History Horrible / TabletopGames

* RTG released a ''Anime/DragonBallZ'' RPG. The execution was just as ludicrous as it sounds — stat blocks for the characters from the series had attacks that required rolling upwards of thirty dice... and that was just for the Saiyan Saga. The book itself was poorly written and poorly laid out, and it suffered from a lot of filler devoted to only marginally relevant subjects, such as customizing action figures. Three sourcebooks were released (with more cancelled), but the system was ''horribly'' suited to ''DBZ''. The creators took a system with expected stat values between 1-10 (involving rolls of only 3d6 to resolve checks) and fed stats in the ''hundreds'' into it. "Power levels" amounted to nothing more than MP, but were used as the basis for gaining XP from a fight. Ugh.

* The collectible trading game '''[=BreaKeys=]'''; the main gimmick was literally breaking your opponent's game piece when they lost. ''[=BreaKeys=]'' pieces apparently came in bags of 20 for $20, which could be wasted in less than a minute in a game. Because the weaker pieces would always be the first ones to break, the law of collectible games, in which the rarer the game piece the stronger it is, does not apply here. Furthermore, the broken plastic pieces were fairly sharp and could cause messes and small injuries. And the icing on the cake, you could just feel, with your fingers, how strong each key was before using it. You can watch [[WebVideo/FamiliarFaces CR]] review it [[http://blip.tv/familiar-faces/cheap-damage-breakeys-5526890 here.]]

* The collectible trading game ''**[=BreaKeys=]**''; the main gimmick was literally breaking your opponent's game piece when they lost. ''[=BreaKeys=]'' pieces apparently came in bags of 20 for $20, which could be wasted in less than a minute in a game. Because the weaker pieces would always be the first ones to break, the law of collectible games, in which the rarer the game piece the stronger it is, does not apply here. Furthermore, the broken plastic pieces were fairly sharp and could cause messes and small injuries. And the icing on the cake, you could just feel, with your fingers, how strong each key was before using it. You can watch [[WebVideo/FamiliarFaces CR]] review it [[http://blip.tv/familiar-faces/cheap-damage-breakeys-5526890 here.]]

* The collectible trading game ''[=BreaKeys=]''; the main gimmick was literally breaking your opponent's game piece when they lost. ''[=BreaKeys=]'' pieces apparently came in bags of 20 for $20, which could be wasted in less than a minute in a game. Because the weaker pieces would always be the first ones to break, the law of collectible games, in which the rarer the game piece the stronger it is, does not apply here. Furthermore, the broken plastic pieces were fairly sharp and could cause messes and small injuries. And the icing on the cake, you could just feel, with your fingers, how strong each key was before using it. You can watch [[WebVideo/FamiliarFaces CR]] review it [[http://blip.tv/familiar-faces/cheap-damage-breakeys-5526890 here.]]

* ''TabletopGame/RacialHolyWar''. The title [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin speaks for itself]], but the concept warrants a fuller explanation: in the future, the minorities have conquered the world under the guidance of their Jewish masters and reduced white people to a few small pockets of resistance. But now the whites are going to strike back... and you're going to play them. The material seriously reads like someone who just finished the ''[[Literature/TheProtocolsOfTheEldersOfZion Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]'' but didn't quite feel up to tackling ''Literature/MeinKampf''. And that is ''before'' you get to the horrible, broken, unfinished rules, including, but not limited to ''complete omission of rules regarding player-character attack resolution'' -- that's right, the game actually forgot to tell you how to attack things. Other gems: Players can be debilitated by body odor and will accept bribes to not attack ''during combat.'' [[LogicBomb Makes you wonder how the player race can claim to be "superior" if they suffer from the same physically-debilitating greed as the enemy races.]] More info [[http://web.archive.org/web/20080212094700/http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/rahowasucks.html here]].

* RTG released a ''Anime/DragonballZ'' RPG. The execution was just as ludicrous as it sounds — stat blocks for the characters from the series had attacks that required rolling upwards of thirty dice... and that was just for the Saiyan Saga. The book itself was poorly written and poorly laid out, and it suffered from a lot of filler devoted to only marginally relevant subjects, such as customizing action figures. Three sourcebooks were released (with more cancelled), but the system was ''horribly'' suited to ''DBZ''. The creators took a system with expected stat values between 1-10 (involving rolls of only 3d6 to resolve checks) and fed stats in the ''hundreds'' into it. "Power levels" amounted to nothing more than MP, but were used as the basis for gaining XP from a fight. Ugh.
* ''TabletopGame/{{FATAL}}'' is, hands down, the all-time reigning champion of horrible [=RPGs=]. The rulebook consists of '''900''' agonizing pages of poor mechanics, a massive number of ill-defined stats, violations of common sense, [[VulgarHumor and all-around contempt for basic human decency]]. For example, one of the most basic rolls in the game is [=4d100/2-1=]. That's right, roll a hundred sided die four times, sum the results, divide in half and subtract one...for all ''seventeen'' of your stats, and anything else requiring a bell curve. The creators, on learning the flaw of this system, decided to "improve" it to [=10d100/5-1=]. For the record, if you are using real dice, that requires 20 d10 rolls. Character creation takes a while in this system, especially since (at least in the first version) each stat had four sub-stats (requiring ''more than a hundred'' dice rolls), and at one point it calls for a 1d10,000,000 roll. For the record, that's either 8 d10 rolls (one per digit), or one die that would be better [[Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk for crushing]] Franchise/IndianaJones than for getting a random number. Practicality is thrown out the window in favor of vulgarity and offense, a quality not helped by the creators' claim that only white, non-Christian people inhabit TheVerse and their constant flip-flopping between claims that it's either "[[BlackComedy controversial]] [[ParodyRetcon humor]]" or historically and mythically accurate (which, it obviously isn't). Skills tend to be pointless and mundane (urination) and statuses are often every bit as bizarre as they are tasteless (fruit growing out of one's privates, a "scratch'n'sniff" vagina appearing on one's forehead, getting aroused whenever it rains). [[LoadsAndLoadsOfRules The sheer number of rules is ridiculous]] and makes the game incredibly difficult rather than giving it any challenge; to calculate the results of ''sex'', one must '''solve quadratic equations'''. On top of all this, the game is absolutely ''drowning'' in UnfortunateImplications, featuring piles of misogyny, rape, and apologia for same. RPG Net reviewers Darren Maclennan and Jason Sartin [[http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml have a far more detailed, and horrific, review if you're still tempted...]] (NSFW) An older version of the game included unfortunate more-than-implications including things like magic items themed around racist caricatures.
** However, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TLlbVW-VA0 the theme song]] is [[SoBadItsGood pure comedy gold]].

* ''[[http://web.archive.org/web/20080212094700/http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/rahowasucks.html Racial Holy War]]''. The title [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin speaks for itself]], but the concept warrants a fuller explanation: in the future, the minorities have conquered the world under the guidance of their Jewish masters and reduced white people to a few small pockets of resistance. But now the whites are going to strike back... and you're going to play them. The material seriously reads like someone who just finished the ''[[Literature/TheProtocolsOfTheEldersOfZion Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]'' but didn't quite feel up to tackling ''Literature/MeinKampf''. And that is ''before'' you get to the horrible, broken, unfinished rules, including, but not limited to ''complete omission of rules regarding player-character attack resolution'' -- that's right, the game actually forgot to tell you how to attack things. Other gems: Players can be debilitated by body odor and will accept bribes to not attack ''during combat.'' [[LogicBomb Makes you wonder how the player race can claim to be "superior" if they suffer from the same physically-debilitating greed as the enemy races.]]
* ''TabletopGame/{{Spawn of Fashan}}'' is a [[http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_6157.html classic]] example from the early 1980s that has become one of the standards by which execrably bad [[TabletopGames tabletop]] [=RPGs=] are measured. It was an incomplete release — even though it had an example world, it didn't include enough in that sample for full use of the system. It took a long time to create characters and run combat because the stat tables were poorly organized and poorly labeled.
* ''Literature/{{Wraeththu}}'': The RPG [[CanonDefilement "adaptation"]] of Storm Constantine's fantasy series about post-apocalyptic mystical intersex mutants with flower-like genitalia (no, seriously) ended up not realistically portraying the setting of the books at all, casting the player characters as [[SmugSnake pretentious and glamorous sociopaths]], and going out of its way to be as unhelpful to the novice GM as possible. Of note are the gutwrenching mechanics: among other transgressions, chain mail transfers a statistical immunity to flamethrowers. Details [[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=244590 here]] and [[http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14347.phtml here.]]

* In comparison, ''Super Nova'' was benign but it's still a rather mediocre card game. Players drew from a single communal deck, but the rules were so vague that there was originally [[{{Unwinnable}} no win condition]]... which was [[http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Chort/SuperNova/part1.html#winning fixed in errata.]] The artwork is nothing awe-inspiring either.

* ''Series/MurderSheWrote: The Board Game''. Players are amateur sleuths trying to figure out who among them is the murderer, while said murderer must kill all witnesses and escape the island. Fair enough, a pretty solid concept aside from a few clunky rules. But in order to tie it to the series, the players are the lady investigator herself, Jessica Fletcher. ALL of the players. Even the killer. So the game presumably concerns an interdimensional confluence in which parallel versions of Jessica (one of whom is evil) team up, making it the perfect game for people who are both fans of ''Series/MurderSheWrote'' and ''Series/DoctorWho''. Also lends credibiliy to the AlternateCharacterInterpretation "Jessica was always the killer and each case she got solved was just her pinning the blame on someone else".

* ''Top Trumps'' is a very well respected card game that has lasted for years with tons of expansions. However, its ''Space Phenomena'' pack is the worst of the lot. The game works by having two to six players compare a statistic on the cards with the highest one being the winner. The ''Space Phenomena'' cards have stats as "N/A" or an extremely low number and rapidly shift in measurements, meaning that most cards are straight up unusable. This makes the game incredibly slow without HouseRules. Even worse, some of the stats provided are in non-standard or just plain wrong units (such as "Earth Years" for ''speed'')[[note]]Perhaps the creators confused orbital velocity with orbital period, as orbital period depends on orbital velocity. A more appropriate statistic would be "Distance from Sun" or even "Distance from Barycenter", though the former still results in the Sun and other objects having an N/A and the latter is perhaps too obscure for the general public, though the Sun will not have an N/A in this case[[/note]] or change reference points (for instance, orbital period, or "speed", for planets is given relative to the Sun, while orbital period for the Sun and other objects is given relative to the galactic center), resulting in numbers that are insane, wildly inaccurate and seemingly pulled out of nowhere. (Apparently The Moon wasn't discovered until 1651[[note]]Giovanni Battista Riccioli's ''Almagestum Novum'', published in 1651, laid the foundations for the modern system of lunar nomenclature[[/note]], Venus wasn't discovered until 1990[[note]]The Magellan spacecraft, which produced the first global terrain map of Venus, arrived at Venus in 1990[[/note]], and Halley's Comet is -6000000 Earth masses[[note]]The Halley's Comet card attempts to describe the comet's mass in terms of Earth's, but fails miserably. The correct value is 3.7E-11 Earth masses according to WolframAlpha[[/note]].) Watch ''[[Creator/StuartAshen Ashens]]'' rip it apart [[http://youtu.be/1Us3iSgixRI here]].

* ''Intelligent Design Vs. Evolution''. [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement Ignoring the thinly-veiled attempt]] to convert players to believe in intelligent design, it's a simple board game where two players or two teams must move their pieces to the end of the board. While playing, players gain brain cards by answering questions; there are only 250 question cards. By comparison, Trivial Pursuit has 6,000. The questions themselves either make cheap shots at evolution, convince players to believe in the church, or are just random bible quotes. Not only is the information on the cards misquoted, but they clearly weren't proofread. One card cites ''[[Wiki/{{Wikipedia}} Wickipedia]]'' (sic, we're not joking) as a source. The blog Freaking Awesome takes a look at it [[http://freakingawesome.net/2012/01/09/intelligent-design-vs-evolution-the-board-game-an-analysis/ here]].

* ''[=deadEarth=]'', a post-apocalyptic wasteland RPG, claims to be better than all other post-apocalyptic [=RPGs=] of its time (it was published in 2000)... but it falls flat on its face with horrible chargen mechanics and mutations — er, "[[NotUsingTheZWord Radiation Manipulations]]" — that make no sense. Characters can be killed by Radiation Manipulation ''during character creation'', which is made worse because strict rule interpretation limits a player to three character sheets ''ever''. The skill system is incredibly convoluted, and since you have to pick your skills before you roll your Radiation Manipulations, you'll be picking those skills without critical info about how well your character can use them even if he lives to be played. You can read up on the specifics [[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=473443 here.]]

* ''Empire Of Satanis'', a game billed as being as being a mix of Lovecraftian horror and Satanism. What it actually contains is a nonsensical, derivative setting which has a puerile take on evil and horror at the best of times when it isn't just plain stupid. What makes it particularly bizarre is the designer, one Darrick Dishaw, a member of the 'Cult of Cthulhu' who claimed that he was "kicked out of the church of Satan for being too Satanic." His primary method of advertising the game consisted of yelling about how evil and artistic it is, using sockpuppet accounts to post positive reviews and, when all else failed, ''placing a curse on the people who disliked his game.'' A review can be read [[http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11696.phtml here.]]
** It almost seems confused as it talks of being as vile as possible, but having ''Candyland Magic''. There is nothing in the rules or setting to make the half-demon characters not instantly kill each other, let alone work together as a party. The description of the setting is confused prose with zero consistency or sense of what kind of world these characters actually live in.

** As you start to actually READ the thing you realize it doesn't have rules, it has word salads that it seems like C++ flipped through a dictionary and picked out whatever words his finger landed on. Rule Rulber Zero is supposed to be an explanation on how C++ numbers his version histories, but starts to drift into an aside about Superman canon and quickly devolves into an AuthorFilibuster and [[ConspiracyTheorist conspiracy theory]], eventually totaling over 1500 words. To top it all off, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking C++ fails to follow his own version history numbering rule]].

* ''Rap Rat'' is a board game for kids made in 1992 which used [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW5m3ix8KuI a VHS tape]] as part of the game. Kids would put in the tape and they'd roll a color-coded dice and move around the board. However, the board goes in a complete circle and does not end. Instead, they have to roll the same color as their piece, pretty much making the board useless, and each time they land on one of their color they get one part of a Cheese Jigsaw Puzzle, and they had to collect 10 pieces in order to win. While doing it, Rap Rat himself would repeatedly interrupt the game to shout out to the players to have them say and do stuff, and would act generally annoying with his pseudo-raps, all while eating the cheese on the screen. It would take him 10 minutes to finish the cheese on the screen, and if he eats it all before a player can collect 10 pieces, all players lose. Given the [[LuckBasedMission odds of rolling your color 10 times to get the puzzle pieces it is extremely difficult to do it in 10 minutes]] and, combined with Rap Rat being insufferable and [[NightmareFuel downright creepy]], the uselessness of the board part of the game, and lack of anything else, made the game absolutely unbearable. It really says something when the game's bad design and the creepiness of Rap Rat himself led to the creation of a [[http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Rap_Rat creepypasta]] and the game is only remembered by said creepypasta.

* ''Rap Rat'' is a board game for kids made in 1992 which used [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW5m3ix8KuI a VHS tape]] as part of the game. Kids would put in the tape and they'd roll a color-coded dice and move around the board. However, the board goes in a complete circle and does not end. Instead, they have to roll the same color as their piece, pretty much making the board useless, and each time they land on one of their color they get one part of a Cheese Jigsaw Puzzle, and they had to collect 10 pieces in order to win. While doing it, Rap Rat himself would repeatedly interrupt the game to shout out to the players to have them say and do stuff, and would act generally annoying, all while eating the cheese on the screen. It would take him 10 minutes to finish the cheese on the screen, and if he eats it all before a player can collect 10 pieces, all players lose. Given the [[LuckBasedMission odds of rolling your color 10 times to get the puzzle pieces it is extremely difficult to do it in 10 minutes]] and, combined with Rap Rat being insufferable and [[NightmareFuel downright creepy]], the uselessness of the board part of the game, and lack of anything else, made the game absolutely unbearable. It really says something when the game's bad design and the creepiness of Rap Rat himself led to the creation of a [[http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Rap_Rat creepypasta]] and the game is only remembered by said creepypasta.

* ''Rap Rat'' is a board game for kids made in 1992 which used [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW5m3ix8KuI a VHS tape]] as part of the game. Kids would put in the tape and they'd roll a color-coded dice and move around the board. However, the board goes in a complete circle and does not end. Instead, they have to roll the same color as their piece, pretty much making the board useless, and each time they land on one of their color they get one part of a Cheese Jigsaw Puzzle, and they had to collect 10 pieces in order to win. While doing it, Rap Rat himself would repeatedly interrupt the game to shout out to the players to have them say and do stuff, and would act generally annoying, all while eating the cheese on the screen. It would take him 10 minutes to finish the cheese on the screen, and if he eats it all before a player can collect 10 pieces, all players lose. Given the [[LuckBasedMission odds of rolling your color 10 times to get the puzzle pieces it is extremely difficult to do it in 10 minutes]] and, combined with Rap Rat being insufferable and [[NightmareFuel downright creepy]], the uselessness of the board part of the game, and lack of anything else, made the game absolutely unbearable. It really says something when the game's bad design and the creepiness of Rap Rat himself led to the creation of a creepypasta, and the game is only remembered by said creepypasta.

* ''Rap Rat'' was a board game for kids in 1992 which also used [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW5m3ix8KuI a VHS tape]] as part of the game. Kids would put in the tape and they'd roll a color-coded dice and move around the board. However, the board goes in a complete circle and does not end. Instead, they have to roll the same color as their piece, pretty much making the board useless, and each time they land on one of their color, they get one part of a Cheese Jigsaw Puzzle, and they had to collect 10 pieces in order to win. While doing it, Rap Rat himself would repeatedly interrupt the game to shout out to the players to have them say and do stuff, and would act generally annoying, all while eating the cheese on the screen. It would take him 10 minutes to finish the cheese on the screen, and if he eats it all before a player can collect 10 pieces, all players lose. Given the odds of rolling your color 10 times to get the puzzle pieces it is extremely difficult to do it in 10 minutes and, combined with Rap Rat being insufferable and [[NightmareFuel downright creepy]], the uselessness of the board part of the game, and lack of anything else, made the game absolutely unbearable. It really says something when the game's poor design and the creepiness of Rap Rat himself led to the creation of a creepypasta.

* In 1985, FASA put out a ''Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse'' RPG to cash in on the fad of the time... and it was near the point of being completely unplayable. Important rules were left out (combat requires the defender to roll a D6 and add their skill... but ''which'' skill is never given) or even directly contradicted (one monster is listed as having two "attack" options, only for ''the very next sentence in the book'' to note that it "always defends"), and even when there is an explanation, it tends to be unnecessarily complicated (players have to consult a complex table to see how an enemy reacts to being hit before they can actually do damage). Stats are given for several characters from the show, but many of them give the impression that the writers had never even watched the source material - Teela, for example, is a magic-user despite being the BadassNormal of the Masters, and [[PluckyComicRelief Orko]], of all people, gets offensive spells. Worse yet, some of said spells ''didn't even have rules included for how they worked'' - later releases included a card that, rather than giving the rules, just said that they would be included in a future edition (which never came out). It was intended for 8- to 10-year-olds to introduce them to [=RPGs=], but even adults with college degrees have expressed confusion over the mechanics.

* In 1985, FASA put out a ''Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse'' RPG to cash in on the fad of the time... and it was near the point of being completely unplayable. Important rules were left out (combat requires the defender to roll a D6 and add their skill... but ''which'' skill is never given) or even directly contradicted (one monster is listed as having two attacks, only for ''the very next sentence in the book'' to note that it "always defends"), and even when there is an explanation, it tends to be unnecessarily complicated (players have to consult a complex table to see how an enemy reacts to being hit before they can actually do damage). Stats are given for several characters from the show, but many of them give the impression that the writers had never even watched the source material - Teela, for example, is a magic-user despite being the BadassNormal of the Masters, and [[PluckyComicRelief Orko]], of all people, gets offensive spells. Worse yet, some of said spells ''didn't even have rules included for how they worked'' - later releases included a card that, rather than giving the rules, just said that they would be included in a future edition (which never came out). It was intended for 8- to 10-year-olds to introduce them to [=RPGs=], but even adults with college degrees have expressed confusion over the mechanics.

* In 1985, FASA put out a ''Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse'' RPG to cash in on the fad of the time... and it was near the point of being completely unplayable. Important rules were left out (combat requires the defender to roll a D6 and add their skill... but ''which'' skill is never given) or even directly contradicted (one monster is listed as having two attacks, only for ''the very next sentence in the book'' to note that it "always defends"), and even when there is an explanation, it tends to be unnecessarily complicated (players have to consult a complex table to see how an enemy reacts to being hit before they can actually do damage). Stats are given for several characters from the show, but many of them give the impression that the writers had never even watched the source material - Teela, for example, is a magic-user despite being the BadassNormal of the Masters, and [[PluckyComicRelief Orko]], of all people, gets offensive spells. Worse yet, some of said spells ''didn't even have rules included for how they worked'' - later releases included a card that, rather than giving the rules, just said that they would be included in a future edition (which never came out). It was intended for 8- to 10-year-olds to introduce them to [=RPGs=], but even adults with college degrees have expressed confusion over the mechanics.

** As you start to actually READ the thing you realize it doesn't have rules, it has word salads that it seems like C++ flipped through a dictionary and picked out whatever words C++'s finger landed on. Rule Rulber Zero is supposed to be an explanation on how C++ numbers his version histories, but starts to drift into an aside about Superman canon and quickly devolves into an AuthorFilibuster and [[ConspiracyTheorist conspiracy theory]], eventually totaling over 1500 words. To top it all off, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking C++ fails to follow his own version history numbering rule]].

* ''Film/JurassicParkIII: Island Survival Game'' is an overly simplistic "roll and move" game whose primary failure is the utter lack of strategy designed into it. Two players control either the humans or the dinosaurs; the goal for the humans is to escape Isla Sorna, while the dinosaurs must kill the humans by attacking them to remove one life chip at a time. This setup, combined with the opportunity for the human player to roll an escape during the dino attacks which also allows them to move forward several spaces, puts the dinosaur player at an intrinsic disadvantage. The [[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vbOSVYVyX2I/U_IyleOpoLI/AAAAAAAAIls/DOY_LdOuwAs/s1600/20140818_111955.jpg board]] is split into 5 portions based on the main action scenes from the film, and it's so linear that there is little motivation to choose one alternate path over another. Cards with certain effects are drawn when the human player lands on certain spaces, and strictly adhering to the rules means they must be used immediately rather than held for later strategic use. The win condition for the human player is achieved through further strategy-free luck: keep landing on the final space, drawing cards, and hoping that you pull the win card or else you must backtrack through the final section of the board. The physical and aesthetic craftsmanship is also lacking; while the modeled plastic dinosaur pieces are somewhat decent, the cards, life chips, and even the human character pieces are all made of cheap cardboard, while the game board itself features a low-detail illustration of the island. ''Critical Hits'' [[http://www.critical-hits.com/blog/2007/04/26/jurassic-park-3-island-survival-game-a-review/ gave the game]] a 2/10, noting that the only potential fun to be had would be from ignoring the given rules and simply role-playing your own scenario with the pieces.

** As you start to actually READ the thing you realize it doesn't have rules, it has word salads that make C++ come across as an untreated schizophrenic. Rule number Zero is supposed to be an explanation on how C++ numbers his version histories, but starts to drift into an aside about Superman canon and quickly devolves into an AuthorFilibuster and [[ConspiracyTheorist conspiracy theory]], eventually totaling over 1500 words. To top it all off, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking C++ fails to follow his own version history numbering rule]].

* ''TabletopGame/{{FATAL}}'' is, hands down, the all-time reigning champion of horrible [=RPGs=]. The rulebook consists of '''900''' agonizing pages of poor mechanics, a massive number of ill-defined stats, violations of common sense, [[VulgarHumor and all-around contempt for basic human decency]]. For example, one of the most basic rolls in the game is [=4d100/2-1=]. That's right, roll a hundred sided die four times, sum the results, divide in half and subtract one...for all ''seventeen'' of your stats, and anything else requiring a bell curve. The creators, on learning the flaw of this system, decided to "improve" it to [=10d100/5-1=]. For the record, if you are using real dice, that requires 20 d10 rolls. Character creation takes a while in this system, especially since (at least in the first version) each stat had four sub-stats (requiring ''more than a hundred'' dice rolls), and at one point it calls for a 1d10,000,000 roll. For the record, that's either 8 d10 rolls (one per digit), or one die that would be better [[Film/RaidersOfTheLostArk for crushing]] Franchise/IndianaJones than for getting a random number. Practicality is thrown out the window in favor of vulgarity and offense, a quality not helped by the creators' claim that only white, non-Christian people inhabit TheVerse and their constant flip-flopping between claims that it's either "[[BlackComedy controversial]] [[ParodyRetcon humor]]" or historically and mythically accurate (which, obviously, it utterly fails at being). Skills tend to be pointless and mundane (urination) and statuses are often every bit as bizarre as they are tasteless (fruit growing out of one's privates, a "scratch'n'sniff" vagina appearing on one's forehead, getting aroused whenever it rains). [[LoadsAndLoadsOfRules The sheer number of rules is ridiculous]] and makes the game incredibly difficult rather than giving it any challenge; to calculate the results of ''sex'', one must '''solve quadratic equations'''. On top of all this, the game is absolutely ''drowning'' in UnfortunateImplications, featuring piles of misogyny, rape, and apologia for same. RPG Net reviewers Darren Maclennan and Jason Sartin [[http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14567.phtml have a far more detailed, and horrific, review if you're still tempted...]] (NSFW) An older version of the game included unfortunate more-than-implications including things like magic items themed around racist caricatures.

* ''Top Trumps'' is a very well respected card game that has lasted for years with tons of expansions. However, it's ''Space Phenomena'' pack is the worst of the lot. The game works by having two to six players compare a statistic on the cards with the highest one being the winner. The ''Space Phenomena'' cards have stats as "N/A" or an extremely low number and rapidly shift in measurements, meaning that most cards are straight up unusable. This makes the game incredibly slow without HouseRules. Even worse, some of the stats provided are in non-standard or just plain wrong units (such as "Earth Years" for ''speed'')[[note]]Perhaps the creators confused orbital velocity with orbital period, as orbital period depends on orbital velocity. A more appropriate statistic would be "Distance from Sun" or even "Distance from Barycenter", though the former still results in the Sun and other objects having an N/A and the latter is perhaps too obscure for the general public, though the Sun will not have an N/A in this case[[/note]] or change reference points (for instance, orbital period, or "speed", for planets is given relative to the Sun, while orbital period for the Sun and other objects is given relative to the galactic center), resulting in numbers that are insane, wildly inaccurate and seemingly pulled out of nowhere. (Apparently The Moon wasn't discovered until 1651[[note]]Giovanni Battista Riccioli's ''Almagestum Novum'', published in 1651, laid the foundations for the modern system of lunar nomenclature[[/note]], Venus wasn't discovered until 1990[[note]]The Magellan spacecraft, which produced the first global terrain map of Venus, arrived at Venus in 1990[[/note]], and Halley's Comet is -6000000 Earth masses[[note]]The Halley's Comet card attempts to describe the comet's mass in terms of Earth's, but fails miserably. The correct value is 3.7E-11 Earth masses according to WolframAlpha[[/note]].) Watch ''[[Creator/StuartAshen Ashens]]'' rip it apart [[http://youtu.be/1Us3iSgixRI here]].

* ''[[http://web.archive.org/web/20080212094700/http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/rahowasucks.html Racial Holy War]]''. The title [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin speaks for itself]], but the concept warrants a fuller explanation: in the future, the minorities have conquered the world under the guidance of their Jewish masters and reduced white people to a few small pockets of resistance. But now the whites are going to strike back... and you're going to play them. The material seriously reads like someone who just finished the ''[[Literature/TheProtocolsOfTheEldersOfZion Protocols of the Elders of Zion]]'' but didn't quite feel up to tackling ''Literature/MeinKampf''. And that is ''before'' you get to the horrible, broken, unfinished rules, including, but not limited to ''complete omission of rules regarding player-character attack resolution'' -- in short: you can't hit anything. Other gems: Players can be debilitated by body odor and will accept bribes to not attack ''during combat.'' [[LogicBomb Makes you wonder how the player race can claim to be "superior" if they suffer from the same physically-debilitating greed as the enemy races.]]

* ''Literature/{{Wraeththu}}'': The RPG [[CanonDefilement "adaptation"]] of Storm Constantine's fantasy series about post-apocalyptic mystical mutant hermaphrodites with flower-like genitalia (no, seriously) ended up not realistically portraying the setting of the books at all, casting the player characters as [[SmugSnake pretentious and glamorous sociopaths]], and going out of its way to be as unhelpful to the novice GM as possible. Of note are the gutwrenching mechanics: among other transgressions, chain mail transfers a statistical immunity to flamethrowers. Details [[http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=244590 here]] and [[http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/14/14347.phtml here.]]