Gerbera Tetra:  Well, I lied it’s not all the games I’ve owned. I’m going to skip the ones I talked about last time and I decided if it didn’t have a Wikipedia article I’d pass on talking about it. Seriously even the wikidiots haven’t heard of all the weird games I’ve owned. In a few other cases I’m reserving a game for a different sort of article so..  well so.

The Good:
Games that almost took the Top Five. I would almost universally say go and find the a copy! Sadly some of them you can’t.

Amber, the first diceless game I ever bought. heck the only one I ever bought. The stats determined who was better than who in some broad and odd categories. That was it if you were better, you were better that was it.. assuming all factors were equal. That was the trick of it; the GM took into account all the little things going on including what and how the characters acted to determine outcomes. No luck involved. It was wits and role play all the way. The execution was tricky almost tricky enough to put this game in the Flawed category but.. ironically this game would be easier for non-veterans to grasp. Even then the learning curve is a bit steep but well worth it if you got a very role play instead of roll play group. So, I call it’s flaws less of an issue.

Cyberpunk 2020 this game came out almost to late. Cyberpunk was just starting to become popular and thus no longer cool. If you understand the ethos of Cyberpunk you got what I meant. As a game the system is a little wonky but tight. It oozed flavor and had that 80’s glam and live fast die young mentality. It was a potential platform for both awesome and awful storytelling. It is a time capsule of hardcore gaming or hardcore role playing that did something almost brand new. Owning 2020 edition is the only way to go and forgiving it failed foresight is a must. Think of the 1939 Worlds Fair, sure they were laughably wrong about the future but.. if they had been right; What a place for adventure!

DC Heroes. Holy flashback smoke batman! This game was published in a ‘readers digest’ form as the Batman rpg when the first Tim Burton Batman movie came out. I loved this game. The DC heroes game didn’t try, at first, to be a universal Superhero game. It made concessions to broadening of powers so you could make your won but many powers existed solely to simulate something a certain hero or villain could do. And it serviced well at simulation the DC universe at the time. It was fun to play some what slow to pick up for some but not difficult. But most importantly it was fun. The game system still has quite a following and unlike most internet fandoms, I think they’re right.

Paranoia . Dark humor for all and lots of mayhem! Latter editions only though.. trust me. In any case the game is dark satire of cold war paranoia that still resonates. We still fear computers, political radicals and mutants. Guess what? everybody is the last two right off! Everyone gets to work for a sadistic computer that only Emmy-chan could love [and hate at the same time]. The crazy paranoid computer also give everyone reason to shoot everyone else. Wackyness ensues wit vigor. Oddly there is some roleplaying to be had; inside the humor it a dark depressing and horrifically oppressed and paranoid society. The fact that it’s all cartoony in style saves it from being Kult or something. It can be played for laughs or pathos but usually in the comic end.

Tales from the Floating Vagabond. Drinking game or Role Playing game.. a little of both I think. Tales has a Red Dwarf flavor to it with some Cool World mixed in it. Play anything you can imagine; you going to get sucked into the bar at the center of the universe anyway. Seriously the door randomly samples people going int other doors randomly around the multiverse. The bar owner, Spit, figured the first reaction to dimensional snatching is to go get a drink. It a goofy hook for a goofy game. I once wrote up a scenario called the ‘Hunt for Miss October’ if that gives you any idea. Kinda Toon for grownups.

Toon & Teenagers From Outer Space - Speaking of Toon there’s Toon and TFOS. I place them together even though they are different concepts from different publishers becasue thay aim for and soaringly accomplish the same goal: Simulating animated adventures in a lighthearted tone. Tom and Jerry, Droopy, Bugs and Daffy, they would all feel right at home in Toon. Lum and the Galaxy High kids would slide right into TFOS. Nobody dies, but everyone can get bonked. Reality bends to the whim of comedy and they both spell their genres out really well. While they are hard to find both make great Rpg’s to introduce someone into the idea. Everyone has seen the old cartoons Toon emulates and teen anime comedy is seen widely enough now that getting TFOS is easy.

The Flawed:
Most of the games here have one of two issues. Either the background and setting are awesome and the system bites or the reverse. In some cases the flaws wouldn’t keep me or any veteran of rpgs away but you’d have hell trying to getting the thing to work for your average joe gamer who might *gasp* have too much of a life to grok this kind of stuff. All in all I could recommend these games but not without reservation, in a lot of cases you are best of using them as fodder to conversion to another system.

Ars Magica
I can only speak for the two editions I’ve owned. One i got early on in the development and one i bought recently. Both evopke great background and drama.. and all the nasty nasty pretentiousness you’d expect from MRH. It’s almost crimminal how good this game almost is. Imagine mideval Europe as the inhabitants thought it was; full of magic, mystery with god and the devil playing a chess match over mortal souls. Insert wizard player characters who have deep magic and flexible spells. All wrapped in ooodles of potential for great stories.... and then drown it to death with dense text unnecessary use of clumsy terms and a clunky system to make sure it stays down. I recall the earlier edition being actually easier to play for godsakes.

Big Eyes, Small Mouth the universal anime Rpg. I’d love very much to put this in the Good category. It’s flexibility is very close to Hero System. It is also easier to learn. In fact if you buy some of the derivative games made from it you might have a grand old time. But,it is not balanced very well. It will likely make a campaign fall apart purely through ignorance of it quirks. The point is if you need a universal system there are better ones to use; so why buy this one? The anime flavor built in that’s why. The authors get that flavor pretty well, espectially when doing show or background specific games. So buy those and use this to “toolkit” them if you must.

Call of Cthulhu is a gamer favorite. In fact I’m likely to be banned from Brittan for panning this in any way. And I’m going to. The only thing saving this from the OMGIPMFT is it chilling atmosphere and depth of setting. This baby is a prime candidate for the Gurps/Hero treatment. I.e. take the great setting and run it in some system that works. You heard me, this poor thing is saddled with the BRP system.Like Stormbringer and Elfquest a great background is saddled with the second worst gaming engine to still be in wide print. In fact I’ll mention those two here, since they also share the same category for the same reason. These are great settings, colorful and rich in detail that slug along almost unplayable in BRP land. However.. if you can deal with it or are willing to Hero the things they are well with the money.

HOL Human Occupied Landfill . I really wish I knew what happened to my copy of this. In the far future you are trash, literally. So is the game, in the trashy but you want it anyway sense. This game is the RPG equivalent of that skimpy dressed thing at the bar you just know is going to rob you blind instead of do you.. but you’re looking anyway. It a fantastic read, funny as hell and virtually unplayable. You can play it, I’ve seen it done but I’m not sure that is the intention. I think it’s a brilliant piece of satire of both pop culture and rpgs themselves. Buy it at your own risk, just don’t take it home to mom.

Kult - This game is one I still own.. if I can ever get it back from the guy I loaned it to. Lie Call of Chuthulu it’s horror and it’s dark dense and rich in texture and flavor. This game creeped me out while reading it’s subversive and dangerous concepts. If you’re going to hell for playing an Rpg it will not be D&d it will be Kult! Like CoC you’ll be fighting unspeakable evil and probably going mad for it but its more personal. The eldrich horrors don’t see you as vermin; they see you as prisoners. Kult is more modern more dirty and raw; more Clive Barker than Poe or Lovecraft. The system is also damn near unplayable. But I’d give it the universal treatment or maybe free form it. With the right group it’d be worth the trouble.

Mechwarrior RPG. Try and make a good game out of a bad one? Some times you fail, some times you succeed and some times you.. almost succeed. The game has a go at a tough sell; making all roles in the Battletech universe playable. The game can be fun but it’s tough to use that universe without making role playing what happens in between Battletech sessions. The designers and writers manage it well enough. In fact I’ll go so far as they did very well; provided you’re a Battletech fan. If you aren’t this game might be just a bit off. If you’re willing or already overlooking the inconsistency of the universe than it is all good. If not and you still want a wargame based sci-fi Rpg buy Renegade Legion.. if you can find it.

Middle-earth Role Playing & Rolemaster. By all rights both of these games should be in the OMGIPGMFT category. Think of MERP and D&D and Rolemaster as AD&D for framing. Both games produced Gurps like background, detail and depth in their source material. Think CoC. The systems are actually pretty solid if very, very very chart heavy. Character creation is longer than almost any game I’ve ever played. But it’s good, really good .. just unnecessarily obtuse. Seriously if you sent me back to 1993 and made me pick a fantasy rpg to play I’d pick this one. These days I’d only subject dear friends to it. Not that I want to torture them, but only dear friends would put up with me long enough to get what the game does well; play deep.

TORG. Someone at West End had a really good idea.. and possibly some really good drugs. The world is being invaded by other realities, parallel universes come to steal out possibilities. Yep the literal possibilities. Sounds crack-tastic and it was but it worked. It was good, really good in concept.. the execution wasn’t. The basic system was workable enough and useful but the supplemental material drug it down a bit. Lie a lot of West End products it was good, palatable but flawed. For example one ‘invading reality’ had so many broken things in the source book they eventually had it destroyed in continuity to get rid of it.. I think. But I’d love to see it again really, it was great.

Timelords. If I was honest this would be in the last category but I have nostalgia for this game. The idea was you and your friends come together and one of you shows off an odd crystal they found. A twenty sided McGuffin turns out to be an uncontrollable time machine. The idea was to make yourself in game and play you as .. well a very lost and confused time traveler. That’s it really. The rest of the game book used a clunky.. okay nearly uselessly clunky games system to run things. I fear this is only in the Flawed category out of nostalgia but .. you can’t buy this thing anymore anyway so sue me.

Vampire - While I’ve only owned the original editions [ie. VtM, WtA etc.] the World of Darkness games are really good. But flawed, oh so flawed. The entire product line receives high marks for background, source material and quality and quantity of adventure material. The deal killer here is the rules set. They never quite got the munchkin-isms worked out and the player community didn’t help any. Both the writing and playing nearly collapsed under power gaming on one hand a pretentious role playing on the other. One side note though; this game set above all others got girls into gaming back in the day. Bonus!

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Like Mechwarrior this game took a war game and made it into less of one. Notice I didn’t call it a Role Playing game. It is not that you can’t role play in this game, the game just doesn’t encourage it directly. Like a lot of British RPG products it sets up rich and interesting possibilities and ... pretty much expects you to fight and die a lot. The character generation and advancement system is fun in the abstract but really confining and counter-role playing in practice. That said I’d still play it any day of the week. The game is just plain fun.

And The “Oh My God I Payed Good Money For This?!?!?!
These are games I wish I hadn’t bought. They might be something I’d be loathe to part with now that they are here but if I could tun back time without dancing in fishnets on a warship I’d just pass on those purchases. With that in mind consider these a warning; don’t buy these things it is a waste of money. If you have bought any of these and you like them… well you’re a sick f*ck.

RuneQuest ah the origin of the BRP system. For this alone it deserves some infamy. However unlike some of the other games run on basic Role Playing this one can’t be saved by its setting. Not that the setting isn’t interesting. On the contrary it is very interesting if you can puzzle it out. Now I’ll admit this is really dependent on what edition you hold. Some are clear others are not but the version I owned is mercifully not available in stores. It was confusing, dense and just to much to bother with. I’ve perused the new editions of it in the game store and.. couldn’t make heads or tails of the system so.. I put it back on the shelf.

The Doctor Who RPG. Coulda been good but is really broken. Let me get this out of the way; I’m a Doctor Who fanboy and my favorite Doctor is Tom Baker. On that basis alone I do not wholly regret owning this game, although I no longer own it. But I must steer anyone and everyone away from it. The system shares the early FASA engine that Star Trek did. The system is similarly as issue ridden as the Basic Role Playing engine. It’s obtuse, clunky and make play difficult. Worse still if you’re a big fan of the show.. the game takes some freakish liberties with the background and just plain gets some other things plain wrong.

Ghostbusters RPG how West End kept getting role playing game franchises and the shitting all over them I’ll never know. Not becasue they were bad designers. On the contrary they could be very good. But here they weren’t. They had the admirable goal of making a rule light system for a lighthearted take on a really funny movie. The big failing was you couldn’t do a fair portion of things that happened in the movie. For a direct property that was at the time only movie length you wonder for a moment if they play tested it much at all. I felt that it was just a hash in attempt. The second edition resolved much of these problems but.. it was too late.

Heroes Unlimited/Palladium Fantasy RPG/Rifts and Robotech- Robotech was teh gateway drug here.. then all my friends we playing the Fantasy Rpg and well there was Heroes U.. and .. and yea I owned Rifts and even played a little. I was young, I didn’t know any better! My buddies made me play it. Now, older wiser and scarred for it I can tell you this drivel call Megeversal is crap. You could fertilize the Sahara with this stuff. What’s more the leader of the dope pushers, Kevin Siembieda is also full of crap. Palladium made a house rules heavy version of AD&D and haven’t changed it perceptibly since except to add more and clunkier rules each time. Worse still the books are very rarely whole; i.e. you’re going to have to wing a lot of things that even BRP gets right. Ignore the fanboys.. buy something that works.

Marvel Super Heroes- Speaking of things that don’t work. I rely don’t know how anyone managed to play this thing. Seriously if any one can explain it to me I’d love to hear of it. The things is people did play it, a lot apparently but they must have had quite a time the thing used a weird chart and some really imbalanced power systems. But to each their own. Then again TSR did some times publish a ton of crap with no audience.  I owned the The Ultimate Powers Book and was surprised at the number of ways you could have vampirism.. no seriously an inordinate amount of powers were vampirism.. god only knows why.

Superworld - Another sad sad Basic Role Play product. It lacked a lot of focus ripped off Champions a bit and was rather math weird. But the game killing flaw was this; “Seven characteristics (Strength, Constitution, Size, Intelligence, Power, Dexterity, Appearance) are rolled with dice (2D6+6, rather the 3d6 used for many other Basic Role-Playing games.) The sum of these characteristics gives a total of Hero Points used to buy super powers.” Yep the better you rolled for stats the more powerful you’re hero would be.Ponder that for a bit..  yep broke the game balance right out of the gate.

Weapons of the Gods- Oh wow do I want this game to be merely Flawed. No shit I’d love for this game to be workable but I can’t make heads or tales of it. I’m sure I could.. if someone showed me a play test or something. like a lot of games with bucket loads of potential and oddles of style and Wow factor it’s burdened with a bad bad game system. Additionally while the background and lore are amazing, they made it part of the character system, no shit if you want to have your hero involved in background elements you can/have to pay points for it you could use to make your character more effective. While this gives players and Gms some control over what elements of the background come into the story.. it can cause arguments and needless imbalance. I can’t tell you how much it kills me that I wish I’d never bought this thing. I’d have been better off buying the comics and using a universal system. I’d understand more and have a game my players would enjoy more.