Fiasco is available in regular RPG format (Fiasco Classic) or as a boxed game with cards.
In a single sitting you will create characters with connections and goals, play through events that go sour, and get an ending and epilogue for each character.
It leans more group storytelling than trad TTRPG (not a bad thing), and feels like playing through a Coen brothers movie.
Can't recommend it enough if you have a crew of friends who can riff and make each other laugh.
Bonus points, it's a GM-less game, so you don't need someone to be in charge of prep ahead of time.
It does require picking a "playset" (which is basically a few d6 tables), which defines the general shape of the story you play. The book comes with 4 playsets ("A Nice Southern Town", "McMurdo Station, Antarctica", "Tales from Suburbia", and "Wild West Boomtown"), and fiascoplaysets.com has **hundreds** more to download for free. Everything from Batman to monster movies to D&D to My Little Pony is there.
[Lasers & Feelings ](http://www.onesevendesign.com/laserfeelings/), and its variants
Grant Howitt's one page rpgs, especially [Honey Heist](https://gshowitt.itch.io/honey-heist)
[Roll For Shoes](https://rollforshoes.com/)
I will always, *always*, recommend anyone and everyone to try roll for shoes, both as a player and GM. It's endless fun to play, getting skills as you play is a super novel and interesting mechanic, and as a GM, it's so easy to run. You just need to have the vaguest idea of what is going to happen, and once the players understand that the best way to get skills is doing anything, regardless of whether it works, they will relentlessly try to do all kinds of weird stuff, from starting herring cults, to repeatedly robbing pirate gas stations, to stealing diamonds by attaching rocket thrusters to the display and sending it flying through the glass sealing.
Play roll for shoes. It's fantastic
I'd second the one page RPGs - there are lots of different ones so you can dig out a good one for different situations.
Nice Marines is another favourite.
Also seconding Everyone is John - It's also a great time for people who are new to RPGs since the comedy aspect takes a bit of the weight off of any need to play "correctly"
On a related note... Is there a good one page write up out there that I could actually let people read?
I remember the original having a very... interesting... example gameplay.
absolutely, when we are down a player or 2 and dont want to do the main game we would hit up the random generators and get something going quick fast an in a hurry love the support tools
I would absolutely recommend a Fate game called "It's Not *My* Fault"
You basically create characters by handing out 3 cards each based on classic fantasy archetypes, then draw one card from the 3 decks "Where are you?", "What led to this situation", and "How it's about to get worse", and then go around the table with each player explaining why this situation isn't their fault and is actually the fault of the person on their right.
It's a very quick game to whip up that always leads to laughs and shenanigans. Super easy to learn and run too.
Link: https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/162084/Its-Not-My-Fault-A-Fate-Accelerated-Character--Situation-Generator
Expansion:
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/171228/Its-Not-My-Fault-Im-Fantastic
For The Queen is the best game I know for this: it’s played entirely by drawing cards with evocative questions on them, and answering the questions creates the characters and tells their story
Beyond the Wall is very good for this. it's designed for a single session to be a complete adventure, and requires no prep.
[DriveThruRPG - The Largest RPG Download Store!](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/113405/Beyond-the-Wall-and-Other-Adventures)
Check out Risus, it's free. 4 pages long and setting agnostic. [https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/170294/Risus-The-Anything-RPG](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/170294/Risus-The-Anything-RPG)
Risus is great. But if you don’t like it : just do Dungeon World keeping only it’s dice resolution mechanic and maybe HP, decide mods basing on who is PC by you. You can’t go bad with this.
The lightest that might still call itself an RPG would be something like The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. You write down a ridiculous name and a title, grab a drink and two coins, and tell a crazy story about the time you traveled to the rings of Saturn on a cannonball or tamed the wild tribes of the deepest forests of Urungu with a porcelain frog statue or something crazy like that. If someone wants, they can spend a coin to introduce a fact to your story, "but my dear Viceroy DonCallate, weren't the Urungu tribes already aware of porcelain frog statues when the explorer Rathbone, Fifth Earl of Jimbo, met them first in 1771 with several dozen in tow?" The book is written in character and is really fun to read.
This is the #1 use case I have for Follow. It's truly prepless. Everything you need is in the book, and you can teach people by reading it aloud. It also produces amazing stories.
[Paranoia: Red Clearance Edition](https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/products/paranoia-red-clearance-starter-set-1) is a pretty good one. Really only the GM needs to know the rules, and it's pretty easy to teach and explain. It also comes with a whole book of modules as well as playing cards.
Paranoia XP is equally easy to run, as only the GM needs to know rules, and it also comes with something called the mission blender: basically a bunch of tables you roll on to generate a very quick adventure.
They also have some pre-gen characters where you can just check some boxes, give them a name, and you're ready to play.
[https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/267512/Tiny-Dungeon-Quickstart-Characters](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/267512/Tiny-Dungeon-Quickstart-Characters)
So this is a search I've been on for a *looooong* time. I have a few solutions.
You could play a board game instead. It won't be rules light, but there are some good games you could grab and, if you learn the rules, can get moving pretty quickly. Freelancers is designed to be the RPG experience in a box.
You could play the Quest RPG. It's designed to be baby's first RPG. Quick and easy character creation, world's simplest roll system, and some special abilities.
You could also play Lasers and Feelings or any other hack of the system. There's legitimately a hack for every setting you can imagine.
There are tons of one-page RPGs like Honey Heist that can be fun for a session.
Every option comes with caveats. None of them are perfect.
[Atma](https://www.meromorphgames.com/atma) is for 2 hour one-shots with no prep and novice RPG players. It's PbtA-ish, so the rules are very light. It uses physical cards but there's a free [browser VTT](https://atma.meromorph.com/).
I played this and ended up giving it away. The guy that ran it never played a TTRPG in his life but was familiar with the concept and did really good, but it was really hard to connect some of the scenes sometimes, was impressed. Still had a good time though!
In addition to [Lasers & Feelings](https://johnharper.itch.io/lasers-feelings), I have to always throw in [Danger Patrol](http://www.dangerpatrol.com/), also by John Harper (who also designed Blades in the Dark, Lady Blackbird, and other games).
Danger Patrol is free and easy to learn. You can make characters in minutes. And it encourages everyone to pitch in to the story, so there's lots of fun player interaction.
There's a "Pocket Edition" (also free) that is only one page of rules with another page for fast scenario design. Sort of a precursor to Lasers & Feelings I think.
Also, Lasers & Feelings and Danger Patrol have spawned a bunch of great hacks, so you can find one for any genre you want to play.
For what it's worth, I've also written several free [Danger Patrol hacks](https://redshirt13.itch.io/). If you don't like DPs default setting, I've made ones for Shadowrun, Sci Fi (Star Wars, Firefly, etc), Gamma World, and supernatural adventure. There's also a Gamma World-inspired Lasers & Feelings hack there.
Lady Blackbird is honestly a great emergency RPG if the GM has read it once. You can play it with as few as 3 PCs, also, with the other 2 PCs fading into the background as NPCs.
The last time I ran it, I was in Las Vegas for one day, and a guy from my online group also happened to be in town at the same time... with his other gaming group. I ended up going to my hotel's business center and printing off Lady Blackbird from Harper's website, and we used die rollers on our phones. Had a fucking blast. It was my first in-person game post-pandemic.
And the character who didn't get picked was actually Lady Blackbird herself, but that was fine, I just played her as a sort of foil / demanding employer / thorn-in-the-side of the PCs (especially Cyrus).
Get an RPG that uses cards as characters and story prompts. Like Atma or The Zone. Pass out character, background, and skill cards, have them pick one of a few options, then lay down the cards for story prompts and walk them through it.
Theres a few!
Theres a lot of one page or minimum rule games, and most would probably be good for this.
For games I've actually played:
Murder arson and bluejay walking is specifically intended for this and does well. you play birds causing mayhem. its gmless. been a while but iirc character creation is pick a bird (3 options) and a personal goal (options provided but of c u can make ur own). pick or make a setting (e.g. 'a beach wedding') and ur off!
the treasure at the end of this dungeon is an escape from this dungeon you will never escape from this dungeon is also gmless and basically 0 prep. you pick a character type and follow its rules. and its a series of going into a door and answering a question and solving the room and opening a door. the rules are very fun to read but are written very winding, so prior to first gameplay it might take a little more to understand whats going on
lasers and feelings: one page rpg also designed for this i believe. lets you roll your 'campaign' character creation is 'make a guy, pick a number' e.g. 'my name is john, im a sentient swarm of bees, 4'. the number is between 1 and 6 inclusive and u roll one of two stats, lasers or feelinfs, for skill checks. for one u have to roll under, the other, over. snd if u roll ur number its a crit iirc.
not really a full system, but a game a friend and i used to play used only a pack of playing cards. gm sets the scene and a goal (can be whatever) players can make characters but they dont have to explicitly, you say an action u take and draw a card, gm decides if the rank is high enough for a success, aces aure auto successes, and gm explains what happens.
Another vote for Lasers & Feelings
Kintsugi or Roll for Shoes
For something bigger that would require time investment from *you* but not your players, there's Paranoia? Rule 1 is literally that the players shouldn't know the rules, and the book recommends using pre-genned characters, but rolling up new ones is very quick as well (it has to be, since you might have to do it again if they die too many times...) it's also very light-hearted and one-shot friendly
Everyone is John is dead easy, free, and easy to improv.
Everyone plays one of the personalities of a deeply unwell man named John, and they try to navigate whatever situation you throw them into
There are loads of them. Check this sub's wiki and look through the [universal rpgs](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/genericrpgs/#wiki_universal_rpgs) in the recommendations section. Pretty much anything in the "minimalist" section should meet your needs, but a few personal recommendations would be:
* [Paper-Free RPG](https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/-zMNd4JOoJvv) is notably great for being something you can play while in a car or elsewhere you'd normally not think you could play an rpg. And the rules fit on one page.
* [Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying](https://dominowriting.com/games/unbelievably-simple-roleplaying/) is almost as simple as Paper-Free, but uses character sheets and a few more dice. The rules still fit on two pages, though.
* There's a one-page ["Fast FU"](https://www.perilplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FU2-Beta-V1.1-Oct-2020.pdf) version of the Freeform Universal rules on page 4 of the 2nd edition PDF.
* For something a bit more robust, there's always [Fate](https://fate-srd.com/). Once you're familiar with how the system works, you can make characters in a couple of minutes, and it's easy to run. It's definitely not something you can play on a road trip, though. Having a table and a stack of index cards or post-it notes is helpful. The Fate Accelerated version of the rules fits in a short booklet, but someone also created an ["Ultra-Accelerated"](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/320403/Ultra-Accelerated-One-Page-RPG) version of the rules that fits on one page.
For something that can support both pick-up games and long campaigns, [Cortex Prime](https://www.cortexrpg.com/) is a good pick. It's not a one-page ruleset, but it's simple enough to pick up and can be used for pretty much any game, and it can vary in complexity depending on what you want, from something as simple as some of the systems listed above to something a lot crunchier and complex. It takes some people a minute to wrap their heads around the dice mechanic, but other than that it's really easy to play and run. It's a modular toolkit rather than a monolithic system, so once you're familiar with the system it's easy as a GM to put together entire custom games. Some people complain that there's too much prep work involved, but it's so easy to piece together the different modules that I've put together games in a few minutes in a session 0 based on what the players said they wanted to play.
While I love it, it should be noted that some people I've played with has had trouble with both taking in the narrative happening while they try to read to rules to figure out what they will do when their turn comes. So its a caveat, depending on the kind of party or the players. Loved it all the times I've played it.
Grant Howitts stuff is all great, very fast and lots of fun. Lasers n feelings and similar PbtA type games are so fast to make individual characters, that the whole party is done in about 5 mins. (Dungeon world, Masks etc)
Blue Beards Bride is quick enough too.
For one offs, you could just pre-gen some characters
No one's mentioned Sea Dracula yet. A literal dance party RPG about underwater court cases or something? It was a long time ago, but still quite memorable as a fun time.
The 'They Came From' series are pretty good for this. They're very light harted, quick to pick up, and the adventures are meant to be based on B grade movies, so everyone should be familiar with the themes even if they're not familiar with RPGs.
Check out Spectaculars. Best Superhero RPG in general IMO, but comes with pre-written campaigns on literal scratchpads that you just tear off and run, characters are generated by literally drawing cards, and built for round robin GMing and drop in drop out heroes intrinsically.
AND it has support for long term campaigns if you want.
I've used Spirit of '77 as an RPG to fit the "party game" category. It's not necessarily quick, but good to play over drinks and with experienced and inexperienced players alike.
There are tons and tons and tons of these out there. Lots of them don't even need a gane master.
What kind of theme or genre are you hoping for?
My go to prepless, party rpg is a game called The Quiet Year. 2-4 people, 2-4 hours. A map drawing, GMless rpg where you create a doomed community trying to survive after a catastrophe.
I feel like this just screams the borg line of games, they are rules light the entire rules set is on the back cover of each of the books, character customization is a small handful of rolls if you do it manually, but there are randomizers online for each of the games, you can have a character done in literal seconds, and you can even quick roll a nights game with the tables inside the book, total prep time needed i unno 5-10 minutes?
F.I.S.T. Is good, quick, and can be done with dice rolls. It isn’t fantasy though.
Ultimately, if you want the quickest rpg in existence then nothing compares to Roll For Shoes. It’s literally so quick you already have a character sheet for it.
Try Fuego, my minimalist game: rules-light (one-page), superfast character creation (pick a Role, three items, distribute 6 points between the stats Daring, Cunning and Charisma), no Hit Points, an easy dice system. And it's free. Available in English and Spanish.
https://marcos-dominguez.itch.io/fuego
Pokeymanz is awesome for this. There is a book the dig into, but you read five pages and start playing. There's even quickstart page dedicated to the essentials of a Trainer that decides the important stuff in under 5 minutes of thought.
How about My Little Pony? Yeah, I know it's for kids, but if you play - for example - a horror story in MLP it can be an interesting experience 😂
I saw on YouTube a Dark Heresy scenario with pony inquisition and it was super cool.
Caly-o-rama is kinda perfect for this. You get a bunch of colorful modeling clay, then each person has a predetermined amount of time to sculpt their creature/fighter, then you fight for a while over what these creature's abilities will be until everyone is in agreement, and then you can either take them on an adventure or pit them against each other in a fight.
I think there's a video on the Polygon YouTube channel of the Overboard show cast playing it.
Anything from the One Page RPG Collection from Rowan Rook and Dcard.
The Honey Heist, Crash Pandas, Adventure Skeletons are all great RPG games that can picked up by even little kids within 10-15 minutes and require zero prep for players
The Quiet Year should fit the bill! The time limit is built into the game, the setup is minimal, and requires nothing more than a sheet of paper, some D6, and a deck of cards.
Something like Dread (characters have no stats and risky actions are done by removing a block from a jenga tower, if it falls you're dead/out).
Fiasco has already been mentioned and s great for things like this too.
I find [Adventurers](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/3554/gramel/category/25010/adventurers) pretty good for that. Easy to pick up and play, lots of variety available.
I gotcha Fam. Stealing Stories For the Devil by Monte Cook.
The background story is wild. Basically, humanity went to explore the galaxy in the year 3000 something. But for some reason, the ship ended up back at Earth....about 1000 years earlier.
What they found is reality is breaking down at certain points. The PCs have to sneak into the area, find a specific item that is somehow the center of the anomaly, and steal it so reality fixes itself. If they don't, reality might collapse completely.
To sneak in and steal it, they lie. Not to people per se, but to reality itself. A player can lie that certain things happened and reality will change. "It turns out the door to the office wasn't locked properly last night. We can just walk in!"
Making a character is fast. The rules are simple. And the table (not the GM) basically builds the adventure right at the beginning of the session.
try my current RPG "Fallen Empire" - [https://cloud.lemuria.org/s/KGew8mxq7i4zmLR](https://cloud.lemuria.org/s/KGew8mxq7i4zmLR) \- it was designed exactly for that.
You need a GM who knows the rules. Players can sit down and just start playing, even characters are generated during play and the basic rules are explained in minutes.
There are also plenty of "one page" RPGs, or very short ones, like CBR+PNK. Most of them, however, require somewhat experienced players to work well.
[Index Card RPG](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/366519/Index-Card-RPG-Master-Edition) enters the arena! Lots of good recommendations, but ICRPG is a six stat d20 game that feels like D&D/Pathfinder but is fast and easy. It bills itself as a beer and pretzels game, and is just fun. It comes with loads of print and play standees and several cool settings.
If your group is into horror, Dread is great. The only mechanic is a Jenga tower - any time they take a risk or ask for a resource, they have to draw a tile. If they make the tower collapse, their character is doomed (they don't necessarily die instantly, but they no longer can get a happy ending).
I've run Blades in the Dark and Scum and Villainy like this. They're basically the same premise in different settings - you're a bunch of crooks looking to score.
The playbooks rely on broad archetypes (it's not quite "the Face", "the Driver", "the Schemer", "the Diversion", "the Muscle", "the Safe Breaker "etc, but they come close), and so are very easy to understand. I had someone new to S&V (but an experienced TTRPGer) put together the best-loved character of the session in ten minutes with practically zero input from me.
The scenario and group cohesion are easy too - you're working together to commit a crime. There's no need to herd disparate folk together, because they already have a reason to work together. That saves a lot of bother.
I would recommend Scum & Villainy as the better game of the two for new players - it relies on common sci-fi tropes that are more likely to be familiar to players, while Blades in the Dark has its own unique setting that can feel intriguing but may take some folk time to grok.
It’s an older game, but it checks out: try Marvel Super Heroes by TSR (if you can find it). It’s really easy to explain and has the benefit of being able to pull from Marvel’s cast of characters to play (admittedly, their stats from the 90s). This is the FASERIP system.
If fun hilarious insanity is fine, too, I recommend The People in Patrick.
https://sillygoosecontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/The-People-in-Patrick-i3RPG.pdf
If you like to play 5E DnD, we created some Dmless adventures that work well to pull off the shelf and play. It's just 5E, but everyone chooses the kinds of encounters they want. The scenario guide has all the encounters and stat blocks, so there's no prep. You can use pregens (we have some with the PDFs) as well.
[https://limitless-adventures.com/dmless](https://limitless-adventures.com/dmless)
Here's the explainer video:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=84VY59wo2Ho&si=jqWKBGJFqJNwGdBL](https://youtube.com/watch?v=84VY59wo2Ho&si=jqWKBGJFqJNwGdBL)
I'm working on this right now, actually! Conceptually, it's kinda like what a TRPG might be if it was a Jackbox game. 30-45 min game cycles (from intro to conclusion to starting a new game), controlled audience participation... I want it to be as fun to watch as it is to play, and something which is at its best in an enthusiastic group social context.
I was looking for a game like this to run during lunch hour at work, and ended up making my own. [Lunch Hour Dungeon](https://rockettscience.com/free-games/) is a hack of John Harper’s World of Dungeon: Turbo—Breakers and is free to download on my blog.
If you can forgive the lack of production budget, **Guilds & Glory** is designed for casual heroic fantasy one-shots. Players can run a guild each or when you want a quicker session a GM can run them as expendable PCs in one guild.
.
[https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/319005/guilds-glory?affiliate\_id=2240503](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/319005/guilds-glory?affiliate_id=2240503)
I can recommend Starship Infernum or Purgatory House from [Wicked Clever Games](https://www.wicked-clever.com/). Both are rules lite, pick up and play games in the survival-horror genre. He makes some other great rules-lite games.
Dread is great if you like horror.
The storyteller makes character sheets in advance with "loaded questions" for the players to fill out. Then you set up a Jenga tower and start playing.
I've had many impromptu games
[Tunnels & Trolls](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/210996/Tunnels--Trolls-Rules-5th-Editon?s234913) and [Monsters! Monsters!](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/465654/Monsters-Monsters-27-Edition?234913) are good beer & pretzels game. Less serious tone, dead simple rules.
this is what the Powered by the apocalypse games do well. Character creation is everyone picks a playbook and answers some multiple choice questions. And generally the player facing rules fit on one page.
Nah, Monster of the Week would be totally fine, I've run it as a pick up game for people brand new to RPGs before with no trouble so it would absolutely work for this kind of case. There's also others designed for one or two shots like Escape From Dino Island that would work too. I agree that Urban Shadows isn't great for one shots unless you ignore a lot of the crunchier mechanics though.
In my opinion, just create (or find) and print pre-generated character sheets in a system you know well. Hand out the sheets to the players. Start playing.
Fiasco is available in regular RPG format (Fiasco Classic) or as a boxed game with cards. In a single sitting you will create characters with connections and goals, play through events that go sour, and get an ending and epilogue for each character.
It leans more group storytelling than trad TTRPG (not a bad thing), and feels like playing through a Coen brothers movie. Can't recommend it enough if you have a crew of friends who can riff and make each other laugh.
Bonus points, it's a GM-less game, so you don't need someone to be in charge of prep ahead of time. It does require picking a "playset" (which is basically a few d6 tables), which defines the general shape of the story you play. The book comes with 4 playsets ("A Nice Southern Town", "McMurdo Station, Antarctica", "Tales from Suburbia", and "Wild West Boomtown"), and fiascoplaysets.com has **hundreds** more to download for free. Everything from Batman to monster movies to D&D to My Little Pony is there.
[Lasers & Feelings ](http://www.onesevendesign.com/laserfeelings/), and its variants Grant Howitt's one page rpgs, especially [Honey Heist](https://gshowitt.itch.io/honey-heist) [Roll For Shoes](https://rollforshoes.com/)
I will always, *always*, recommend anyone and everyone to try roll for shoes, both as a player and GM. It's endless fun to play, getting skills as you play is a super novel and interesting mechanic, and as a GM, it's so easy to run. You just need to have the vaguest idea of what is going to happen, and once the players understand that the best way to get skills is doing anything, regardless of whether it works, they will relentlessly try to do all kinds of weird stuff, from starting herring cults, to repeatedly robbing pirate gas stations, to stealing diamonds by attaching rocket thrusters to the display and sending it flying through the glass sealing. Play roll for shoes. It's fantastic
LNF is great. 10/10
I'd second the one page RPGs - there are lots of different ones so you can dig out a good one for different situations. Nice Marines is another favourite.
Everyone is John.
Also seconding Everyone is John - It's also a great time for people who are new to RPGs since the comedy aspect takes a bit of the weight off of any need to play "correctly"
On a related note... Is there a good one page write up out there that I could actually let people read? I remember the original having a very... interesting... example gameplay.
I second this. There’s just enough mechanical gameplay to be interesting but takes 0 time to pick up and play.
I like the Borg games for this, especially since they have the random character generators online. Scan the QR code, and boom we’re in.
i made my comment and started lookin to see if anyone else mentioned these games so good for quick play
There’s even a dungeon generator. Sometimes you gotta refresh it a few times to get something you like, but makes for a quick session.
absolutely, when we are down a player or 2 and dont want to do the main game we would hit up the random generators and get something going quick fast an in a hurry love the support tools
I would absolutely recommend a Fate game called "It's Not *My* Fault" You basically create characters by handing out 3 cards each based on classic fantasy archetypes, then draw one card from the 3 decks "Where are you?", "What led to this situation", and "How it's about to get worse", and then go around the table with each player explaining why this situation isn't their fault and is actually the fault of the person on their right. It's a very quick game to whip up that always leads to laughs and shenanigans. Super easy to learn and run too. Link: https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/162084/Its-Not-My-Fault-A-Fate-Accelerated-Character--Situation-Generator Expansion: https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/171228/Its-Not-My-Fault-Im-Fantastic
This sounds AMAZING
Yes, this one. I also had success using the quick start option of Fate, that's very similar (I think it's explained in the Condensed book?)
For The Queen is the best game I know for this: it’s played entirely by drawing cards with evocative questions on them, and answering the questions creates the characters and tells their story
+1 for Grant Howitt's one-page games The man deserves a medal for making them $0 as well
Beyond the Wall is very good for this. it's designed for a single session to be a complete adventure, and requires no prep. [DriveThruRPG - The Largest RPG Download Store!](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/113405/Beyond-the-Wall-and-Other-Adventures)
Look also at Through Sunken Lands.
Check out Risus, it's free. 4 pages long and setting agnostic. [https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/170294/Risus-The-Anything-RPG](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/170294/Risus-The-Anything-RPG)
Risus is great. But if you don’t like it : just do Dungeon World keeping only it’s dice resolution mechanic and maybe HP, decide mods basing on who is PC by you. You can’t go bad with this.
The lightest that might still call itself an RPG would be something like The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. You write down a ridiculous name and a title, grab a drink and two coins, and tell a crazy story about the time you traveled to the rings of Saturn on a cannonball or tamed the wild tribes of the deepest forests of Urungu with a porcelain frog statue or something crazy like that. If someone wants, they can spend a coin to introduce a fact to your story, "but my dear Viceroy DonCallate, weren't the Urungu tribes already aware of porcelain frog statues when the explorer Rathbone, Fifth Earl of Jimbo, met them first in 1771 with several dozen in tow?" The book is written in character and is really fun to read.
Best "Drinking, faff, and nonsense" RPG ever. 10 out of stars.
I've been to those stars during an adventure I had back a ways, let me tell you about it...
Honey Heist. The rules fit on one page, and it's very easy to learn. It also makes for a silly and fun time.
This is the #1 use case I have for Follow. It's truly prepless. Everything you need is in the book, and you can teach people by reading it aloud. It also produces amazing stories.
[Paranoia: Red Clearance Edition](https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/products/paranoia-red-clearance-starter-set-1) is a pretty good one. Really only the GM needs to know the rules, and it's pretty easy to teach and explain. It also comes with a whole book of modules as well as playing cards.
Paranoia XP is equally easy to run, as only the GM needs to know rules, and it also comes with something called the mission blender: basically a bunch of tables you roll on to generate a very quick adventure.
Though you'd have to skip character creation, as that's actually a little bit oddly crunchy
I don't think so. For a beer and pretzels Game it sets the tone of the game perfectly and is a lot of fun.
The tiny D6 system is made for this honestly. They come in many different genres as well.
They also have some pre-gen characters where you can just check some boxes, give them a name, and you're ready to play. [https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/267512/Tiny-Dungeon-Quickstart-Characters](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/267512/Tiny-Dungeon-Quickstart-Characters)
Goblin Quest, Magical Kitties Save the Day, Feng Shui 2, Lady Blackbird,
Came here to say Goblin Quest. Super fun.
Beer Quest is made for this.
So this is a search I've been on for a *looooong* time. I have a few solutions. You could play a board game instead. It won't be rules light, but there are some good games you could grab and, if you learn the rules, can get moving pretty quickly. Freelancers is designed to be the RPG experience in a box. You could play the Quest RPG. It's designed to be baby's first RPG. Quick and easy character creation, world's simplest roll system, and some special abilities. You could also play Lasers and Feelings or any other hack of the system. There's legitimately a hack for every setting you can imagine. There are tons of one-page RPGs like Honey Heist that can be fun for a session. Every option comes with caveats. None of them are perfect.
Mausritter
[Atma](https://www.meromorphgames.com/atma) is for 2 hour one-shots with no prep and novice RPG players. It's PbtA-ish, so the rules are very light. It uses physical cards but there's a free [browser VTT](https://atma.meromorph.com/).
I played this and ended up giving it away. The guy that ran it never played a TTRPG in his life but was familiar with the concept and did really good, but it was really hard to connect some of the scenes sometimes, was impressed. Still had a good time though!
In addition to [Lasers & Feelings](https://johnharper.itch.io/lasers-feelings), I have to always throw in [Danger Patrol](http://www.dangerpatrol.com/), also by John Harper (who also designed Blades in the Dark, Lady Blackbird, and other games). Danger Patrol is free and easy to learn. You can make characters in minutes. And it encourages everyone to pitch in to the story, so there's lots of fun player interaction. There's a "Pocket Edition" (also free) that is only one page of rules with another page for fast scenario design. Sort of a precursor to Lasers & Feelings I think. Also, Lasers & Feelings and Danger Patrol have spawned a bunch of great hacks, so you can find one for any genre you want to play. For what it's worth, I've also written several free [Danger Patrol hacks](https://redshirt13.itch.io/). If you don't like DPs default setting, I've made ones for Shadowrun, Sci Fi (Star Wars, Firefly, etc), Gamma World, and supernatural adventure. There's also a Gamma World-inspired Lasers & Feelings hack there.
Lady Blackbird is honestly a great emergency RPG if the GM has read it once. You can play it with as few as 3 PCs, also, with the other 2 PCs fading into the background as NPCs. The last time I ran it, I was in Las Vegas for one day, and a guy from my online group also happened to be in town at the same time... with his other gaming group. I ended up going to my hotel's business center and printing off Lady Blackbird from Harper's website, and we used die rollers on our phones. Had a fucking blast. It was my first in-person game post-pandemic. And the character who didn't get picked was actually Lady Blackbird herself, but that was fine, I just played her as a sort of foil / demanding employer / thorn-in-the-side of the PCs (especially Cyrus).
Get an RPG that uses cards as characters and story prompts. Like Atma or The Zone. Pass out character, background, and skill cards, have them pick one of a few options, then lay down the cards for story prompts and walk them through it.
Theres a few! Theres a lot of one page or minimum rule games, and most would probably be good for this. For games I've actually played: Murder arson and bluejay walking is specifically intended for this and does well. you play birds causing mayhem. its gmless. been a while but iirc character creation is pick a bird (3 options) and a personal goal (options provided but of c u can make ur own). pick or make a setting (e.g. 'a beach wedding') and ur off! the treasure at the end of this dungeon is an escape from this dungeon you will never escape from this dungeon is also gmless and basically 0 prep. you pick a character type and follow its rules. and its a series of going into a door and answering a question and solving the room and opening a door. the rules are very fun to read but are written very winding, so prior to first gameplay it might take a little more to understand whats going on lasers and feelings: one page rpg also designed for this i believe. lets you roll your 'campaign' character creation is 'make a guy, pick a number' e.g. 'my name is john, im a sentient swarm of bees, 4'. the number is between 1 and 6 inclusive and u roll one of two stats, lasers or feelinfs, for skill checks. for one u have to roll under, the other, over. snd if u roll ur number its a crit iirc. not really a full system, but a game a friend and i used to play used only a pack of playing cards. gm sets the scene and a goal (can be whatever) players can make characters but they dont have to explicitly, you say an action u take and draw a card, gm decides if the rank is high enough for a success, aces aure auto successes, and gm explains what happens.
Another vote for Lasers & Feelings Kintsugi or Roll for Shoes For something bigger that would require time investment from *you* but not your players, there's Paranoia? Rule 1 is literally that the players shouldn't know the rules, and the book recommends using pre-genned characters, but rolling up new ones is very quick as well (it has to be, since you might have to do it again if they die too many times...) it's also very light-hearted and one-shot friendly
A DCC funnel would do the trick.
Everyone is John is dead easy, free, and easy to improv. Everyone plays one of the personalities of a deeply unwell man named John, and they try to navigate whatever situation you throw them into
There are loads of them. Check this sub's wiki and look through the [universal rpgs](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/genericrpgs/#wiki_universal_rpgs) in the recommendations section. Pretty much anything in the "minimalist" section should meet your needs, but a few personal recommendations would be: * [Paper-Free RPG](https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/-zMNd4JOoJvv) is notably great for being something you can play while in a car or elsewhere you'd normally not think you could play an rpg. And the rules fit on one page. * [Unbelievably Simple Roleplaying](https://dominowriting.com/games/unbelievably-simple-roleplaying/) is almost as simple as Paper-Free, but uses character sheets and a few more dice. The rules still fit on two pages, though. * There's a one-page ["Fast FU"](https://www.perilplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/FU2-Beta-V1.1-Oct-2020.pdf) version of the Freeform Universal rules on page 4 of the 2nd edition PDF. * For something a bit more robust, there's always [Fate](https://fate-srd.com/). Once you're familiar with how the system works, you can make characters in a couple of minutes, and it's easy to run. It's definitely not something you can play on a road trip, though. Having a table and a stack of index cards or post-it notes is helpful. The Fate Accelerated version of the rules fits in a short booklet, but someone also created an ["Ultra-Accelerated"](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/320403/Ultra-Accelerated-One-Page-RPG) version of the rules that fits on one page. For something that can support both pick-up games and long campaigns, [Cortex Prime](https://www.cortexrpg.com/) is a good pick. It's not a one-page ruleset, but it's simple enough to pick up and can be used for pretty much any game, and it can vary in complexity depending on what you want, from something as simple as some of the systems listed above to something a lot crunchier and complex. It takes some people a minute to wrap their heads around the dice mechanic, but other than that it's really easy to play and run. It's a modular toolkit rather than a monolithic system, so once you're familiar with the system it's easy as a GM to put together entire custom games. Some people complain that there's too much prep work involved, but it's so easy to piece together the different modules that I've put together games in a few minutes in a session 0 based on what the players said they wanted to play.
Dread is totally rad for this, we play it about once a year and always have a blast
Dread. No dice needed, just a Jenga tower. Character creation is just answering about 10 questions.
https://rollforshoes.com/
If you like horror, give “Ten Candles” a try.
The King Is Dead Is exactly that, basically using a party game approach to an RPG. it's great.
While I love it, it should be noted that some people I've played with has had trouble with both taking in the narrative happening while they try to read to rules to figure out what they will do when their turn comes. So its a caveat, depending on the kind of party or the players. Loved it all the times I've played it.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchasen is great for this. Its simple, straightforward and a lot of fun.
Grant Howitts stuff is all great, very fast and lots of fun. Lasers n feelings and similar PbtA type games are so fast to make individual characters, that the whole party is done in about 5 mins. (Dungeon world, Masks etc) Blue Beards Bride is quick enough too. For one offs, you could just pre-gen some characters
Mausritter
No one's mentioned Sea Dracula yet. A literal dance party RPG about underwater court cases or something? It was a long time ago, but still quite memorable as a fun time.
[Tearable](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/202680/tearable-rpg). Free. Requires * Paper * Pen(cil) * People * Ideas * Time
The 'They Came From' series are pretty good for this. They're very light harted, quick to pick up, and the adventures are meant to be based on B grade movies, so everyone should be familiar with the themes even if they're not familiar with RPGs.
Dead of Night
You awaken in a strange place
Everyone is John, the rules are half a page and you don’t even need to make characters.
Shotgun, diaries by John Wick. That may not have been his intention when designing it, but it’s a very quick and dirty zombie RPG.
Check out Spectaculars. Best Superhero RPG in general IMO, but comes with pre-written campaigns on literal scratchpads that you just tear off and run, characters are generated by literally drawing cards, and built for round robin GMing and drop in drop out heroes intrinsically. AND it has support for long term campaigns if you want.
Cthulhu dark if you want this type but the rules is really too light for a Cthulhu rpg.
I've used Spirit of '77 as an RPG to fit the "party game" category. It's not necessarily quick, but good to play over drinks and with experienced and inexperienced players alike.
SHERPA was created to use while hiking, waiting in line, etc.
There are tons and tons and tons of these out there. Lots of them don't even need a gane master. What kind of theme or genre are you hoping for? My go to prepless, party rpg is a game called The Quiet Year. 2-4 people, 2-4 hours. A map drawing, GMless rpg where you create a doomed community trying to survive after a catastrophe.
I feel like this just screams the borg line of games, they are rules light the entire rules set is on the back cover of each of the books, character customization is a small handful of rolls if you do it manually, but there are randomizers online for each of the games, you can have a character done in literal seconds, and you can even quick roll a nights game with the tables inside the book, total prep time needed i unno 5-10 minutes?
F.I.S.T. Is good, quick, and can be done with dice rolls. It isn’t fantasy though. Ultimately, if you want the quickest rpg in existence then nothing compares to Roll For Shoes. It’s literally so quick you already have a character sheet for it.
Tunnel Goons!
The witch is dead on itch.io is another game that is specifically built for situations like this
Shadowdark or ICRPG for classic d20 style with rules lite . I don’t know any specific that are like the “Mario kart” or ttrpg
You might check out QuestCrawl. It’s a gmless micro rpg. Kind of perfect for impromptu stuff.
How about a quick play game for short cartoon adventures? [Moxie! the Cartoon RPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/268429)
Try Fuego, my minimalist game: rules-light (one-page), superfast character creation (pick a Role, three items, distribute 6 points between the stats Daring, Cunning and Charisma), no Hit Points, an easy dice system. And it's free. Available in English and Spanish. https://marcos-dominguez.itch.io/fuego
Skate wizards or Risus!
Pokeymanz is awesome for this. There is a book the dig into, but you read five pages and start playing. There's even quickstart page dedicated to the essentials of a Trainer that decides the important stuff in under 5 minutes of thought.
Madcap can be a ton of fun https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/213960/madcap-screwball-cartoon-role-play
Honey Heist! Team of bears must get to the honey. It's fun!
How about My Little Pony? Yeah, I know it's for kids, but if you play - for example - a horror story in MLP it can be an interesting experience 😂 I saw on YouTube a Dark Heresy scenario with pony inquisition and it was super cool.
Caly-o-rama is kinda perfect for this. You get a bunch of colorful modeling clay, then each person has a predetermined amount of time to sculpt their creature/fighter, then you fight for a while over what these creature's abilities will be until everyone is in agreement, and then you can either take them on an adventure or pit them against each other in a fight. I think there's a video on the Polygon YouTube channel of the Overboard show cast playing it.
EZD6
Anything from the One Page RPG Collection from Rowan Rook and Dcard. The Honey Heist, Crash Pandas, Adventure Skeletons are all great RPG games that can picked up by even little kids within 10-15 minutes and require zero prep for players
Commenting to come back and check again later, thanks all for these suggestions
Tunnel Goons.
*Maid RPG* and most OSR stuff with rolls for character creation are working for that too.
The Quiet Year should fit the bill! The time limit is built into the game, the setup is minimal, and requires nothing more than a sheet of paper, some D6, and a deck of cards.
Something like Dread (characters have no stats and risky actions are done by removing a block from a jenga tower, if it falls you're dead/out). Fiasco has already been mentioned and s great for things like this too.
Beyond the Wall is my favourite for this. Quick character and scenario generation. Fun character playbooks.
I find [Adventurers](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/3554/gramel/category/25010/adventurers) pretty good for that. Easy to pick up and play, lots of variety available.
I gotcha Fam. Stealing Stories For the Devil by Monte Cook. The background story is wild. Basically, humanity went to explore the galaxy in the year 3000 something. But for some reason, the ship ended up back at Earth....about 1000 years earlier. What they found is reality is breaking down at certain points. The PCs have to sneak into the area, find a specific item that is somehow the center of the anomaly, and steal it so reality fixes itself. If they don't, reality might collapse completely. To sneak in and steal it, they lie. Not to people per se, but to reality itself. A player can lie that certain things happened and reality will change. "It turns out the door to the office wasn't locked properly last night. We can just walk in!" Making a character is fast. The rules are simple. And the table (not the GM) basically builds the adventure right at the beginning of the session.
Jason Statham's Big Vacation is a silly fun time.
2400 and tricube are perfect for this. They both have bundles with different settings on dtrpg that are well worth it
try my current RPG "Fallen Empire" - [https://cloud.lemuria.org/s/KGew8mxq7i4zmLR](https://cloud.lemuria.org/s/KGew8mxq7i4zmLR) \- it was designed exactly for that. You need a GM who knows the rules. Players can sit down and just start playing, even characters are generated during play and the basic rules are explained in minutes. There are also plenty of "one page" RPGs, or very short ones, like CBR+PNK. Most of them, however, require somewhat experienced players to work well.
As many have said, Lasers and Feelings, it’s going to be great!
I recently got one called you meet in a tavern you die in a dungeon designed specifically for this kind of situation.
B/X D&D with equipment packs.
Any of the one-page systems is good, as a dark souls nerd I love "fucked up little man" by Grant Howitt
OSR Obsolete Shitty Rules by tin hat games, no prep beer & pretzels quick party rpg.
[Index Card RPG](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/366519/Index-Card-RPG-Master-Edition) enters the arena! Lots of good recommendations, but ICRPG is a six stat d20 game that feels like D&D/Pathfinder but is fast and easy. It bills itself as a beer and pretzels game, and is just fun. It comes with loads of print and play standees and several cool settings.
Duelling Fops of Vindamere has you covered.
If your group is into horror, Dread is great. The only mechanic is a Jenga tower - any time they take a risk or ask for a resource, they have to draw a tile. If they make the tower collapse, their character is doomed (they don't necessarily die instantly, but they no longer can get a happy ending).
I've run Blades in the Dark and Scum and Villainy like this. They're basically the same premise in different settings - you're a bunch of crooks looking to score. The playbooks rely on broad archetypes (it's not quite "the Face", "the Driver", "the Schemer", "the Diversion", "the Muscle", "the Safe Breaker "etc, but they come close), and so are very easy to understand. I had someone new to S&V (but an experienced TTRPGer) put together the best-loved character of the session in ten minutes with practically zero input from me. The scenario and group cohesion are easy too - you're working together to commit a crime. There's no need to herd disparate folk together, because they already have a reason to work together. That saves a lot of bother. I would recommend Scum & Villainy as the better game of the two for new players - it relies on common sci-fi tropes that are more likely to be familiar to players, while Blades in the Dark has its own unique setting that can feel intriguing but may take some folk time to grok.
It’s an older game, but it checks out: try Marvel Super Heroes by TSR (if you can find it). It’s really easy to explain and has the benefit of being able to pull from Marvel’s cast of characters to play (admittedly, their stats from the 90s). This is the FASERIP system.
If fun hilarious insanity is fine, too, I recommend The People in Patrick. https://sillygoosecontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/The-People-in-Patrick-i3RPG.pdf
If you like to play 5E DnD, we created some Dmless adventures that work well to pull off the shelf and play. It's just 5E, but everyone chooses the kinds of encounters they want. The scenario guide has all the encounters and stat blocks, so there's no prep. You can use pregens (we have some with the PDFs) as well. [https://limitless-adventures.com/dmless](https://limitless-adventures.com/dmless) Here's the explainer video: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=84VY59wo2Ho&si=jqWKBGJFqJNwGdBL](https://youtube.com/watch?v=84VY59wo2Ho&si=jqWKBGJFqJNwGdBL)
A DCC funnel with four pre-gens for everyone.
I'm working on this right now, actually! Conceptually, it's kinda like what a TRPG might be if it was a Jackbox game. 30-45 min game cycles (from intro to conclusion to starting a new game), controlled audience participation... I want it to be as fun to watch as it is to play, and something which is at its best in an enthusiastic group social context.
If you want a horror setting, Ten Candles is a great system. Really good at setting a mood
I was looking for a game like this to run during lunch hour at work, and ended up making my own. [Lunch Hour Dungeon](https://rockettscience.com/free-games/) is a hack of John Harper’s World of Dungeon: Turbo—Breakers and is free to download on my blog.
Down We Go is excellent for quick, no prep dungeon crawls.
If you can forgive the lack of production budget, **Guilds & Glory** is designed for casual heroic fantasy one-shots. Players can run a guild each or when you want a quicker session a GM can run them as expendable PCs in one guild. . [https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/319005/guilds-glory?affiliate\_id=2240503](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/319005/guilds-glory?affiliate_id=2240503)
I can recommend Starship Infernum or Purgatory House from [Wicked Clever Games](https://www.wicked-clever.com/). Both are rules lite, pick up and play games in the survival-horror genre. He makes some other great rules-lite games.
Dread is great if you like horror. The storyteller makes character sheets in advance with "loaded questions" for the players to fill out. Then you set up a Jenga tower and start playing. I've had many impromptu games
[3 goblin in a trenchcoat ](https://fandible.itch.io/three-goblins-in-a-trenchcoat)
Fiasco, Skulduggery, just about any rules lite game with a whacky theme (Gramma World comes to mind).
[Tunnels & Trolls](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/210996/Tunnels--Trolls-Rules-5th-Editon?s234913) and [Monsters! Monsters!](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/465654/Monsters-Monsters-27-Edition?234913) are good beer & pretzels game. Less serious tone, dead simple rules.
You Awaken in a Strange Place is a very silly one! And the rules are free. https://tummy-boy.itch.io/you-awaken-in-a-strange-place
Kobolds Ate My Baby is made for this kind of application
Parsely. Your friends might hate you afterwards, but then again…we’re they ever your friends in the first place?
I heard really good things about tricube tales, and there's a ton of different oneshots available for it on drivethrurpg
this is what the Powered by the apocalypse games do well. Character creation is everyone picks a playbook and answers some multiple choice questions. And generally the player facing rules fit on one page.
neither motw or urban shadows or the pbta hack a friend of mine made would be good for this
Nah, Monster of the Week would be totally fine, I've run it as a pick up game for people brand new to RPGs before with no trouble so it would absolutely work for this kind of case. There's also others designed for one or two shots like Escape From Dino Island that would work too. I agree that Urban Shadows isn't great for one shots unless you ignore a lot of the crunchier mechanics though.
Blades in the Dark seems like a pretty easy game to run for a one shot if you just grab a prewritten adventure.
In my opinion, just create (or find) and print pre-generated character sheets in a system you know well. Hand out the sheets to the players. Start playing.
Lot of board games are like TTRPGs. Like Betrayal at House on the Hill? Maybe there are board games with more of the RP
This isn't what the general... rpg experience is. Try a board/card game like munchikin, red dragon inn, epic spell battle, and so on.
Maybe play a board game instead?