"Casual" RPGs

[Reynard]

One thing I have noticed in some RPG communities -- particularly those with a high population of new players -- is a desire for more "casual" RPGs. This usually means minimal prep, easy to comprehend and without a huge time commitment (either for a given session or over a long period). What comes to my mind is: try this cool board game! But obviously that is dismissive and doesn't answer the need for those people.

So I was wondering what game folks might label as "casual" with that definition in mind, and how you would go about engaging with a "casual" RPG.

For my part, I think you can certainly play early D&D (B/X or whatever) as a casual game where everyone grabs a premade character and delves a dungeon -- like playing DUNGEON! or Descent but with all the benefits of the RPG part. That doesn't really answer the prep part, though. Even if you use a prewritten module, GMing in that style means being able to be reactive and understand both the rules and the scenario. I would guess that there are OSR games that solve this issue, but I don't know what they are or how they would do so.

Outside of D&D type play, though, I am hard pressed to think of a "casual" RPG where you can experience say, a heist adventure or a spy thriller, that is easy and fast and doesn't require prep.

Thoughts?

 

[payn]

Outside of D&D type play, though, I am hard pressed to think of a "casual" RPG where you can experience say, a heist adventure or a spy thriller, that is easy and fast and doesn't require prep.

Thoughts?

The narrative driven style of game does this well. You chuck out all the minutia of carrying gear and taking turns in rounds and stats for anything. Instead you construct and interesting scene, like a museum heist and focus on the moments of intrigue. The mechanics just help drive the narrative instead of simulate it. Games like PbtA and Fiasco are great at jumping right in quickly and getting right to the fun.

 

[Reynard]

The narrative driven style of game does this well. You chuck out all the minutia of carrying gear and taking turns in rounds and stats for anything. Instead you construct and interesting scene, like a museum heist and focus on the moments of intrigue. The mechanics just help drive the narrative instead of simulate it. Games like PbtA and Fiasco are great at jumping right in quickly and getting right to the fun.

I forgot about Fiasco. That's a really good example of a game with almost no rules that needs almost no prep, or even a GM if I remember correctly.

I admit to not being a big fan of PbtA games in general. Are they designed to be little to no prep? My copy of Monster of the Week seems to contain quite a lot of scenarios, but I have never actually run it (I accidentally bought it because I thought it was a FATE game, not PbtA).

 

[Umbran]

Outside of D&D type play, though, I am hard pressed to think of a "casual" RPG where you can experience say, a heist adventure or a spy thriller, that is easy and fast and doesn't require prep.

Thoughts?

A heist scenario? Try the Leverage RPG (Cortex-based). It is intended to emulate a fairly episodic TV show and much of the content of the session is generated via a mechanic in which the players generate complications.

 

[Aldarc]

A heist scenario? Try the Leverage RPG (Cortex-based). It is intended to emulate a fairly episodic TV show and much of the content of the session is generated via a mechanic in which the players generate complications.

Didn't Monte Cook Games kickstart a weird time travel heist game as well?

Outside of D&D type play, though, I am hard pressed to think of a "casual" RPG where you can experience say, a heist adventure or a spy thriller, that is easy and fast and doesn't require prep.

Thoughts?

Blades in the Dark. Players generate characters and a crew. Players pick a score for their characters - which may or may not be a heist - and begin play. Mayhem ensues as a result of the cascade of consequences.

 

[timbannock]

Cortex is session focused: not a huge focus on advancement, the GM can solve a lot with either the Doom Pool mod and/or the simpler Test, Contest, Challenge systems in Tales of Xadia, etc.

Labyrinth the Adventure Game is effectively old school D&D with narrative mechanics and a dungeon ready to run basically after only a very cursory skim by the GM. The "rules" take up about 3-5 pages, tops.

Fate Accelerated is obvious.

Knave, Maze Rats, Mausritter and that family minimize prep by including extensive generators on the fly, but often require a working knowledge of RPGs and/or reliance on outside bestiary or spell sources to truly sing. Not great for total newbies, but they take out a lot of the typical D&D prep or the need for an existing module. Even 5E has Into the Unknown, which is packed with procedural generators, enough so that you can put together a couple hexes of wilderness and a 10-room dungeon in about 15 minutes and run it as is.

 

[Reynard]

A heist scenario? Try the Leverage RPG (Cortex-based). It is intended to emulate a fairly episodic TV show and much of the content of the session is generated via a mechanic in which the players generate complications.

Cotex is a system I keep meaning to try but never get around to.

 

[Reynard]

Blades in the Dark. Players generate characters and a crew. Players pick a score for their characters - which may or may not be a heist - and begin play. Mayhem ensues as a result of the cascade of consequences.

I played this for the first time the other night. it didn't feel like a pick up and play "casual" game, though -- there's a bunch of subsystems and built in complexity.

 

[Reynard]

Fate Accelerated is obvious.

FAE is awesome but I think you actually have to have a prettty solid understanding of both FATE and rpgs in general to run it effectively on the fly.

 

[AOieiosle]

I would argue DnD is more "casual" and easy to pick up than FATE or PbTA games. If you have any concept of a boardgame or Dungeons and Dragons, these narrative mechanics have to be learned with effort because you're always trying to make parallels to traditional RPG mechanics.