This game is sooo bad.. but I love it

[silva]

What games do you guys admit are really bad in some significant way, but.. fuck it, you love it regardless ?

Me, its Shadowrun.

- mathematically weird ( d6 pools with variable target numbers that go from 2 to 12): check.
- unnecessarily complex (different crap sub-systems for each aspect; situational modifiers gallore): check.
- a sub-system that keeps convolutedly weird after 4 editions (matrix): check.
- do not promote its fiction themes: check.
- reaaaaaaalllyy slooooooooow combat: check.

But whatever, I love the thing! It was the first rpg I ever played, and Im so familiar and comfortable with its rules that I can run it with eyes closed while sleepwalking! Also, its setting is the big selling point for me anyway.

How about you guys ?

[John Magnum]

I'm affectionate toward Fantasy Flight's various Warhammer 40k games, because I like the setting (well, via Relic's Dawn of War games) and because I've had good experiences with friends. There are a lot of pretty cruddy design decisions going on, though, and after like literally four games that each received major errata the "Healing" skill and just the basic "How do you recover from HP damage?" issue is still unbelievably fucked-up.

[Cynic]

Yeah, mostly liking a game despite it's horrible pitfalls is usually based on having good experiences with friends.

Let's see, Everquest d20 and the original hackmaster.

Also, while not a system the huge "world's largest dungeon" book. We never played the game for more than two sessions during any of the times we visited it but the terribad dungeon crunch still keeps itself in mind.

[Rawbeard]

I don't really love it, like at all, but I still do play 4e D&D and have some fun with it.
Unless the GM assumes trolls are level appropriate without any reliable fire damage. You can fight those fuckers for days. Just a small taste of what kind of bloat higher levels have to offer...

Yeah, I really don't love it, but close enough, I guess.

Oh, another one would be Savage Worlds. Fucking terrible engine, if you think D&D has a HP bloat that drags shit out, try to use Savage Worlds for High Fantasy and fight, I don't know, a dragon, or something. You'll hack on that fucker for hours without anything happening, mostly because you simply do no damage and if you do he will soak it, until he finally is unable to soak anymore and you oneshot that fucker from pristine condition to overkill by factor 10 or higher.
And don't say "it works for low fantasy". Number one, fuck you and number two, no it still doesn't, because now you don't have a wizard to fry that fucker out of his soaks and into enternity.
It works well with pulp-y settings though, SciFi, and modern shit, if you are boring.

[Atmo]

FAST RPG. It remembers Risus (whence is VERY BAD presented) with a good damage calculation, but it's open as hell to create new perks.

[hogarth]

Toon. I've always had fun playing it, but 80%+ of the skills we never ended up using (in favour of just making stuff up as we go along).

[tussock]

GURPS. Reading GURPS, at least. Getting ready to play it. Talking about your character builds. Such nice books, such intricate calculations to produce the most ordinary characters, such incredible accidental power disparity that results. So easy to get off the RNG at both ends for any number of critical situations, or all of them forever by getting just a touch to the left.

And then two of the three characters cannot be challenged at all and the third can't function at all. And it's always my character that's not functional, because I tried to tell an interesting story again rather than breaking things, because the books had such nice story hooks I didn't want to break! <sigh>


I think if you ignore the points and just promise not to break anything, it's ... well, it's not really GURPS any more. 4e's better, easier to spot the broken stuff at least, more self-consistent in it's math, less stupid-high and -low numbers floating around.

[OgreBattle]

RIFTS

it's every 80's anime smashed together into one setting with giant numbers subtracting from other giant numbers.

[Vebyast]

GURPS.

Similar experience here. It was the most fun I've ever had with a character. I fit him right into the setting, and the build informed a mindset and history that was just so much fun to RP on top of being entertaining inside and outside of combat... but, looking back, if the DM hadn't tweaked everything and then literally sat down with everybody and helped them hammer out their characters one at a time, the game would have crashed and burned before it even started.

[fbmf]

Star Wars D6. Mostly based on good times with friends in the days of yore.

2E Ravenloft, largely for the same reason.

Game On,
fbmf

[John Magnum]

Oh yeah, I love GURPS.

[PoliteNewb]

1st edition AD&D. Ninjas & Superspies. Synnibar.

[Leress]

BESM 1st and 2nd editions.

[TOZ]

D&D 3.x

It's a Frankenstein monstrosity, but we make do.

[RobbyPants]

Warhammer Quest (a board game, with a large rule book for expanding it into an RPG). I had a lot of fun with this in highschool and college. I loved the idea of a board game with 91 paintable miniatures and a board that you build each time you play.

Bad points:

• Overall fiddly rules.
• All attacks (and most actions) are resolved on a d6.
• Melee attacks are made by comparing Weapon Skills of the attacker vs the defender while looking up on a table (that seemed not to be derived from any mathematical formula).
• Ridiculously deadly monster abilities (really, only the rats in the core game, but lots of monsters in the expanded rules).
• Stupid random encounters in and on your way to towns.
• Stupid random events when trying to make business transactions at the town.
• If you end up more than one room away from the guy with the lantern, you trip, break your neck, and die (that was the actual justification in the rules). No standing there still until they come back to get you or buying your own fucking lantern. It's not like they even had rules for needing a free hand to have a lantern. Everyone should have a lantern and 15 backup lanterns.

If you could look past a lot of the lethal lolrandom of the game, it could be a lot of fun. At least charGen was quick (pick a character, roll d6 for Wounds, and give him a name). It did, coupled with the insane artwork, add a bit of charm to the game. Good for beer and pretzels.

[Neurosis]

Rifts.

mathematically weird ( d6 pools with variable target numbers that go from 2 to 12): check.

Target numbers have been fixed for like the last ten years.

That said, when they were floating, they went as high as whatever the fuck. They were not limited to 12.

I had a player succeed a TN 24 test once. True story.