Although, all of my recent 3.5 play has involved Pathfinder. And we used the Basic set, adding it bits and pieces from the full rulebook as needed.

The Pathfinder Basic Box is particularly impressive. Only levels 1-5, and the rules are stripped to an almost perfect mix of options.

Caveat: I haven't played an RPG in over 15 years, so my experience is dated. Also, I don't know if I tried enough to really assemble a "worst" list, but I do remember games that disappointed me because the potential seemed to be boundless.

1. Villains and Vigilantes. I love this setting and their approach to wonky characters. We played a lengthy campaign of this and I have everything Dee and Herman and their associates ever published. This is one of two games I could see myself actually running again one of these days... except for the system. Too many characters can get knocked out with one average punch and the combat system itself isn't coherent. I know that Dee created Living Legends to replace it, but I never got around to it.

2. Dark Sun. The concept as a whole was interesting. The mechanics, as a whole, were not. From the unplayable Templar class to the almost as unplayable Defiler ("Strange! All of the sparse plant life around is withering! It couldn't possibly be that cloaked figure muttering a charm spell!") to the breakable weapons to... well, just everything. Playing a thri-kreen was kickass. Playing in Arthas often wasn't. I know that Wizards released new stuff a couple years ago, but haven't bothered to find out if it's any good.

3. TORG. I loved the concept. And I LOVED the Cyberpapacy (cyberpunk and the medieval Church? I am so there.) But, again, the mechanics just killed it. The cards and the weird "story points" just didn't flow and there were too many opportunities for the GM and the players to be at odds over what worked and what didn't.

OTOH, my favorite game of all time (other than the two or three that I made) is the other one I could see myself running one day: Gamma World, third edition. I know a lot of people frown on them, but I liked the action table for its symmetry and I really enjoyed Kim Eastland's take on the world and its flora and fauna. I ran a very long and elaborate campaign for GW in first, second, third, and fourth editions, but I still think third ed was the best with a little modification for the classes of fourth.

First edition V&V was maybe the fifth role-playing game that I tried, but I really wanted to run a fun superhero rpg, so I embraced it with all my heart. I ran a couple of V&V campaigns throughout my high school years, switching to second edition V&V as soon as it came out. I ended up writing about 30 pages of house rules to add more powers and flesh out areas like cybernetics and magic. Around that same time, Marvel started publishing their Handbook series, and then their Deluxe Handbook series. I ended up statting at least 2/3 of their characters for V&V. Yeah, it was a flawed game, but we played the heck out of it. Like you, I ended up buying just about everything published for the game, plus I ran a lot of homebrew stuff based in the Marvel Universe.

Yeah, definitely a flawed game. You mentioned that it was easy to knock out some heroes. On the flip side, it was also sometimes really tough to knock out some heroes. According to one module, a small nuke does 1d100 points of damage. When the players failed to defuse that bomb in time, it went off, doing 4 points of damage. The throwing rules and falling damage rules also seemed out of synch with the rest of the game. And randomly rolling up superpowers often resulted in some unsatisfactory characters.

Back then, GenCon was a very small convention. I got Jeff Dee and Jack Herman to autograph my second edition rules. Better still, I got to play in a V&V session with Bill Willingham as the game master. Although he is famous now for his excellent Fables comic, back then he wrote the two best V&V modules ever: Death Duel with the Destroyers and The Island of Doctor Apocalypse. He brought back the Destroyers and a slightly revised Doctor Apocalypse a couple of years later in his first comic book series, Elementals. The only other great V&V adventure was Crisis at Crusaders Citadel, which was later redone as a four-issue mini-series V&V comic.

When I moved away, one of my friends expressed interest in starting up a V&V campaign. I gave him everything, the rules, the modules, and all my own content. I never looked back with any regret, until right now.

Shellhead wrote:


Ahaha, when we were running our cleric groups it was amazing how little healing we needed to do. It was all summon spamming, domain spells, enervation, and other horrible things. Mix that in with a decent hit die, saves and solid attack bonuses (buffed by spells!) and you have a pretty awful thing for a GM to challenge at all.

I guess if the group had taken a traditional, fantasy approach with a traditional party the class wouldn't have been so bad. With a group of boardgamers who treat D&D as a strategy game to win, it was something else. Once we hit around level 15 we could take down anything, often without lifting a finger. Just scry on our enemy, warp to it, gank away, and warp back home. When we started plans to execute unclean deities (there was a stat book for that!) the GM conceded defeat.

From a munchkin point of view, there was a fairly concrete hierarchy:

Cleric > Wizard/Sorcerer > Rogue/Bard > Useless Meatshield (anything else).

The whole game was a munchkin's wet dream, and I can't even conceive how 4th edition could make it worse. It may have even restored some sanity. I hear people complaining about it being all about miniatures and squares, but I already thought that about 3rd ed. Everything from flanking to attacks of opportunity emphasized that style of play heavily. 2nd edition (basic AD&D) was the best by far.

Shellhead wrote:


Yep. Have the comics, too. I actually thought FORCE was a pretty decent adventure, but I agree that, story-wise, the Destroyers/Apocalypse duo was probably the best. What I tended to do was just use the framework of many of the adventures as a basis for other things and then run with my own compilation of villains from those and the Most Wanted books, etc. I had a whole multi-tiered arrangement where rival street gangs were being manipulated by the Concrete Savages and they, in turn, were being pulled along by the Blood Guild (which had links by membership to three other groups) and they, in turn, were being subtly controlled by the Shadow Syndicate (and on and on...)