the RPG table than we did with Exalted.

However, I will freely admit that we made it sing at our table only because my players had significant genre buy-in over any desire to master the crunch on their end, and I quickly learned that you can't run Exalted NPCs with the full rules for PCs. I developed my own "quick characters" system way back in the days when the development team insisted it wasn't necessary. The concept that Charms could play out like a CCG was a fallacy from the get go, because the GM can't handle five CCG games and one RPG all at once in their head.

But when you run that game with NPC Exalts being a dice pool + 3-4 "special effects" Charms, and the rules-as-published are just for the PCs to play demigods? Combine that with a GM mindset of "yes, you absolutely can...but what will happen if you do?", then yeah, Exalted is one hell of a fun game.

 

[David Johansen]

To be fair, anything with a silly amount of Skills for what the game is doing is a massive NO for me, but I don't think that's quite on point for the subject of this thread!

To be fair anything that expects me to believe the GM won't claim my character can't do things that I think they should be able to. I want it in writing on my character sheet and in the rulebook thanks.

 

[Psychopomp]

In the spirit of the thread, the only "this is so bad, I gave it away" game I've ever encountered was D&D 3e. I wanted to like it so bad, but unlike Exalted, I just couldn't find a way to lower the burden on myself as the DM. I ran three short campaign attempts, and all three failed the first time I tried to run an NPC spellcaster. It was just too much to keep track of, even at low levels, as the NPC spell caster needs some friends to help them out...but there really weren't any minions/mooks/extras rules to help with that, either. Set piece battles always consisted of sheets of stat blocks to keep track of. It frustrated me to the point of pissing me off.

D&D 4e looked like it might be better suited to my tastes, but I couldn't get around the fact that it was all so centered around boardgame level positioning. It begged to be played with miniatures, and my group (and myself) were all wargamers, and we preferred wargames for minis and RPGs for theater of the mind. (I actually had an Iron Kingdoms RPG campaign fall apart when, every time combat started and minis/maps came out, we realized we were starting to play Warmachine instead of an RPG.)

 

[xanther]

To be fair, anything with a silly amount of Skills for what the game is doing is a massive NO for me, but I don't think that's quite on point for the subject of this thread!

I feel the same about a silly number of classes or feats but consider all that a matter of taste...one person's silly is another's fulsome options.
The only game that come immediately to mind with zero redeeming value is FATAL...but never bought it, just read a few pages of the rules. My therapist says I should be able to recover from that reading in just 4 dozen more sessions

 

[Rich H]

I feel the same about a silly number of classes or feats but consider all that a matter of taste...one person's silly is another's fulsome options.
The only game that come immediately to mind with zero redeeming value is FATAL...but never bought it, just read a few pages of the rules. My therapist says I should be able to recover from that reading in just 4 dozen more sessions

Agreed! It's why I did say "... I don't think that's on point for this thread". I'm totally with you on things like classes and feats, etc too. I really am a goldilocks player and GM regarding the right number of options - I want them broad enough to give me creative wiggle room but not too many to inhibit that same creativity. I find that a lot of granular options mean that too many exception based mechanics are created and therefore to do things in the game your character has to pick that option/skill/feat/etc. So, I need enough choices to differentiate but not too many to, perversely, restrict.

 

[CRKrueger]

wait, what? Was it the cover that drew you in?

View attachment 45219

You'll have to admit, that chick is hot enough to teabag a kobold for.

 

[Tulpa Girl]

I thought it was at least partially viewed negatively because so much of it was reprint material from Dragon, as opposed to new material.

I always thought that it was the new classes, which were generally broken in multiple ways*, which caused much of the ire for UA. The new spells, by contrast, I don't think most people had too much problem with.

*The thief-acrobat, as opposed to the barbarian and the cavalier, wasn't really broken or unbalanced, just boring and unneeded.

 

[DeadBob]

I always thought that it was the new classes, which were generally broken in multiple ways*, which caused much of the ire for UA. The new spells, by contrast, I don't think most people had too much problem with.

*The thief-acrobat, as opposed to the barbarian and the cavalier, wasn't really broken or unbalanced, just boring and unneeded.

I may be mis-remebering (since it was quite some time ago), but I think a Best of Dragon had come out prior to UA that covered a lot of the same ground (and may have even had other cool stuff in it that UA didn't have) at a lower cost (but obviously not a hardcover). For me (as a kid), it felt a bit like a money-grab as opposed to a real product.

Also, as a kid, overpowered wasn't really in my vocabulary.

Come to think of it, didn't UA make cantrips official? I think that alone should gain it a little forgiveness.

 

[Tulpa Girl]

It didn't help that, for a lot of people, the binding started to fall apart for their copies of UA after a couple of weeks.

 

[DeadBob]

It didn't help that, for a lot of people, the binding started to fall apart for their copies of UA after a couple of weeks.

Never heard about that (I still have a pretty decent copy on my shelf I got off E-Bay about a decade ago). OTOH, GW Rogue Trader 40K books were fricking awful about that (the minis game, not the later RPG).

 

[Imaginos]

Never heard about that (I still have a pretty decent copy on my shelf I got off E-Bay about a decade ago). OTOH, GW Rogue Trader 40K books were fricking awful about that (the minis game, not the later RPG).

I hadn’t either. My copy is pretty good.

 

[Toadmaster]

I never heard about or saw any AD&D books having binding issues. The issue most I knew had with UA was it was very power gamey, with the new die rolling methods and classes.

 

[ffilz]

I never heard about or saw any AD&D books having binding issues. The issue most I knew had with UA was it was very power gamey, with the new die rolling methods and classes.

My younger sister had a DMG that fell apart. Purchased sometime between 1979 and 1981. It wasn't used that much. When she ended up NOT being hooked by D&D, I turned it into a loose leaf book and eventually sold it. I've seen other spine issues, but never had spine issues with my personal books. My PH (the ONLY AD&D book I kept after college) has a loose spine, but it's still holding. The replacement books I got in the 2000s as used books all have good spines including UA but who knows how used each was, I haven't put very many miles on them.

 

[robiswrong]

D&D3 is really my anti-game. At first I thought it was a great, logical evolution.

In practice, especially after the splats?

It attempted to get too generic (while not achieving the genericness of something like GURPS), while increasing build complexity and optimization shenanigans beyond even GURPS.

I usually look towards D&D when I want something simpler. D&D3 ends up adding complexity I don't want from D&D, while not giving the flexibility I'd get in a truly generic system, and just focuses on all the things I don't want in RPGs.

I'd rather play old-school D&D for the simplicity, or an actual generic game if I want flexibility.

I mean, I get a lot of people love it. Good for them, and I'm glad it exists for them.

 

[T. Foster]

When Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures were released (1985) TSR was in very desperate financial straits (they were literally counting on sales of these two books to keep the company afloat) and had to go with a cheaper printer than they had previously used, which is why the binding quality is so notoriously poor on those two books (and also copies of the other hardbacks printed at the same time, but those are less common). It didn’t affect every copy, and within another year or two they went back to using better binding, but a large number of the first printing copies of those two books have broken bindings - either some pages fallen loose or in some cases the entire book separating from the cover.

Between this and the errata from Dragon #103 finally being incorporated into the text (which never happened under TSR), if you want a copy of Unearthed Arcana nowadays you’re much better off buying it POD from DriveThruRPG than buying a second-hand vintage copy.

 

[xanther]

Agreed! It's why I did say "... I don't think that's on point for this thread". I'm totally with you on things like classes and feats, etc too. I really am a goldilocks player and GM regarding the right number of options - I want them broad enough to give me creative wiggle room but not too many to inhibit that same creativity. I find that a lot of granular options mean that too many exception based mechanics are created and therefore to do things in the game your character has to pick that option/skill/feat/etc. So, I need enough choices to differentiate but not too many to, perversely, restrict.

Thread de-rail warning...not sure would be an RPG Pub thread without it

With you on that. I like options to be as broad as possible but still providing meaningful distinction. These categories should also be ones that easily allow me to design genre appropriate characters without exceptions or a convoluted sub-system...looking at you AD&D multi-classing.

On a lot of other options, like many skills or classes, to me it depends on how restrictive they are. That is, if there is alot of overlap then choosing one over another is mostly flavor and preference. I may not like it for page count and elegance and functionality of design reasons but have no fundamental mechanical issue with it.

I tend to have an issue with feats as in D&D as these are largely exceptions to the rules...so when you need to have so many exceptions to bring to fruition the creative vision I begin to wonder...and such a mechanical set up implies, if doesn't outright say, if something is covered by a feat then you need to have the feat to do it.

 

[Voros]

I ran Exalted 1e and 2e weekly for almost 12 years straight, with only short breaks between multi-year campaigns. My group and I never had more fun at the RPG table than we did with Exalted.

However, I will freely admit that we made it sing at our table only because my players had significant genre buy-in over any desire to master the crunch on their end, and I quickly learned that you can't run Exalted NPCs with the full rules for PCs. I developed my own "quick characters" system way back in the days when the development team insisted it wasn't necessary. The concept that Charms could play out like a CCG was a fallacy from the get go, because the GM can't handle five CCG games and one RPG all at once in their head.

But when you run that game with NPC Exalts being a dice pool + 3-4 "special effects" Charms, and the rules-as-published are just for the PCs to play demigods? Combine that with a GM mindset of "yes, you absolutely can...but what will happen if you do?", then yeah, Exalted is one hell of a fun game.

What genre is it based on exactly? I've seen it referred to as anime-based but I assume it much be a genre of anime I've avoided like the plague?

 

[Brock Savage]

I love the Exalted setting and own tons of 2e books but yea it's a classic case of S class setting married to the wrong system. One of my many RPG projects is Exalted using Godbound.

What genre is it based on exactly? I've seen it referred to as anime-based but I assume it much be a genre of anime I've avoided like the plague?

People will say it is anime but that is reductionist and unfair to the setting. There are many influences that make Exalted a truly unique fantasy setting. The one thing they were really specific about is that they intentionally excluded anything related to Tolkien.

 

[Silverlion]

What genre is it based on exactly? I've seen it referred to as anime-based but I assume it much be a genre of anime I've avoided like the plague?

Anime oversized weapons, big-powers, etc. In my view they said it was going to be at one time for doing games like Gilgamesh and Enkidu but--uh, I got giant oversized swords super-fantasy powers that make big things happen and weird fantasy politics (with 'classes') Although I think the Quickstart did the game far better than the entire weight tome (as what it was, not what I'd understood it was going to be.)



Also, I would discard World Tree for many many reasons, but never owned it. I talked to a friend ages ago about it, and that was enough.

 

[JAMUMU]

I love the Exalted setting and own tons of 2e books but yea it's a classic case of S class setting married to the wrong system. One of my many RPG projects is Exalted using Godbound.



People will say it is anime but that is reductionist and unfair to the setting. There are many influences that make Exalted a truly unique fantasy setting. The one thing they were really specific about is that they intentionally excluded anything related to Tolkien.

Exalted using Godbound is hand-wavy fun, so long as the GM knows the lore enough to just roll with it.

The original Exalted 1st edition wasn't even an "anime" setting, though a lot of the art and the core nation skewed that way. It had deep shades of sword and sandal/sword and planet/Bronze age historical/Pirate King stuff alongside the anime flavour, and it was easy to run a campaign without any direct reference to the anime elements. I ran a sword and sorcery in the jungle type campaign for a new group for a good while, and the look on the player's faces the first time a Lookshy patrol rocketship passed overhead was a GMing highlight.

 

[Psychopomp]

What genre is it based on exactly? I've seen it referred to as anime-based but I assume it much be a genre of anime I've avoided like the plague?

Epic demigod heroes (in the classical sense of the term) with powers adhering to tropes found in the mediums of wuxia and anime, in a setting blending some of the best parts of Greek myth, Asian myth (yes, multiple Asian sources), and sword n' sorcery. Yeah, that's a mish-mash, but that was the part of the charm. It was everything "epic, flawed heroes" all at once.

Or, as I once described it, I loved running Exalted, because I felt like I was running the Miyazaki/Anno collaboration anime of Romance of the Three Kingdoms; screenplay adaptation by Robert E. Howard.

 

[Voros]

Epic demigod heroes (in the classical sense of the term) with powers adhering to tropes found in the mediums of wuxia and anime, in a setting blending some of the best parts of Greek myth, Asian myth (yes, multiple Asian sources), and sword n' sorcery. Yeah, that's a mish-mash, but that was the part of the charm. It was everything "epic, flawed heroes" all at once.

Or, as I once described it, I loved running Exalted, because I felt like I was running the Miyazaki/Anno collaboration anime of Romance of the Three Kingdoms; screenplay adaptation by Robert E. Howard.

Huh, maybe I need to take a closer look at Exalted 1e but demigod powers doesn't match the many wuxia films I've seen, a handful have overtly supernatural powered characters in films like Buddha's Palm, etc. but not nearly at the level of demigods imo.

Which anime would y'all say are an influence on Exalted?

 

[The Convenient Skill]

7th Sea 2nd edition for me.

I didn't get through the setting chapters at the front of the book.

Let's grab the Arthurian period, the Viking era and the Thirty Years War and mix it all together.

Why not throw in North America with cowboys, independence war and prohibition at the same time? Or a Communist eastern nation with huge production facilities, wuxia fighting and ninjas? I get rule of cool, but it's just jarring.

I didn't even make it to the actual rules before it was been shelved, not impressed.

 

[Psychopomp]

Huh, maybe I need to take a closer look at Exalted 1e but demigod powers doesn't match the many wuxia films I've seen, a handful have overtly supernatural powered characters in films like Buddha's Palm, etc. but not nearly at the level of demigods imo.

Which anime would y'all say are an influence on Exalted?

Like I said, it's a mish-mash. What if wire-fu Achilles had a buster sword and magic sunlight powers? What if wire-fu Hercules had magic earth powers and the sorcery to summon demon bodyguards. What happens when they both want the same magic house? Will they put aside their differences team up to fight wire-fu Sauron and his Black Cauldron?

It was crazy, and glorious, and inspired by whatever anime you wanted. But mainly it was inspired that one anime with that one scene where one of the heroes did that thing that was so badass and crazy everyone in the living room was either cheering or shouting, "Holy shit, did you see that?"

But here's the deep secret: the magic of Exalted and why it stayed so popular isn't the Charms system, or the setting, or the fiction blurbs between the chapters. The beating heart of Exalted is the stunt mechanic.

 

[Ben Adams]

D6 DC universe. Still have the box set, love the art, but good chernabog the rules are a kick in the jimmy.

LotR CODA. During the LotR craze I was so excited to run this. 5 sessions later i was out.

Savage Worlds & I are in a whirlwind. I've played it a few times w/different groups and it just has not clicked. I read thing about it, think that's cool & I'm interested, but after a while i feel like I could do the same crap in D6 or True20 & easier. I see great write ups, cool looking house rules for taste, and get excited about all the settings. But then after a while and a few sessions I just don't feel it again. But I keep getting crap for it. I think I am the hall of shame in this instance.

 

[Vargold]

The Issaries edition of Hero Wars. Only RPG I have ever taken back to the store for a refund.

 

[Jenx]

Another one that occurred was Stormbringer (GW)

This one:

I was never a fan of Elric but ran it anyway and the book more or less dissolved and was loose leaf after a week or so. I think the glue evaporated on contact with oxygen. Regardless whether the game was good or not (it was ok I think? That was a while ago...) it was shocking how poor the quality of the book was. These days I talk from the perspective of someone who prints and binds their own hardback books (which for the most part are solid, functional and long lasting. I'm yet to properly master softbacks as I've only done a couple) and they are sewn and glued with good (90gsm) or excellent (120gsm) paper. Made to last because if they fall to bits I can only blame myself.

That picture I got from ebay. Aside from being a bit battered I wondered if it had the same...

Yup. There are several of this book for sale and all at 'chancers' prices because its not that common. £40+ or equivalent. One of the listings doesn't mention about the binding but all others have issues - Spine knackered, pages loose, some pages missing but we still want a salty price for it. Ummm nah, I'll pass.

So for that this specific version of Stormbringer gets a Hall of Shame nomination for me for being made with a piss poor binding that for me was the first experience of RPG books being less than indestructible . Though we had all the D&D books going none of them were particularly fragile and I gave em a battering but this thing (GW Stormbringer not sure version) was shite for being quite expensive at the time and defective binding from day one.

 

[3rik]

I got rid of all my Savage Worlds games and books, except Solomon Kane.

Wait, people play Rolemaster? I assumed people just did what we did as kids and read the critical hit table to each other with awe.

I know for a fact people actually play it. Some even won´t play anything else.

When I ran Conan I was finding that I just never had enough Doom to really threaten the players. If I hoarded until the end of the session the players could see that the encounter wasn't meant to be that dangrous, and if I spent it, I would end up running out before the end of the session.

 

[Toadmaster]

D&D3 is really my anti-game. At first I thought it was a great, logical evolution.

In practice, especially after the splats?

It attempted to get too generic (while not achieving the genericness of something like GURPS), while increasing build complexity and optimization shenanigans beyond even GURPS.

I usually look towards D&D when I want something simpler. D&D3 ends up adding complexity I don't want from D&D, while not giving the flexibility I'd get in a truly generic system, and just focuses on all the things I don't want in RPGs.

I'd rather play old-school D&D for the simplicity, or an actual generic game if I want flexibility.

I mean, I get a lot of people love it. Good for them, and I'm glad it exists for them.

This is my issue as well. It really isn't an awful game, but I have much better options.