What Is Your Go-To Pick-Up TTRPG?


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For me, I would have 3 possible options: GURPS 4th Edition, Dungeon Crawl Classics, or Edge of the Empire.

It may sound odd to say GURPS due to the system's reputation for crunch, but I've run and played the game enough that I can (and have) run something on the fly if need be. For the players, I could likely guide people through making a character using Delvers to Grow in under an hour. Alternatively, I also have notebooks full of materials made for previous campaigns. Of the three options, this may have the most math, but the system also produces results that generally make sense, so even people new to rpgs could grasp a presented situation (without needing to be versed in gaming tropes).

For DCC, the core book has a pre-made adventure in it that is relatively easy to run without prep. I also have roughly 50 index cards of level 0s ready to go (that I made to get a feel for the system). Level 0 characters are simple to run, so I wouldn't be worried about complexity. If it was for people already familiar with the game, I have other funnels and adventures from which to choose.

For Edge, I own the starter set from when I first started playing the system. It's slightly different from the full set of rules, but it's still a good boxed set. For a group adverse to a lot of counting and adding dice together, it's relatively simple to explain that a player just needs to know whether they got more good symbols or more bad symbols.
 

For the next few months Daggerheart. And yes character creation is easy enough in it that I can get through character creation and an adventure out of nowhere in an evening if I have the cards to hand.

My normal go-tos are comedy games including Fiasco, Honey Heist, and Crash Pandas. Leverage or Lasers and Feelings with the right group.
 

Eat the Reich, Pirate Borg, WEG Star Wars, or something Free Kriegsspiel Renaissance.

Eat the Reich for good clean horror-comedy fun. Vampires chewing their way through a bunch of Nazis is a fantastic way to spend an evening.

Pirate Borg for some wild OSR adventures and goofy accents. Grab one of the starter adventures or roll up a random one in five minutes and go.

Star Wars is always fun when you’re Rebels blasting space Nazis. Print out a few templates, grab a handful of d6s, and go.

Free Kriegsspiel Renaissance for anything and everything else. Decide on a resolution mechanic, use clocks, and go. Any genre I’m familiar with I can probably get up and running inside of ten minutes.
 
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FATE Accelerated

  • Give me a Genre and a Setting
  • Give me a Sentence to describe your Character
  • Assign Your Approaches
  • Give me your Troubles

I'll give you a starter scene based on your Troubles and go from there

I love FAE, but I use a hack for fantasy games - I replace the default six approaches with the six D&D abilities (this is not my own innovation, but I forget where I read about it). Works like a charm! It immediately gets people who know D&D but have never played FATE before into the action quickly.
 

Fantasy HERO is an option. I have homebrew docs for fantasy and specifically for Legend of the 5 Rings (in HERO) that can really speed up character creation. Also, most of my friends are already very comfortable with HERO.

Fiasco is a fun choice too.
 

SWADE would be my first choice but if it were just a game we played for one night/session I would be just as likely to run something like Everyone is John or Lasers and Feelings.
 


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