I like to collect and occasionally play fun, quirky and rules-lite RPGs. I thought I might share some that I’ve enjoyed reading or playing over the years with this community. I’ve linked my Google drive collection here. Hopefully this can be a good resource for people looking to play in this community or elsewhere!
Some of my favorites include:
Honey Heist
Lasers and Feelings
Pride and Extreme Prejudice
Adventure Skeletons
I’d love to hear some recommendations for any that I should add!
I’ll submit my own, it’s meant as a first RPG for new players who don’t have a GM available so it’s wordy for a one pager. Also I put play examples and sample character sheets on the back, so technically… I count it as one page anyway.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yGWn37AjIk-br7PagEL51fMZVVs30l4b/view?usp=drivesdk
Looks pretty awesome from a quick glance. Gives me a very RISUS vibe, which is my favorite system. Were you inspired by RISUS at all?
I’m working on a RISUS clone myself, it’s called RISA. So far I’ve only made the SRD, but I hope to flesh it out into a full fledged sourcebook. Here’s a link to the SRD if you’re interested: https://9ofthetimes.itch.io/risa
I have seen the name RISUS before, but I have zero familiarity with it. I downloaded your RISA PDF - haven’t had time to fully read it but so far it seems solid. Seems more on the narrative side, which I like.
Have you played Grok?! at all? I really like it mechanically, but one of the things I kept seeing with new players was difficulty remembering which dice had the number of sides they needed. So I simplified that. Then I took some inspiration from the old White Wolf dice pool mechanics, and probably a dozen other things I’ve seen over the years.
RISUS was created by S John Ross, and inspired by the old Ghostbusters RPG and a few others. It is a traditional/narrative hybrid created at a time when narrative oriented games were scarce (Fudge probably being the best example of the dominant narrative system at that time, which was the foundation for FATE). The RISUS pdf is freely downloadable online, but oddly is under a copyright which prevents the remixing and hacking you often see with CC or other open source licenses (used by Laset & Feelings and others). That’s why I decided to create a clone, so others could remix and adapt it freely. I’m still working on creating more content for it, and have plans for a wiki as well as a community space for it, but it’s slow going due to finding the time to work on it. Here’s a link to the original RISUS system if you’re curious: https://archive.org/download/RisusTheAnythingRPG/Risus - The Anything RPG.pdf
I think I may have heard of GROK, but only in name. I haven’t ever seen the system itself. I’ll have to take a lool at it sometime when I get the chance.
I love the way you handled success probably in this game; where even a novice has a 1/6 chance of doing something near impossible, but nothing is ever a guaranteed success, all while keeping the rules very straightforward. Added it to the collection, thanks!
Thanks! I will mention that if you let players stack up multiple dice the odds of failing become very slim, so if a player wants to be very good at something they become very, very good at something. I’ve found that players enjoy succeeding, funny that.
Just give them a variety of goals and challenges. This ruleset is meant to work better from a storyteller’s perspective than it does from a dungeon master’s - Look at the sample characters, they’re all plot hooks with no single focus. Almost like regular people. :)
That’s true, for example, if you have 4 dice in something and the DC is 2, by my math that’s a 1/1,296 chance of failure. Still technically not a guaranteed success, but there’s not a big incentive to get excited for the roll since you pretty much know the outcome. May I suggest:
Complete success roll: whenever two or more of your dice on a skill check each have a value of “6”, you have achieved a complete success. Not only do you succeed in what you are trying to do, but you may confer a one time bonus of 1D to another player attempting a check related to that success.
For example: Pick and Slip are trying to get a document from a gang leader’s room at a local tavern. It’s pretty busy tonight, so not only will Pick need to successfully unlock the door, but Slip will need to get into the room undetected. Pick attempts to unlock the door. DC4 - not easy, but Pick is really good at opening locks, so he rolls 4D. He gets 2, 6, 3, 6. Two sixes, a complete success! Pick whispers “there’s an arcane alarm on this lock, but whoever cast it did a sloppy job. The rune they used is very similar to the one I saw on the table right…over…there!” A group of patrons jumps with a start as their table begins emitting a high pitched beeping sound. The entire bar is staring at them in confused bewilderment. “There you go, Slip, you’re not the loudest thing in the room anymore.” Now slip gets a bonus dice on his roll to sneak into the room.
This mechanic brings back an element of chance to rolls that would otherwise be almost certain, it rewards players that are really good at or well equipped for a task, and it encourages teamwork, planning and coordinating.
That’s a great mechanic! I tried to simplify this system for people who had never played before, both for ease of learning and ease of running the game. I left a lot of possible mechanics out chasing that 1page status. There’s a lot of room to expand this base system into a pamphlet sized ruleset, but I’ll leave that work to others right now.
My next work is more elaborate, more along the lines of a dice pool system with attributes / skills. It does have a “help” mechanic that works a lot like this one (or the one from the 2d20 rulesets), where one player can give their extra successes to another player. Definitely won’t be a 1 page system.
This is a neat little community, thanks for sharing!
You betcha!
Roll for Shoes is one of my favorites. I haven’t used Lasers and Feelings yet, but have been wanting to for awhile. More than likely I’ll use it or one if the L&F hacks that are out there for a game here sometime. Trash Pandas and Honey Heist always looked fun, as you can see I’m a fan of GS Howitt, but haven’t touch even the tip of the tippy tip of the iceberg when it comes to their (very numerous) output. I think the next one by them I want to try is the noir-inspired one (forget the name). As for the others, I’ve not heard of them. I’ll have to check them all out when I get a chance. Thanks for the collection! I hope you can find the time to run a game on here sometime, too. It’ll be nice to see what other people come up with :D
This is a great resource! I love Honey Heist, I found out about it through the Critical Role oneshots and think it’s an excellent little game. Crash Pandas by the same author was also great.
Never listened to CRs Honey Heist episode, but I’ve GM’d it twice and both times we were dying laughing!
I’m not a huge Critical Role fan these days, I watched back in the old Twitch Geek and Sundry days but felt like it lost its shine somewhere in campaign two.
The oneshots on the other hand are excellent and I feel like they have consistently been some of the best work they’ve ever done for the channel. Which reminds me, I need to rewatch “The Night Before Critmas”…
Ooh looks fun! Added.
