Lightweight RPG Systems

[robotsinmyhead]

As the title suggests, I'm looking for some personal (anecdotal) info on very-lightweight RPG systems.

In our downtime of cycling 4e games, I like to run old-school fashion off-the-cuff games, generally in a modern setting. The idea is that the player, without any sort of previous knowledge of the game, can sit down and read the entire system in about 10 minutes and begin creating a character. Beyond a decent character backgound, character leveling and stuff like that is pretty much a non-factor. The game is more about RPing the character you've made and having a good time.

I recently whipped up my own rules on the matter which I called JOOP RPG (the JUST OVER ONE PAGE RPG, which as the name suggest, is fairly short), and I was hoping to find some other systems in the same vein that I can 'benchmark', or just use those rules instead.

As I mentioned, systems that focus on non-fantasy elements, particularly in modern settings, are the aim here.

Any suggestions for reading?

 

[Jan van Leyden]

While it isn't supposed to do modern stuff, Dungeonslayers fits the bill as far as being light-weight and giving the players 10 minutes to learn the system are concerned.

 

[Pbartender]

I'd also recommend F# and Risus.

F#, especially has some really good advice on running pick-up games, and keeping them moving.

 

[MortonStromgal]

So there are lighter games out there but I'm going to suggest New World of Darkness just the core mortals book. The rules are medium-light but really easy to grasp and with the exception of merits, morality, virtues and vices (all of which you could play without) all of the character creation rules you need are on the 1 page character sheet. The 4 things I mentioned would not add that much time to character creation either but they would actually have to read the book as the options available are not on the character sheet.

Oh and mechanics are this

count up your dots in the attribute and skill the GM tells you plus any bonus for gear plus or minus any modifiers and grab that number of 10 sided dice, roll them, count any dice that have 8, 9, or 10 on them, take any 10s you get and roll them again repeating the previous step until there are no 10s left. Tell this total number to the GM, that is how many success you got.

 

[grufflehead]

Wushu

The basic rules are freely available from that link. Although it is designed for 'Crouching Tiger' style Wuxia games, the rules are pretty universally applicable to other genres, and one of the supplements is Gun-Fu which adds rules for gunplay (unsurprisingly!). I'm playing a 'sky pirates' pbp game using the rules, and am currently trying to recruit for a high fantasy game on the ENWorld forums.

 

[darjr]

Searchers of the Unknown (A Wizard in a Bottle)

One page simple rules.

Concept
A typical old-school D&D module stats list for a monster
looks like this: (AC6, MV9’, HD 1, hp 4, #AT1, D1-10 by
halberd). The idea is that, if it’s enough for monsters, it
should be enough for PCs too. This light-rule system enables
to play these modules in that way.

There are expansions out there but I don't seem to have a link to those just yet.

 

[darjr]

Here they are.
RetroRoleplaying: The Blog: Searchers of the Unknown One Page RPG: The Many Variants

 

[Thanee]

While not quite that lightweight, I would still recommend taking a look at Savage Worlds.

Bye
Thanee

 

[beldar1215]

While not quite that lightweight, I would still recommend taking a look at Savage Worlds.

Bye
Thanee

I would second this. Savage Worlds is a great system.

Beldar

 

[King Nate]

I suggest the Dragon Age game. It has a simple and sweet stunt system and very rules-lite.