Worst Tabletop RPG

[Saint-Just]

Whereas that's one of the reasons I consider any system with hyperscaling hit-points (unless they literally represent the character being able to take the same wound and shrug it off) a candidate for "worst system".

(And no, I don't buy explanations about evasion, glancing blows, etc, being built into Hit Points -- that's almost always represented elsewhere in the system, such as D&D's Armor Class, Saving Throws, etc.)

I would buy those explanations if they didn't suddenly stop working when there is some effect added to the strike. Each successful strike with a poisoned weapon/sting/fang obviously breaks the skin, each successful strike which lefts a bleeding wound (which hereafter depletes your hit points or makes you weakened in some other way) obviously breaks enough blood vessels to have a noticeable amount of blood loss every round etc. There are dozens of other effects phrased as "cut the skin", "destroy nerve clusters" etc.

Incidentally I see nothing wrong with variable damage, even highly variable like 1d12 or 3d6, because even the crunchiest RPG is always underspecified with regard to reality, so variable damage is a good simulation of "fall 30000 feet and survive, fall 30 feet and die". It's imperfect, but especially for physical injury "exactly 4 damage" is significantly worse.

[Anonymouswizard]

Whereas that's one of the reasons I consider any system with hyperscaling hit-points (unless they literally represent the character being able to take the same wound and shrug it off) a candidate for "worst system".

(And no, I don't buy explanations about evasion, glancing blows, etc, being built into Hit Points -- that's almost always represented elsewhere in the system, such as D&D's Armor Class, Saving Throws, etc.)

I've just started to accept the consequences of hp as meat, in D&D powerful enough characters can survive falls from orbit. Yes you end combat looking like a shonen fighting series anime character, but it's the easier way to handle it.

Bu yeah, ideally less hp scaling. D&D characters IMO should begin with 20-30hp and end up in maybe the low 60s. But that would require a massive rework of damage.

[Silly Name]

Whereas that's one of the reasons I consider any system with hyperscaling hit-points (unless they literally represent the character being able to take the same wound and shrug it off) a candidate for "worst system".

(And no, I don't buy explanations about evasion, glancing blows, etc, being built into Hit Points -- that's almost always represented elsewhere in the system, such as D&D's Armor Class, Saving Throws, etc.)

I'm not particularly bothered by this sort of extreme abstraction, but I've found that I prefer games were HP (and consequently damage) are kept to the lower end too. I can play D&D without getting upset by the fact a PC taking 40 damage may shrug it off without much worry, but when even 1 or 2 points of damage feel important I enjoy things much, much more.

[noob]

I've just started to accept the consequences of hp as meat, in D&D powerful enough characters can survive falls from orbit. Yes you end combat looking like a shonen fighting series anime character, but it's the easier way to handle it.

Bu yeah, ideally less hp scaling. D&D characters IMO should begin with 20-30hp and end up in maybe the low 60s. But that would require a massive rework of damage.

The current falling damage rules would mean your starting characters would survive a drop from orbit half of the time.
If we improve falling damage then players would abuse it to kill all the monsters ever.
(You are flying? I trip you and net you and you fall to your certain death. You are not flying? Enjoy being thrown in orbit then dying.)

[JNAProductions]

The current falling damage rules would mean your starting characters would survive a drop from orbit half of the time.
If we improve falling damage then players would abuse it to kill all the monsters ever.
(You are flying? I trip you and net you and you fall to your certain death. You are not flying? Enjoy being thrown in orbit then dying.)

That’s not true.

An average 5E PC has anywhere from 8 HP (Wizard) to 15 (Barbarian).
You can push it higher, but not by much.

At 20d6 damage max, anydice has greater than 99.99% odds of doing at least 40 damage. That’s enough to kill outright anyone with 20 HP or less.

[Anonymouswizard]

The current falling damage rules would mean your starting characters would survive a drop from orbit half of the time.
If we improve falling damage then players would abuse it to kill all the monsters ever.
(You are flying? I trip you and net you and you fall to your certain death. You are not flying? Enjoy being thrown in orbit then dying.)

Less than a third of the time just from falling damage (20d6), not including additional damage from atmospheric rentry and the extreme conditions experienced. We're talking 100km+ here. And this might actually be an acceptable outcome for the game,although I'd rule the extreme conditions the character is suffering from at maybe 2d6 per round.

Falling damage is already fairly deadly as it is. It's not the most potent thing in the rules, but it can theoretically drop a mid level Fighter to zero.

[EggKookoo]

The current falling damage rules would mean your starting characters would survive a drop from orbit half of the time.

This is where common sense has to come into play. If you fall from orbit, you don't calculate HP. You just die. Likewise if you fall into an active volcano.

The thing is, hit points really shouldn't be used as a general system for bodily integrity. They're a combat-oriented means of capturing acute injury. They only really work within the parameters of combat, or combat-like things (traps, etc.). I have come back around to them being mostly meat points but they don't represent structural integrity. If you take 6 HP damage, that's some kind of (mostly) physical injury. That injury is fresh, painful, and distracting, and if you get enough of such injuries in a relatively short period of time, your body is overwhelmed and you pass out (and possibly die). If you sit down and rest for an hour (and roll some hit dice), you regain some or all of those lost hit points. You still have your injury, but it's less critical. Less life-threatening. Resting has given your body a chance to "step back from the edge," so to speak. Recovering those lost hit points doesn't mean you knitted up like Wolverine. It just means the injury has become less of an immediate problem.

[SwordCoastTaxi]

For people thinking any version of D&D is worst, check out Human-Occupied Landfill.

https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12895.phtml

If D&D is a slap to the face, HOL is a bullet to the head.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've just started to accept the consequences of hp as meat, in D&D powerful enough characters can survive falls from orbit. Yes you end combat looking like a shonen fighting series anime character, but it's the easier way to handle it.

I put together a in-universe explanation for HP (in the 5e context) for my setting. I haven't made it canon, but it seems to work. I'll note that it does have drawbacks if you're looking for realistic (as in this-universe realistic), but since that's not one of my concerns, it works for me. It also explains a lot of other mechanical bits without adding epicycles, so that's even better.

Spoiler: short form of the explanation

Show

Basically, the nature of the biology is different for all creatures. Specifically, living things have an aura projected by their soul. This aura acts as the interface between soul, body, and immaterial world--the body is the interface between the soul and the material world.

The aura contains and manipulates stores of energy. Spell slots, limited-use abilities, and "vital energy". This vital energy has both quickly-available (ie HP) and deeper-but-slower (ie Hit Dice) reserves. When the body would take damage from any source, the aura floods the injury site with vital energy from its ready-reserve, causing it to heal but depleting the reserve. When the ready reserve is depleted, the injury takes full effect, usually dropping the character out of (effective) combat[1]. In that state, the soul scrambles for whatever reserves it can muster--from ambient sources, from other tissues, or from deeper reserves. Sometimes it pulls together enough to patch the wound--other times it doesn't and the character dies. This is what death saves represent--this frantic scrambling for energy.

Characters whose quick-reserves are partially depleted can, through some downtime and rest, use their deeper reserves (HD) to refill their ready-reserve. These deeper reserves don't replenish (from ambient sources) nearly as easily, taking repeated full rests. A period of sleeping is also enough to refill the ready reserve.

As any character gets stronger, part of strengthening their soul is strengthening their aura and increasing their reserves. But a consequence of the rest of the setting is that two things determine how much your reserves increase--how much time and effort you spend training physically (vs mentally/spiritually/etc) and sheer bulk. The first is why "martial" classes have bigger HD than "caster" types[2]. The second, which is overriden for game purposes (and theoretically for any PC-classed creature) by the class-effect, is why large creatures have bigger HD[3] than small ones.

One effect that I do toggle differently for PCs and non-PCs is lingering injuries from being dropped to 0 HP. Technically they're on for everyone and not healed by rest--if you go to zero HP (exhaust your ready reserve), whatever injury put you there leaves at least a scar. Fell out of the sky and went unconscious as a result? You've likely got broken bones. If you rest without medical attention, you're going to heal up all wrong. The bones will knit back together, but out of place. Etc. But I (and my players) find this unfun for PCs, so we ignore that part for PCs. Consistency is nice, but when it gets in the way of the kind of games we all want to run, well, it's not that nice.

This also explains how healing magic/potions works--healing magic is basically bottled vital energy in an easy-to-absorb form. It's a direct vital energy injection. The aura also accounts for how soul-forged (ie warforged but slightly different) can use healing potions and healing spells--it's hitting the aura, not the gut.

[Saint-Just]

For people thinking any version of D&D is worst, check out Human-Occupied Landfill.

https://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12895.phtml

If D&D is a slap to the face, HOL is a bullet to the head.

Sounds like quite enjoyable read, from the review, at least. And if classics like FATAL and RaHoWa almost surely were created with intention to be played, and not as some one-off thing, this one wasn't (and still likely to outperform them).

And D&D was only described as "worst for the genre", not worst by itself, which this thing definitely cannot claim to be.

[SwordCoastTaxi]

The funny thing is how people, like myself, call D&D terrible but it really is the industry standard.

Make a better game or keep complaining, I say. I run a modded version of the Rules Cyclopedia for D&D.

5e is a superhero game that suits players and gives GMs headaches due to the player-challenge dicothomy (characters exceed the prescribed challenge rating). With 5e, players can essentially railroad the GM with their abilities.

But, that suits WOTC fine.

[sktarq]

Whereas that's one of the reasons I consider any system with hyperscaling hit-points (unless they literally represent the character being able to take the same wound and shrug it off) a candidate for "worst system".

(And no, I don't buy explanations about evasion, glancing blows, etc, being built into Hit Points -- that's almost always represented elsewhere in the system, such as D&D's Armor Class, Saving Throws, etc.)

Actually one of the optional rules is that the 2nd part is exactly what HP represents...and your meatstuff is represented by " vitality points" which basically are set at the beginning of the game an only go up very slowly as you level if at all, heal slower, are used once your HP are gone or you get hit with a critical hit.

It's an option I'd recommend for allowing higher level characters more survivability without the weird reality distorting effects of being able to shrug off a major damage strike that just seems silly if you think about it for two seconds.

[Jason]

Gygax was well aware that hit points could not all be described as capacity to take physical damage.

It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. It is preposterous to state such an assumption, for if we are to assume that a man is killed by a sword thrust which does 4 hit points of damage, we must similarly assume that a hero could, on the average, withstand five such thrusts before being slain! Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage — as indicated by constitution bonuses — and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations, the “sixth sense” which warns the individual of some otherwise unforeseen events, sheer luck, and the fantastic provisions of magical protections and/or divine protection. Therefore, constitution affects both actual ability to withstand physical punishment hit points (physique) and the immeasurable areas which involve the sixth sense and luck (fitness)...
...let us assume that a character with an 18 constitution will eventually be able to withstand no less than 15 hit points of actual physical damage before being slain, and that perhaps as many as 23 hit points could constitute the physical makeup of a character. The balance of accrued hit points are those which fall into the non-physical areas already detailed. Furthermore, these actual physical hit points would be spread across a large number of levels...
...Beyond the basic physical damage sustained, hits scored upon a character do not actually do such an amount of physical damage. Consider a character who is a 10th level fighter with an 18 constitution. This character would have an average of 5½ hit points per die, plus a constitution bonus of 4 hit points, per level, or 95 hit points! Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm — the sword thrust that would have run a 1st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter’s exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment. However, having sustained 40 or 50 hit points of damage, our lordly fighter will be covered with a number of nicks, scratches, cuts and bruises. It will require a long period of rest and recuperation to regain the physical and metaphysical peak of 95 hit points.

That assumes no magic healing, of course. In 1st edition healing without magic was painfully slow, 1+ Con modifier per day, with complete rest, though the rules also state that any character can recover all their hit points with 4 weeks of rest.

[Vahnavoi]

The funny thing is how people, like myself, call D&D terrible but it really is the industry standard.

This was mentioned before, but it has so many people calling it terrible because it is the industry standard. A lot of players apparently only play a handful of games, and they often start with D&D before moving on to a second system that's more to their liking. Because of this, D&D ends up looking bad in comparison, that is, it's the worst game most people have actually played because they don't play a lot of games.

People who play a lot of different games, especially indie and amateur games with incomplete or experimental rules, often have easier time making their peace with D&D.

[Lord Torath]

The current falling damage rules would mean your starting characters would survive a drop from orbit half of the time.
If we improve falling damage then players would abuse it to kill all the monsters ever.
(You are flying? I trip you and net you and you fall to your certain death. You are not flying? Enjoy being thrown in orbit then dying.)

Fun fact: Spelljammer had rules for bursting into flame when falling from over a mile up.

[Willie the Duck]

Gygax was well aware that hit points could not all be described as capacity to take physical damage.

That assumes no magic healing, of course. In 1st edition healing without magic was painfully slow, 1+ Con modifier per day, with complete rest, though the rules also state that any character can recover all their hit points with 4 weeks of rest.

Yes, D&D was always well aware that hit points were a gamist abstraction and never made too many bones about it (combat was also considered abstract). That of course doesn't mean that can't violate peoples' preferences, but it's amazing how many times we have to keep going to this well. I would think it could look like:
- "D&D doesn't realistically represent individual specific combat wounds to my level of preference."
*"I'd imagine not. It was not a goal the designers considered overly important to their game."
-"Good to know. I guess D&D is not the best TTRPG for me."
*"Not if you consider that highly important to an enjoyable gaming experience."
-"I do."<fin>
but here we are, on round-and-round #348,265,107 of it.


Edit: Ought to mention that it's perfectly reasonable to bring it up in a discussion of worst TTRPGs since this might be something one considers a contributor towards their choice of worst (or just 'worse than ____') game. It is elsewhere that I'm mystified that it keeps coming up.

[Jason]

This was mentioned before, but it has so many people calling it terrible because it is the industry standard. A lot of players apparently only play a handful of games, and they often start with D&D before moving on to a second system that's more to their liking. Because of this, D&D ends up looking bad in comparison, that is, it's the worst game most people have actually played because they don't play a lot of games.

People who play a lot of different games, especially indie and amateur games with incomplete or experimental rules, often have easier time making their peace with D&D.

I get a whole "that one Churchill quote on democracy" vibe on this thread.
To paraphrase: "Many forms of RPG have been tried, and will be tried in this world of video and board games. No one pretends that D&D is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that D&D is the worst form of RPG except for all those other RPGs that have been tried from time to time..."

D&D gets a lot of flack for all the things people think it doesn't do well, and for being most people's "starter" rules, yet it still is the most played RPG, the best seller, and obviously the one most talked about. My group plays it all the time, and I've played it off an on since 1983. It was my first RPG and I keep coming back.

[KineticDiplomat]

To clarify, because it is the industry standard and because it is such a comparatively low standard that through the confluence of the market dynamics (both in the financial and matching markets sense) of TTRPGs crowds out many much better RPGs.

At the risk of reasoning by analogy, it is as if Go Fish somehow dominated the card game market - the starting assumption if there is a deck of cards is that you are playing Go Fish, when someone asks about playing cards the assumption is that unless otherwise noted you are playing Go Fish, and everyone insists that it works just fine for everything, it’s a great common denominator, and at worst you just have to home brew it a little - no need for Poker, Blackjack,Bridge, Cribbage, Spades, etc.

It isn’t a case of of it being better than its alternatives - it is so distinctly worse than so many alternatives - it is a case of people buying their tools from the company store and pretending that it’s not local monopoly.

[Jason]

To clarify, because it is the industry standard and because it is such a comparatively low standard that through the confluence of the market dynamics (both in the financial and matching markets sense) of TTRPGs crowds out many much better RPGs.

At the risk of reasoning by analogy, it is as if Go Fish somehow dominated the card game market - the starting assumption if there is a deck of cards is that you are playing Go Fish, when someone asks about playing cards the assumption is that unless otherwise noted you are playing Go Fish, and everyone insists that it works just fine for everything, it’s a great common denominator, and at worst you just have to home brew it a little - no need for Poker, Blackjack,Bridge, Cribbage, Spades, etc.

Doesn't this rather beg the question of why D&D is the industry standard? It came first, but it's not like there have been no other competing RPGs over the past 40+ years. There were competing games within a few years, and some of them are even still around.
Is it really just market dynamics or is D&D successful because it really is good?

Why doesn't Go Fish dominate the card game market?

[Friv]

Doesn't this rather beg the question of why D&D is the industry standard? It came first, but it's not like there have been no other competing RPGs over the past 40+ years. There were competing games within a few years, and some of them are even still around.
Is it really just market dynamics or is D&D successful because it really is good?

It's a combination of reasons.

First, because I want to get this out of the way - D&D has always been a pretty good game. I don't think it would be successful if it were a disaster, and while I wish there were more industry standards on an equal footing with it, it deserves to be one of the ones in the running.

Now, for the other reasons.

First, D&D came first, and yeah, that's a huge advantage. There's a reason that everyone still plays Monopoly even though it's an objectively bad game, and that reason is that it hit the market at a time when it didn't have a lot of competition, became a family standard, and has coasted on its reputation ever since. When your game isn't objectively terrible, having the nostalgia factor going for you is even harder to overcome.

Secondly, D&D had an early team that marketed the hell of it - their goal was to make it the industry standard fast enough that the other games coming up behind it couldn't compete. Gygax was in Hollywood working to get movies made. D&D was targeted by the Satanic Panic, and while that caused trouble, it also cemented the idea in the heads of a lot of people who weren't gamers that D&D and Roleplaying were the same thing, which affected what they invested in and supported.

Thirdly, the companies that had the potential to be primary competitors to D&D never got big enough to challenge it on an even footing. If anyone was likely to disrupt D&D as the industry standard it was probably World of Darkness, with global LARPs, popular video games, novels, and even a TV show - but the big company that bought D&D marketed it really well, and the big company that bought White Wolf completely messed it up and then sold it to another company who also messed it up.

It takes a lot of money to be the industry standard, and so far no one with a lot of money has had the inclination and the ability to go up against D&D and win.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Doesn't this rather beg the question of why D&D is the industry standard? It came first, but it's not like there have been no other competing RPGs over the past 40+ years. There were competing games within a few years, and some of them are even still around.
Is it really just market dynamics or is D&D successful because it really is good?

Why doesn't Go Fish dominate the card game market?

Instead of "is good", I'd say "fills a large market demand". That is, it gives people looking for TTRPGs enough of what they want. Which is the only real test of quality in a market, since most other considerations are subjective.

And we've seen what happens, despite the name recognition, marketing, etc, when D&D doesn't meet those demands--CF 4e. Total overall market share of TTRPGs dropped (or more precisely dropped faster than it had been). Yes, PF, but that couldn't make up for the drop. Lots of people left the hobby entirely. They didn't switch to other games (en masse anyway), at least from what I understand. To me, this says that despite all the pretenses, those other games fell short in some way:

* lack of marketing? But marketing isn't magic, despite what marketers say. As shown by the failure of 4e, which had tons of marketing. And the failure of lots of heavily-pushed, heavily-hyped video games, movies, etc.

* didn't do what people wanted them to do?

* something else?

And when 5e came in, it either sparked or rode (not going to debate which one) a resurgence in TTRPGs and is currently doing quite well (market wise). The sales data is basically not available (unless you spend lots of real-world $$ for reports), so I won't talk about how well. But it's certainly doing better than 4e was (a very low bar, I know).

[Vahnavoi]

I agree those are reasons, but there's a lot more we could add.

For example:

It may be an error to think that D&D's relevant competitors were and are other RPGs. Certainly, on the company level, TSR faced stiffest competition from Wizards of the Coast and Games Workshop, which, at the time, were focused on trading card games and miniature wargames, respectively. We know how that story ended: TSR was bought by WotC and even today, it's my understanding that the tabletop side of D&D makes peanuts compared to Magic: the Gathering. It's possible most of the people who could compete with D&D are not making tabletop roleplaying games in the first place, because real money is made elsewhere, like computer games.

Secondly, one of the reasons D&D became (near-) synonymous with roleplaying in general is because early hobbyists disrespected the Hell out of TSR's copyrights. (Indeed, people basically mocked, and continue to mock, TSR and sometimes Gygax personally for statements that were completely reasonable from a brand holder's viewpoint.) Instead of competing with D&D, amateur publisher and game makers basically parasitized on its success. Off-brand D&D has probably always been the second most popular roleplaying game up to this day - think of what Paizo has been doing, for example. Open Game License may gave given them a legal ground to do what they're doing, but at the same time I think this kind of practice both chokes out innovation and cements D&D's design paradigm.

[sktarq]

One of the other major factors is that TTRPG's have a natural pull toward monopoly or least oligarchy.
Because it is group activity and everyone assembles needs to invest in learning the system. So while a few people will learn a lot of systems most people will learn only a couple or just one....so they pick the popular one...this increases the ability to form gaming groups around this game and thus makes it even more appealing to those people who are only going to learn a small number or one system. This makes for a virtuous cycle where people looking for players or DM's know it easier to find other people who play that and so look for those types first as it most likely to succeed. A few cycles later and you have a very limited number game systems dominating. The overall market is largely going to be driven by the laziest consumers since even most (but not all) of the hard core hobbyists need those people to fill out their tables. And the best games are those you get to play while the worst sit on your shelf and taunt with possibility that never goes anywhere.

This makes disrupting the overall market very tough and "better" systems don't stand much of chance.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One of the other major factors is that TTRPG's have a natural pull toward monopoly or least oligarchy.
Because it is group activity and everyone assembles needs to invest in learning the system. So while a few people will learn a lot of systems most people will learn only a couple or just one....so they pick the popular one...this increases the ability to form gaming groups around this game and thus makes it even more appealing to those people who are only going to learn a small number or one system. This makes for a virtuous cycle where people looking for players or DM's know it easier to find other people who play that and so look for those types first as it most likely to succeed. A few cycles later and you have a very limited number game systems dominating. The overall market is largely going to be driven by the laziest consumers since even most (but not all) of the hard core hobbyists need those people to fill out their tables. And the best games are those you get to play while the worst sit on your shelf and taunt with possibility that never goes anywhere.

This makes disrupting the overall market very tough and "better" systems don't stand much of chance.

That's true (network effects are strong). But I've found lots of success in bringing straight-up new people into the hobby. New to D&D, new to TTRPGs, heck, even new to roleplaying in general (including CRPGs). In fact, the majority of my playerbase is new people, mostly found via word of mouth. I happen to play 5e D&D, but you'd think that other games/people partial to other games could do the same. Does it take more work? Sure. But you can build a local community (well, except during the current "no you can't even think about talking to people in person" mode, but...).

[Morty]

It's weird how, when a certain amount of criticism of D&D is gathered in one place, the discussion starts veering towards "but how can it be true if D&D is so popular?".

[Jorren]

One observation that I've had consistently (by that I mean for about 35 years) is that other rpgs, while they may be able to compete with D&D for established gamers, they simply cannot do it on an entry level basis. While people who play rpgs may occasionally drift away from D&D, new rpg players almost always want to play what the majority are playing. Even when taught a simpler game and even when they like that entry level game, they invariably settle into D&D as their default game.

When someone asks what rpgs should I select for a bunch of people who have never played rpgs before, I always want to say D&D. That's not because I think it is the best game for beginners. It's because if those players end up wanting to keep playing rpgs, that's what they will want to play soon enough. If they don't want to keep playing rpgs, chances are that it probably didn't matter too much what game they were introduced to.

[Luccan]

It's weird how, when a certain amount of criticism of D&D is gathered in one place, the discussion starts veering towards "but how can it be true if D&D is so popular?".

Well, this thread is titled Worst Tabletop RPG. So in this case "D&D is the worst TTRPG in existence" comes across as hyperbolic, given how many people (including those who have played other systems) are quite happy to play it. Plus, there are enough differences between some editions that to slap that on all of D&D seems uninformed. Also, come on, you're calling the world's most popular tabletop rpg bad on a forum spun off from a D&D comic. If I hopped into a videogame forum and called basically any of a popular developer's major series garbage I'd expect pushback. But I crapped on Dungeon World and FATE Accelerated earlier in the thread, so it's not like the thread should be considered objective.

[KineticDiplomat]

We’re at 19 pages now, so I can see how latecomers to the party may have missed some of the intermediary discussion. To just speed right through another one starting from scratch:

-The initial supposition isn’t that D&D is the worst mechanically or the most cringeworthy. It is the worst for the hobby as a whole because it mires it in mediocrity and prevents good games from getting through.
-At that point someone says “but it’s so popular”
-The rebuttal is “yes, but it is popular due to external factors, including its own critical mass in a hobby where you need five people from within a small group of hobbyists to play. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not very good”
-“But I can play it! Better the game I can play, even if it’s not that good!”
-“That’s kind of the point we’re making about it being bad, the one where you can only play the bleh game and struggle to play the good ones”
-At this point someone mention there’s no way D&D is the worst of all time...

[AvatarVecna]

One thing that probably contributes to D&D being viewed as worse is precisely for its popularity. This isn't me saying that gamers are just a bunch of hipsters who like hating on a popular thing solely because it's popular (although that's true of a not-insignificant percentage). This is me saying that a lot of people cut their teeth on D&D, and at some point in dealing with 2e or 3e or 4e or 5e, they said "this one thing about D&D bothers me so much that I'm going to make a system that doesn't have that problem". The system they make might be barely recognizable as even being related to D&D at all, while some systems steal 90% of their mechanics from D&D, with the remaining 10% that got changed being a result of some combination of balance changes and filing off the serial numbers.

"No really, it's its own thing now! We've embraced third-party developers, like Better ToB^TM, Better Incarnum^TM, Better Truenaming^TM, Better Hypermundanes^TM, and Better Artificer^TM! We made a bunch of classes that just mash two base classes together and called them something new and interesting! We even gave every skill four new things to do! Sort of! A lot of it is just doing old things better, most of it really, but some of them are actuallly new options for using the skills! And in the time since our original technically-not-legally-plaigerism, we made new versions of a small number of classes with a small number of changes each! We call them 'unchained', because they're slightly different from the original version, and that means we can pretend we've made them fully our own! They're so original, we didn't even bother thinking of new names for them!"

This isn't me disparaging those systems, or D&D. I very much enjoy 3.75, even as I wish it had done a lot more. And hey, it still might well do a lot more in the years to come!

I'm more pointing out that part of the reason why D&D looks worse than [insert system that vaguely feels like D&D in mechanics or setting] is because in all likelyhood, that system was made to do well at a thing D&D did poorly. And because of D&D's popularity, a lot of its flaws are pretty well-known too. The fact that they're better because they were intentionally made to be better doesn't mean that D&D isn't still riddled with problems.

[Morty]

Well, this thread is titled Worst Tabletop RPG. So in this case "D&D is the worst TTRPG in existence" comes across as hyperbolic, given how many people (including those who have played other systems) are quite happy to play it. Plus, there are enough differences between some editions that to slap that on all of D&D seems uninformed. Also, come on, you're calling the world's most popular tabletop rpg bad on a forum spun off from a D&D comic. If I hopped into a videogame forum and called basically any of a popular developer's major series garbage I'd expect pushback. But I crapped on Dungeon World and FATE Accelerated earlier in the thread, so it's not like the thread should be considered objective.

You've already arrived at the correct conclusion. There's absolutely no difference between calling a popular RPG and an unpopular one "the worst". Popularity doesn't offer exemption from criticism and neither of those are actually "the worst" in any objective sense - those would be monstrosities like FATAL or the bigoted trash people mentioned earlier.