Can you suggest a RPG system.

[KronikAlkoholik]

The tricky part is minimal prep time for you.

System mastery goes the longest way towards helping with that.

The systems I currently run where I pretty much have prep time down to less than an hour per session, usually half an hour, is FATE games and Castles and Crusades. Another system that I think will be easy once I master it is CORTEX.

Another system that I can prep for very quickly 90% of the time is Legend of the 5 Rings 4E. System mastery definitely helps me with this one.

Savage Worlds does give a nice variety, and I am prepping to run Soloman Kane. At this point my prep time is just going into understanding the material (Soloman Kane) well enough to do it justice within the system. The system itself is still crunchy, but once you get familiar with it building stuff is pretty fast.

If you want to check out the FATE system there is a FATE SRD PDF available to DL on line:

http://www.faterpg.com/dl/sotc_srd.pdf

Yeah I found out that two others had already mentioned FATE just with seperate names so I've downloaded the SRD. Also with all the people mentioning Savage World I must check it out, however I've not liked what I've seen so far off it, Guess I must have misunderstood something about it.

 

[MortonStromgal]

Also with all the people mentioning Savage World I must check it out, however I've not liked what I've seen so far off it, Guess I must have misunderstood something about it.

Don't feel bad I have been trying to like Savage Worlds for years. The fan content is fantastic but I can't stand the die mechanic.

 

[KronikAlkoholik]

Don't feel bad I have been trying to like Savage Worlds for years. The fan content is fantastic but I can't stand the die mechanic.

Yeah I was thinking about this myself as I was reading SW test drive rules. It's a problem in many games but I just see how big a problem it is in SW.

Let's say one PC's strength is D12 and anothers is D4, these are extremes. One is among the strongest while the other is avarage/ under avarage.

They are going arm wrestling so its a opposed strength test. The weakling is going to win 12,5% of the time and it's a draw 8,3%.

The crazy strong guy is only gonna win 4 out of 5 times and this is ignoring the exploding die which can only help the weaker one so his odds are even better.

Ok you can just decide that the stronger wins automatically but the question here is where do you stop with that. Why having opposed test at all then.

Better would be to do the test best out of three. It would decrease the small guys chances to around 4% ( based on how you handle ties ).

Now this is a problem with many rpg's but I just see it as more so in SW. Maybe not, haven't really thought about it much. Guess it's best not too.

Well that discussion should have it's own thread I guess.

 

[chaochou]

I'm not looking for a setting, rather a system. The perfect system would be something generic so we could use it for any setting, would allow the characters be both cool and interesting and would require little prep time for me.

...

Now with the addition in the recent years of the indie market I was hoping that there was a hidden gem that would suit us fine.

I think the indie market has produced some outstanding games. But I'm hesitant to recommend most of the ones I like because they tend to be quite setting specific... they're designed to do a game of pirates or a crime caper or whatever. I don't know how well a lot of them do setting crossover.

That said, I'd give another shout to Spirit of the Century, or its cousin The Dresden Files (same system). And also Apocalypse World by Vincent Baker, which is post-apocalyptic, takes very little prep and is designed to create very cool, competent characters.

It's been hacked into a D&D variant (Dungeon World: Syntax Error | Dungeon World) and there's other hacks in progress or done on the AW forums, from Conan to Tron.

 

[tenkar]

I'm going to throw Tunnels & Trolls into the mix. The rules are easy to learn, monster design is a snap, and with a little practice you can convert most Old School D&D modules on the fly. At it's core it is fantasy, but there is a sourcebook called New Khazan that adds Sci-Fi (actually, more Sci-Fan). There are also some supers rules floating around if you can find them.

You can grab a free condensed version of the T&T rules at RPGNow, so you can peek for free.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I understand your problem with the Savage Worlds dice mechanic. You're taking a simulationist view of it, and Savage Worlds has a different philosophy. Savage Worlds prefers speed and simplicity over simulation.

The die mechanic is designed so that you can quickly roll the die and see if you succeeded, usually without any math, and the exploding dice makes every roll potentially exciting.

As for your arm-wrestling example, any sensible GM would just say that the person with the higher strength die wins. There really is no element of chance in arm wrestling.

That said, you HAVE to play it to understand it. Even reading the book isn't enough because it's just that different.

 

[Kunimatyu]

To paraphrase a famous Lord of the Rings quote, Savage Worlds looks foul but plays fair.

Try playing it before you give up on it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

There really is no element of chance in arm wrestling.

Minor quibble: there is more to arm wrestling than mere strength. Sure, its the most important factor in many ways, but the competition also requires endurance, leverage, quick reflexes and in extreme cases, a high pain threshold.

 

[Macbeth]

Dungeon World was mentioned earlier, and while I think you'd enjoy it, it's not generic as such. Like chaochou mentions, Apocalypse World and its hacks are designed around getting the feeling of a genre through the rules. That doesn't mean there's a setting, it just means that using Dungeon World to run a spy game isn't really an option (though you could totally write an awesome spy hack). The post-apocalyptic genre is baked into Apocalypse Word, fantasy roleplaying is baked into Dungeon World.

What setting there is comes from the players and GM working together. The characters have abilities that allow them to make statements about the setting, so everybody contributes and has a say through the lens of their character. When making a cleric, for example, the player has some abilities that shape what the deity they worship looks like, contributing to the setting everyone makes.

Full disclosure: I'm one of the authors of Dungeon World, so of course I think it's great. Anyway, hopefully that clarifies a bit. Not sure if it meets your generic requirement, but Apocalypse World is easily one of the best games I've ever played, and Dungeon World brings that same fun to D&D-style fantasy.

 

[ValhallaGH]

the exploding die which can only help the weaker one ....

Not to get too far gone, since you don't seem to be wanting to continue it, but people often make a mistake when looking at acing dice-they think it is a gigantic boost to small dice, making a d4 the best die type.

It ain't.

Acing adds about .6 to the average result of any given die type. The actual increase in average roll is greater for smaller dice (~0.88 for d4, ~0.69 for d6, ~0.64 for d8, ~0.61 for d10, ~0.59 for d12), but the effect is that a d4 averages 3 and a d12 averages 7.
Example: TN 10.
A d4 aces twice and rolls a 2+. Total 10+. Odds ~5%.
A d12 rolls once and rolls a 10+. Odds 25%.
For Wild Cards (like the PCs) d4 has ~12% success (and ~4% critical failure), and d12 has ~31% success (and ~1% critical failure).

Bigger dice get better results, and roll fewer 1's (which can be significant when there are consequences for getting a 1 on the Trait die).
Factor in the dice-control option (bennies spent to reroll bad die results), and large dice are almost never overcome by small dice. And the exceptions are appropriately memorable.


Note that this it true for every game with exploding dice. The change in frequency only matters if you use a threshold-success system, like Shadowrun 4th or World of Darkness.