Worst...Supplement...Ever...

[Blue]

It's frivolous opinion time!

I read some comments this morning on people trying to get old Champions material through E-Bay and suddenly flashed back on the worst supplement I ever bought.

So I thought I'd see if people can remember what the worst superhero related supplement was that they ever bought. I was going to limit this to champions, but it might be just as fun to hear about awful MSH, DC heroes, etc.

My vote (and this is fairly obscure): "Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs", an adventure with teenage heroes in high school, made for both Champions and Superworld. It makes me want to have players design humorous "tick" style characters so I can then try to run this supplement straight-faced.

So howzaboutit? Bought anything truly awful?

[Hermit]

Europeon Enemies is almost universally loathed around here.

[death tribble]

I didn't think it was that bad. European Enemies that is.

I found Villany Unbound to be more of a letdown. But there is a Dark Champions one with very few usable things in it. And I can't remember the name. It is the one with the three agent like people on the front. Reddish sort of cover.

[Jhamin]

I hate to admit it, but the worst Superhero supplament I have ever seen was the old Champions adventure "Scourge from the Deep"

A team of aquatic theamed villians go on a rampage. The problem lies with the Characters. They include:

Barnacle - A power armored guy who clings to stuff. That is the extent of his power.
Man'O War - A gellyfish with a face and Human legs. No arms, no torso, just legs.
Coral - Takes damage when she shoots parts of herself at you. Odds are, she will drop before her target
Dolphin - The gadgeteer. A dolphin that hates humans. Wore a metal tube that covered most of his body and had robotic arms.
Shark - Kind of scary combatant, but his main power was to change enemies into sharks so they would asphyxiate.

Coast Guard - (the NPC "Hero") A dimwitted night watchmen in glowing white plastic powerarmor that looks like is is made from milkjugs. Even better, the armor was given to him by an intelligent space otter who thought he was loveable.

The climax of the adventure comes when the villians take over a TV studio to broadcast their demands. I couldn't get past how they all avoided drying out under the lights.

[winterhawk]

Originally posted by Blue
My vote (and this is fairly obscure): "Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs", an adventure with teenage heroes in high school, made for both Champions and Superworld.

Ick, good pick...didn't that have a fat guy that could eat anything?


Originally posted by Blue
So howzaboutit? Bought anything truly awful?

The first two Blood of Heroes (1st Edition Rulesbook and the Sidekick supliment) offerings ultilize the old DC Heroes rules (one of the best systems ever IMHO) and have some of the worst artwork and sample characters ever...to the point that I can't believe anyone could publish these books and say "Yeah, this is really good."

And then there is the worst suppliment of all time...I have been on the boards awhile now, and have long expoused the evils of this Champions equivalent of a Pauly Shore movie...European Enemies! Stupid, sometimes stereotyped, but always boring characters...character artwork that did not match the 'Appearance' section of the character...so many errors that they actually had a send in for an errata sheet right in the middle of the suppliment...I can honestly say I have never used any character published in this suppliment and never will. It only collects dust on my bookshelf for use as a cautionary example.

[winterhawk]

Originally posted by death tribble
I didn't think it was that bad. European Enemies that is.

I beg to differ, see above :p


Originally posted by death tribble
I found Villany Unbound to be more of a letdown. But there is a Dark Champions one with very few usable things in it. And I can't remember the name. It is the one with the three agent like people on the front. Reddish sort of cover.

An Eye for an Eye

[Beetle]

As the proud owner of both Scourge from the Deep and European Enemies (lucky me :rolleyes: ), I have to say that as cheesy as SftD is, it can't hope to approach the level of badness embraced by European Enemies. Man, that thing was terrible.

[Starcorp Man]

For me, it has to be Mutant File. I loath that book.

[keithcurtis]

Originally posted by Blue
My vote (and this is fairly obscure): "Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs", an adventure with teenage heroes in high school, made for both Champions and Superworld. It makes me want to have players design humorous "tick" style characters so I can then try to run this supplement straight-faced.

It had decent art though. Jackson (Butch) Guice IIRC.

European Enemies gets my vote.

Keith "No Frecnh jokes, please" Curtis

[death tribble]

Scourge from the Deep had the Underwater rules but villains who truely sucked.
A lot worse than the ones in European Enemies

But for utility, An Eye for an Eye. And I am grateful to Winterhawk for the quick comeback on this.

[Blue]

I forgot about Scourge! Yup, it was all about the bad supervillains.

Another example of something so bad it's almost fun to run.

And Blood of heroes (1) was really bad. I had been looking forward to it since I was vaguely familiar with MEGS. Seems like the publishers needed a good beating after releasing that first one.

Did the subsequent versions improve it any? I refused to buy in again.

(My vote is still for BMfDD though.)

[Starcorp Man]

Speaking of European Enemies, what was the secret page about?

[allen]

Originally posted by Blue
"Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs"

Have never read the module, but absolutely love the title... has to rank up there in 'my best superhero module titles' ever list. (Which is admittedly probably even *more* frivolous than 'worst supplement ever list'.)

[Starcorp Man]

Bad Medicine wasn't created by Hero Games, so does it count?

[Blue]

I think Chaosium made it? It had dual stats for both superworld and champions. I'd count it. Point isn't to beat up on Hero Games (because we love them!) but to beat up on everyone :D

[Tom McCarthy]

It's hard to pick the worst. So many supplements had glaring flaws, but only a few were irredeemable.

Scourge from the Deep certainly never made me want to actually run the adventure (nice Tom Lyle cover, though). Ditto for the Invaders from Below, Olympians (nice George Perez cover, though), Road Kill, and Demons Rule (though it's the most salvageable of the bunch).

European Enemies had a few interesting concepts, but really few for the size and possible scope of the book (reasonable Jackson Guice cover ruined by the colorist). Mutant File was disappointingly out of scope for my campaigns at that time; the point tallies just were out of reach (nice Storn cover, but the interior art was uninspiring). High tech Enemies had similar power level issues, but the cover didn't grab me the same way.

Most of these supplements had classic ideas and themes that failed in the details and I never was willing to work to recover them.

By comparison VOICE of Doom (villains too powerful), Target: Hero (incomplete character sheets), Atlas Unleashed (lame supervillains) and some others definitely are ones I want to run (and run again for other players) despite their flaws.

[Glen Sprigg]

Strike Force. :D

Actually, I'm going to say Road Kill. This is an adventure in which the PCs are supposed to stop a heavy metal band from killing...the New Kids on the Block. Any of my characters would have either stood there waiting for the right moment to 'arrive just an instant too late' or outright helped them finish the job. I mean, I thought Wings of the Valkyrie had a moral dilemma...:rolleyes:

Glen

[keithcurtis]

Originally posted by Glen Sprigg
Strike Force. :D

Actually, I'm going to say Road Kill. This is an adventure in which the PCs are supposed to stop a heavy metal band from killing...the New Kids on the Block. Any of my characters would have either stood there waiting for the right moment to 'arrive just an instant too late' or outright helped them finish the job. I mean, I thought Wings of the Valkyrie had a moral dilemma...:rolleyes:

Glen

Heh. Snort. GUFFAW!:D :D :D

Keith "Good One!" Curtis

[winterhawk]

Originally posted by death tribble
But for utility, An Eye for an Eye. And I am grateful to Winterhawk for the quick comeback on this.

Useless trivia at your service!


Originally posted by Glen Sprigg
Actually, I'm going to say Road Kill. This is an adventure in which the PCs are supposed to stop a heavy metal band from killing...the New Kids on the Block. Any of my characters would have either stood there waiting for the right moment to 'arrive just an instant too late' or outright helped them finish the job. I mean, I thought Wings of the Valkyrie had a moral dilemma...:rolleyes:

ROFLMAFO...As a long time roadie, I always thought Roadkill was totally cliched myself...


Originally posted by Starcorp Man
Speaking of European Enemies, what was the secret page about?

Being the dork that I am, I actually sent away for it...I have it scanned if anyone would like to see it.

[Jeff T.]

European Enemies = mind-numbingly bad

[Hermit]

It wasn't 'bad' but I have to say, "Pyramid in the Sky" just left me cold. Didn't do a thing for me.

(Does this supplement make me look fat?) :)

And yes, asking a group of players to 'save' the NKOB is really cruel. I had one guy ask if he could spend five points and buy his character's "Total Code VS Killing" down so it allowed for "a few exceptions". :)

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by winterhawk
Being the dork that I am, I actually sent away for it...I have it scanned if anyone would like to see it. Sure!

[winterhawk]

This was the send in from European Enemies in .jpg format.

http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/lanceskijr/lst?.dir=/FIles

[Doug McCrae]

Originally posted by winterhawk
The first two Blood of Heroes (1st Edition Rulesbook and the Sidekick supliment) offerings ultilize the old DC Heroes rules (one of the best systems ever IMHO) and have some of the worst artwork and sample characters ever...
You are so right. I can't stand to read those books because of the drawings. One of the few examples of a product that has been made a lot worse by adding artwork. The Sidekick supplement actuallly has even more of the crap.

[Starcorp Man]

Originally posted by winterhawk
This was the send in from European Enemies in .jpg format.

http://briefcase.yahoo.com/bc/lanceskijr/lst?.dir=/FIles

Umm there's nothing there. :)

I actually liked Demons Rule, I liked the whole Cthulhu bent to the adventure. Ran it once and it was mighty successful.

[winterhawk]

Originally posted by Starcorp Man
Umm there's nothing there. :)

!@##$% Ya-Hell

I will mail anyone who wants to see the pages.

[Doug McCrae]

I liked Bad Medicine For Dr. Drugs a lot. It follows somewhat the X-Men concept of superheroes-in-training but emphasises the school aspect even more, and is in the spirit of 80s movies set in high school or college. I particularly like the player handout 'The Unwritten Code' which describes how school kids, even superpowered ones, must act if they want the respect of their peers. No squealing, for example. Good for getting across the distinctive feel of the setting.

It says at the start "The real fun of this scenario is in playing teen-age heroes who have just come into their powers". They're not the Justice League, they're not the Avengers. They're highschoolers. The one with the Matter-Eater Lad power is called 'The Masked Avenger'. He is based very much on the John Belushi character from Animal House and IMO makes a really entertaining PC personality-wise, though his power is a bit stupid. It should be pointed out that the rest of the team have perfectly sensible powers like speed, psychic powers, force fields, etc.

[Champsguy]

Originally posted by Doug McCrae
You are so right. I can't stand to read those books because of the drawings. One of the few examples of a product that has been made a lot worse by adding artwork. The Sidekick supplement actuallly has even more of the crap.

Yech. That was a wretched piece of Fuzion, if I ever saw one. Great system, lousy artwork, vomitous example characters.

I've been threatening to run a campaign where the PCs "accidentally" get transported to that world.

[JohnathanChance]

Originally posted by Blue
It's frivolous opinion time!

My vote (and this is fairly obscure): "Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs", an adventure with teenage heroes in high school, made for both Champions and Superworld.


You know I actually have this adventure....and I must agree it was truly horrible..:D

[keithcurtis]

IIRC, Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs had a decent map of a high school. I don't think it was as bad as some are saying, but I could be looking back with nostalgic glasses.

Keith "I got nothin' here" Curtis

[Super Squirrel]

Originally posted by keithcurtis
IIRC, Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs had a decent map of a high school. I don't think it was as bad as some are saying, but I could be looking back with nostalgic glasses.

Keith "I got nothin' here" Curtis Ah, nostalgia glasses! I remember when I was young and I thought Mysterious Cities of Gold was decent. Now I look at it... and there is a flying shark?!? What the heck?

[nHammer]

I would rate Enemies: The International Files along with Eurpean Enemies.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by keithcurtis
IIRC, Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs had a decent map of a high school. I don't think it was as bad as some are saying, but I could be looking back with nostalgic glasses.Yeah, I didn't think it was all that bad, either. (Especially considering that it came out during the heyday of Marv Wolfman and George Perez's work on The New Teen Titans, when young hero comics were the craze.)

Heck, Aaron Allston credits it as an inspiration for his excellent GURPS Supers adventure, School of Hard Knocks, so it can't be all bad. ;)

[Alibear]

Europeen Enemies made me laugh at least, especially getting countries names mixed up. Very shabby indeed!:(

Foxbat Unleashed was shocking and wins my vote! BTW I told someone on the boards that I would "gift" them the book if they sent me the price of postage. I sent the book thjey did not send the cheque! :rolleyes: No wonder they call me Billy Hunt!:(

[TheEmerged]

RE: Secret Page. Email is stranger894@yahoo.com

Thank you for the offer and the time.

RE: European Enemies. I hate this book with barely-bridled passion, but it's not entirely the book's fault. See, not long after I'd started playing HERO my friend and I tracked down an out-of-town gaming store that said they had HERO stuff. I was totally unprepared for the amount of material they had, though, and had only brought enough money for a few products. I seem to recall this is when I picked up Ninja HERO too, for example.

What does this have to do with EE? Well, the other products I had purchased left me with enough to buy just one product, and my decision came down to EE and another product. However, the other product looked very specific to its own campaign world, so I figured EE would be of more immediate use to the campaign I was running. Besides, my buddy and I had already resolved to come back the next week with more money...

Naturally, the other product was gone when we returned. It was a few years before I realized the enormity of my mistake.

The punchline? The other product was Strike Force :eek:

[Tclynch]

I remember seeing the guys from Pulsar Games with the "New" Blood of Heroes at Origins a couple of years ago. While they were trying to sell it to me I was flipping thru it, giving it a pretty good once over...man, the art almost made my eyes hurt...I placed it back down on the table and never went back.

[lemming]

Hmm, I see nobody has mentioned Enemies III. That was the first Hero book that made me think "Why did I spend money on this?"

[Glen Sprigg]

I never saw Enemies III, as I didn't get into Champions until the BBB jumped out at me from the gaming store shelf and threw itself into my backpack.

I do have pretty much every 4th edition book, as well as a few earlier ones, and as I said earlier, Road Kill was the worst (New Kids on the Block? Ugh). Invaders From Below didn't have much to recommend it, but the cover art (homage to FF 1) was almost worth the cost of the book itself. I've used a few characters from European Enemies, especially the heroic ones. I also ran a combat between Despoiler and Borealis, just 'cause. It's a good thing the Northwest Territories are sparsely populated...

I liked Scourge of the Deep, and I've used it as an origin story for an aquatic hero. I admit some of the characters were, to say the least, cheesy as hell, but it's a comic book, cheese is mandatory. The Mutant File should have been named 'The Campaign Overkill File,' and Hi-Tech Enemies had the Weasel, a character who would make the Harbinger of Justice think, 'I'll take the night off tonight...' Alien Enemies was too much of a mediocre thing, although I liked the Olympians. Zeus should be built on a thousand points or more; he's a god! Superheroes don't fight him, they listen respectfully and do as they're told! (Yeah, right...)

Glen

[Kevin Scrivner]

I never bought many Hero System supplements but the ones I did get were generally pretty good. I tend to buy supplements used (regardless of game system) to glean ideas from. Two of the weakest were actually for Mercenaries, Spies & Private Eyes with stats for Justice Inc.

Raid on Rajallapor -- An espionage adventure set in India. The art was cartoony but fit the genre, and there were good maps. But the supernatural twist the author tried to spring in the end was goofy rather than eerie. Never used it.

The Adventure of the Jade Jaguar -- At one point I saw a fanzine article on how to run this as a GM'd scenario instead of a solitaire scenario. Wish I'd saved it. I think it would have been a more coherent product that way. Tried to run it for my players but it was too hard to dope out all the permutations.

Border Crossing -- Lots of detail, and maybe the storyline was good after all, but the presentation was unattractive. And my players weren't into realistic espionage stories.

From the Casebook of Nick Velvet -- For the Ellery Queen Game. Looked like an intriguing quartet of mysteries but again it was written for solitaire play and was heavily dependent on maps included with the main game. If I worked hard enough on it, maybe it would be useful but I haven't had the opportunity yet.

The Official Two Worst Supplements:

Omegakron and The Horn of Roland, both for the Lords of Creation RPG. No coherent plotting, just random encounters with a bewildering variety of opponents of varying power levels. Very much a dungeon crawl with Doctor Who sensibilties. Horn of Roland sort of had an excuse since the PCs were being shuffled between two or three dimensions, but it was if the writer strung three unrelated scenarios together. Omegakron was disappointing because it didn't give a unified setting. You had talking animals in once section of the city, robots in another, human slaves in another. No wonder the game bombed.

On the other hand, the scenarios for FGU's Daredevils were wonderful pulp novel re-creations and the two adventures I've found for TSR's Gangbusters are pretty solid and easy to run even if you don't have the parent game.

[AlHazred]

To be fair, I have bought a lot of Hero supplements, and the few old supplements I don't have (Wings of the Valkyrie) I've at least seen and paged through. None of them are really that bad.

Before I get anyone's dander up, I feel compelled to remind people of the Bad Old Days of gaming, when product quality standards were nonexistent, and anybody who had a photocopier, a pen, and some paper thought he had all that it took to put out a gaming supplement.

Hero's come away easy. You think Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs is bad? Ask a Glorantha fan about Eldarad or Daughters of Darkness. Ask a GURPS player about GURPS Wild Cards or Billy the Axe. Ask an old-time D&D player about the old Dimension Six products.

All that being said, I really didn't care for Cyber Hero. But some of the art's okay. And it just inspired Mike Surbrook to do a better job with Kazei Five.

----------------------------------
"Look on the bright side. Dying is the next best thing to living." -- Sgt. Strict

[Koshka]

I don't have European Enemies, though I know people who refer to it as "Plan Nine From Hero Games". I own Foxbat Unhinged, though, and found it very disappointing.

I can't recall the title offhand, but there was an enemies book for Dark Champs where everything was written as the personal notes of the Master of Crime -- I junked that one in a hurry. Anyone recall the title?

Actually, if we're expanding the list to include non-Hero stuff, we can toss AD&D modules into the mix. I never could see the point of Lost Temple of Tharizdun, for instance.

[Keneton]

I never liked the poor editing of chracters in the enemies line of books. They were so full of errors. I'm glad most of these old characters are out of circulation.

The major difference in todays products is the quality of editing. There were plenty of great ideas back then, but not much in the way of Good Mechanics. Old Hero was purely fun, but only one step above Judge's Guild for quality of Art and editing.

[winterhawk]

Originally posted by Koshka
I can't recall the title offhand, but there was an enemies book for Dark Champs where everything was written as the personal notes of the Master of Crime -- I junked that one in a hurry. Anyone recall the title?


Underworld Enemies or Murderer's Row?

[Susano]

Originally posted by AlHazred
Before I get anyone's dander up, I feel compelled to remind people of the Bad Old Days of gaming, when product quality standards were nonexistent, and anybody who had a photocopier, a pen, and some paper thought he had all that it took to put out a gaming supplement.


Two words: JUDGE'S GUILD



Hero's come away easy. You think Bad Medicine for Dr. Drugs is bad? Ask a Glorantha fan about Eldarad or Daughters of Darkness. Ask a GURPS player about GURPS Wild Cards or Billy the Axe. Ask an old-time D&D player about the old Dimension Six products.


GURPS Wild Cards isn't bad at all. It does cover the series up until Vol... 6(?) and was written by on the the WC authors. And it had more useful character ideas than European Enemies.



All that being said, I really didn't care for Cyber Hero. But some of the art's okay. And it just inspired Mike Surbrook to do a better job with Kazei Five.


Thank you.

IMO, European Enemies takes the prize. Sure Scourge of the Deep had lame-as-heck character, but at least it had the useful underwater rules and notes in the front. EE had nothing. None of the characters had anything going for them, and many were painful stereotypes to boot. Want to see and know more? Go here: http://www.devermore.net/surbrook/revisedhero/herorev.html

Enemies: The International File actually had some nice ideas, and some ideas that would be workable once you revised them a bit. I liked Villany Unbound as well, for the same reasons. High-Tech Enemies wa, IMO, terrible, with not much to offer in the way of new of inventive applications of powers. And the power levels were absurd. Oh, and lets not mention The Weasel, who would kill virtually every PC I ever made with ease (and most of the NPCS, too).

[Hermit]

I kind of liked High Tech Enemies, the Destruction Co. especially. Didn't think much of the Wormhole gang though.

[TheEmerged]

I didn't use High Tech Enemies much; I purchased this one during the Great HERO Drought (translation, when I and the rest of the local gaming group was obsessed with Magic: The Gathering) and so it never affected my campaigns.

That, and the book lost me in the introduction when the author tried to excuse the "Defender Exploit".

[Jhamin]

Originally posted by Hermit
I kind of liked High Tech Enemies, the Destruction Co. especially. Didn't think much of the Wormhole gang though.

The Destruction Company are some of my favorite long running villians. They had style.
CyForce was Ok.

The rest of the book was pretty bland. Not bad, just Bland.

[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.

I didn't buy European Enemies, and have never read it.

I didn't buy Wings of the Valkyries, but fairly recently got to borrow a copy. It sucks. It sucks in ways that annoy me more than the ways that BMfDD sucks. It's just - contrived. The whole thing is a terrible exercise in railroading the PCs into a set course of action. Bleah. But I'm reluctant to call it the worst.

I would have to give The Mutant File a dishonorable mention, too. It's ridiculously overpowered characters really bug me for some reason. Sure, it would probably work really well if you toned down the characters a lot, but, still... It probably doesn't help that I'm not a big X-Men fan.

For overall badness, though, I can't really bring myself to say that I actually regret buying (or "inheriting") any of the products that I have bought or "inherited". I'm more likely to wish that I had been able to buy every single Hero system product that has ever been produced.

Worst? Actually, there's none that isn't of some value or interest. None are useless, and none are therefore "worst" in my book.

Alan

[The_Hero]

As someone who bought darn near EVERY Hero product through the 80's and 90's...

Heroes from the Deep - decent water rules.

Bad News from Dr Drugs - decent High School rules and a good map

Eye for an Eye: Lots of good write-ups...

Olympians - couple good pics I used for Greek Heroes

Mutant File: Good template for Mutant characters which I still use. Other write-up blew chunks though...

EE, Road Kill, High Tech Enemies - All bad! My friends and I would joke about characters in it. "Hey, let's take a snowshovel full of points, chuck them at a piece of paper and see where they stick!" Esp...EE. Went to Origins one year and talked to the Hero booth about it, they were less than pleased, I think they thouhgt they did a GOOD job with it.

[misterdeath]

Hero product: European Enemies. Hands down. Bad character math, bad power construction, bad geography, bad ideas.

Non Hero supers product. the MSH game's Alpha Flight adventure. Ever been in a session where nothing you do matters, like clockwork the next element of the plot is going to happen, whether you do anything about it or not? Well, TSR wrote an adventure that works just that way.

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).

D

[winterhawk]

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.

[Blue]

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.

[Grymlynn]

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...

[Old Man]

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.

[Lord Mhoram]

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. :p

[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.

[Tom McCarthy]

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.

[lemming]

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. :D

Did you know there's a second book? MWA HA HA HA!

[misterdeath]

Do you know what's worse? I OWN it.

Mwahahahahahaha.

D

[Haerandir]

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...

[Logan D]

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.

[lemming]

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....

[misterdeath]

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

[Pol Rua]

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)

[Superskrull]

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.

[Glen Sprigg]

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

[Derek Hiemforth]

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.)

[Chuk]

Originally posted by AlHazred
[B] 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.

[Redmenace]

Just out of curiosity, what does anyone think was so awful about Gurps Wildcards? Lack of world data?

[Susano]

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.

[BlackCobra]

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.

[Susano]

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.

[Logan D]

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.

[TheEmerged]

Ditto on the "curious" statement. My own known to be flawed and biased memory is saying something about "whole lot of wishful thinking"...

[Susano]

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.

[5 Sided D6]

I vote for the Great Supervillian Contest - really,really lame villians and plot and horrible art to boot. Only saving grace is i didn't pay for it(bought a lot of old Hero books off Ebay and they guy just threw it in for free lol).

[Enforcer84]

ALthough I never really minded it too much. I have heard many say that
Mystic Masters was the worst thing they had ever seen. Admittedly, some of Albert's early art rubbed me the wrong way. I feel he has improved alot. The actual material was alright, but not great.

[Glen Sprigg]

Originally posted by Enforcer84
ALthough I never really minded it too much. I have heard many say that
Mystic Masters was the worst thing they had ever seen. Admittedly, some of Albert's early art rubbed me the wrong way. I feel he has improved alot. The actual material was alright, but not great.

Are you kidding? Mystic Masters is a far superior product to the Ultimate SuperMage. USM didn't capture the spirit of comic book magic nearly as well as MM did, in my opinion. Yes, it drew heavily from Marvel's Dr. Strange mythology; what better source could there be for comic book magic?

I still use the Archmage-Dmitrios-Tyrannon stuff in my game, just because it's so well thought out. And Tyrannon is the baddest of the bad-nasties.

Glen

[steriaca]

Originally posted by Hermit
It wasn't 'bad' but I have to say, "Pyramid in the Sky" just left me cold. Didn't do a thing for me.

(Does this supplement make me look fat?) :)

And yes, asking a group of players to 'save' the NKOB is really cruel. I had one guy ask if he could spend five points and buy his character's "Total Code VS Killing" down so it allowed for "a few exceptions". :)

I beleve "Pyramid in the Sky" was, basicly, trying to tie in three unrelated adventurs so that thay could have an excuse to publish one book. And some of the pages are duplicates. Nice try, but next time, try about three or four seprate adventurs in one book if your going to bundle them.