Minimalist Systems

Looking for a few good systems on the lighter end of the scale; not in terms of crunch but, you know, ten pages verses a hundred. Something relatively compact, mechanically tight, and easy to read through and learn in, say, an hour.

Other urls found in this thread:

panix.com/~sos/rpg/sherpa.html
danielbayn.com/wushu/
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

RISUS is my go-to game in such situations.

Risus

It doesn't have monsters, so you'd need to grab some D&D bestiary (like the 1st edition AD&D Monster Manual, for instance), but otherwise...

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The test-drive rules for Savage Worlds actually comes in at only 10 pages, if you don't count the cover, the blank character sheet, or the "templates" at the back.

Mazerats is good for it.

I'd personally go for Beyond the Wall because I like it more, but that one's more than ten pages.

OP what you want is Dungeon World. It's fast, with a strong core mechanic built to enhance the story, not restrict it like the shitty D&D mechanics. Failure in Dungeon World is actually interesting, and all of the abilities are codified into the core mechanic to make it fast, fun, and easy to use. The combat is also much, much better. A dragon doesn't need 300 hit points to be challenging like it does in D&D, it can do stuff that's actually terrifying, like rip a character's arm off. Also, armor is damage reduction so no more of this "less likely to hit, but still does full damage if it does hit" bullshit. The monster stats are incredibly light, character creation is extremely fast and fluid, with just as many options as D&D when you consider that most of D&D is trap options. There is no powergaming in Dungeon World, just a fast story-based game that still has the mechanics from D&D that you love (hit points, classes, etc) but with much stronger mechanics that lead to a more fulfilling roleplaying experience.

My last session of Dungeon World, my human fighter wrapped a vampire in a bear hug and wrestled him out a window into the castle moat. That is real roleplaying, not babby D&D shit where you have to make two different rolls and then have some autist look up how far you can move about while grappling. Dungeon World is about fun and good story, not rules and combat bullshit.

RISUS, a cut down version of FATE/Accelerated, Barbarians of Lemuria.

Dungeon World is more than 10 pages. As a GM, it's a bitch to learn. You're better off with Fellowship, anyways, or any PbtA game that actually understands how to do PbtA.

Some good recommendations in this thread. Thanks.

Risus is good, though I'm not much for FATE.

Incredible.

Never heard of this. Looks solid, will go over.

Never heard of this either, though something about it reminds me of Microlite.

Heard of this, but never got around to checking it out.

Doesn't have to be 10 pages exactly, just shorter than the big name systems tend to be.

Beyond the Wall is good for it, then. It's in the OSR general trove

It's a copypasta, user. Now you know not to fall for it again.

This doesn't have supernatural or exotic bits, but it is free, it is mechanically tight, it's not hard to learn.

Tip: skim the descriptions of the dis/advantages and skills. That's the bulk of the page count.

Instead of Dungeon World, use the official demake of it, World of Dungeons.

I heard good stuff about Ten Candles but I can't find it anywhere yet.

>or any PbtA game that actually understands how to do PbtA.
Except Dungeon World does PbtA better than the original game.

Whitehack is an OSR-adjacent sytem that clocks in at 64 pages. It's kinda like if OD&D were more narrativist

I bought it, it's like 10 bucks.
It's a great game, with an elegant minimalistic design, but bear in mind that - as many indie press games do - it's built around a very specific kind of story, and it's almost completely narrative. I don't know if that's what the OP wants.

Is there a good generic minimalist system? I don't need it to necessarily be rules-light, I just need it to be very customizable. By customizable I mean not having a bunch of pre-made feat lists, spell lists, class lists and whatnot.

So i need something really specific. I work night shifts at a casino and it gets really boring. I need a system that we can play that is d100 based and at most a character sheet about the size of a large note card.

My go-to generic rules light is an oldie nobody knows called SHERPA. It's made by the same guy who wrote FUDGE (the game that later became Fate) and it's sort of like a prototype to both. Very simple, you have a few stats of which some are open-ended, charsheet fits on a business card. Plus, it was made to be played while hiking, so you can run it with either dice, a stopwatch as the randomizer, or fully diceless.

Thanks, mang
>it was made to be played while hiking
It makes sense given the name, but it really perplexes me that there was a demand for "games to play while hiking". From experience, talking on hikes or marches leaves you breathless very soon.

I read a summary of the game mechanics and I very much appreciate the simplicity and universality. Thank you, user.

PDF links to either?

Holy shit, batman - thanks!

So are you trying to sell pdfs or what? I've seen this exact post a few times now.

The fuck is a "RISUS"?

see

SHERPA is online in text form:
panix.com/~sos/rpg/sherpa.html

FUDGE is old as fuck and reads like stereo instructions, so you could skip that, but Fate should have an online SRD that's also free. (It's also definitely not a light game, even though there's also an Accelerated version that should be more apt to this thread).

One system I've been wanting to try lately is Wushu. It seems perfect for my group - we play by text online, and our biggest problem is just shutting down RP-wise during combat, because the rolls take so long. Wushu is basically just circle-jerking about action scenes with some dice thrown in for funsies. My main concern is that requiring elaborate descriptions for every fight/contested scene might turn it into busywork, but it still looks interesting. Has anyone played it before? All I've seen is 10+ year old RPG.net posts raving about old editions.

danielbayn.com/wushu/

I am working on writing down the rules for an unwritten homebrew I played in the summer. So far, I am 80% done and it is clocking in at 3 pages.

You could have just googled it and the very first hit is a link to the latest ruleset.

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I remember reading about a schtick system, but I've got no link. It was made by the guy who ran "pornstars play DnD" and is meant to mirror how fights go in comicbooks. The idea is every character has a certain number of d6s that they use to make "Schticks", representing their abilities or quirks. So if the Hulk (a boss) has 20d6 to spend on his Schticks, he could have 3d6 for Thunder Clap, 3d6 for Throw Car, 4d6 for Hulk Smash, another 4d6 for a second Hulk Smash (because Hulk smashes a lot) and 6d6 for Worldbreaker Hulk as his "Schticks". Spiderman (a player character) has12d6, has Websling 3d6, Spidey Sense 3d6, Wall Crawl 2d6, Spider Strength 2d6 and Quips 2d6.

The way fights work is simple. Each player (or the player and the DM) picks a schtick and they roll the number of dice that schtick has. The highest roller subtracts the lower roller's number, and deals that amount of damage to their opponent. Both players then cross out the schtick they used - if you re-use schticks, the comics gonna get boring and stale. If you take more damage than you have HP, you lose. If you run out of schticks and your opponent still has schticks left over, you lose, as its assumed they beat you with the next schtick they use. At the end of a fight, all the player's schticks refresh.

I don't remember how much HP a character is supposed to have, but for simplicity's sake lets say one for each d6 they have.

And that's it. I haven't used it yet but it sounds fun and its very very simple.

Nice!

Searchers of the Unknown. The main thing missing are monster stats. The basic idea of the game was paring down player character stats to the level of those single line statblocks you see in adventure modules.

My recommendations:
Risus
Lasers and feelings and it's clones
Everyone is John
Here is some fucking DnD
Fiasco
WaRP rpg

Not OP here but am looking for something similar. So similar in fact that it is the same thing but designed for combat-adverse horror role-play games.

Ten Candles has already been mentioned in thread. The book is longer that what asked but it's absolutely a minimal design, character "sheets" are made up of just four words/phrases written on post-its. It's exactly made for desperate horror. Be warned that it's a storygame though, not everyone's cuppa.

Recently tried ICRPG. Works really well

Try Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, OP. It's simple to learn, extremely easy to tweak and it's PWYW at DriveThru.

i wish the 40k RPGs had this type of printer friendly format.

No. Just sick of fa/tg/uys recommending the wrong systems.

Dude, I like Dungeon world and other pbta games. But it wasn't the right recommendation in this thread.

TECHNICALLY for a player Dungeon World is extremely ruleslight.
Just pick a playbook you fancy and the narrator will guide you trought the basic moves. You don't even need to open the book.

> RISUS

I'm so sorry.

> RI
> SU
> S

Why wasn't it?

Roll 1d20 for anything you'd normally roll for
1 to 2 is a terrible result
3 to 7 or so is a bad result
8 to 10 is a neutral result
11 to 14 is a good result
15 to 18 is a great result
19 and 20 are reserved for critical hits/successes n shit
Keep track of some general stuff like 'sword use' which gives +0 to +3 or whatever to the relevant rolls, to a maximum result of 20.
Super difficult things may require multiple 20s in a row.

Just use your imagination and be creative!

>there are literally hundreds of games out there
>but no, you better use the half-cooked crap I just shat out without reason
>be creative! :^)

GURPs, duh. 3d6 roll under is all you need.

I'm glad you contributed your own half-cooked crap shat out without reason :^P

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little casual? I’ll have you know I'm chair of my university's gaming club, and I’ve been involved in running Tomb of Horrors at GenCon, and I have over 300 confirmed TPKs. I am trained in dice fudging and I’m the top DM in the entire RPGA. You are nothing to me but just another munchkin. I will PK you with precision the likes of which has never been seen before in this setting, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with using third-party sourcebooks without my permission? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of neckbeards across the campus and your character sheet is being smeared with cheeto dust right now, so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your character. You’re fucking disintegrated, kid. My DMPC can scry anywhere, anytime, and he can kill your PC in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just by using the corebook. Not only am I extensively trained in Tucker's Kobolds, but I have access to the entire line of official supplements and I will use them to their full extent to wipe your character's miserable ass off the face of the dungeon, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” build was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have picked a core race. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit save-or-die all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, scrub

pretty passe pasta ;^d

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I dunno, actually ... I keked - so it ain't all that bad ...

I'd remove damage entirely and substitute bonus dice for situational and initiative bonus. But this is nice.

also this is good and reletivelly unknown

>The magical realm of Kyvr'ax