zarionofarabel
Hero
Tales from the Loop!
5E burnout - looking for a summer RPG
Savage Worlds would be an easy one I guess. Just give a list of Edges you are allowing, and go from there.
Alternatively, Lords of Gossamer is a narrative run game, and it be either be a bidding on stats or straight point buy - which I prefer. Remove the limitation on sorcery, so players have more freedom and good to go.
www.drivethrurpg.com
www.drivethrurpg.com
Essentially, a game where you travel the multiverse, and do what you want.
Alternatively, Lords of Gossamer is a narrative run game, and it be either be a bidding on stats or straight point buy - which I prefer. Remove the limitation on sorcery, so players have more freedom and good to go.
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Lords of Gossamer & Shadow (Diceless) - Rite Publishing | Diceless | DriveThruRPG.com
Lords of Gossamer & Shadow (Diceless) - Your Player's choices and action are far more random than dice! Our world is but one of untold many, a flux of chance
Essentially, a game where you travel the multiverse, and do what you want.
innerdude
Legend
Can also recommend Tiny d6, especially for Sci-Fi. It's ultra lightweight, but has just, just enough player-facing rules to be fun to play. Requires a GM willing to make rulings for nearly everything, but if you're comfortable with that, it's great fun.
Tiny Frontiers is the Tiny d6 Sci-Fi book; it's a standalone with no other purchase required. It's a great system if you want to do Guardians of the Galaxy / Hitchhiker's Guide style shenanigans. When we played it last year, we used the assumed setting from the Deep Rock Galactic video game, and it was awesome.
I'd recommend Frontier Space, a d% game inspired by the old Star Frontiers. While I don't know if it is technically "rules lite" it is less crunchy than 5e and is essentially just rolling percentile dice vs. a skill or ability number.
Another option would be Mecha Hack which is - as you might guess - is a Mecha game based on the Black Hack rules. Very simple and playable with or without a battle map.
Both have core rules as a PDF for <$9 and POD softcover rulebooks for <$15.
Another option would be Mecha Hack which is - as you might guess - is a Mecha game based on the Black Hack rules. Very simple and playable with or without a battle map.
Both have core rules as a PDF for <$9 and POD softcover rulebooks for <$15.
hawkeyefan
Legend
I’ll basically take any chance I can to recommend Spire: The City Must Fall. It’s a great game, the core rules are simple, and they have a Quickstart that is pay what you want for the pdf. They also have three Campaign Frames (module like scenarios that are ready to play and include pregenerated characters) that are free.
Spire Quickstart
Other than that, I would echo either Alien or Tales From the Loop. Both are solid games. They use the same system, but deliver a pretty different play experience. Depends if you want the gritty paranoia of Alien or the light but strange kids-on-bikes type game.
All three games that are easy to learn but engaging in play, work well online (no tactical maps or VTT required), and each is relatively inexpensive to grab.
HawaiiSteveO
Blistering Barnacles!
Some great suggestions , thanks ! I was hoping to get some ideas for smaller creators . Will spend some time checking these out !
aramis erak
Legend
Fairly modern traditional rules, not fantasy... rules are between medium and light - consistent rolling mechanic, good bit of setting info, lots of threat info:
(The Small Employer cutoff is 50 people last I checked, and that was 2019.)
Star Trek seems to be Modiphius big line... new book every other month or so, and smaller folio-sized stuff in between, a rate that has been hard due to approvals. Modiphius also is doing at least one a quarter for each of several other lines.
Let's look at the credits for 3 corebooks (Conan 2017, STA 2017, JCOM 2018)
And while Free League lists about 8-10 staffers on their website, their books also show some extras not on the corporate website. They've got ALIEN, Twilight 2000, Mutant Year Zero (I got all 4 cores plus more for $45 this week in PDF via Bundle of Holding). Plus Vaesen, Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood, Coriolis, Forbidden Lands, and the forthcoming Blade Runner. Coriolis appears to be finished. Releases are slow for all the year zero engine games. Plus, non-YZE, they have Mork Borg and The One Ring 2E.
And while I don't hesitate to say I think 2E is sorely inferior to 1E, it's still the best tolkien RPG in print...
- Rules medium-light (2/5)
- Twilight 2000 4th ed. (2.2 or so complexity) Core box plus card deck, need 2 each d6, d8, d10, d12, extra contrasting d6 to about 5. This is the base per-player dice. One card deck for the GM - the custom one is nice as it means not needing the ref's manual out. THe custom dice are totally not needed, but my double-set wound up seeing a lot of use in play, just because players liked using them. Alternate history... WW III in 1997-spring 2000... last orders from HQ: "Good luck, you're on your own."
- Vaesen: (1.7 complexity)19th C monster of the week. Set in Sweden, but can be tweaked to just about anywhere. Community COntent for other locations is available; official content for Ireland is sold separately as well. Or the mechanically close Things from the Flood and/or Tales from the Loop. (also complexities 1.7 or so.)
- D6 Adventure or D6 Space - (Complexities 1.7 and 2.0, IMO) Genre engine versions of the D6 system from WEG (now released by Nocturnal). Essentially Space is D6 Star Wars 3rd edition rules, but without the setting fluff. Rules are much lighter than the page count indicates - well illustrated, Decent layout. D6 Fantasy is also part of the trilogy. All three are the same game engine,but with genre specific changes and specialty content. If you want to simplify further, drop the advantages and disavantages. Can be tuned to a variety of styles with optional rules in the cores.
- Dune - this is a wonderful adaptation of the 2d20 game, it's pretty rules light in play, (I'd say 1.6/5) and it's not slow to generate characters. The Starter box adventure rocks. (playtested it. My players learned to hate Piter right quick.)
Drawback: while it lore dumps, the rules only lightly enforce setting. - Palladium's Mechanoid Trilogy. Note that the current book is really 3 separate related games in one reprint volume.... While it's going to be familiar to anyone whose played any Palladium design (Excepting Recon or Amber), it's a simpler version of the core, and it's a wickedly cool se
- Rules Light
- Starships and Spacemen 1E (About 1.25/5)- Sure it's 44 years old. Sure, it's clunky looking in its typewritten layout. But hot damn, it's a Trek-like worth playing for its own niftiness. It makes TOS style exploration missions a priority, reducing the number of crew to player capable levels, and is a kind of quirky old school fun. (The 2E is a different, much crunchier, less strealined, and slightly less over the top, version.) PDF and POD available
- Star Frontiers - PDF/POD available. 1982, just barely rules light (about 1.5/5). FOcuses on planetary action, at least until one integrates SFKH... but SFKH puts starship skills equivalent to D&D High Level Play. Something which I find a major issue with, but friends of mine love. Kinda quirky, but there are adventures for it as well, so the quirkyness can be exploited. Skills are broad, no specializations, but raising them raises a bunch of subskills.
- Palladium's Deluxe Recon. kind of gritty Vietnam War game; PCs are active duty. Not a palladium design, but they bought it in the 80's. I'd put it about 1.2 complexity. The usual excellent maps and visuals in the core that keep Palladium in business.
- Fantasy but not D&Dish...
- D6 Adventure. Same system as D6 Space and D6 Adventure. If not using magic, about a 1.7; if using it, right about 2.0
- Talisman Adventures. Maybe a 2.1 complexity. Quirky Fantasy, mildly gonzo, definitely encourages open world play.
You left out Pathfinder, L5R, Star Trek, Star Wars, and a few other bigger-than-40k RPGs Paizo and FFG were both too big for the "Small Employer" provisions of the US tax and insurance requirement laws. At least they were before the pandemic and the Asmodee shuffling of IPs.I think compared to D&D and maybe Warhammer 40k, every game is a small creator game.
(The Small Employer cutoff is 50 people last I checked, and that was 2019.)
Star Trek seems to be Modiphius big line... new book every other month or so, and smaller folio-sized stuff in between, a rate that has been hard due to approvals. Modiphius also is doing at least one a quarter for each of several other lines.
Let's look at the credits for 3 corebooks (Conan 2017, STA 2017, JCOM 2018)
- Line Devs
- C: Jason Durall & Chris Lites
- STA: Dave Chapman And Sam Webb
- JCOM: Jack Norris, Benn Graybeaton
- Additional Development
- JCOM: Benn Graybeaton
- Writing:
- C: Richard August, Timothy Brown, Michael Coker, Rachael Cruz, Vincent Darlage, Jason Durall, Chris Lites, Kevin Ross, Mark Finn, Jeffery Shanks & Monica Valentinelli
- STA: Dave Chapman, Jim Johnson, Patrick Goodman, Ross Isaacs, Bill Maxwell, Jonathan Breese, Nathan Dowdell, John Snead, Oz Mills, Aaron Pollyea, Rob Wieland, Ade Smith, Anthony Jennings, Dan Taylor, Dayton Ward, Gareth-Michael Skarka, Giles Pritchard, Maggie Carroll, Steven Creech, Shawn Merwin, Sam Webb And Jacob Ross
- JCOM: Richard August, Jennifer Baughman, Jason Brick, Darren Bulmer, Mark Carroll, Chris Lites, Bryan C.P. Steele, Jonathan M. Thompson, Peter Wright
And while Free League lists about 8-10 staffers on their website, their books also show some extras not on the corporate website. They've got ALIEN, Twilight 2000, Mutant Year Zero (I got all 4 cores plus more for $45 this week in PDF via Bundle of Holding). Plus Vaesen, Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood, Coriolis, Forbidden Lands, and the forthcoming Blade Runner. Coriolis appears to be finished. Releases are slow for all the year zero engine games. Plus, non-YZE, they have Mork Borg and The One Ring 2E.
And while I don't hesitate to say I think 2E is sorely inferior to 1E, it's still the best tolkien RPG in print...
MotW was going to be my suggestion. PbtA is easy to run and the modern day monster hunting thing is super low cognitive overhead for players. They will almost assuredly be familair with at least some of the pop culture touchstones, like Supernatural or Buffy or whatever, and obviously knoq the setting (since they live in it).
MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
Hi, I'll focus on your first three bullets:
Regarding "good for online play", your examples seem to suggest that you are open for tech-lite online play. Which opens things up considerable.
My first recommendation is to consider some one shots or 2-4 session adventures.
With that:
1. Labyrinth The Adventure Game, by River Horse Games (https://www.amazon.com/Jim-Hensons-Labyrinth-Adv-Game/dp/1916011551) - $36. A bit expensive for one book, but it is a great quality book. This is fantasy based on the Jim Henson movie. It is great for one shots. It is rules light and does not require much of time investment to get ready to play. You don't need a VTT to play, but it is nice to be able to display some of the location images and move some tokens around for a few locations. In the book is a link for digital files. Owlbear Rodeo or Role would be perfect.
2. InSPECTres by Memento Mori Theatricks. $10 (InSpectres - Memento Mori Theatricks | DriveThruRPG.com). Inspired by shows like Ghost Busters and other shows of a group or organization that investigate paranormal activity. Great for one shots and short campaigns. Very simple and easy to learn rules. No need for battlemaps. Just use Zoom, Discord, or Google Meet.
3. Paranoia by Mongoose Games. $30 for the starter set. A bit less rules light, but certainly lighter than 5e. Good for both one shots and campaign play. I never use battlemats when I run it, but you could.
- break from swords & sorcery / fantasy would be great . Spies , espionage , sci-fi , etc
- rules light , good for online play - ToM or perhaps Zoom whiteboard or Owlbear Rodeo.
- low cost or free quick start rules would be great or low cost buy in
Regarding "good for online play", your examples seem to suggest that you are open for tech-lite online play. Which opens things up considerable.
My first recommendation is to consider some one shots or 2-4 session adventures.
With that:
1. Labyrinth The Adventure Game, by River Horse Games (https://www.amazon.com/Jim-Hensons-Labyrinth-Adv-Game/dp/1916011551) - $36. A bit expensive for one book, but it is a great quality book. This is fantasy based on the Jim Henson movie. It is great for one shots. It is rules light and does not require much of time investment to get ready to play. You don't need a VTT to play, but it is nice to be able to display some of the location images and move some tokens around for a few locations. In the book is a link for digital files. Owlbear Rodeo or Role would be perfect.
2. InSPECTres by Memento Mori Theatricks. $10 (InSpectres - Memento Mori Theatricks | DriveThruRPG.com). Inspired by shows like Ghost Busters and other shows of a group or organization that investigate paranormal activity. Great for one shots and short campaigns. Very simple and easy to learn rules. No need for battlemaps. Just use Zoom, Discord, or Google Meet.
3. Paranoia by Mongoose Games. $30 for the starter set. A bit less rules light, but certainly lighter than 5e. Good for both one shots and campaign play. I never use battlemats when I run it, but you could.
