"What ruleset would you NOT recommend?" Topic

I keep seeing posts on "oh I love game XYZ, and you should try it.." and ones like " XYZ is the best rules for that genera". And that's great, as I have gotten some wonderful rulesets from TMPers advice.

But what about the flipside?

Have you ever come across rules that are:
1) Unplayable as written – nothing is saving this game
2) Unreadable – due to bad fonts/printing or bad layout
3) Art/pics soooo bad, you cannot handle life any more
4) Bad use of rules/minis – ranges/movements/etc. but can be fixed w/ a house rule

Now I am interested in most periods, so what games would you recommend me from staying away from, and why.
(please no "well its GW, so its just gotta suck" comments)

For me, the worst written rules was West Wind's RoadKill. Pages were in the wrong order, the rules were not even remotely clear as some rules that involve each other were in totally different sections, and when you could make sense of them, it took a ton of house rules to fix them. By the end of the day, we had more house rules than rules from the booklet!

I gave up on DBR and HFG after trying to make sense of the versions posted on Phil Barker's website. I want to try them, I really do, but the rules were just a sea of acronyms and dense gibberish. People who play them seem to like them, so maybe there is a game hiding in there…but I couldn't find it.

I am making a private bet on the over/under for … you know.

FOW??????????????? Did I guess correctly????

It's a long list. Heck, you could have a long list just using the abysmally-written products of one small company.

Allen

I second Daves comments about the recent versions of Horse, Foot and Guns. Just gibberish. Shame as the early versions were both readable and playable, so that is what I use.

Chronopia. Not the rules, so much, but the fluff. Worst written and edited hash of over-the-top gory nihilism I've ever seen. Pure dreck, rife with basic grammatical errors, punctuation mistakes, and typos, with a style reminiscent of a 15-year-old with a blood fixation.

Star Fleet Battles, ca. 1980s-1990s. Nothing but exception after exception, bloated into multiple 2-inch thick binders. A game made for rules lawyers or masochists. I will say the revised, streamlined version looks much better.

"I gave up on DBR and HFG after trying to make sense of the versions posted on Phil Barker's website."

Multiple versions of DBR?
Version 2 of DBR was published in 2004 and IIRC there has not been a later version. Also you won't find it on Phil Barker's web ste.

I'd agree with you about HFG …

I once said that there were no bad rules, and that all have some virtue, even if this virtue is only to sell figures, and keep the manufacturers solvent.

However, when I said there were no bad rules, I was not really serious.

There was a naval game that I played out of courtesy at the local FLGS.
Your ship moved 3/8" per turn.
Torpedoes were resolved three hours after you launched them. If you lasted that long before passing out from ennui.
All shots/hits went to charts that lead to charts that lead to charts. A "critical hit", after 10 minutes of resolution, blew up the paint locker, or the Admiral's parlor.
I mercifully forget its name, but it was excruciatingly BORING.
Being a non-practicing Catholic, I offerred up such games for the holy souls in Purgatory.

This has the potential to become a huge thread. Possibly with multiple DHings.

I'll get the popcorn ready

I agree SFB was quite a mess, and I could not recommend it even though I played it back in the day, but the new version: Federation Commander is much better I would recommend it.

I have tried FOW, but I find it hard to recommend because it simply feels wrong for WWII battles. Just my opinion. It seems like a great way to collect, paint and play with WWII figures, and it is very well supported, but when I pushed the minis around on the table it just felt strange and out of scale with my tanks moving along in tight formation just inches away from the enemy tanks?

I should probably give it another try, but so far not one I can recommend.

Don't start until I get back from the mens room.

Heh, once watched a SFB game with Romulans attacking a fed space station. Feds were supposed to come to the rescue in several turns.

The Romulans left the space station alone and spent their first turns laying a minefield across the entry point of the fed starships.

The fed came on the board a few turns later, ran into the minefield and sustained a lot of damage, then turned around and left the table.

I find the lack of QRS in Chris Peers' rules a bit off- putting; the multiple unit combat mechanisms in both WAB and FOG drive me nuts; any version of Empire tends to bring on narcolepsy; ah….Volley and Bayonet seems to have skirmishers broken at the moment; DBMM is already heading to version 1.1 and army list book 4 isn't out yet; WW II air power needed fixing in Mongoose's Victory at Sea; the range sticks would knock over the troops in CLS; all the gum-binding rules sets need to go to Kinko's for retrofit with spiral binding…..,……..,……,…..‌‌

There should be 24 hours warning before posting such threads. My bunker is being cleaned and I can't get in now.

I tried "revenge" but could not warm to it.

"ennui" is a good word

I hated reading my way through Warmachine's rules… the fluff moreso than the rules… Chronopia's author has nothing on whichever pre-teen wrote that tripe.

It didn't get any better once I tried playing the game… which reminded me right off of the several annoying games of Magic The Gathering I'd been talked into. All about creative/sneaky rules combinations… special powers and exceptions.

I'll recommend the figures to someone well-heeled enough to afford them, but not the rules.

Oh… and I won't recommend Diplomacy to anyone with anger-management issues.

WAB and VaS.

I tried "revenge" but could not warm to it.

That's because revenge is a dish best served cold.

Well done! 8>)

Since GW has already been invoked, their Hall of Shame should be properly identified. Most of GW's games suffer from WHTW ("We Hate Technical Writing") to some extent, but only a few cross over into "won't recommend it" territory.

Sticking to rules, as opposed to… "misguided",,, army books (which would make for a long list), the short list starts with Space Fleet (the predecessor of Battlefleet Gothic) and 3rd edition Epic (aka "Epic 40k").

There are also the caveat recommendations. I won't recommend Talisman to "Eurogame" fans, because they are used to short games, which Talisman isn't. Nor will I recommend any GW game with an extensive model line to anyone with a short attention span, no modeling or painting talent (lack of skill is one thing, lack of talent another), or poor readers.

Wandering outside the implied topic boundaries briefly, I won't recommend Rifts to anyone interested in actually playing, or 4th edition D&D to anyone looking for "that old-time RPG experience". Nor will I recommend World of Warcraft to anyone who likes the sun.

When it comes to Star Fleet Battles, stick to what is in print, which is either FedComm or the last edition of SFB. Earlier editions of SFB are just asking for trouble unless you go back 30 years, and even those were pretty shockingly written. SFB is another one I won't recommend to weak readers or the lazy.

For me, GW rules are very well laid out, so that you can follow them (most of the time).

As for FoW, I feel the same way. Good core mechanic, just oddly placed for a WW2 game, but it works well for what its trying to do. I do not understand the dislike for FoW. Why do some folks not like it?

Yea…SFB eratta and 'exceptions' killed that game for me…

With this thread, I am not looking for a 'flame war' (so there should be no DHing), its just what rules to stay away from, and most importantly, WHY ?

If we want to include RPGs in there, I got a LOOOOOOOOG list…

I cannot stand any I-go-U-go rules anymore. Bar none.

Raven.
Interesting fluff, noble undead protecting the peasants and frothingly fundamentalist Monotheists who go round saving unbelievers by slaughtering them.
Unfortunately, the stats in the lists didn't match the rules, troops mentioned in the fluff didn't appear in the lists. Someone seemed to be thinking in inches while someone else was metric. A good idea rendered unplayable by the lack of an independent editor/proofreader.
Confrontation V3, not a bad game but why leave it until about page 93 before you find out how to play it.

As much as I wanted to like Car Wars and as much as I like the setting and the fluff I could never get past the fact that to go around a single turn would take multiple driving checks and 20 minutes. I dare say pulling out of a parking spot in Car Wars might be the most hazardous (and lengthy) trick in gaming!

There are a few rule sets I have issue with, but I shall not name them here. It would make kittens cry.

I will however say I hate my own efforts in particular. That time could have spent painting miniatures.

Yea…SFB eratta and 'exceptions' killed that game for me…

Errata:

Please substitute 'errata' for 'eratta' throughout

Classic battleTech . every hit goes to a different location . movement like a snail . I was told it had changed by that time it was too late. The first Car Wars with its 1/10 second impulses were mind numbing . Avalon hills GunSlinger was unreadable with 4 zillion action cards per man .
When you find a good game you seem to forget the 100 piles of dung you waded through to find it

I notice there are a lot of SF/Fantasy rules getting a mention here…

For that reason, and sheer contrariness, I'll pitch in a RPG

Aftermath

Not exactly fast moving…

I cannot seem to remember the name of the RPG, but in the late 80's there was one where you had to figure out the bullet trajectory and find a chart seeing what organs you hit.

Combats took about 15 minuets a shot… Totally Broken system.

"bullet trajectory"

Phoenix Command.

Empire for Napoleonics

WRG for ancients

Final Argument of Kings for the SYW

"WRG for ancients"

Which WRG? 1st Ed, 2nd Ed, 3rd Ed, 4th Ed, 4th Ed (with Dover Amendments), 5th Ed, 6th Ed, 7th Ed, DBA, DBM, DBMM …

- or all of them?

BTW, this thread should also be on the TMP Poll Suggestions board. Then we could have a 10 Worst Ever Rules (as voted by TMPers) list!

"BTW, this thread should also be on the TMP Poll Suggestions board. "

I've put my money where my mouth is and added a thread (linked back to here).

Empire and Ancient Empire. The VLB thingy never worked. The rules themselves could put you to sleep in seconds. Never finished a single game.

Ancient Empire

I was going to keep my mouth shut but I suppose Ancient Empire would be a good choice. Never could get through the rules.

Posting on this thread seems fraught with peril.

Recommendations should be based on what the person is looking for.

There are rules that I totally detest that I would recommend if someone wanted a set-em-up knock em down game that can be played in under an hour.

mjc

bullet trajectory -- that was Millennium's End, not Phoenix Command. Phoenix Command actually played very quickly and had solid design for firearms combat.

Millennium's End on the other hand, well let's just say that we spent half an hour calculating the effects of a burst of automatic fire and then gave up on the system.

I do not remember the name but I was told about a WW2 skirmish set at Historicon back in the 1990s.
Only 4-5 second turns. It took 3 or 4 turns just to reload a weapon. A very slow playing game from the little that I watched.

I cannot stand any I-go-U-go rules anymore. Bar none.

I'm in the same boat, though I wouldn't call any of the games I've played as bad or not recommendable. I just don't like that style of rule set anymore.

Rudy, would that have been "Follow Me!", I wonder?
--
Tim

Road to Osaka is one I'm not fond of.

Thanks,

John

This is a two part question, first you must want to play the episode/period of the rules, then you look at/try the rules.

My main criterion for liking a set of rules is that I already know how to play them. I wanted to try Pike and Shot era. The Gush rules were just too convoluted. I knew DBA and liked it so tried DBR. I did figure that out with careful reading, and help from friends. It suffers from "traditional WGR production values" with few diagrams, no examples of game play or definitions. But I got to it.

I wanted to play musket era so tied to understand HFG. It was supposed to be a musket era DBA but it is just too complicated, so I went to DBN.

Since I knew DBA and was happy with it for playing ancient games with toy soldiers I never tried DBM, or FOW, or WAB or any other game. So I cannot comment if they are good or not. Not good enough for me as I do not know them :)

WRG 7th edition ancients are my worst nightmare. I remeber games were simply headache inducing. Along came DBA and I was really happy, I also enjoyed the first version of DBM….but then it just went through multiple versions (I have at least four printed versions myself, maybe 5!)and it became as little fun to play as 7th had been. Shame as I suspect it was a certain type of player that led to the changes that wrecked a decent game.

Still love DBA though.

I bought Empire III back in the 80s. I tried to play it once. E II wasn't to bad and the original was decent so I had high hopes…… (sigh)

Gladiator Wars was a chaotic mess. Not to bad if you spend a few hours re-writing them into something that doesn't look like a rough draft.

Yes, I have to bring up GW. The versions of Blood Bowl and Battlefleet where you threw the dice into the box lid with the boxes printed there. A royal pain.

What was that WW2 skirmish game that came out in the late 90s… It was one of the many variations on the name "Battlefield" or "Battleground" or something.

It was slapped together from 3-4 separate booklets with no attempt to unify anything, so there was something like four "page 6"s throughout. The writing was staggeringly bad – even by the standards of American wargame writers – so that any given word might be spelled in four different ways on the same page. Charts and tables were thrown about, as if at random, most of which requiring reference to another chart that was nowhere to be found, and all of which required various kinds of dice, as if nobody had ever asked, "Should we try to streamline this to use only one or two kinds?" And then all the data you needed came in supplement booklets, in which each tank had a full page diagram with data. The rules themselves were a mish-mash of concepts: card-driven (sort of), initiative-based (sort of), WYSIWYG (sort of), but figuring out the sequence of play was next to impossible since just about every action could be done as an interrupt of your opponent's turn.

Amazing. A masterwork of confusion and sloppiness. And believe me, he had some serious competition for the title, so one should not take the victory lightly.

But my absolute favorite thing about all rules like this is the Designer's Notes, when the author thanks his playtesters, editor, and proof-readers. I can't tell if we're dealing with imaginary friends in these situations, or multiple-personality disorders, or if it's simply a case of a wargame group comprised entirely of first-semester EFL students.

Battleground WWII by "Easy Eight" perhaps?

link