winterhawk Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 Originally posted by Hermit I kind of liked High Tech Enemies, the Destruction Co. especially. The Destruction Co. is one of my Hunteds! Power Tool was my college Engineering School rival. They really prey upon my penchant for theme based teams. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blue Posted March 18, 2003 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 Originally posted by assault My thoughts: I didn't buy Bad Medicine for Dr Drugs, but I enthusiastically seized it when a friend was giving away some of his older and less useful RPG stuff. My opinion of it is that it is a "cult classic" - you either hate it, or you have a sneaking fondness for it despite its weaknesses. I like it. Then again, I also watch Plan 9 every chance I get... I wouldn't list BMfDD as the worst. Yup! Like I said, it's so bad that I pine to run it again. We all have guilty pleasures. Mine is creating unneccessary threads! HaHA! Mission accomplished. I now return to my lair to plot my next thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grymlynn Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 Hey Mike, be nice... The only two Judge's Guild products I bought were two D&D modules by Paul Jaquays - Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia. Those were about the best D&D modules I ever got, and I got a lot of them... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 Earthdawn: A really neat setting hooked up to a system so byzantine I don't think I ever did figure out how to make a character or use magic. Shadow World: These varied wildly in quality. Some were pretty good (like Gethaena), and some were really, really bad. One example of the latter was "Journey to the Magic Isle", which, for five dollars, gave you two 'adventures' with a total of about four encounters. One of those was a thinly disguised Cthulhu mythos adventure badly transplanted into the Shadow World. Oh, and FH users of Shadow World suffered, since it was published back when ICE owned both FH and Rolemaster; often the FH stats in the modules were not usable, or not even there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Mhoram Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 EE was bad, but I have used a character in it for inspiration in the background of a new character, so it can't be the worst. The underwater rules saved Scourge from worst so.... Enemies Assemble and Enemies for Hire.. Altantis too. Actually anything in that particular trade dress that Steve didn't write. As an aside I like the Dr Drugs module. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redmenace Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 I apologize to the author, I've never written a printed supplement, but Roadkill is just unbelievably awful. Its like the books in Call of Cthulu, evil and sanity destroying. That said it isn't the worst. Return of the Elokians , Chaosium- a alien first contact scenario where the aliens are misled against the heroes by a geriatric gangster couple, Bugsy and Murial. Bundled in a collection with two others, Sorry but I can't remember the title. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom McCarthy Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 I must admit, Enemies Assemble was one that felt like 90% chaff. I did like seeing the big energy guy from the Ultimates remember his mission after a typically bizarre run in with Foxbat. I got some use out of Enemies for Hire. Many of the characters had fairly limited schticks, several of them at least served a Gilt Complex function (the players see them use one good ability, assume an equally well-rounded character design, and then are shocked by how one-dimensional the villains prove to be). Call it 60-70% chaff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 Originally posted by misterdeath Non Hero semi-supers product: Synnibar. The world of. Yeeks. Overpowered and Underpowered character classes. Confusing rules, strange random elements. Some good ideas, but hard to glean the wheat from the chaff (more apt analogy, finding the needle in the hayloft). Come on, that Raven guy jumped off diving boards to make sure it was a good system. Did you know there's a second book? MWA HA HA HA! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
misterdeath Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 Do you know what's worse? I OWN it. Mwahahahahahaha. D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haerandir Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but my vote goes to European Enemies, too. Any time the fact that they forgot to print the strength value for a brick is NOT the worst error in the book, you have serious problems... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D Posted March 18, 2003 Report Share Posted March 18, 2003 I rather liked Enemies Assemble, myself. Not everything in there was good, true. I'd say about half hte book was so-so, but the other half was GREAT! I especially liked the Foxbat and crew writeup, Factor 7, and the Ultimates. I thought the update on the Ultimates was particularly well done and added a lot of depth to a group I had thought was a bunch of losers. There were many memorable and fun characters in the Foxbat section. Few gaming supplements make me laugh out loud, but I got more than a few chuckles out of that section. I consider the Enemies Assemble version of Foxbat and the Ultimates to be the definitive version of the characters. Factor 7 was an interesting spin on a villain group and a wonderful example of a villain group that doesn't think they are the villains. Pyramid in the Sky was intriguing. I couldn't use it as written, but there were some very good ideas in there. I could have filed the numbers off and changed a few things around and made that adventure work really well. Enemies for Hire was another one where there were a lot of good ideas floating around. I thought it was interesting to see all of the supervillains who could be considered the "second string" of the Hero Universe. They weren't mooks by any stretch, but two or three of them would make good "Lieutenant" Villains for the party to get past. High tech Enemies and The Mutant File are almost what I'd call "Guilty Pleasures". I liked reading some of the interesting backgrounds, but the power levels were just ridiculous. Even so, it was another case of interesting ideas that I could work with if altered. And for me personally, it's easier to bring down the power level on a published character then the other way around. But I have to agree, back in the days of 250 pt starting heroes, seeing agents... I say again... AGENTS at 250 points!!! That's just not right... European Enemies - Blech... I have that one. I've never used it. I mean, when I'm asked to actually take seriously a character like Mastodon... or the Thespian? Good grief!! The only character in European Enemies I thought was even the least bit salvageable was the Bastion of Budapest. He was actually interesting. He was a one trick pony, but he was interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lemming Posted March 19, 2003 Report Share Posted March 19, 2003 Originally posted by misterdeath Do you know what's worse? I OWN it. Mwahahahahahaha. Yea, I bought the "Ultimate Adventurer's Guide" just because the original book was so bad. I'm still tempted to do a Synnibarr Hero at some point, but I might be brought up on war crimes.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
misterdeath Posted March 19, 2003 Report Share Posted March 19, 2003 I bought it at Gen Con one year directly from mr McCrackhead. It's a good threat game, "You think Hero's complicated, well, look at this... I could run it next instead of Supers..." Ha. D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pol Rua Posted March 19, 2003 Report Share Posted March 19, 2003 I can understand that some GM's don't have the time or can't be bothered to do this, but I don't use ANYTHING straight out of the book. Supplements are just ideas for me. I take the idea and usually do an almost complete re-write of it. By the time I'm finished, the final results don't really look all that much like the original material. As a result, I've used characters from European Enemies quite successfully, actually, I twisted the Roadkill adventure around to the point where I actually used Argent Anarky as the evil band. Two! TWO crappy supplements in ONE!!! Ah-hah hah hah!!! Oh, and as far as the Elokians adventure... it was in a three-adventure supplement called 'Trouble for Havoc', and featured three adventures - A fight in a nuclear reactor, a lost race story and a cold war slugfest. Great Fodder for my 60's Silver Age Campaign! I've also run Dr.Drugs. The characters are interestingly fleshed out with neat personalities, and are fun to play. You can run it as a campy, deadpan humour game, or, with re-writing, as a neat, 80's era teen heroes game. Besides, who could say a bad word about a teen gang called 'The Monkey Thugs'? Okay, sure, there's lots of supplements that need less work than others, but there's always something at the heart of each one for me to work on. ______________________________________ Pol. (Half-full guy) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superskrull Posted March 19, 2003 Report Share Posted March 19, 2003 The horror! The horror... I'm gonna have to go back to the 80's for this one. My vote is for Mind Masters from the Gamma World line. That sucker was a plot-on-rails with greased tracks and explosive collars if you run. It was an evil meatgrinder of a module, designed solely to render a character unplayable or at least broken in body and spirit. The premise is that you stumble into a computer controlled sanitarium and they 'fix' your delusions of being in a post-holocaust world. You come out of it shaved, surgically modified and with the equivalent of the Phobia mutational defect. If you're a character who previously enjoyed using his wings, prepare to have them sliced off, just like the fur, scales, feathers or other deviations from baseline. There's no real way to enjoy that module, other than locating and sending a Death Machine to play with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glen Sprigg Posted March 19, 2003 Report Share Posted March 19, 2003 Originally posted by Redmenace I apologize to the author, I've never written a printed supplement, but Roadkill is just unbelievably awful. Its like the books in Call of Cthulu, evil and sanity destroying. That said it isn't the worst. Return of the Elokians , Chaosium- a alien first contact scenario where the aliens are misled against the heroes by a geriatric gangster couple, Bugsy and Murial. Bundled in a collection with two others, Sorry but I can't remember the title. Oh, man...I actually have that thing. HAVOC, it was called. I bought it back before I was interested in Champions; I was playing V&V at the time. The characters were truly...lousy. The plots were mediocre at best, and the production was so typical early 80s. It was primarily a Superworld supplement, with V&V and Champions conversions included. Glen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Hiemforth Posted March 19, 2003 Report Share Posted March 19, 2003 Originally posted by Glen Sprigg Oh, man...I actually have that thing. HAVOC, it was called. Actually, (says Derek the Pedantic) it was called Trouble For Havoc. (It's on my Big List Of All Hero Books linked in the sig below.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuk Posted March 19, 2003 Report Share Posted March 19, 2003 Originally posted by AlHazred Ask a GURPS player about GURPS Wild Cards B] They'll probably say it's great, because it is. Allowing for the travesty that is GURPS Supers 1st edition, of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redmenace Posted March 19, 2003 Report Share Posted March 19, 2003 Just out of curiosity, what does anyone think was so awful about Gurps Wildcards? Lack of world data? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted March 20, 2003 Report Share Posted March 20, 2003 Originally posted by Redmenace Just out of curiosity, what does anyone think was so awful about Gurps Wildcards? Lack of world data? It had plenty of world data. It covered the history, had scads of major character, discussed he virus, the aliens, and all that. The only problem was the engine -- GURPS Supers. Now, I've seen the NPCs from GURPS Wild Cards Aces Abroad. Those were some pretty crappy characters let me tell you... Virtually every single one was some sort of mytholgical persona brought to life. Pretty "enh" on the originality scale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackCobra Posted March 20, 2003 Report Share Posted March 20, 2003 Originally posted by Redmenace Just out of curiosity, what does anyone think was so awful about Gurps Wildcards? Lack of world data? Um, the unbelievably bad art? Hang on, let me grab it off the shelf and remember more. The layout wasn't great. The character write-ups (in GURPS Supers terms) are at best debatable. (I don't remember why, exactly, but I read the books 15 years ago and the details are a mite hazy.) And for a Steve Jackson / GURPS book, the content was not up to standard. Heck, I still buy GURPS books -- they're fantastic resources. But this one just didn't pack any where near the usual punch. That's why. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted March 20, 2003 Report Share Posted March 20, 2003 Originally posted by BlackCobra Um, the unbelievably bad art? Whew -- that's true. A large portion of it is not at all good. Hang on, let me grab it off the shelf and remember more. The layout wasn't great. The character write-ups (in GURPS Supers terms) are at best debatable. (I don't remember why, exactly, but I read the books 15 years ago and the details are a mite hazy.) And for a Steve Jackson / GURPS book, the content was not up to standard. Heck, I still buy GURPS books -- they're fantastic resources. But this one just didn't pack any where near the usual punch. That's why. The funny thing, it was written by a Wild Card author -- John J Miller, who created Yeoman, among others. So he knew what he was writing about and was involved in the project originally. I can't say much about hte designs, as I don't know GURPS Supers to know if anything was done all that poorly, although I know the GURPS to HERO translations I did worked out pretty well. IMO, there is a lot of stuff a lot worse than GURPS Wild Cards out there. Like GURPS Super Scum. Or some of the logic behind GURPS IST. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan D Posted March 20, 2003 Report Share Posted March 20, 2003 Originally posted by Susano IMO, there is a lot of stuff a lot worse than GURPS Wild Cards out there. Like GURPS Super Scum. Or some of the logic behind GURPS IST. I'm curious, Mike - What was it about IST that's wrong? I have a copy of that supplement myself. And I like it a lot, although I have my own issues with logic within it as well. I wonder if we're looking at the same things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheEmerged Posted March 20, 2003 Report Share Posted March 20, 2003 Ditto on the "curious" statement. My own known to be flawed and biased memory is saying something about "whole lot of wishful thinking"... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted March 20, 2003 Report Share Posted March 20, 2003 Originally posted by TheEmerged Ditto on the "curious" statement. My own known to be flawed and biased memory is saying something about "whole lot of wishful thinking"... That about sums it up. The whole UN anti-nuke program and things like MLK getting elected president. Really unrealistic expectations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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