Your favorite pickup game?

[scruffygrognard]

The Battlestar Galactica boardgame. It's awesome and captures the feeling of the first 2 seasons of the show perfectly. The game is built around player interaction, teamwork and deception. In fact more roleplaying takes place during BSG than in a lot of RPG sessions that we play.

 

[humble minion]

We've been playing Munchkin as a fill-in for a few years now (Munchkin Fu for preference), but we've had a bit of a change recently.

With a new daughter for one player, serious family health issues for two others, and frequent business travel for some, Munchkin (or cancelled sessions) were getting too common and actual roleplaying too rare. So we're trying out a Mutants & Masterminds game. The system is fast, to get through a complete adventure in an evening, the nature of superhero stories lend themselves well to a very discretely episodic structure and covering for missing PCs, and it's a complete change of pace from the rather lethal and grisly stuff that's happening on the Isle of Dread in the main campaign. Everyone's just going to bring along their PC each week, and if everyone shows up it's D&D, if not, then the superheroes come out to play...

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I always find the Chaosium Call of Cthulhu a great substitute. Character creation is very fast, the mechanics are incredibly simple, and at least in my experience it's perfect as a one-shot. The only tough part would be for the GM to prepped to run the story.

 

[Umbran]

The only tough part would be for the GM to prepped to run the story.

With the right choice of game, I don't find that to be too difficult. You need to use a specific sort of scenario, one that's flexible to numbers and types of characters playing, and that is quick for the GM to review. It takes a bit more work to create such a thing, but you don't need many of them, as you're not using the backup often.

Games like Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia have the benefit that really, you aren't worried about whether what you're tossing at the PCs is a bit too tough. The genre includes a lot of dead PCs anyway.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Games like Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia have the benefit that really, you aren't worried about whether what you're tossing at the PCs is a bit too tough. The genre includes a lot of dead PCs anyway.

Exactly. That's another benefit that I've found as a player in Call of Cthulhu: my expectation is that characters are going to die, so if it happens to me it feels like part of the game, not like a defeat.

For me Call of Cthulhu is like watching a horror flick. It's fun to see the heroes figure out the mysterious happenings and it's just as fun to see them slashed to death by the axe-wielding maniac. That makes a CoC session enjoyable whether the PCs win or lose, which is an invaluable dynamic for a one-shot to have. I'm not sure that I would look back as fondly on a superhero one-shot that ended with my hero trounced and the villain's plot unfoiled.

 

[malcolypse]

DREAD!!!!!! It takes about 30 seconds to explain the premise and a minute or two to go over the rules. Character creation is easy for anyone to figure out because there are no numbers to juggle.

Also, it is awesome like a thousand hot dogs.

 

[Rel]

DREAD!!!!!! It takes about 30 seconds to explain the premise and a minute or two to go over the rules. Character creation is easy for anyone to figure out because there are no numbers to juggle.

Also, it is awesome like a thousand hot dogs.

I agree with this in general but all the really good Dread GMs that I know like to get the questionnaires in advance so they can work the plot to play to the particular PC's at the table. Since that takes time it makes it rather sub-optimal for a zero-notice game. But if the GM is good at rolling with that kind of thing with no prep then I say go for it!

This reminds me that Dread House would be another good pickup game. Uses a Jenga tower like Dread but with a more codified set of rules depicting a group of teenagers spending the night in a haunted house.

 

[MortalPlague]

I'll put in a second (third?) vote for Old School Hack. We ran it once, and I already have some of my players asking when we can play it again!

Arkham Horror is our usual fallback. I now have all the big box expansions and two of the little boxes, so we've got pretty much unlimited configurations for that board game...

Very occasionally, we'll play Apples to Apples or Battlestar Galactica. My group isn't sci-fi oriented or I'm sure we'd play BSG more often.

Also, Mafia is an excellent game...

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Zombie Fluxx is always popular in our group. Very quick to learn and usually quick to play as well. We can sometimes get a game in while we wait for latecomers to arrive.

Carcassone is a fun game for when you have 2-4 people. Another one that is quick to learn (but takes a bit longer to master).

Frag! is another one I like, although I think you need 4+ players to get the most fun out of the game.

Descent (board game) can be good fun for when you only have a few people. Get players to run multiple characters if needed.

Personally I think Paranoia works well as a one shot but works best with 4+ PC's so that one PC's goals go against the goals of at least 2 other PC's. Call of Cthulu would work, but I generally like to be prepared before running adventures for my group so it would have to be an adventure that I had prepped ahead of time, knowing that multiple no-shows was a fair chance of occurring.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Festivus]

Haven't had to go to it yet, but Castle Ravenloft will very likely fall into this category. Others we have used:

Bang! -- you can inject roleplay into it, or not... or just drink some beer and shoot people. Plus the directions are in Italian which is super fun.

Magic:The Gathering is still something we will whip out when we just have two of us. I usually carry a deck with me.

Pandemic is a fun co-op game that is pretty easy to learn and can be hard as hell to win or easy as pie depending on how difficult you set the game up for.

Formula D - Racing car action... this is a pretty mindless roll and move type game but it's a lot of fun when you play it with all the bells and whistles on it... lots of tactical decisions go into winning a race.