What Is Your Go-To Pick-Up TTRPG?

[Reynard]

I need to get a physical copy of the Mothership pre-1E release.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Ah. Mothership. That's another great one for no-prep one-shots. If you have the right booklets you can create an adventure almost as quick as with Pirate Borg. Hell, you could probably just roll up a Pirate Borg adventure and reskin it for Mothership.

I've picked up several products that are about generating and exploring derelict ships, which is something pretty much everyone can understand instantly and which doesn't require anything more than "your ship approaches the derelict; here's what's on the scanners."

 

[Reynard]

I've picked up several products that are about generating and exploring derelict ships, which is something pretty much everyone can understand instantly and which doesn't require anything more than "your ship approaches the derelict; here's what's on the scanners."

The Mothership version of the Shadowdark dungeon generator? (which is my favorite dungeon generation system of all time)

 

[overgeeked]

I've picked up several products that are about generating and exploring derelict ships, which is something pretty much everyone can understand instantly and which doesn't require anything more than "your ship approaches the derelict; here's what's on the scanners."

Mothership - Dead Planet or another one?

 

[John Dallman]

If the players have characters in the great OD&D/AD&1e meta-campaign, I can whip something up in that on the fly.

If not, Toon. Everyone understands the premise immediately, character generation is trivial, and it's great fun and over quickly.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Astonished that people are picking SWADE given my impression was it needed a fair amount of prep/material to really function, but I guess some people have that to hand.

The only thing I'd need specifically was stats for opponents, but given the somewhat schematic nature of SWADE, if the sample opponents in the book or something else I had wouldn't do, I could slap those together in a short period, or if absolutely necessary, do them off-the-cuff. A knowledge of the typical attack die (D8) and the normal Toughness (probably about six) and referencing the weapon table allows that as a pretty easy thing to do. I mean, it'd be nice to have some Edges written down, but its not strictly necessary.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For my part, the ability to run a quick pickup game -- or any minimal to no prep game -- is familiarity with the system. If you know the system well, no matter what the system is, it is pretty trivial to put together interesting and "balanced" encounters on the fly. The rest is just whim, random charts or leaning on tried and true tropes.

Yeah, there was a time I could have done that with RuneQuest or Hero without too much of a struggle. Like I said, I'm just rusty.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I've picked up several products that are about generating and exploring derelict ships, which is something pretty much everyone can understand instantly and which doesn't require anything more than "your ship approaches the derelict; here's what's on the scanners."

Its an SF dungeon crawl after all.

 

[Ath'kethin]

The shifting attendance at my weekly Dungeon Crawl Classics game at a local coffee house/chocolatier means I have to be prepared to run a pickup game every week, in case nobody (or almost nobody) from the main game/previous week's game shows up.

So I regularly run pickup DCC games and IMO the system is ideal for that, but the again I feel it's ideal for pretty much anything.

 

[dbm]

It always makes me sad to see books and boxes still in the shrink wrap.

I read them in PDF, only open them when it’s time to run them