Which rules-light RPG system would you recommend?

[Rasyr]

My suggestion would be Meddling Kids by Pandahead Productions. It would work as a great intoduction, and still allow for plenty of choices and ideas. However, the game is designed around playing Scooby Doo type adventures, so it works well for modern style of RPGs...

http://www.pandahead.com/MeddlingKids/background.php

 

[mcrow]

I suggest:

C&C or Lejendary Adventures for fantasy games because tehy are both very simple and I get the old school feel when I play them.


For sci-fi or mordern:

D6
Unisysteem
Savage Worlds

 

[SWBaxter]

I'm looking for something to use as an intro to RPGs for people who haven't played before, so my chief criteria are genre versatility and easy learning.

My list of "teaching games" isn't quite the same as my list of rules-light games. But most of 'em are a lot lighter than some of the suggestions in this thread (Exalted?! Why not Aftermath while you're at it?), so they may serve. I've had good success with:

Marvel, the FASERIP edition - good for comic book fans, the keyword system is pretty intuitive.
Fudge - again, keywords rule.
BRP - Chaosium's venerable Basic Role-Playing system as seen in many games. Percentile skills are easy to grasp. I actually have a homebrew system built around BRP and with elements of the old Worlds of Wonder set that I use to intro new players, and am thinking of adopting as my standard ruleset.
Perfect20 and Core Elements - two attempts at distilling d20 down to its essence, both pretty good.
Megatraveller - clear and simple system, particularly attractive to old fogeys (like me) who like the idea of a 40ish year old character chucking his career and striking off to make it rich in an uncaring galaxy.
Lord of the Rings - the RPG by Decipher, reasonably simple system with a strong common reference point.
Feng Shui - good for action movie fans.

Hope those help.

 

[Ethernaut]

What's your favourite rules-light system?

Hands down, it's Risus. To see it in action, check out my Silverlode or Dragonspire games. Rel has also run Risus games at Game Day events and FickleGM is a big fan of the system as well.

 

[buzz]

I'll be the contrarian here and say that, IMO, rules-good is better than rules-lite, and that your expertise with the system --and ability to teach it-- is more important than its ease-of-use.

That said, I'd suggest looking at InSpectres. Buffy/Angel is also a pretty simple system from a player POV.

 

[Terwox]

True20 I'd wager -- you already understand D20, and you know how to make the on-the-fly rulings that come with a rules-light system a lot better as True20 is based on D20.

I'd echo definitely not Exalted. I've read through the book a couple times, and though I haven't played, I'm still fuzzy on how the heck charms and combos and essence and blahblah actually works.

 

[Turanil]

What's your favourite rules-light system?

-- Castles & Crusades
-- True20
-- Savage Worlds

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I'd go with Castles & Crusades of Tunnels & Trolls. But yeah, the Anniversary Edition had some issues, though it's pretty simple to sort out on your own.

I like Tunnels and Trolls, myself, although the recent anniversary edition was a mess.

-The Gneech

 

[Treebore]

Castles and Crusades. Unlike 3E it allows you to try anything, no feat or skill required to be written on your character sheet. Plus C&C definitely requires a DM to rely on common sense and for everyone to have a "reasonable" outlook on what can and cannot be done.

Plus I easily adapted my Megatraveller game to SIEGE Engine and kept it a SKILL based game, shocked the tee total c**p out of me when I found out how easy it was.

Here is a long thread on the C&C messageboards explaining the many reasons C&C is a good system.

C&C discussion

 

[Clueless]

BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth) has genre diversity (designed to support all flavors of anime - so, pretty much everything. ) and one of the simplest rulesets I've seen. You can make it more complex if you want to as the game continues with some of the other releases for it.

Risus also got a good review for simplicity from the NC Game Day runs of it.