5 Rules Light RPGs (That I'd Actually Recommend Playing)

Most regular readers know that, given the choice, I will take a rules-heavy RPG over a rules light one any day of the week. I enjoy being able to really tinker with systems, customize characters in meaningful ways, and explore a wide and varied toolkit of options. With that said, I understand there are also players out there who like a game they can pick up and play with minimal learning curve, and who don't need an extensive underlying skeleton to enjoy the game; they just want to get into the action.

If you're one of those players (or you just feel the need to put your complex planning instincts on a shelf for a little while), there's plenty of stuff out there to try. And if you haven't tried the following games, these are a few that I would actually recommend along with what I think makes them a cut above the competition.

#1: Grimm

Get your hands on it if you can.

Sadly it seems like Fantasy Flight's Grimm is out of print at time of writing, though I'd highly recommend checking back from time to time to see if a copy resurfaces... because this game is great!

Originally a complicated offshoot of the D20 Modern line, Fantasy Flight stripped Grimm down to its essentials. Players take on the role of children lost in the horrific realm of the Grimm Lands, and they have to figure out a way to survive and escape using only their wits and imagination! The game takes about 10 minutes to learn, and really takes nothing more than 2d6 to play. It's cut down, super simple, and the world it's set in is strange and bizarre enough that the archetypal nature of the classes sort of fits the theme. While the kids are still characters, they're also very clearly being pressed into broad archetypes of children, and allowed to fill traditional roles in a story.

I gave this one the top slot for a reason.

#2: Feng Shui

Hong Kong action theater, anyone?

Feng Shui was the first time I'd ever played a rules-light game, and it was an engaging experience. Billing itself as a Hong Kong action style game, it's far more concerned with the story beats, cinematic descriptions, and awesome look of a scene, rather than in overly complicated die rolls, precise distances on a map, or the exact radius of the explosion caused by the grenade you threw.

What really makes this game work is that it leans into the cinematic conceit, making it something of a ball for fans of action films who want to let loose their inner John Woo. My two cents, that's the key to enjoyment; if you lose that, "This is supposed to be a movie," feeling then the game is going to start going sour pretty soon.

#3: Savage Worlds

If you're going to get one game, get this one.

Some folks might argue that Savage Worlds doesn't belong on this list because it provides you with a huge variety of options and game genres you can play. However, a rules light game is one with relatively simple mechanics, and in my experience you can teach someone to play this game in about half an hour or so. Most questions they've got will be completely answered within the first hour of a given session, and from that point onward they're good to go.

Where Savage Worlds really excels is in the sheer variety of genres and settings it offers, all using this simple, near-universal system. Whether you want to do Weird West shenanigans in Deadlands Reloaded, or you want to stalk monsters through the London back alleys in Rippers Resurrected, there's something for every taste with this game!

#4: Pie Shop

This is one of the weird ones.

Pie Shop is one of the most bizarre RPGs I have ever played. In case the Sweeney Todd reference didn't give it away, you and all the other players are serial killers. There's no metaphysical happenings, no demons, no vampires... you're all just deeply disturbed individuals who feel a compulsive need to murder other people.

What makes Pie Shop so strange is that in order to create a workable premise for a party (since serial killers so often work alone) you almost have to put together some bizarre, fantastical setup. Whether it's a dark web gladiatorial bout, or a government experiment using murderers as disposable assassins, or some underground convention of crazed killers, it can get ridiculous.

My two cents; embrace the discomfort of the premise as it's delivered. This is a game for adults, and if you feel squirmy playing it don't worry... that just means you're not really a serial killer on the inside.

#5: Dread

Ah... we meet again.

If you haven't heard about Dread, what makes this game infamous is that it has a particularly unique mechanic. In short, it uses a Jenga tower instead of dice, cards, or something else to determine the results of your actions. Even if you're good at moving the pieces in one of these tower games, the very mechanics of Dread means that sooner or later one of your actions is going to fail. And when the tower comes down, that's lights-out for your character.

That said, if you want to give the rest of the table a chance, you can opt to knock the tower over to sacrifice yourself to save the others.

I will add a caveat to this endorsement, however. Because while Dread is a phenomenal system for running one-shot horror games where it's likely that most (if not all) of the characters are going to die horrible deaths before the night is done, the game is not really good for anything beyond that. This makes it an extremely niche activity that's really more use for seasonal one-offs or occasional light fare... you're not going to get a long-running campaign out of this unless you pull a Friday the 13th and the only recurring character is whatever monster the GM keeps killing you all with!

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The Best Roleplaying Games (You've Probably Never Heard Of)

Pathfinder. The World of Darkness. Call of Cthulhu. All Flesh Must be Eaten. These are the heavy-hitters every gamer has at least heard of, even if it isn't a particular player's game of choice. However, it's important to remember that while these might be some of the most popular games on the market, they are far from the only games available. For players looking for something a little bit different though, Improved Initiative is here to point you toward what might become your new favorite games.

Grimm

Boy is it ever.

Originally released as part of the D20 Modern series, and re-released by Fantasy Flight Games with a stream-lined and simplified rule system, Grimm is a game of terrible tales and adolescent adventure. Players take on the roles of children (no younger than 9 and no older than 12) who have passed into the Grimm Lands; a place full of every monster and myth the brothers Grimm sentenced into their book of stories. They have to travel through the checkerboard kingdoms, seek out ancient items of power and try to find their way back home again.

Grimm's major advantages, aside from the great flavor of the world and the novelty of playing children who can take things like "Bully" and "Dreamer" as classes, is that the system is simple and easy to both play and run. There's no XP to grant at the end of a session, there's no complex feat choices, and all of a character's abilities are very simple and straightforward. All players, and the storyteller, need are two six-sided dice and the base handbook. That makes Grimm a relatively cheap investment, in addition to being something that can almost literally be run at the drop of a hat.

Lastly, and I feel this must be said, Grimm can be as dark or as cutesy as you want. If you want to have a Disney-fied game because players are a little younger, then that's perfectly possible. However, the game itself trends toward the dark and the traditional, with child-eating witches, murderous lunatics, and capricious magic that end up destroying sanity and warping flesh. Just because characters are children, that doesn't make this a children's game.

Spycraft 2.0

D20 Shaken, Not Stirred

For players who want to get more use out of their dodecahedrons, Spycraft is a game that's gotten very little love over the years. Whether someone wants a full-on "Mission Impossible" style team, or they want to take their cues from shows like "Leverage", Spycraft is the ideal game for players who would like something a little more complicated than just kicking in the door and killing the monsters.

What this game lacks in knights in shining armor it more than makes up for in the variety of roles and the sheer possibility of missions. Storytellers can run a Call of Cthulhu style game where government agents send in investigation teams to uncover and deal with extraterrestrial encounters and their associated cults of worshipers. On the other hand it's equally possible to run a Hong Kong action theater style game where a team of mercenaries goes toe-to-toe with a drug cartel in an exotic locale. The Cold War, World War II, Vietnam, nothing is off limits in Spycraft. The system is solid, and it makes a refreshing shift from monsters in dark alleys and riding through the woods to the next goblin raid.

X-Crawl

This is how we roll.

XCrawl did something that no other game had ever tried to do before; it combined the dungeon crawling aspects of traditional Dungeons and Dragons with the glamour and drama of professional wrestling. The result is a modern-fantasy-gladiatorial-death-match-reality-TV-show that runs of the base of any D20 system the storyteller prefers.

In all fairness, XCrawl is less of a game and more of a skin. It can work with any edition of Dungeons and Dragons, but it can also be paired with D20 Modern, Pathfinder, or any of a number of other systems. If it involves a 20-sided die and all of its compatriots, then XCrawl can invigorate players' imaginations and present them with something so far outside their normal sphere of play that it gets their hearts pumping while it kicks their roleplaying up a notch. The game requires showmanship, number crunching, and a dose of off-the-cuff bravado, but if a party can put that together the results will be stories that get told for a long, long time.

Pie Shop

It is exactly what you think it is.

The last entry on this particular installation (I'm sure there will be others) is Pie Shop. For those of you who've seen Sweeney Todd, the title is a bit of a spoiler. You play a serial killer; that's it. There's no magic powers, no higher goal, you're just a group of deranged sociopaths looking to let a little blood and have a good time.

Pie Shop is refreshing in its sheer brutality... but it has one fatal flaw (aside from not being able to find the book too terribly easily). That flaw is that getting a group of serial murderers to all work together, unless they have a shared psychosis, is really difficult. The very act of creating a plot can sometimes mean putting together a scenario so ridiculous that it undermines the realism of the game. The government is capturing serial killers and using them as black ops agents? Sure! The mafia is recruiting dangerous, unpredictable mentally ill murderers as a special hit man squad? Eh, why not?

On that note though, if a storyteller can get over the hump of finding the right premise, Pie Shop is a game unlike anything else out there.


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