Whats a good, rules light, game for a beginer GM?

whats a good, rules light, game for a beginer GM?

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Mutant Year Zero (Genlab Alfa/Machinarium). Great for beginners and still very entertaining for veterans. That is if you like some postapocalypse inspired from the early days of Gamma World.

Savage Worlds is pretty simple. Generic too, works with any setting.

D&D 5e basic rules. Download the free PDF and start make characters in under 15 mins. Basic rules keep it light (5e is already fairly light) and it only has 4 classes and races so its really easy for a new GM to wrap his head around and not have to memorize everything.

Risus.

Real talk: you want a system that's fairly complicated, but has simple surface-level rules. It doesn't matter that you're playing it wrong, because you can still have fun. Rather, because things seem wrong, everyone starts digging into the rulebooks and actually reading them, which just gives you a good gaming experience over all.
Rules-lite games meanwhile, get players used to not needing to read the rulebooks because the GM can tell them everything they need to know in 10 minutes.

It's easier to cut down on rules than build up.
I recommend 2nd or 3rd ed D&D, 2e WFRP, or Traveller (Mongoose version).

Then again, I got into TT as a hobby with Battletech. As anyone will tell you, it's one of the more complicated systems out there. On the plus side, learning 40k was piss easy for me.
Otherwise, go with Apocalypse world is also good, but Dungeon World is ass.
>let's take a system known for requiring very few dice rolls per encounter and try to turn it into a system requiring many dice rolls per encounter
>brilliant!

As a final notes, read the books. The players also need to read the books. Get used to it. As with painting models in wargaming, reading is the most labor-intensive part of TTRPGs. If you don't like it, find another hobby. I say that with the best intentions.

I wouldn't really call it rules light, but I would definitely second this recommendation.

It's easy to learn and use the basic rules, but there's also a lot of room to grow and develop, which really makes ideal for beginner GM's.

In response to the 5e recommendations, since OP won't know any better:
please, debate me if you want, but in another thread. OP needs a counter-point against 5e, hence this post. Actual discussion about the system belongs in a different thread, because it will kill this one

5e is a joke. It's like they rebuilt 3.5 off memory, which means that only the character creation is developed.

>linear armor (no reason except money to use any light armor except studded leather or any heavy armor except full plate, unless 3 and 5lbs respectively was causing trouble)
>pointless weapons exist (trident is a worse spear, scimitar is a worse short sword, glaive and halberd are identical)
>Healer's kit (5gp) invalidates the Healer feat unless the GM designed the situation such that a Healer's kit cannot be present

Use a good system instead. Like Mutants & Masterminds. Or even Apocalypse World.

OP didn't need a counterpoint, especially because it's a good game.

Feel free to go down the list of other recommended games so far and complain about them, as well as go ahead and warn OP of all the faults and issues with M&M and AW, or you're going to just look like a guy who doesn't like a system because it's popular.

Nah. A point needs to be made that 5e isn't actually better than other common systems, which often gets confused in threads like this. Volume of recommendations and how well the system works are not the same thing.

I don't see a problem with "pointless" weapons in an RPG - or any sort of game, for that matter.

Adds flavour for people that are actually roleplaying, provides an option to powergame for players that care about powergaming.

If you make every weapon average out at a "balanced" DPS then you effectively remove all differences between the weapons apart from their aesthetics (and those are imaginary in a tabletop anyway). In which case, why have a weapon system at all?

And with that out of the way I VOTE SAVAGE WORLDS

As someone who has run more 5e than probably anyone else in this thread, hes not wrong. 5e really is just a dumbed down, shittier model of older DnD version. The advanced combat rules (grapple, disarm, trip) aren't present except through the DMG or a subclass, the skills have been put into as few categories as possible, the subclass system basically bars character customization to level 3, and the skill DC's dont vary enough, as the skill bonuses rarely go over +10 unless you have expertise.

The weapons are pointless because it is a significant loss to use them. A scimitar being weaker than a shortsword makes no sense, but it is. Dex fighters in 5e are restricted to Rapiers, Str fighters to longsword or greatsword, otherwise they take a loss to their damage die. As a DM, you have to start houseruling things in 5e pretty fast, or the guy who wants to dual-wield scimitars is gimped otherwise. Which, btw, dual-wielding in 5e is garbage, as the rules prevent it from being good or making sense.

Maid RPG.

You missed mounted combat. The section is mostly about mounting and dismounting your horse.

5e is basically laying foundation. 3.X was a broken mess before the splatbooks, and 4e wasn't D&D.

5e was about putting out a system that works. It's not particularly exciting or novel (if it didn't have the D&D name it would be dead because of how plain it is), but it works.

Hopefully 6e will build more flair into the foundation, because splatbooks can't alter core mechanics. It's ultimately just dull because your entire playstyle is determined at level 3 of each class, like you pointed out, and only starts making a massive difference at level 7 or so.

This, by the way. It's not a campaign-based RPG in the way D&D is, but it will give you nice sessions. Paranoia and Everyone is John are also good for this.
For new players, I'd recommend these more episodic systems, since if a player doesn't like the character he made, he'll be making a new one next session along with everyone else.

I'm ashamed that no one's mentioned FATE or FATE Accelerated yet.

The alternative is to make a scimitar and a shortsword identical. Wouldn't that be kind of pointless? Just have a generic "light sword" and leave it at that.

Or do what GURPS Low Tech does, by attempting to simulate realistic damages and costs. GURPS LT is blatantly unbalanced in places, but it's like... Like real life, man, ya know?

Oh, and Maid RPG is only as "weeb" as you make it, by the way. You can play butlers if maids is too awkward for your group.
>four guys make variations of Alfred and spend an evening trying to save not!Bruce Wayne from the demon incursion in the kitchen, because that's your domain and it's not Batman's job to fix it.

FATE has easy rules on paper, but actually implementing them requires far more critical thinking and literacy abilities than other games. You're constantly re-negotiating how to implement the same four (is it four? I forget) rules to every situation.

FATE is hella cool though

>It's not a campaign-based RPG in the way D&D is, but it will give you nice sessions. Paranoia and Everyone is John are also good for this.

The guy who recommended Maid RPG here.

Real talk, any "GM" who asks for a rules-lite system isn't the type to do be able to do much more than 1-shots to begin with. Better to play to your strengths.

And on a far less scathing note, short-campaigns are better to learn the baby steps of GMing anyway. Though honestly, a pre-made short campaign would get you more mileage than any number of 1-shots will.

Read this OP.

theangrygm.com/jumping-the-screen-how-to-run-your-first-rpg-session/

Or you could just increase the critical range on one, make it weigh more and remove the Light trait, and change the Light rules to provide a bonus when dual-wielding, instead of only allowing the player to dual-wield light weapons. Drop a dual-wielding penalty on weapons with the versatile trait if you want.

Now you have Scimitars critting more, but sword swords working better while dual-wielded. Meanwhile you open the door to dual-wielding flails.

This is why people say there are problems with 5e. It simplified to the point that player options are more limited than they were in previous editions. See: removing critical ranges.

The problem is 5e IS broken. Sections of the Player Handbook are actually false. Some contradict each other. The Grappler feat states that it allows creatures one size larger than you to not automatically succeed on checks against your grapple, but they don't do that to begin with. I'm convinced 5e wasn't playtest much, cause the system is inadequate for any long-term campaign.
A scimitar and shortsword shouldn't be identical. But they are, with the scimitar just having a smaller damage die. Without inventing some terrible homebrew non-damage buff to lower-damage die weapons, scimitars really are identical to shortswords, but shittier.

not to mention, that would make Champion fighters irrelevant if their main class feature became a weapon bonus.

To be fair, the Champion Fighter can only exist because the crit ranges were removed. Hence, limiting the player's ability to control how their character plays. The crit seeking duelist is no more.

I'd strongly suggest cutting your teeth on Mouse Guard actually.

Apocalypse World is a good RPG if you're not playing with literal children. It's also free now.

Fate is also good, and Core and Accelerated are both free on the website.

www.microlite20.net
Pretty much D&D stripped down to it's very core. Give it a shot.

Hi-Lo Heroes

Rules lite is not what you want. Unless you are interested in a genuine game of improvisation like Kingdom, pick a system that works with the kind of game you want to run.

I would recommend Stars Without Number or GURPS for space scifi, The Old World of Darkness for modern fantasy, DoubleCross for superhero, and Anima for high fantasy.

FFG's Star Wars RPGs are really cool for their specialty dice, but it's useless unless you want Star Wars.

What system should I pick if I want to play gridbased turnbased RPG with action points? Think fallout 2 but with a squad instead of a lonely hero, XCOM or Space Hulk boardgame.

Melee is next to non-existant and rules that improve shooting mechanics are welcomed (cover , suppression , etc)

Play a video game in that case. Those mechanics are strongly unsuited for traditional RPG format.

I fail to see why. What would be different between that and say, pathfinder? Between battles you walk around and do skillchecks like usual, if during battle you come up with something unusual (I'm going to kick this barrel down the stairs to hamper intruders) then GM gets to decide its action point cost and possible effects.

>I don't see a problem with "pointless" weapons in an RPG - or any sort of game, for that matter.

Oh yes, the many, many roleplay opportunities arise from my weapon doing 1 less average damage for no benefit! Surely, I could not just use the stats for the better weapon (it's not like it actually has any abilities that differentiate them) and call it a fucking day. No, to really, TRULY roleplay, I must use a weapon that has shittier stats because the designer decided one of the weapons should for basically no reason.

whoops was meant as a reply for the other post

I was about to say Strike!, but it doesn't actually use action points.

It does nab the cover system from XCOM, however. It streamlines and simplifies it to a degree, but it's pretty in-depth still.

Action points usually turn out pretty fiddly in tabletop. Does the XCOM boardgame have action points? Or you mean XCOM the game?

It looks like the trolls finally woke up and realized that it wasn't 3.5 that was taking all the new players, but 5e.

All your posts are basically "let's exaggerate what we personally don't like and act like our tiny personal issues even matter in the large scale of things, all just to try and scare people away from a good system."

It's not really fair to try to lie to people like that, especially when anyone who's actually played the game understands just how much bullshit your posts are.

First off
>Pathfinder works though!
Pathfinder and D&D are shitty adaptations of wargaming, they are nit RPGs.

But as for why this particular thing is bad:

Because AP calculation and maintenance is far too complicated to be done by hand, and it needlessly lengthens combat. Players will find themselves counting beans when it adds essentially nothing to the depth of the game because actions in RPGs already have a 'cost' in that you only get so .any of them in a turn, and certain actions are more expensive than others.

AP system would be: "you are moving 7 tiles at a speed that makes it cost 3 per tile, plus 1 to face that direction, so 22 AP for that, and then taking a snap shot costs 32 AP, now your pool was, what 50, so you can't take a shot this turn"

A regular system: "you move 20 feet as a passive action and attack as your active action"

Furthermore, grid-based gaming is not good for RPGs or vice versa. If you want a complex tactical experience, play video games or wargames, not RPGs.

>Pathfinder and D&D are shitty adaptations of wargaming, they are nit RPGs.

Maybe by whatever weird definition you are going by.

5e does have problems (even of those anons exaggerate), but it's miles better than 3.PF.

I personally find it just slightly too complex for how boring it is, but w/e.

>let's take a system known for requiring very few dice rolls per encounter and try to turn it into a system requiring many dice rolls per encounter
>brilliant!

It's called granularity, Dungeon World is about combat, Apocalypse World is not.
The math all works, and characters improve at roughly the same rate. (Unless you're that guy from the previous Apocalypse Engine thread who was doing 60+ rolls per hour, in which case you're fucking up)

Burning Wheel, GURPS, Rolemaster

Not 5e, ever. Anything but 5e.

>I'm terrified of people going to the best system and never needing to play anything else afterwards

If they're already playing the best, you should be happy for them.

No, I don't want people getting into a garbage system just because it's popular and getting used to awful mechanics like Vancian casting. Or even worse, turning away from the hobby because they were introduced to it by such a pathetic system.

Whoa, get a load of your hot opinions.

Riddle me this. Why has 5e brought in more players into the hobby than any other system since its release? Surely such an awful game that drives people away from the hobby wouldn't be doing the exact opposite of what you want to pretend it does.

Go ahead and dislike it all you want, even if the only reason you really dislike it is because it's not only popular but good so it will retain and expand its popularity. But really, bitching about it like you think you can scare people away from it is just being silly.

...

You idiots defending garbage never change - glorious!
How's that shit taste, moron?

Dungeon World

You idiots pretending 5e is garbage never change - glorious!
How's that shit taste, moron?

You're adorable.

How it must eat away at you, the idea that there's a game better than whatever horse you're backing, and regardless of how much you shitpost, people will play and love it.

New to this kind of thing. What's a good system for a pair of people to play? Doesn't have to be DMless but has to work well with only a single player in that case. Erotic stuff allowed.

It hasn't.

Those 'new players' are the cast off dregs of what was 4e.

Amber Diceless.

Basic RPG, aka Runequest.

Try D&D 5e, user. It's good.

It's not rules light strictly speaking, but Basic Fantasy gets my recommendation. The mechanics are actually quite simple, and running it is an absolute breeze.

Scarlet Heroes is designed for Conan-style adventures between one player and one GM in a vaguely east-Asian (but also including not-Germans/Swiss) setting. It's based on the old school D&D framework and does a really awesome job of making a single player feel like a total badass.

What if the person I'm playing with doesn't want to feel like a badass?
My sole player may be my BDSM loving girlfriend.

5e has more players now than 4e ever had.

Enjoy your hot garbage, kiddies! The rest of us are having fun, with other people who are also having fun, playing good games.

Savage Worlds is a shitty system that tries too hard to reinvent the wheel. The exploding die and raise mechanics make any form of encounter balance/planning impossible. A rank 1 novice can one-shot a dragon with lucky die rolls using his fist. The system boasts that bennies are used for "cool things" like players changing narrative or pulling off impossible stunts, but players just hoard them for use as extra hit points. The chase system (any iteration of it) is an absolute shit storm of retardation. The 3-wound limit is just plain bad game design. The community is full of sad 40-something-year-old zealots who foam at the mouth at any notion of house ruling the assy mechanics. Shotguns are utterly broken and despite having the same average damage as a rifle, end up dealing twice as much because of exploding dice. The entire game works on a fucktarded tabletop scale so you either have to use miniatures for EVERY combat or have fun doing extra math every time you want to figure out range penalties.

It's like the worst parts of FATE and GURPS put together, with none of the upsides. Don't play it. Leave it in the trash where it belongs.

It was always free, dumbass.

It's brought in more players because of name recognition you stupid fuck.

People also play and love 4e and 3e and every other fucking RPG out there. It doesn't make them good games.

Nice argumentum ad populenum though.

Why couldn't 4e do the same breh?

Why couldn't 3.5 do as well? 5e has already outsold it and it's beating the piss out of Pathfinder as well, don't be so made that your hobby is actually alive now and it wasn't your shitty little indie that did it.

Thanks to The Big Bang Theory and 5e being rules lite as fuck. also the Sjw gender rules got it a lot of exposure.

...

Actually, 5e's good because it's easy to learn and built on a strong foundation with a lot of depth. It's a truly modern evolution, combining all the best parts of previous editions while also introducing new great elements of its own.

It being popular is just reminding you that my opinion is shared by more people than your opinion. Fuck, that must frustrate the shit out of you.

>Tabletop gaming is now more accepted and popular than it's ever been thanks to D&D the one constant in the industry

>Neckbeards are mad as fuck about it

Delicious

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

for the same reason Veeky Forums keeps shilling Godbound and 5e