Day 22 of #RPGaDAY is all about ease of use at the table. “Which RPGs are the easiest for you to run?”
Anything that’s really freeform and really light rules, I’d start with. But then my mind starts to wander a bit and I’m looking at Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars line again. It’s an incredibly simple system that manages to be crunchy and tactical, yet light and story-driven at the same time. Those crazy dice — the dice that take a few rolls to get used to with their crazy symbols — let you have something awesomely beneficial happen when you fail, bring about something disastrous when succeeding. They’re But Dice: Yes, but… they say. No, but… they tell you.
And the system is dead simple: create a dice pool, increase the die size here, roll your difficulty dice at the same time. Doing something that gives you a benefit — or something that’s thematically appropriate? Add a boost die. Playing against the theme of the game or doing something with a hindrance? Toss in a setback die.
We’re playing Edge of the Empire and Joe-Bob Laser is shooting into melee and you don’t know what the rule is for that? Toss in a setback die or two and the game just moves on. The core books are well over 400 pages long, but the system is crazy light. ((The actual rule is you increase the difficulty by swapping an eight-sided purple Difficulty die out for a twelve-sided red Challenge die and any Despair icons are hits on others. But hell, if you don’t remember it, just add a Setback die or two in there.))
Hell, it’s easier to run than Fate, which is pretty easy.
Previously on #RPGaDAY…
Last year, the topic was supposed to be “Supposedly random game events that keep recurring!?”[sic] Well, everyone keeps talking about how much dice love me, so me rolling well in front of everyone, maybe? We had a ninja ghoul evade machinegun fire because all the dice I rolled for that thing to dodge came up successes. That kind of was a thing we kept referencing in that and other games. I dunno. This is an odd question.
In 2015, the topic was “Perfect Gaming Environment.” It’s still some place where I can change stances. Preferably we’ve got a common table, but man, I’ve got to move while playing.
In 2014, the topic was “Most Complicated RPG Owned”. I still have a copy of Twilight: 2000. I do have copies of GURPS Mysteries and GURPS The Prisoner ((The only GURPS books you need to own.)) , but no actual GURPS. I remember how crazy it was to calculate hits in that system.
Oh, wait! I also have various versions of Shadowrun, each with their two steps too many to do anything at all. I think I’ll fall back to third edition which took the nearly impossible to run decking rules and made them into a completely different set of nearly impossible to run decking rules.