"Casual" RPGs

[Mezuka]

The GUMSHOE system is casual, for me. It does investigations very well. They also have a sci-fi version called Ashen Stars. I played Ashen Stars.

Gumshoe System - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Aldarc]

Going back to your original prompt...

I know that you bounced off of Dungeon World pretty hard, but I would say that Jeremy Strandberg's Homebrew World qualifies. It's a modified version of Dungeon World designed for one-shots, short campaigns, and convention play. It only exists in pdfs, as it is more of a fan project, which means that one can't just pick it up at a brick-and-mortar and run it.

Index Card RPG. It's super easy to read through and run. For anyone who thinks that D&D is great for "casual" play, then ICRPG takes the cake and beats it at its own game. Lay down illustrated index cards for your terrain like a board game or print out its art for monsters. It's designed for quick, easy play. With simple distances like close, near (or banana), and far. Character creation is a snap. As loot provides bonuses and HP is measured in hearts, it's super intuitive for people coming from video games too. It also has one of the better game mastery sections I have read.

 

[Reynard]

Index Card RPG. It's super easy to read through and run. For anyone who thinks that D&D is great for "casual" play, then ICRPG takes the cake and beats it at its own game.

I looked at this once and was taken aback by the "index card RPG" being a really long book (i think it is over 100 pages) so I did not investigate further.

 

[innerdude]

Tiny D6 (Tiny Dungeons or Tiny Frontiers) is absolutely perfect for this kind of thing.

You can literally teach an eight year old how to play in five minutes. Players essentially don't even need to know the rules if you're willing to coach them on when to roll dice, and how many.

Core mechanic is thus --- roll 1, 2, or 3 D6. If you get a 5 or a 6 on any of the dice, it's a success. Roll sixes on any two dice, it's a critical success.

The books are around 100 softcover pages, but 60+ pages of each book are sample scenario / mini campaign setups specifically designed to just get the game off and running. There's 10 or 12 available in each book.

You can easily do 8-10 session mini campaigns. There's enough character options that you might be able to stretch it to 16 or 20, but I could imagine it would get stale for the players much longer than that.

Edit: obviously this kind of a game requires players willing to accept a large level of GM illusionism / fiat, but I was downright shocked how much fun our Tiny Frontiers mini campaign ended up being (I was a player not the GM).

 

[Aldarc]

I looked at this once and was taken aback by the "index card RPG" being a really long book (i think it is over 100 pages) so I did not investigate further.

Index Card RPG 2e contains a 20 page "How to Play," about 25 pages of character creation material (covering both fantasy and sci-fi) including loot and magic, two mini-settings (fantasy: Alfheim; sci-fi: Warpshell), a game mastery section, monsters, adventures, and a section of roll tables. But it does all of this with layout like this:

...which makes it easier to consume.

There is a 400-page Master Edition that came out recently that compiles a lot of the materials, including settings and adventures. But the core game play of the game is super quick and easy to jump into for one-shots and the like.

 

[Piratecat]

We've spent almost every Sunday of the pandemic playing casual and indie RPGs requiring little to no prep. A huge source of these has been Grant Howitt's one-page RPGs, such as Sexy Battle Wizards. While I'm not normally a huge PbtA fan, we've also had fantastic fun with games like Brindlewood Bay and Pasion de las Pasiones. I've run lots of GUMSHOE (including Swords of the Serpentine), I've playtested a new low-prep game I'm working on called LOOT THE KINGDOM, and we haven't even come close to running out of games we want to play.

 

[Arilyn]

We've spent almost every Sunday of the pandemic playing casual and indie RPGs requiring little to no prep. A huge source of these has been Grant Howitt's one-page RPGs, such as Sexy Battle Wizards. While I'm not normally a huge PbtA fan, we've also had fantastic fun with games like Brindlewood Bay and Pasion de las Pasiones. I've run lots of GUMSHOE (including Swords of the Serpentine), I've playtested a new low-prep game I'm working on called LOOT THE KINGDOM, and we haven't even come close to running out of games we want to play.

Gumshoe is a great system.
Brindlewood Bay! Yes, this is an excellent casual game that I think might fit the bill.
Depending on the interest and age level of the group, the Kids on Bikes/Brooms? Super easy.

 

[5atbu]

FIASCO is almost exactly right.

 

[5atbu]

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.

But once you grok FAE then you can improv a session including setting, adventure and resolution with zero prep.

Grokking it needs not any experience of other RPGs IMHO.

 

[Mezuka]

The most casual fantasy rpg I know is Barbarians of Lumeria.

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