Worst RPGs ever

Worst RPGs Ever

RPG.net is where all kinds of games are discussed, both the good and the bad ... and, occasionally, the ugly. Surprisingly enough, there is fairly good agreement among RPG.net denizens on which games are the worst of the worst, the ones that sit comfortably on the left tail of the curve, the ones that demean both the hobby and the people who play it, the ones you can't take seriously.

The following is a list of these bad games. Some have bad rules (confusing, contradictory, complicated, whatever); some have bad settings; most desperately need editing—and the truly bad ones are all of the above.

(Note that this page will probably be tweaked several times...)

Here are the leading candidates:

FATAL.

When it first hit the fora it was greeted with derision and disbelief, with posters quoting snippets from the ruleset as “evidence” that they can't be serious, this can't be a real game, they had to be putting everyone on. Sadly, it eventually came out that it was no joke, that Byron Hall and company were dead serious and firmly believed they had created the Greatest Game Ever (an opinion they apparently still hold). The short version: FATAL is over-complex, incoherent, racist, misogynist, and deviant in a bad way. More details are in the “Game That Must Not Be Named” entry and the links from there.

RaHoWa

The name is an acronym for Racial Holy War—and that should tell you most of what you need to know right there. The PCs play “White Warriors”, fighting against the classic 'enemies' of racist groups: blacks, Jews, latrinos (the game uses that term), and basically everyone outside of the “Aryan ideal”--or, would, if the game had decent rules. Incomplete, racist, and stupid. More details at Primary Error.

Wraeththu

At the top of the “bizarre setting” list is this game, based on a series of novels by Storm Constantine. The Wraeththu are bishonen ubermenschen who are apparently slowly taking over the Earth—and, along the way, converting the occasional human into one of them by having sex with them. Oh yeah, there are only male Wraeththu—and their genitalia look like flowers or anemones. (Hence the name I'm trying to popularize for it, MHLD, for Mr. Happy Looks Different.) More details are in Darren MacLennan's Wraeththu Review Thread.

HYBRID

One person's attempt to create one ruleset to simulate the whole of comics—or possibly an extended game of Nomic gone berzerk—or possibly a schizophrenic's cry for help. No one's entirely sure, including the author if the text is any indication. Probably not playable, but here because it is, after all, an attempt at a game.

KABAL

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Spawn of Fashan

(werdz go here)

World of Synnibar

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SenZar

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Leading Edge Games

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Cyborg Commando

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