What TTRPG Is Perfect and Complete In One Volume?

[RenleyRenfield]

In your opinion, what TTRPG is perfectly well mde and totally complete in one volume? That is to say, not only is the game good, but you don't need anything else to play it even long term.

NOTE: it is not required that the game does not have supplements, just that you feel that it does not need any.

I am tempted to say Champions 4E (the Big Blue Book) but the fact is it needs more example villains to be truly complete (so IMOP Classic Enemies completes Champions 4E, even though there are ots of other books I love).

I think my real answer is All Flesh Must Be Eaten. There are supplements for it, but they aren't necessary at all. That game is a real toolkit for all kinds of games, not just zombie survival.

What do you think? What game(s) do you think is totally perfect and complete in one volume?

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (cortex)
Only the one main book is needed, anything else is superfluous.

Blades in the Dark
Perfect as its. Even the creator's Deep Cuts isn't needed.

Pasion de Las Pasiones
Possibly the most fun/hilarious rpg ever made

Dread
There is no need for anything else for this game to be glorious serial killer fun.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (cortex)
Only the one main book is needed, anything else is superfluous.

Eh. It isn't lacking need for more enemies intrinsically less than any of the simpler SHRPGs.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Human Occupied Landfill

 

[darjr]

Basic Fantasy

 

[Joshua Randall]

An interesting question: if a game is of the sort that does not have a giant roster of monsters (so, not D&D nor similar) -- but rather, builds the monsters on general principles --

How "complete" do you think the "single book" needs to be vis a vis its monster catalogue?

For example:

• Gumshoe does have a small rosters of monsters / cultists / thugs / etc., but far from a giant "monster manual". It has a kinda sorta framework for building monsters: assign General attribute points, pick a Hit Threshold, model damage.
• Shadow of the Demon Lord, the product line, will happily sell you numerous supplements with monsters in them. However, the core book contains a small roster of monsters, along with a framework for building your own. (And a lot of them are just going to be: take a base creature, advance it by character levels, choose spells.)
• Apocalypse World, the original book (not all the offshoots), has a few examples of "monsters", and some general advice on how to set up opposition for the PCs. Of course, this game is far less concerned with exact stats that something like D&D or SOTDL or even Gumshoe....

[Edited to add]: I ended up creating a new thread to discuss this, so as not to derail this one any further. So future people if you read this far but not farther, go over here for the "monster catalogue" discussion!

 

[Thomas Shey]

An interesting question: if a game is of the sort that does not have a giant roster of monsters (so, not D&D nor similar) -- but rather, builds the monsters on general principles --

How "complete" do you think the "single book" needs to be vis a vis its monster catalogue?

For example:

• Gumshoe does have a small rosters of monsters / cultists / thugs / etc., but far from a giant "monster manual". It has a kinda sorta framework for building monsters: assign General attribute points, pick a Hit Threshold, model damage.
• Shadow of the Demon Lord, the product line, will happily sell you numerous supplements with monsters in them. However, the core book contains a small roster of monsters, along with a framework for building your own. (And a lot of them are just going to be: take a base creature, advance it by character levels, choose spells.)
• Apocalypse World, the original book (not all the offshoots), has a few examples of "monsters", and some general advice on how to set up opposition for the PCs. Of course, this game is far less concerned with exact stats that something like D&D or SOTDL or even Gumshoe....

Its a legitimate, and "eye of the beholder" question. I'm not sure in all cases the "general principals" are clear enough that you don't need significant samples to work with to have a clear idea, however, and depending on the detail level, simply assembling them may be a sufficient workload I'd be willing to call a short enough list "incomplete". But I couldn't supply objective numbers for most of this.

 

[Reynard]

An interesting question: if a game is of the sort that does not have a giant roster of monsters (so, not D&D nor similar) -- but rather, builds the monsters on general principles --

How "complete" do you think the "single book" needs to be vis a vis its monster catalogue?

For example:

• Gumshoe does have a small rosters of monsters / cultists / thugs / etc., but far from a giant "monster manual". It has a kinda sorta framework for building monsters: assign General attribute points, pick a Hit Threshold, model damage.
• Shadow of the Demon Lord, the product line, will happily sell you numerous supplements with monsters in them. However, the core book contains a small roster of monsters, along with a framework for building your own. (And a lot of them are just going to be: take a base creature, advance it by character levels, choose spells.)
• Apocalypse World, the original book (not all the offshoots), has a few examples of "monsters", and some general advice on how to set up opposition for the PCs. Of course, this game is far less concerned with exact stats that something like D&D or SOTDL or even Gumshoe....

I guess the test for me would be "is it simple and intuitive based on the information presented?" It shouldn't be harder to make a monster than a trap or other adventure element.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I'll fork this offer to a different discussion so as not to derail this one.

Monster Catalogue vs. Monster Creation Rules (vs. Why Not Both?)

Forked from the thread What TTRPG Is Perfect and Complete In One Volume? I wrote: An interesting question: if a game is of the sort that does not have a giant roster of monsters (so, not D&D nor similar) -- but rather, builds the monsters on general principles -- How "complete" do you think...

www.enworld.org

 

[J.Quondam]

An interesting question: if a game is of the sort that does not have a giant roster of monsters (so, not D&D nor similar) -- but rather, builds the monsters on general principles --

How "complete" do you think the "single book" needs to be vis a vis its monster catalogue?

(edit: oops, i didn't see that you just forked off a new thread about this, apologies!)

I imagine it should be as complete as it needs to be in order to be played appropriately to its genre in the way intended by the designers.
For a D&Desque game, the expectation is to be slaying monsters, so it makes sense to include a ready-to-go bestiary of whatever monsters are iconic to the game's genre. In other games (eg, cosmic horror genre), the monsters are often meant to be unique, so monster-building rules are the way to go, with maybe a few examples to guide the GM.

In The Traveller Book, on the other hand, the game isn't really "about" monsters. But exploration and survival is a key part of the genre, so the base game includes rules to quickly generate entire planets and their alien lifeforms as needed.

And of course, plenty of RPGs don't even involve monsters at all, so those games wouldn't include bestiaries. Instead, they give rules and examples for creating whatever obstacles are appropriate to the game. Someone mentioned Pasion de las Pasiones upthread. It's a RPG about Latin American telenovelas, so its rules offer a variety of stereotypical character archetypes and examples expected in soap operas. Similarly, Prince Valiant is mostly about knights and damsels in distress, so those rules focus on those types of human characters in those kinds of stories. However, those same rules can also be applied to build a troll or dragon if the GM wants to do that.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I guess the test for me would be "is it simple and intuitive based on the information presented?" It shouldn't be harder to make a monster than a trap or other adventure element.

I'm not sure I know of a single game I've played in the last 40 years that'd pass that test, mostly because traps are so very simple most of the time. I mean, I'm not sure I'd describe OD&D monsters that way, and they were dirt simple compared to opponents in virtually anything else I've run.