It’s August and that means that the annual #RPGaDAY ‘question a day’ is here to celebrate “everything cool, memorable and amazing about our hobby.” This year we’ve decided to join in the fun and will be canvassing answers from the ENWorld crew, columnists and friends in the industry to bring you some of our answers. We hope you’ll join in, in the comments section, and share your thoughts with us too… So, without further ado, here’s Day 8 of #RPGaDAY 2017!
#RPGaDAY Question 8: What is a good RPG to play for sessions of 2hrs or less?
Morrus: As long as you all know the game well, and you dive into it without too many distractions, most any game can provide a great two-hour experience. There's a lot of wasted time in most sessions (which is fine - they're social activities, and socialising with friends is important), but if you boil it down to the actual gaming part, two hours is quite doable even with fairly rules-heavy games. Obviously it's easier with rules light games, and games which don't require battlemaps and miniatures, but at least one of my weekly groups tends to be just over two hours a week once everybody has arrived and settled down. I actually find a focused two hours can be great.
Darryl Mott: Fiasco. (And let's not get into the semantics argument that it’s “not a real roleplaying game”. It’s a collaborative storytelling game where you play a role, and even has dice, so it's close enough.) There are playsets for pretty much any fictional genre you can think of at this point, and it’s a lot of fun. Because of the focus on the story over game mechanics, you fit a lot more story into a much smaller period of time.
Christopher Helton: My weekly online group only meets for two hours, so I would say "Just about anything." We've played Swords & Wizardry, Marvel Super-Heroes, Rifts, D&D 5E and Werewolf games with that time period in mind.
Angus Abranson: Most games can work in a two hour session… although some games certainly benefit from longer sessions to really get the immersion and tension going. When I was working out of the Rebellion offices when Cubicle 7 were based in Oxford we actually had a lunch ‘RPG group’ that tried to meet two or three times a week. One of the guys from the novel publishing side of things, three from computer game developments, and myself – with the occasional floating guest player. Being lunch break it was ‘one-hour’ sessions, that usually meant more like 45-50 minutes once everyone had settled. We still managed to get a pretty decent campaign of D&D going though
Martin Greening (Azure Keep, Ruma: Dawn of Empire): 3:16 by Gregor Hutton. It’s basically Starships Troopers/Warhammer 40K, and has very cool mechanics for requisitioning new weaponry and earning rank. Plus, the silhouette graphics are cool.
Paul Mitchener (Age of Arthur; Hunters of Alexandria): In play I've found both Blades in the Dark and Monster of the Week really lend themselves to this. The way I run it, a Monster of the Week mystery takes about 2 hours. And for Blades in the Dark, a single score for the rogues has taken between one and two hours in the past. That allows room for downtime along with engaging with complications and the politics between different criminal factions before selecting the next score. As a more self indulgent answer, my game Age of Anarchy lends itself well to a game of two or so hours to resolve a particular issue for the PCs' patron lord.
Simon Brake (Stygian Fox): Anything with as few rules as possible. Fiasco is my go-to game, but is no good if you have too many players. Cthulhu Dark is a great simple system, if you have a short enough story prepared.
Lynne Hardy (Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks; Achtung! Cthulhu): Well, I'm biased, so of course I'm going to say Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks. But I'd also recommend Untold: Adventures Await, the upcoming family story telling game from the Creativity Hub, which uses Rory's Story Cubes.
Eran Aviram (Up to Four Players; City of Mist): Savage Worlds is the obvious answer, as it's really straightforward and easy to pick up, but I'd like to also point at the Star Wars RPG dice (soon to come out as Genesys), because in a way they build the game for you, allowing the GM to sit at the table while only still having just a general idea or two. I've used these dice along with the very bare-bones of the rules to run several highly successful 2-hour games, including introducing new people to roleplaying, and GM competitions.
Simon Burley (Golden Heroes, The Super Hack): THE BLACK HACK. It's D&D stripped back to its basics and all the better for it. I use it to introduce new players to the hobby. I have a standard one hour demo game. I use Matt Colville's "The Delian Tomb". (I like the idea that if the players enjoyed the game they can follow it up by checking out how it was designed on YouTube afterwards.) The thing is - Matt designed it to play for four hours using 5th Ed D&D. Using The Black Hack I can take totally new players through the whole thing in an hour - and they understand the rules. I resurrected the classic module "Against the Cult of the Reptile God" at LongCon last year. There was some debate about whether to run it using 1st Ed, update it to 5th Ed or use some other iteration of D&D. By agreeing to use The Black Hack, everybody was able to buy a copy of the rules (they're cheap!) and we were all on the same page without any of us having to learn a complex new game.
Garry Harper (Modiphius Entertainment; The Role Play Haven): All Flesh Must Be Eaten, by Eden Studios.
Stephanie McAlea (Stygian Fox Publishing, The Things We Leave Behind): Ghostbusters or Paranoia.
Uli Lindner (Space: 1889; Clockwork Publishing): Dungeonslayers - easy to learn and play, and there are tons of One-Page-Dungeons available.
Ken Spencer (Rocket Age; Why Not Games): If you are looking for a short pick up game, you can't go wrong with Barbarians of Lemuria. The rules are easy and fast, character generations should take about five minutes, ten if the players are new to the game, and it is designed to drop straight into the action. Playing off of pulp fantasy tropes, the movement of any adventure is fast, characters can be stock and cardboard, yet still fun, and there is no top to worry about going over.
Laura Hoffman (Black Book Editions; Polaris RPG): In my opinion, as long as you have your characters ready, any game can be adapted to make a great short session!
Federico Sohns (Nibiru RPG): I'd say Fiasco, or some of the one shot games of fellow designer Benjamin Reyna, who has a plethora of simple, two-page long rulesets with plenty of settings to choose from—and that you can download for free here.
Mike Lafferty (BAMF Podcast; Fainting Goat Games): I love shorter sessions. I think the brevity is so much better for player engagement and pacing. So, I’m tempted to reply and say “all RPGs”. But that’s a bit cheeky and not really in the spirit of the question.
I’ll say ICONS Assembled Edition. Character creation is fast and fun and the rules are both fast-playing and easy to communicate. You can literally roll up characters and be playing in 20 minutes.
Marc Langworthy (Modiphius; Red Scar): Puppetland!
****
Originally created by Dave Chapman (Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space; Conspiracy X) #RPGaDAY os now being caretakered by the crew over at RPGBrigade. We hope you’ll join in, in the comments section, and share your thoughts with us too!
#RPGaDAY Question 8: What is a good RPG to play for sessions of 2hrs or less?
Morrus: As long as you all know the game well, and you dive into it without too many distractions, most any game can provide a great two-hour experience. There's a lot of wasted time in most sessions (which is fine - they're social activities, and socialising with friends is important), but if you boil it down to the actual gaming part, two hours is quite doable even with fairly rules-heavy games. Obviously it's easier with rules light games, and games which don't require battlemaps and miniatures, but at least one of my weekly groups tends to be just over two hours a week once everybody has arrived and settled down. I actually find a focused two hours can be great.
Darryl Mott: Fiasco. (And let's not get into the semantics argument that it’s “not a real roleplaying game”. It’s a collaborative storytelling game where you play a role, and even has dice, so it's close enough.) There are playsets for pretty much any fictional genre you can think of at this point, and it’s a lot of fun. Because of the focus on the story over game mechanics, you fit a lot more story into a much smaller period of time.
Christopher Helton: My weekly online group only meets for two hours, so I would say "Just about anything." We've played Swords & Wizardry, Marvel Super-Heroes, Rifts, D&D 5E and Werewolf games with that time period in mind.
Angus Abranson: Most games can work in a two hour session… although some games certainly benefit from longer sessions to really get the immersion and tension going. When I was working out of the Rebellion offices when Cubicle 7 were based in Oxford we actually had a lunch ‘RPG group’ that tried to meet two or three times a week. One of the guys from the novel publishing side of things, three from computer game developments, and myself – with the occasional floating guest player. Being lunch break it was ‘one-hour’ sessions, that usually meant more like 45-50 minutes once everyone had settled. We still managed to get a pretty decent campaign of D&D going though
Martin Greening (Azure Keep, Ruma: Dawn of Empire): 3:16 by Gregor Hutton. It’s basically Starships Troopers/Warhammer 40K, and has very cool mechanics for requisitioning new weaponry and earning rank. Plus, the silhouette graphics are cool.
Paul Mitchener (Age of Arthur; Hunters of Alexandria): In play I've found both Blades in the Dark and Monster of the Week really lend themselves to this. The way I run it, a Monster of the Week mystery takes about 2 hours. And for Blades in the Dark, a single score for the rogues has taken between one and two hours in the past. That allows room for downtime along with engaging with complications and the politics between different criminal factions before selecting the next score. As a more self indulgent answer, my game Age of Anarchy lends itself well to a game of two or so hours to resolve a particular issue for the PCs' patron lord.
Simon Brake (Stygian Fox): Anything with as few rules as possible. Fiasco is my go-to game, but is no good if you have too many players. Cthulhu Dark is a great simple system, if you have a short enough story prepared.
Lynne Hardy (Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks; Achtung! Cthulhu): Well, I'm biased, so of course I'm going to say Cogs, Cakes & Swordsticks. But I'd also recommend Untold: Adventures Await, the upcoming family story telling game from the Creativity Hub, which uses Rory's Story Cubes.
Eran Aviram (Up to Four Players; City of Mist): Savage Worlds is the obvious answer, as it's really straightforward and easy to pick up, but I'd like to also point at the Star Wars RPG dice (soon to come out as Genesys), because in a way they build the game for you, allowing the GM to sit at the table while only still having just a general idea or two. I've used these dice along with the very bare-bones of the rules to run several highly successful 2-hour games, including introducing new people to roleplaying, and GM competitions.
Simon Burley (Golden Heroes, The Super Hack): THE BLACK HACK. It's D&D stripped back to its basics and all the better for it. I use it to introduce new players to the hobby. I have a standard one hour demo game. I use Matt Colville's "The Delian Tomb". (I like the idea that if the players enjoyed the game they can follow it up by checking out how it was designed on YouTube afterwards.) The thing is - Matt designed it to play for four hours using 5th Ed D&D. Using The Black Hack I can take totally new players through the whole thing in an hour - and they understand the rules. I resurrected the classic module "Against the Cult of the Reptile God" at LongCon last year. There was some debate about whether to run it using 1st Ed, update it to 5th Ed or use some other iteration of D&D. By agreeing to use The Black Hack, everybody was able to buy a copy of the rules (they're cheap!) and we were all on the same page without any of us having to learn a complex new game.
Garry Harper (Modiphius Entertainment; The Role Play Haven): All Flesh Must Be Eaten, by Eden Studios.
Stephanie McAlea (Stygian Fox Publishing, The Things We Leave Behind): Ghostbusters or Paranoia.
Uli Lindner (Space: 1889; Clockwork Publishing): Dungeonslayers - easy to learn and play, and there are tons of One-Page-Dungeons available.
Ken Spencer (Rocket Age; Why Not Games): If you are looking for a short pick up game, you can't go wrong with Barbarians of Lemuria. The rules are easy and fast, character generations should take about five minutes, ten if the players are new to the game, and it is designed to drop straight into the action. Playing off of pulp fantasy tropes, the movement of any adventure is fast, characters can be stock and cardboard, yet still fun, and there is no top to worry about going over.
Laura Hoffman (Black Book Editions; Polaris RPG): In my opinion, as long as you have your characters ready, any game can be adapted to make a great short session!
Federico Sohns (Nibiru RPG): I'd say Fiasco, or some of the one shot games of fellow designer Benjamin Reyna, who has a plethora of simple, two-page long rulesets with plenty of settings to choose from—and that you can download for free here.
Mike Lafferty (BAMF Podcast; Fainting Goat Games): I love shorter sessions. I think the brevity is so much better for player engagement and pacing. So, I’m tempted to reply and say “all RPGs”. But that’s a bit cheeky and not really in the spirit of the question.
I’ll say ICONS Assembled Edition. Character creation is fast and fun and the rules are both fast-playing and easy to communicate. You can literally roll up characters and be playing in 20 minutes.
Marc Langworthy (Modiphius; Red Scar): Puppetland!
****
Originally created by Dave Chapman (Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space; Conspiracy X) #RPGaDAY os now being caretakered by the crew over at RPGBrigade. We hope you’ll join in, in the comments section, and share your thoughts with us too!
