Are there any newbie-friendly RPG systems with no 350 pages of core rules?

Are there any newbie-friendly RPG systems with no 350 pages of core rules?
I would like to give the roleplaying a try with my friend but we are in no need on super-complex character building etc. Just want to draw some maps, roll dice and maybe push some models around if there is an option for this but we still want to have a system to keep it organised and in an orderly manner. Premade scenarios would be really handy for such a newbies

Other urls found in this thread:

basicfantasy.org/downloads/Basic-Fantasy-RPG-Rules-r107-bookmarked.pdf
talislanta.com/?page_id=5
drivethrurpg.com/product/85809/BEAN-The-D2-RPG
futileposition.com/2014/06/lets-read-rpg-pendragon-greg-stafford-part-1-introduction-chapter-1-pendragon-realm.html
archive.org/details/1001PendragonGPCIntro
mediafire.com/folder/7llc83r2xf8bg/Barbarians_of_Lemuria_-_Mythic_Edition
twitter.com/AnonBabble

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basic D&D is your friend. The type from the 80s with the red box. It's simple, quick to pick up, and newbie-friendly.
And, it's actually a better game than most modern rulesfests!

>suggesting Magical Realm the Game to newcomers

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>being such a prancing lala homo man faggot you think lotfp is magical realm

>Suggesting LotFP isn't a great streamlined ruleset of B/X.

basicfantasy.org/downloads/Basic-Fantasy-RPG-Rules-r107-bookmarked.pdf

Basic Fantasy RPG is B/X with better adjustments.

When I first heard of this I thought it was an Adventure Time RPG.

You are being gatekept. The gate is there for a reason. Evidently, you are not suitable to go through it.
Bye now.

So you want something that's easy to run, easy to play and below 350 pages ?

How about D&D ? no seriously
of course i'm joking

Got to the PDF share thread and download Heroquest Glorantha from DA ARCHIVE.

Why Heroquest ? because it's really fucking elegant in it's writing and i think every GM should read it at least for it's take in GMing.

So in 90% of RPGs you got your Strength, agility, intelligence, etc. Heroquest says "screw that lame nerd shit".

Heroquest defines it's heroes through their abilities and Keywords.
An ability is anything your hero has that helps him overcome a problem and come usualy as short but defining desciption or titel.
"Too swole to control" That's an ability.
"Good Humor" That's an ability.
"Karate black belt" That's an ability.
"Spear fishing" is an ability

Keywords define your character in broader terms, like his profession, his culture and are basically package deals when it comes to abilites and each character has a fixed amount of those, unlike abilites.
"Farmer" Is an Keyword
"Demonhunter" is a Keyword
"Babarian" is a Keyword
"Roman" is a keyword

The game rewards creativity and narrative initiative from the players and the book has around 200 pages, of which around 100 are rules, the rest being setting information, examples and beginner adventures.
You don't even need to use the setting since the game is great at making your players feel like heroic figures, from "Stan the brave farmer" to literal avatars of the gods depenting on your tone of the game and powerlevel.
So you could kick the setting into the bin and have an makeshift adventure where not-Guts, not-Belmont, not-Sailormoon and not-Gandalf team up to invade the evil lords castle and kick his ass.

It's a simple system with a lot of narrative and tactical depth when the time comes to whip out the dice and basically the system "the cool cousin or friend older brother, who lets you play his videogames and drives you guys to McDonalds".

Talislanta 2e. It's free here:

talislanta.com/?page_id=5

Simple rules, comes with a short adventure at the back.

Suck a dick, elitist faggot.

He's not wrong. Listen to for now but you're not really ready for something with 400 pages by your own admission. Some dedication is important, and being gatekept is important.

For super light, easy to run games, I'd look at Powered by the Apocalypse. Not all of them are good, but they're designed for convention play so you can get a game going with minimal setup time and they do a lot to help give newbies a structure for roleplaying without having many mechanics at all. Just find one that suits your preferred genre and try it out.

Ignore these people, they are the worst part of the tabletop fanbase and basically only exist to be elitist arseholes. There is nothing wrong with liking simpler games, and there is nothing superior about liking more complex ones. It's all a matter of playstyle and preference, and all that matters at the end of the day is that you and your group are able to enjoy themselves. If anyone ever tells you there's only one right way to roleplay, just ignore the stupid cunt.

Came here to post that. Guess I'll post this instead.

The art reeks of death metal album covers.
the mechanics do not.

Hey now, Simple mustn be a bad thing, Minecraft is simple and it's still the favourite combination of LEGO and cocain you will find anywhere.

The thing is simple doens't mean that it hasn't depth, because usually people dont want complexity, they want something to work with.
So something can be simple and deep and complex and deep but what i want to say is: Complexity doesn't achive depth.

And once you get into the the depth of Heroquest (either 2 or glorantha, they are basically the same) It IS deep with alot of room for meaningful character choices.

Tho, dont confuse the system Heroquest with the Board and Video-game Heroquest. Pretty sure that's what kept it hidden away, being in the shadow of something else (both the board game and the videogame were rather successful) with the same name.

Found the samefag SJW shill. Go drink your soymilk and browse reddit. It's friendlier there.

If you do not read the rulebook, you do not play. If you can't read a 400 page rulebook, you can't be trusted to read the campaign notes, your character sheet, etc. If you do not read, you do not know how fantasy works.

Stop shilling it.

2/10, try harder

Fucking normie, thinks he is special by excluding others.

What's your favourite genre OP? There are a hell of a lot of games out there, so knowing what you're looking for would be helpful.

samefags again.

Ryuutama, it's got that "OSR meets a JRPG." Feel to it, and it's just comfy. Also character creation takes about 5 minutes. It's good for Made in Abyss style campaigns if you ramp up the deadliness, and Dungeon Meshi if you want something more relaxed. It does have a strong bent on travel and exploration though.

Unironically Dungeon World. It's simple as fuck while still managing to capture the feel of DnD.

Someone suggested Strike! and fate accelerated when I started and I enjoyed Strike!

>Anybody who is against me must be the same person, also i can't tell writing styles apart.
Sociopath detected.

>If you can't read a 400 page rulebook, you can't be trusted to read the campaign notes, your character sheet, etc. If you do not read, you do not know how fantasy works.
This. Get literate. But in the meantime there are also some fun lightweight systems to get your feet wet. There's something called like Rogue Fighter Wizard that uses nothing but d6s that's good for a first timer, otherwise a preconstructed simple d&d adventure might be up your alley.

Any mega link with all the books?

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>First two posts are B/X and a B/X clone
And to think that I doubted Veeky Forums. D&D Basic is exactly what you are looking for OP.

>Settling for B/X

inb4 shoop

Fiasco is the best, rules aren't even 100 pages

Labyrinth Lord is better. It accomplishes streamlining and tweaking better without utterly hobbling the thief and cleric in later level combat.

This is a chill game, anyone can play their child self. Haven't tried it yet with anyone, it is a pretty good read. Combat is rare and kids don't die, a more human approach to RPG games.

>implying most fucking GMs have actually read more than half the rulebooks

Rules-light systems are NOT newbie friendly. That's my advice; I know it's not strictly an answer to your question, but it should be noted.

Rules-light systems generally rely on the players to be somewhat knowledgeable and experienced enough to make up for the game's lack of in-depth rules covering every possible edge case, which is why rules-heavy games are so rules-heavy - 80% of the rules cover 20% of the game. Rules-light systems often require a GM who is comfortable with extensive houseruling on-the-fly and adjudicating what happens without a particularly clear guide in the rules. This requires a certain level of confidence and comfort with deciding how a game "should" go without railroading it or making contradictory or unpredictable decisions.

In short, those rules are there for a reason. Literal children play D&D all the time, it's not really that hard. A lot of us here on Veeky Forums played D&D as children. I'm not recommending D&D itself, for reasons I'm sure Veeky Forums would be happy to explain if you don't know, just pointing out that extensive rules can be perfectly newbie-friendly and rules-light can actually be more difficult if you don't already know what you're doing. The more rules the game has, the less ambiguity it has and the less need the players and GM have to adjudicate things themselves.

I'd say that the thing about rules light games is that they don't require experience with RPG's, they just require experience with how stories work. If you're in a very media savvy group who understand story structure, genre conventions and the demands of a narrative, a basic set of mechanics that serves to guide your roleplaying along those paths works really well.

However, for people less familiar with that, more solid game mechanics can give them something to engage with while they're getting comfortable with the idea of roleplaying. It's about figuring out what fits best with your group.

microlite20
google it, very simple, tiny ruleset and it's genrally wonderful.

>soymilk
Soy's plant estrogen actually blocks estrogen uptake in humans, goofus.

Is there a difference between HQ:Glorantha and 2e outside of unique setting stuff?

Idiot.

RPGs are exercise for the imagination. If you need almost everything you can possibly do to be defined by the rules, then you should play a board game.

I played the rules heavy games when I was a kid because I had too much time on my hands, and didn't care if I wasted half the night plodding through bloated rules. And I also believed that having material spoonfed to me by Hasbro was more cool and legit than making it up.

This is is a game, not a writing exercise.

And? The skills are still very applicable to roleplaying games, at least for a narrativist playstyle, which is what most rules light games cater to anyway.

>If you need almost everything you can possibly do to be defined by the rules, then you should play a board game.
Nonsense. Just because most things you can do are defined doesn't mean you're not choosing what to do.

The same is true of chess. But playing chess is a very different from playing B/X.

Presumably you're talking about writing skills? I disagree. I mean creative ideas are good, but gameable material is very different from what works well in a prose story.

I dunno user. I got way more out of a creative writing class than I did out of most GM advice threads, when it comes to making good tabletop stories.

I guess maybe that's what it boils down to - what you primarily see running a game as. Different people make different kinds of games, after all; one DM might have a game with complex and highly technical and skilled battles and a story that basically amounts to "go there, kill the thing," and another DM might have a game where the battles are almost an afterthought but a complex and multifaceted interactive story. Neither one is "wrong," if their players enjoy it at least, they're just different and require different skills.

I'm not talking about writing skills, I'm talking about understanding how stories work. The two are different things.

5e

Most GM advice is practical shit that has to do with managing the group, not creating a plot, that's why.
You can have the greatest story ever, but it's shit if you can't get it across and involve the players in it.

WaRP is basically a more crunchy version of Risus and it makes a good gateway into more in-depth RPGs. you might take a look at that.

fpbp, some faggots take one look at the admittedly fucked up art and figure that the entire game is like that. It's not. Never been to a single LotFP magical realm, and i've played the system for years. Get the rulebook and make your own setting like everyone else who runs it.

The art is drawn by a Finn, so it's not that surprising.

>Just want to draw some maps, roll dice and maybe push some models around if there is an option for this but we still want to have a system to keep it organised and in an orderly manner. Premade scenarios would be really handy for such a newbies

None of your wishes seem to involve role playing, or even anything whatsoever outside of dungeon crawling combat. So perhaps go for a game all about that instead of a role playing game? Pre made characters, pre made scenarios, more of a small booklet than a proper rule book...

Bold opinion, yet correct.

Bean the D2 RPG is pretty Basic
drivethrurpg.com/product/85809/BEAN-The-D2-RPG
Having said that, I think Pendragon 5.2 is the best and most straightforward RPG I know, but it is over 200 pages.
Still I'd recommend you read this review of it
futileposition.com/2014/06/lets-read-rpg-pendragon-greg-stafford-part-1-introduction-chapter-1-pendragon-realm.html
and/or listen to this recording of play:
archive.org/details/1001PendragonGPCIntro

Apocalypse World and any variant that doesn't huff its own ass
FATE
Basic D6
Risus
there's some decent light d100 systems but I forget them

Go back

I recommend Apocalypse World because the game is designed around how to run and play an RPG game so it contains everything you need to quickly create compelling games. The big trick is reading the whole book as GM.

If you insist on D&D, Dungeon World is based on AW but isn’t as good at teaching how to have good games as well.

If you want to roleplay and someone in your group sincerely wants to learn to GM, I recommend Ryuutama. It's designed to teach GMs (and new players) how to play, very simple, and fun.

If you're not too keen on the playing pretend part, I non-jokingly, without judgement suggest you look into board games that provide an rpg like experience, such as the D&D games, Mice and Mystics, the Flying Frog games, House on Haunted Hill; etc.

Oh, forgot to say that if you look in the PDF thread, it's there, but I'm not going to hold your hand because I sincerely believe they deserve your money.

If you want option three, Lady Blackbird is free and something like 10-20 pages. Also fun. Also with pre-made characters. But I think it'll be easier on people who know a bit more about what they're doing.

Yeah, in Da Archive.

muh nigga

Barbarians of Lemuria. Mythic edition is c. 200 pages long, but a lot of that is setting information and so forth. The previous edition was more like 100 pages and it's not like the core system really got expanded (and the admittedly skeletal edition before that was a mere 50 pages).

mediafire.com/folder/7llc83r2xf8bg/Barbarians_of_Lemuria_-_Mythic_Edition

I first started game mastering in 4th grade. I had no prior experience with role-playing games and neither did anybody I was playing with. I was a bit overwhelmed by the sea of details, and this is back before the internet was a thing or there was a public consciousness of what role-playing games were like, so I really was on my own. When I started playing, I found my unfamiliarity with the rules tripping me up and slowing the game down, so I just started winging things. I won't say that my performance was particularly impressive, but making shit up comes naturally, and I certainly think that a game with fewer rules would've been easier for me to run and would've resulted in me actually following the rules more often.

G A T E K E P T
A
T
E
K
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P
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You were new once, too. And you were shit at TTRPGs when you were new. Remember that.

Classic Traveller. Basic game consisted of a three little black A5 sized books.

Yeah, but I read the fucking rulebook first.

If rules stop you from playing p&prpgs then stop, do 360 and moonwalk away.

I play 3.5 all the time and ive never read the rules. If somebody comes to me and says that my character is in error because the rule says otherwise, I would kill that person.

Fuck rulefags.

The kind of assholes who spew that shit simply lack a functional sense of empathy.

BFRPG is a great start.

You beat me to it nigga.

Microlite20 is a nice simple d20 with less than 20 pages I think.

TIME WIZARDS

Not really. As long as you have the system HQ:2 and not the board game.
Glad to see somebody with interest.

Eventually moving on to something complex isn't the same thing as insisting that someone swallow the most frustrating parts of the hobby before they get any payoff.

That said, D&D 5e Basic is NOT 300 pages.

Fate Accelerated. It's about a ten page book, really easy to pick up and play. Fate Core is great, I've gotten people to learn how to play it really easily.
They've got a non-janky pdf on the evil hat website and you can pay what you like for it.

I can't find it ATM but didn't someone make some hyper-condensed d6 RPG rule set designed to be in like 3 pieces of printable paper?

This classic

Speeeeeeerg, not sociopath. Jeez, I thought you guys were supposed to be knowledgeable about this sort of thing.
>writing styles can't be faked

Descent is not new-player friendly. I love it but the sheer scope of the box contents is too much for a lot of newbies.