What rules light fantasy system would you recommend for 'winging it'?

jdrakeh · May 6, 2008

DM_Jeff said:
Can't find it online except on Ebay.

Actually, Noble Knight Games acts as a sometime distributor for new Lou Zocchi products. Mr. Zocchi, as of a year ago, also indicated that he had multiple boxes of brand new TWERPS books on hand. There's a good email address for him here (or at least it was good in 2007). You may want to drop him a line if you're interested in TWERPS (be patient, though -- last I knew he was having an assistant respond to all of his email for him, as he's not too fond of electronic mail).

RFisher · May 6, 2008

I haven’t actually played any of these yet, but if I were doing it I’d probably choose:

Star Cadets
Dungeon Squad
And I’ll second Risus

Edit: OK, Star Cadets isn’t fantasy.

Edit: On the “building” issue: My suggestions probably fail on this criterion, but to me, one of the many advantages of a “rules light” game is that building things is trivial.

jdrakeh said:
I would argue that nobody actually plays FUDGE, they play FUDGE X (where X is a genre, setting, etc). FUDGE requires preparation -- the GM must, at the very least, define basic lists of acceptable traits, skills, gifts and so forth prior to actual play (and, arguably, he must decide which of the many different dice rolling methods, injury rules, etc he is going to use).

That’s not true though. People have played Fudge without prep. The GM doesn’t have to define acceptable traits, gifts, etc. The players don’t even have to finish creating their PCs, but can create them on-the-fly. Dice rolling methods? Again, doesn’t have to be decided until dice need to be rolled. The choice could even be left up to the player each time a roll comes up.

That said, I don’t think Fudge is the best choice unless the GM is already familiar with it. I couldn’t have just picked it up and run a game the first time I saw it.

dystmesis · May 6, 2008

Elephant said:
I can't BELIEVE no one has mentioned Microlite20 yet. Rules light, compatible with pretty much any 3.5/d20/OGL stuff you throw in, and easy to customize, too.

http://wiki.greywulf.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/Macropedia?action=browse;oldid=HomePage;id=Microlite20

ENWorld discussion: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?threadid=219419

The Elephant is completely right!

jdrakeh · May 7, 2008

RFisher said:
That’s not true though. People have played Fudge without prep. The GM doesn’t have to define acceptable traits, gifts, etc. The players don’t even have to finish creating their PCs, but can create them on-the-fly. Dice rolling methods? Again, doesn’t have to be decided until dice need to be rolled. The choice could even be left up to the player each time a roll comes up.

When you start applying that deliberately nebulous rationale, no RPG system requires preparation (i.e., the above is true of any RPG system). The ability to decide what rules to use and when isn't a feature of FUDGE (or any other system), it's a decision made by the GM and wholly independent of the system itself. You can run D&D the same way. Or HERO. Or GURPS. Or. . . any RPG.

All of that said, for people who aren't being quite so esoteric and are looking more for a meat and potatoes discussion of mechanics and determing the intent of said mechanics prior to actual play in an effort to establish rules continuity prior to play (rather than creating an entire custom game system from the ground up by the seat of their pants during play), FUDGE does require preparation. Few game systems don't*.

Incidentally, if you do play FUDGE (or any other generic system) like this, you're still playing That System X (the fact that X is being defined on the fly doesn't negate its existence). People don't play pure systems, they combine systems with premise, settings, and tenets to form games. This is true of SLUG, too. If Aus Snow uses SLUG, he won't be playing SLUG. . . he'll be playing SLUG X (where X represented his chose genre, setting, or premise).

*SLUG is an exception because all action is resolved exactly the same way with no mechanical differentiation made between various aspects of a character, and no mechanical mind paid to setting, genre, tenets, etc.

Ry · May 7, 2008

I think most of these work only if the GM has some ideas, or is in a good creative mindset.

In A Wicked Age works even if the GM has no clue what to do.

scourger · May 7, 2008

Another recommendation for Savage Worlds. It really is a breeze to prepare & run.

Otherwise, I would say just get a sack full of D&D minis and let the game flow from there. That way, the players get the fine granularity of planning their characters but you as DM get the coarse granularity of just using the preprinted foes to oppose them in whatever story you cobble together at the table.

Griffith Dragonlake · May 7, 2008

AD&D 2nd Edition. Because I knew all the AD&D rules by heart and most importantly because the Monstrous Compendium Appendix III (Ravenloft monsters) had the most complete monster XP chart ever. I like making up monsters on the fly and figuring out the exp later. That one page made AD&D 2nd ed. easier to wing than all other editions for me.

AD&D 1st Edition is second runner up because of the excellent random dungeon generator in the DMG.

Baumi · May 7, 2008

-) Gary Gygax's Lejendary Adventure
While it is a bad read (quite confusing), it makes up with a great and very easy gameplay (extremely easy to ad-hoc GM) and a awesome fantasy flair.

-) Savage Worlds
Very Flexible; Tricks and Tactics are encouraged; all inclusive (Monsters; Mass Battle, Chasses, Equipment for Fantasy-Future,..); FAST and FUN; easy to GM (NPC's on the fly are no problem); great Plot-Point Campaign Settings

-) C&C
While I miss some rules and I don't think the classes and weapons are well balanced it still offers great and easy classic gameplay (I really like this system for one-shots).

There are so many other great alternatives out there, but these I still would be my favorites at the moment.

Fenes · May 7, 2008

I use d20, to be exact, a house-ruled version of 3.0. It allows me to wing a lot of stuff, but I go for minimal preparation instead of no preparation.

See link in my sig for some tips and tricks.

Crymson · May 7, 2008

Am I allowed to plug my own system?

It's called QUERP. It's only been out a little while and no one has even really heard of it yet, but it was designed with what the original poster had in mind. Character creation takes roughly 5-10 minutes, and the game system is simply 2d6 vs a Difficulty total. Characters have 6 stats (Fighting, Magic, Strength, Charisma, Stealth and Knowledge) rated from 1-6, and these numbers are set by your choice of character type (of which there are also six: Warrior, Magician, Priest, Thief, Sage and Barbarian). There are advanced rules for creating more flexible characters if you want, though even then character creation only takes a couple of minutes longer.

I ran a few games of it on rpol.net when it first came out, giving away free copies of it to those who played. It was pretty well recieved at the time (only a month or so ago).

This is the link to the PDF, and this is the link to a print version.

(By the way, if anyone wants to sign up over at our forums (www.greywoodpublishing.com) and post in the QUERP section, I'll give the first five people to do it a free copy of the PDF for your trouble!)