Worst Tabletop RPG

[Kishigane]

What's the worst tabletop RPG you've ever played?

[JNAProductions]

What's the worst tabletop RPG you've ever played?

Ever played?

Probably 3.P D&D. And that system, despite its flaws, is still loads of fun!

Ever read or heard of?

FATAL.

[Jason]

The worst experience I've ever had playing an RPG was playing FFG's Star Wars system. It was with basically the same gamemaster and group as had played in another very good Star Wars game using the Saga edition a few years earlier, so I chalk it up to the game mechanics as the problem.

It's not that they didn't work, it's that they utterly failed to feel like Star Wars to me. I played a Jedi who was also a starfighter pilot, and as it turns out the system isn't very good at making either of those feel like they do in the movies.

As a Jedi I was annoyed at:

• How it was impossible to effectively defend myself from blaster shots (you can only reduce the damage of blaster shots by a relatively insignificant amount, not deflect them entirely, unless you buy lots of talents in specific talent trees). Compare that to the movies, where even padawans can fully deflect multiple blaster bolts each round.
• How whether an action drew on the Dark Side or not and therefore caused character conflict or not was determined entirely by whether the Dark Side or Light Side pips came up on the dice, not by what you were trying to do or what motivated your character. In fact, as a starting character its more than likely for the single die you get to come up Dark Side, since there are more Dark Side results on the die than Light Side, so you have to take conflict for doing just about ''anything'' with the Force.
• How conflict didn't matter much anyway, because it was extremely easy to become a lightside paragon and just stay above 90 morality, no matter what the dice said.

Some of the Force powers were rather limited and others were way overpowered, but that's probably true of any Star Wars game.

As a starfighter pilot I was annoyed by how starfighter combat was basically "He who hits first wins". Starship weapons are so damaging and starfighters have so few hull points that the only effective tactic was to hit the other guy before he got a chance at shooting at you. Maneuvers were so abstract and had so little effect on hit probability that they were basically useless.

As a player overall I was annoyed by how frequently non-sensical dice results would come up. It became almost routine to completely fail at whatever a PC was trying to do but have huge amounts of Advantage that we could spend on minor benefits that wouldn't effect the main result. Or to have multiple Triumphs with a failure or multiple Despairs with a success. Much of the time the gamemaster simply ignored the advantage or threat and just concerned himself with whether the roll had succeeded or not.

A system that can't emulate its source material is a system I consider a failure. I won't say that I will never play the game again, but if I do it won't be as a Jedi starfighter pilot.

[Xervous]

Played? Such a narrow range I’ve got that leaves me at 5e Shadowrun for all the nonsense in its rules and editing. Limits and wireless bonuses are mind bogglingly worse than D&D4e skill challenges and they choke the whole system.

Heard of? Racial Holy War. What it says on the tin.

[Anonymouswizard]

FFG's Star Wars system. But that might be my hate for proprietary dice.

Ever read or heard of?

FATAL.

RaHoWa is slightly worse. It's just as offensive as FATAL, although in a different way, but doesn't even have a complete ruleset.

There's a few contenders for the third spot IIRC, all for similar reasons as the top two spots.

[Cygnia]

Bad players/GMs can make any game system horrible. My opinions of The Everlasting, Earthdawn and Shadowrun have been colored by bad experiences with terrible people during play, giving me no real desire to ever try those games again.

[Morty]

D&D 3.5 is definitely the worst I've had the misfortune to play, even if I didn't realize it at the time. Which was simply because it was my first RPG and I just didn't realize you can do things differently and so much better.

[Ottriman]

Worst I've played is probably.... Deathwatch, though I only tried 1 test session. A game where a boss character can die to one round of basic gunfire due to exploding dice crits and where super experienced super soldiers have like 50% or less chance to hit a target at medium range is just not good on a basic level.

Worst I've heard of: FATAL, nuff said.

[Batcathat]

I haven't played a ton of different systems and I don't think I'd call any of the ones I've played "bad", though if I had to pick the worst one it'd probably be a Swedish game called Gemini. It was also the first one I ever played so the combination of nostalgia and me and my friends not properly understanding all the rules for years make it hard to evaluate it objectively though. It had some interesting ideas, both in the rules and the lore (looking back, it was kind of an odd combo of realistic-ish low fantasy and stereotypical high fantasy) but I think it falls short of the games I've played since.

Out of the games I haven't played but is at least somewhat familiar with, I'd probably agree with FATAL though the name alone certainly make it seem like Racial Holy War could be worse.

How whether an action drew on the Dark Side or not and therefore caused character conflict or not was determined entirely by whether the Dark Side or Light Side pips came up on the dice, not by what you were trying to do or what motivated your character. In fact, as a starting character its more than likely for the single die you get to come up Dark Side, since there are more Dark Side results on the die than Light Side, so you have to take conflict for doing just about ''anything'' with the Force.

What an odd choice for a Star Wars game. While I personally don't like the idea of "these powers are Good, these powers are Evil", it's usually very much the case in Star Wars.

[Morty]

Worst I've played is probably.... Deathwatch, though I only tried 1 test session. A game where a boss character can die to one round of basic gunfire due to exploding dice crits and where super experienced super soldiers have like 50% or less chance to hit a target at medium range is just not good on a basic level.

Having played Deathwatch, it's hard to disagree. Taking the base Dark Heresy system and scaling it up to Space Marines did not go well.

[Jason]

Bad players/GMs can make any game system horrible.

They can make your experience horrible, but that's not really the game system. I used to think that the system didn't matter too much as long as I had a good group to play it with.
FFG Star Wars made me realize the mechanics actually are more important than I had thought, at least to my experience.

My RPG playing experience includes: AD&D 1st & 2nd editions, D&D BECMI, Star Frontiers, D&D 3rd through 5th edition (although only one session of 4th), Shadowrun 3rd edition, Twilight: 2000 (1st edition), GURPS (3rd and 4th). WEG Star Wars, MERP, MegaTraveller, FASA Star Trek, Last Unicorn Star Trek, Decipher Star Trek, Mechwarrior 1st - 3rd edition, Legend of the Five Rings 1st - 4th edition, Call of Cthulhu 5th - 6th edition, WOTC Star Wars Revised - Saga editions, FFG Star Wars, Spycraft 1st & 2nd editions, AEG Stargate SG-1, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Cyberpunk 1st edition, Earthdawn 1st & 2nd editions, WOTC Wheel of Time, 7th Sea, Rifts, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Robotech, Teenagers from Outer Space, Warhammer Fantasy RP 1st edition, The One Ring, and probably a few others I'm not remembering at the moment.

If I add games I've only run but never actually played there's probably at least a dozen more.

[gijoemike]

Bad players/GMs can make any game system horrible. My opinions of The Everlasting, Earthdawn and Shadowrun have been colored by bad experiences with terrible people during play, giving me no real desire to ever try those games again.

The group and prior experience mean everything. I have had amazing games in FFG's Star Wars which several prior posters said was their worst game. It comes down to GM and understanding the system. Some of my best memories of gaming is in FFG Start War's. To each their own.


But also, when you ask what is the worst system, one must ALWAYS specify in what way?

1. Imbalance - I have had really bad experience with White Wolf's EXALTED because there are long power chains but sometimes there is a choice betwee a power like - you can always identify the best horse in a herd vs at the same tier - you can set an entire city block on fire dealing Xd in damage. There are many trap options and required system mastery to just make a decent starting character. Powers were sometimes very specific highly situational but not useful vs effective general common powers. My group played 2 sessions before we agreed this just will not work.

2. Ineffectiveness of characters - We played Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader. Great setting, awesome concept. We all picked a different class to play. I happened to pick the void master because I could pilot a ship. The GM ran a space battle. We quickly discovered that the other 5 players at the table couldn't participate except in contrived situations were they only had like 40% chance to succeed. At first we thought we must have made the characters incorrectly. So we all sat down and read the rules and "remade" our characters. Come to discover, we had created the toons right the first time. Rogue Trader makes characters not very competent at running or operating a space ship. The entire point of the game is you are the leadership on a massive spaceship running trade between sections of space in the 40k setting. The games pitch vs delivery was just plain awful. The system was fine but characters were not good at much even after a few skill pt allocations. Ground combat worked ok but was deadly as all get out.

3. Game Design just didn't work - Tortured Earth - I have played in 2 demo games of this. The way skills level actually makes you worse at the ability because you give up uses of the power to make it better. Combats are supposed to be fast but in reality take quite a bit of time. The demo's are blocked for convention time slots. Never finished one. The game devs think teaching and playing their game is 3 times quicker than it actually is. It is supposed to blend magic, horror, fantasy, sci fi. It doesn't work well. I think this game could be FUN. But I have yet to see it work.

4. Oh God, ick, why am I doing this? - this is the category where FATAL resides. BOVD based D&D games would fall here too. This is more content then system. I would like to point out that FATAL requires multiple d100 stats and sub stats. Lots of math and the numerical combos don't make sense.

5. GM was an idiot. - I played a game of Deadlands: hell on earth some 16 years ago. This is the worst game I have ever sat at. Period. The table wanted to stab the GM. We rolled up to the adventure, we questioned, investigated, prepared. Were were told about the worms in the earth popping up and grabbing folks (we know what it looked liked, how it acted, and where it came from). We got on the roof with our guns, waited until noon before luring them out. We knew what was coming, when it was coming, and we set an ambush, where the monster couldn't get to us. GM called for fear checks. OK. that is pretty common for a mild fear in this game. We had done out best to mitigate this.

The GM set the check at 12. A TWELVE. You draw cards in that game. That means we had to draw from a playing card deck looking for a Queen, King, or Ace, or Joker. I had an ability for +2. 10s, Jacks+. The whole table failed. So the GM rolled fear. He rolled on the massive fear/dread chart. One guy had a heart attack and died (they left the table). I (the extra brave one) fainted and was out for the entire combat ( the only one in session). Some else got the shakes until they got therapy. It was nearly a tpk. We had NPC's that all made their check. It was a horrible session. The GM didn't understand the DC's, or how to tell the story. He refused to understand character motivations or player agency in our character choices. Everything was impossible and made little sense. Missing a roll had horrible consequences even for very minor rolls. WORST GAME EVER.

[gijoemike]

They can make your experience horrible, but that's not really the game system. I used to think that the system didn't matter too much as long as I had a good group to play it with.
FFG Star Wars made me realize the mechanics actually are more important than I had thought, at least to my experience.

My RPG playing experience includes: AD&D 1st & 2nd editions, D&D BECMI, Star Frontiers, D&D 3rd through 5th edition (although only one session of 4th), Shadowrun 3rd edition, Twilight: 2000 (1st edition), GURPS (3rd and 4th). WEG Star Wars, MERP, MegaTraveller, FASA Star Trek, Last Unicorn Star Trek, Decipher Star Trek, Mechwarrior 1st - 3rd edition, Legend of the Five Rings 1st - 4th edition, Call of Cthulhu 5th - 6th edition, WOTC Star Wars Revised - Saga editions, FFG Star Wars, Spycraft 1st & 2nd editions, AEG Stargate SG-1, Werewolf: the Apocalypse, Cyberpunk 1st edition, Earthdawn 1st & 2nd editions, WOTC Wheel of Time, 7th Sea, Rifts, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Robotech, Teenagers from Outer Space, Warhammer Fantasy RP 1st edition, The One Ring, and probably a few others I'm not remembering at the moment.

If I add games I've only run but never actually played there's probably at least a dozen more.

LAST UNICORN Star Trek was Amazing. There was a Decipher version of Star Trek?

Game mechanics are always important. How do you interact with the game world without them? I have a tendency to dislike games that become "Mother, may I?" with the DM. If the game mechanics and structure don't give me an idea of how hard or common a given task/item how do I as a character understand it is an option. Having to ask the DM for permission to do everything is a pain. I think this is a reason I have issues with D&D 5e. Different GMs will allow various levels of rule of cool for questions and tasks that should have been in a rulebook. What is the DC for a given task could be a 10 from one GM but a 20 from a different. That makes it hard to function in the world as a PC or P not knowing if I can reasonably do X.

[zarionofarabel]

D&D 3.X made me swear off D&D all together. (Though I may run a really Old Skool Red Box Clone campaign just for nostalgia and a giggle one day!)

The entirety of the "everything D20" era made me realize that System Matters! Finding a system that can properly emulate the media you are trying to, well, emulate, is of the utmost importance.

FFG Star Wars made me realize that dice mechanics that draw players out of the narrative to focus on said dice mechanics are not for me.

Reading and watching some actual plays of Fate and some version of PbtA made me realize that I just can't grasp certain systems no matter how much I want to. I just have to stick to the old "traditional" TTRPGs I guess.

All that being said I don't want to call them the worst TTRPGs. Lots of peeps love these games and will play them and enjoy them and that is awesome!

I think the worst TTRPGs are the ones others have mentioned upthread that I'm guessing were written by Nazis or members of the KKK.

[Jay R]

The Arduin Grimoire managed to combine the vagueness and uncertainty of a rules-light system with the ponderous unplayability of a rules-heavy one.

Chivalry and Sorcery was the most lush, vivid, glorious, immersive, well-researched, carefully-detailed, compellingly unplayable mess I've ever seen.

[Ajustusdaniel]

Not played personally, but a subsection of my gamer group had a go at what I believe was some sort of fan-made Pokemon TTRPG. Game was called part-way through the first session when they realized that the combat rules, as written, were fundamentally non-functional for several of the Pokemon.

[Jason]

The group and prior experience mean everything. I have had amazing games in FFG's Star Wars which several prior posters said was their worst game. It comes down to GM and understanding the system. Some of my best memories of gaming is in FFG Start War's. To each their own.

Well, yes, it was a personal taste thing, but it was the mechanics that put me off of FFG Star Wars, since the group was the same one I had enjoyed playing Saga edition with. Part of the problem was also that we played through most of the printed adventures, and it just went on and on. It took us more than a year.

But also, when you ask what is the worst system, one must ALWAYS specify in what way?

True. I blame my experience on the imbalance of the system, ineffectiveness of the characters, and the game design not working in the sense that it didn't feel at all like Star Wars. My group was fine and the GM was no idiot.

LAST UNICORN Star Trek was Amazing. There was a Decipher version of Star Trek?

A rather short-lived one, yes. It was very similar to LUG's version, actually, and some of the same designers crossed over with the license.

Game mechanics are always important. How do you interact with the game world without them? I have a tendency to dislike games that become "Mother, may I?" with the DM. If the game mechanics and structure don't give me an idea of how hard or common a given task/item how do I as a character understand it is an option. Having to ask the DM for permission to do everything is a pain. I think this is a reason I have issues with D&D 5e. Different GMs will allow various levels of rule of cool for questions and tasks that should have been in a rulebook. What is the DC for a given task could be a 10 from one GM but a 20 from a different. That makes it hard to function in the world as a PC or P not knowing if I can reasonably do X.

That sounds to me like a DM problem rather than a system problem. 5th edition actually has fairly clear DCs compared to 3.5, they don't go up as you level up, and if you have a good attribute you have a reasonable chance of succeeding whether or not you are proficient.

[Kishigane]

RaHoWa is slightly worse. It's just as offensive as FATAL, although in a different way, but doesn't even have a complete ruleset.

RaHoWa is strictly worse.

[Grod_The_Giant]

That I've played? Probably Exalted 2e--the system was slow, clunky, unbalanced, and I never really understood how to make it work. I also rolled up a standard wizard type in a game where the was tons of background lore I (as a player) just didn't know and where spellcasting took literally twice as long as anything else in combat for no good return. On the other hand, that game yielded two good friends and a bunch of wonderful RPG moments, so <shrug>.

Spoiler: My all-time favorite that's probably not funny if you weren't there

Show

The party included an ascetic Zenith (paladin type) and a Lunar (turns-into-animals barbarian type). One of the setting concept is "Solar/Lunar mates," where every Solar/chosen of the sun (default character type; Zeniths like the paladin are a type of Solar) have mystical bonds with one of the Lunars/chosen of the moon-- no matter how often they reincarnate, they'll always find each other and become close in one fashion or another. It was established that the Zenith and Lunar were one such pair, but the Zenith didn't know it and the Lunar wasn't entirely happy with it*. The Zenith also had a mischievous demon familiar who would usually refuse to help unless he promised to do some extremely low-level bad thing ("trip that guy!").

You might see where this is going.

The Zenith and most of the party are taking shelter in a bunker, while the Lunar is standing guard outside. The Zenith is trying to get his familiar to go scouting and see if the baddie were still looking for us, and it--as usual--is trying to get something out of him. Finally, giggling (both in and out of character), the GM whispers something in the player's ear.

"Oh no. Oh, no no no. I am not doing that."

There's some more back-and-forth, and finally the Zenith throws up his hands shouting "fine!" He storms out into the hall to find the Lunar, saying "stupid (familiar) won't do his job unless we kiss, let's get this over with."

And the Lunar's player, without missing a beat and with a totally deadpan expression on his face, says "I'm a porcupine."




*The character wasn't happy with it, that is. The players were the ones who'd chosen to set up the relationship in the first place and were both on board with the whole scene.

Legends of Anglerre gets an honorable mention for being an attempt to create a D&D style experience using Fate 2e rules, but written without understanding what made either system fun. In a similar vein, the Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG one-shot I played through straddled the line between "board game" and "combat-focused RPG" in the most frustrating ways.

[Jason]

RaHoWa is strictly worse.

Well, now that raises a question: should an RPG be considered bad if it concerns a subject that you find personally offensive, regardless of whether the system works well or not?

There are plenty of systems out there that I am not interested in playing because they cover subjects I am not interested in. Does that mean they are bad systems?

[JNAProductions]

Well, now that raises a question: should an RPG be considered bad if it concerns a subject that you find personally offensive, regardless of whether the system works well or not?

There are plenty of systems out there that I am not interested in playing because they cover subjects I am not interested in. Does that mean they are bad systems?

There's a difference between "I'm not interested," "I find this distasteful," and "This is morally wrong."

High School Harem Comedy is a system on this forum that I'd imagine a lot of people are just not interested in. That doesn't make it bad, it just makes it unappealing to those folk.

A system that deals with trauma, rape, and other things in a good way could still be distasteful to someone-it's a topic they don't want to address at all. That doesn't make it bad.

But a system that delights in racism and sexual assault, like FATAL does (and presumably RaHoWa, though I've not looked into that) is morally wrong. That doesn't necessarily make the mechanics bad, though FATAL has garbage mechanics, but it does make the system as a whole bad.

[Zombimode]

I think my personal worst RPG experience, system wise, was with Spirit of 77, a PbtA game. Part of the was the setting. But the larger part was the very specific style of game that all PbtA games try to enforce: I do get what these games are trying to do, but to me it is really the complete opposite of how I want to do things in an RPG.

I also had a very bad experience playing a magic user in 2d20 Conan. My disappointment does not extend to the rest of the system. Just trying to play a wizard is an excercise in frustration: you pay an arm and a leg at character creation, and then during the game when you actually cast some magic you roll a bunch of dice to achieve... maybe some minor effect.

[The Random NPC]

What an odd choice for a Star Wars game. While I personally don't like the idea of "these powers are Good, these powers are Evil", it's usually very much the case in Star Wars.

From what I remember, it's a mechanical abstraction of the temptation of the dark side. At low levels you'll only have one force die and light side pips are few and far between to represent your character's difficulty in finding a calm center. On the other hand, you'll nearly always roll at least one dark side pip (there are more faces with dark side pips, more dark side pips on those faces, and some of the light side faces have dark side pips) so if you really need to have that power go off you can just give in to the dark side.

[Friv]

My general experience with FFG Star Wars is that (a) starship combat is definitely the most glaring weakness of the system, and also that (b) the game doesn't start feeling like Star Wars until you're 10-15 sessions in, because you just don't get enough XP to start your characters off as competent people. Once they are, things even out a lot and it's a much more fluid game.

I think the worst game that I've actually played for any length of time was honestly First Edition Scion. The game was a nightmarish mess. It took all of the problems from Exalted 2E and said, "hey, that game was really too balanced and carefully designed. Let's just go wild with it." Nothing in the game works - not the core combat mechanics, not the surrounding mechanics, not the traits you can get, not your powers, not your Epic Attributes. There's no aspect that is functional for anything that it intends to do.

[Faily]

The group and prior experience mean everything. I have had amazing games in FFG's Star Wars which several prior posters said was their worst game. It comes down to GM and understanding the system. Some of my best memories of gaming is in FFG Start War's. To each their own.

Yeah, likewise, I've had some absolute great moments with the FFG Star Wars and having played the old WEG Star Wars and the various d20-ones, FFG's is my favorite version of playing a Star Wars RPG. Was super-sceptical of the dice to start with, and there are still some things I would want to do differently with the game (but hey, that's what houserules are for), but I very much enjoy it. Mind you, I find that it works best with a group that is very good at rolling with the punches and providing creative input to make the intepretation of the dice a fun shared experience. And if the GM is just looking at Success/Failure, well, then you're missing out on a lot of it.



As for me, worst tabletop RPG... hmmmm...

I've played a lot of different games, but if I were to pick...

- Worst gameplay: 7th Sea (2e). Now I adore the work and thought that goes into 7th Sea. The setting, the ideas, the pretty pretty fluff. However, trying to actually play 7th Sea is at best tedious, and often frustrating. I've been in plenty of lengthy combats in other type of games, but 7th Sea takes a looooong time to conclude any fights.

- Worst rulebook: A Song of Ice and Fire. Now I've seen plenty of bad rulebooks, but SIFRP handidly takes first place here. I could also complain a lot about the actual mechanics in gameplay, but most of all I loathe having to use the rulebook. Information can often be hard to find, sometimes it's contradictory, and various tables are several pages away from their relevant text. Not a huge fan of the rules-system either and would either want to play it heavily houseruled, or with a different system all-together. Which is a shame since the game does have aspects I really enjoy, such as the mechanics for building your own house.


I'm currently trying out Hackmaster 5e, and well, time will tell if it ends up on the bad list. It's my first time playing anything Hackmaster, and I can't say I'm terribly impressed by the system or the gameplay so far. Or the rulebook for that matter.

Oh, and games like FATAL and RaHoWa goes without saying for being the absolute worst.

[Delta]

I think the worst game that I've actually played for any length of time was honestly First Edition Scion. The game was a nightmarish mess. It took all of the problems from Exalted 2E and said, "hey, that game was really too balanced and carefully designed. Let's just go wild with it." Nothing in the game works - not the core combat mechanics, not the surrounding mechanics, not the traits you can get, not your powers, not your Epic Attributes. There's no aspect that is functional for anything that it intends to do.

Scion 1e definitely gets a vote in that I can't think of any system with a more extreme gap between how much I loved the whole idea, setting, fluff and even actually playing it because it was just such a blast and how utterly insanely out of whack the mechanics were, forcing a massive bunch of houserules if you even want to be able to have a meaningful combat encounter once characters earn any relevant amount of XP.

Still have to give 2e a try at some point, it's definitely a lot better just from reading it but again, not a high bar to clear.

Of things I tried recently, Shadowrun 6e comes to mind as one of the worst edition "upgrades" I've ever seen. Now Shadowrun has never been exactly blessed by smooth rules, but from 2 through 5, none of the editions I encountered were so shockingly bad that I didn't in the end make some characters just to have them for a random pick up game now and then (Shadowrun is still moderately popular at conventions, gaming clubs and so on over here in Germany), but considering that this is still very heavily based on 5e, it's just that, a shockingly bad product. Like you can't read through any chapter without finding changes that make you go "Whoever wrote this did not think this through and this was not playtested whatsoever"

Thinking of it, I also had a terrible time the one time I played Numenera, which I really liked at first glance, but when actually playing it, it felt like any characters chances of succeeding at any task was more or less the same unless you spent some of the extremely rare special resource which just isn't fun (for me at least), but then I've been told this becomes better quickly as characters advance and the GM wasn't particularly good either so I won't write the system off completely because of that one time.

[Kishigane]

Well, now that raises a question: should an RPG be considered bad if it concerns a subject that you find personally offensive, regardless of whether the system works well or not?

There are plenty of systems out there that I am not interested in playing because they cover subjects I am not interested in. Does that mean they are bad systems?

I'm not the kind who's easily offended; what makes RaHoWa worse is that not only is it flat-out unfinished, but it's content doesn't even cross the line twice like FATAL does.

[Mutazoia]

Worst game for me? Hands down Rifts. Any system where you can't use pilot your fancy Mech because you didn't get the "typing" prereq for computer use (which is a prereq for pilot Mech) is a bad idea to start with. Just how retro is your Mech that it needs a keyboard? What's next? Do you boot it with a 5.25" floppy disk?

And then the issue with their "expansions". Each new expansion made the previous one useless.

[Duff]

Probably the worst system was one I ran rather than played - A Song of Ice and Fire.

1. There were balance issues - Some advantages and disadvantages were objectively better choices than others - Something which give +1 penetration (so armour reduces damage by 1 less) is worse than something giving +1 damage, since it also helps when the target is unarmoured.
2. Starting characters can be at "Best in the world" level (level 7). Honestly, why is the best fighter in the world hanging around a tin-pot minor house (TPMH)? Why does a minor house suddenly have the 3 best fighters and the 2 best negotiators?
3. There are massive holes in the rules. There's no maximum range on bows, just a penalty for every 100 yards. Our great warrior could kill a man at over a mile. There's detailed rules for social "duels" to influence a person, but nothing about what happens when there's: More than one person per side, more than 2 sides or when both competitors are trying to influence a 3rd (y'know, like each trying to turn the king against their opponent, or a trial - the kind of thing that Game of Thrones is mostly about). Some of the "house rules" were more "Record of ruling", some were tweaks to make the game better match what I wanted, but more than 1/2 the 12 (ish) typed pages of house rules were patches over things that were broken or missing
4. Heroes can attack army units of 100 men, which is great! - Very heroic. But when a good (level 6) archer can take apart an army in a single round, we have a problem...
5. On the topic of armies, how is a house with lands of only a few square leagues funding/feeding/housing an army of 100s of soldiers?
6. How do 20 cavalry turn into 100 infantry when they dismount? Why can well led cavalry move at race-winning speeds? Why does good leadership allow infantry to set Olympic records?
7. The books suggest there's only 4 levels of lordship, the king, the 7 "kingdoms" the great lords and their lesser lords. Trouble is, there must be 100s of lesser lords under each great lord or there's an extra layer or 3 in between the great lord and the TPMH. Which is fine, but it'd be great if they addressed the question

That's the issues I remember off the top of my head

[Jason]

Worst game for me? Hands down Rifts. Any system where you can't use pilot your fancy Mech because you didn't get the "typing" prereq for computer use (which is a prereq for pilot Mech) is a bad idea to start with. Just how retro is your Mech that it needs a keyboard? What's next? Do you boot it with a 5.25" floppy disk?

And then the issue with their "expansions". Each new expansion made the previous one useless.

Unless they've changed something since I last played, which would be very unlike Palladium, someone was pulling your leg. Typing isn't a skill, and there aren't any skill requirements for Pilot: Robots and Power Armor, you just need an O.C.C. that offers the skill. No Computer skill required, and no mentions of a keyboard being needed to pilot a set of power armor that I'm aware of.