Good Simple Games For New GMs?

[Willie the Duck]

I like Ryuutama. It has a focus on the journey more than the campaign, and lots of tools for building the journey in the book. It also has designated times the players are supposed to input world building, a super simple battle-mat, and you don't throw many dice at once. And it gives the GM a character who's job is to spy on the party and use magic to help keep things interesting without getting caught, helpful for reigning in GMs who want to railroad, or pushing passive GMs to engage with the players.

It is filled with stuff to help people who don't normally play RPGs get the hang of it.

Definitely a great game. Cannot say enough good things about it (particularly for playing with kids). I'd say if people just came off of Pathfinder, however, the combat engine might be a little too straightforward.

I might suggest something like Worlds Apart, which uses the Traveller game engine (based on the Mongoose edition 1 version of said rules), but for a fantasy world. Plenty of space for a sci-fi/fantasy mashup.

Another rules light game I tend to suggest is Beyond the Wall and other Stories, which is at its' core a cleaned up B/X D&D engine, but with lots of character background rules and ways to generate plot arcs and the like. Plus the multiclassing rules are pretty solid, allowing you to play a reasonable mixture of the warrior, skillmonkey, and caster without it being either pointless or overpowered.

[Zakhara]

Another excellent light RPG is John Harper's "World of Dungeons." It's very lean; 3 pages and the core rules fit on two. There's only one true "rule" for players to know, and the gameplay/mechanics are of the fiction-first sort, which can easier for new players (and GMs alike) to digest.

[farothel]

If your GM (and hopefully most of your gaming group) are Star Trek fans, there's also a rpg there (actually there's 2, but I've only played Last Unicorn's version). The system is not difficult and if you already know (part) of the setting, you don't have to worry about that.

Another system that's easy to play is Alternity (the first edition, I've not played second yet). It's out of print, but I think you can get it still through DriveTru or similar sites. Character creation is quite difficult, but once in play it's easy. Roll a D20 (+ or - another die to make things more difficult or easier) and go below your skill. Every skill works the same way, initiative works that way, even if you use psionics or magic, it works the same way. No seperate systems for anything. There are two major setting: Stardrive (generic SciFi) and Dark Matter (think X-Files and you get the basic idea).

L5R is also an easy system, but it's a quite difficult setting to get right.

[DwarvenWarCorgi]

For non-D&D and non-complex gaming, I liked:

( "unisystem, etc etc")

The thing I liked was the Success Levels.


Sure, not every possible Action was listed, but at least gave an idea on how to figure out bonuses and outcomes.

Love the unisystem, its way more about storytelling than numbers crunch. Great for new gms and players alike. Army of Darkness rpg uses unisystem, highly recommend it.

[Jorren]

I though The Sprawl was Powered by the Apocalypse?

Whoops, was thinking of PBTA but wrote Fate for some reason. Should know better than to go from memory.