worst game mechanic ever

[misterecho]

I Suspect he's a human spammer of Chinese origin

[kumakami]

the bots may be lacking in good thought, but I feel, Bot or no bot that this is a place for Debate.....that and I was bored.

[pstmdrn]

So many good points, I don't know where to begin, especially because I do not feel like being wordy.

Let's begin with Palladium. I played a lot of Palladium as a pre-teen and I used to think it was great, but it has a bunch of tedious crap to deal with and, as stated, many of it fails to come up in the game. Character creation should not be that time consuming, nor crunchy.

3.5 Feats - The thing I look for the most in a game is a way for players to really make their characters unique. In D&D prior to 3.5, many characters of each class were almost cookie cutter-like except for item and spell choices. AD&D occasionally put our alternate versions of a class (Swamp Druid, etc.), but you could never really customize. Feats in 3.5 allow a player to make very specific characters if they want, like Necromancers that specialize in skeletons, Fighters who excel at killing spellcasters and Clerics that worship gods of Arcane Magic. The fixed progression of older D&D did not leave any room for this type of creativity. It was one reason I left D&D for more 'open' types of games like White Wolf, where almost any type of character is conceivable.

[madunkieg]

The worst game mechanic I've ever encounted was one that caused me to stop playtesting. It stopped the other playtest group, too.

Character creation contained these three steps for buying skills:
1. Childhood: spend 5000 points on skills
2. Youth: spend 3000 points on skills
3. Adulthood: spend 2000 points on skills

It was a percentile system and you bought each 1% individually. So, what was the point cost of each percentage? Well, it was derived from multiple attributes associated with each skill, and calculated to two decimal places. Let's do a little calculation of our own, shall we? 5000 + 3000 + 2000 points is 10000 points total, and costs are calculated to 2 decimal places, so...that's effectively 1 million points spent in odd increments.

[kumakami]

madunkieg: wow, I think I'd shoot the writer for that......

[misterecho]

we have a winner that is undoubtedly the worst mechanic ever!

[Rob Lang]

madunkieg - that's is truly the worst system I've ever seen.

[SheikhJahbooty]

And let me guess Madunkieg,

equipment was purchased with credits, or nuyen, or gold pieces, or dollars, or what-have-yous,

because spending one million centi-skill points doesn't go quite far enough towards instilling the mind numbing zen trance state necessary for truly immersive play.

I used to think Shadowrun had a time consuming character creation system because of the 500,000 nuyen. I had no idea the depths people will sink to.

[madunkieg]

As a prize I would like to never face that mechanic again. Which should be easy, because the game never got into production.

Both local groups got together to give feedback to the creators. Of the 300+ page document, we had both found the same 6 pages that were not so heinous that they didn't deserve immediate trashing, and only 1 paragraph that was actually good. Apparently a third, out-of-town group did get through character creation, so I guess the world is full of all types of people.

[vulpinoid]

I was about to wade into this discussion with some anecdotes of my own, but that's just ridiculous...I can't compete.