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Best games for ease-of prep!

Started by Atsuku Nare, March 04, 2009, 11:02:58 AM

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Edsan

Now that I think of it the easiest game ever to prep as to be d02, It Know No Limit after all...
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GrimJesta

Savage Worlds, Basic D&D and nWoD are very easy to set up for. All three games can have a character banged out in minutes, antagonists even faster. And all three games are so simple, you rarely need to look at the books after playing a session or three. Unless you're doped up on morphine like me, but that's a whole other tale. But even for someone blasted out of reality my opiates, I find these three games easy to run.

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Silverlion

Hearts & Souls, superhero games are easy enough, in general. Make some characters, go fight crime. While it doesn't have to be a literal fight either. Could be investigation into a kidnapping, the stopping of a flood, the rescue of people trrapped in a burning building. All the usual fun challenges superheroes face. Throw one out, let the heroes go after it.

Other similar superhero games with low prep: Truth & Justice, Bash, 4C/MSH, Marvel Saga, Supercrew.
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PaladinCA

FATE 3.0/Spirit of the Century is very easy to prep once you know the system. The games almost run themselves once you are under way.

Caesar Slaad

I'll second FATE/Spirit of the Century.
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John Morrow

Quote from: Atsuku Nare;287115So, what games do you find are easy to prep for? Ones you don't spend 45 hours running the numbers for?

Warhammer FRP.  First edition, anyway.  I haven't run the second edition.

I've always been able to run a pickup game with it very quickly and because of the random character generation, I've even been able to run a game at a game club meeting in Japan where the players rolled up their own characters rather than using pre-generated characters.  Picking and adjusting monsters is very easy and the setting is so colorful and works so well that it practically runs itself.
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Ronin

I'm surprised nobodies mentioned it yet, cause it seems to jump out at me. Risus.
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droog

Well, the easiest game I know of to prepare for is Trollbabe, where all you really need is an adventure seed, but as that's apparently not an RPG I'll go with HeroQuest. You can define an entire NPC with something like Warrior 17.
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shalvayez

I'm equally surprised that nobody has mentioned Call Of Cthulhu or Unknown Armies.
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Soylent Green

Quote from: shalvayez;289293I'm equally surprised that nobody has mentioned Call Of Cthulhu or Unknown Armies.

Well I take "easy to prep" to mean among other things coming up with an adventure. I would imagine coming up with a decent CoC adventure, one with a solid backstory, a trail of logical clues and really scarey moments is actually quite hard.

Of course a ot depends on what you're used to.
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David R

Easy to prep ? Broadsword, of course. Here's a review of the game:

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13301.phtml

It may be a socalled Beer & Pretzels game but I have used it for a wide variety of games.

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madunkieg

I'll second Over the Edge, but expand. In addition to the mechanics that make it a snap to create a new character (a few seconds is all it takes), the game provides huge numbers of people, places and things that can be dropped into play. By huge, I mean the game would be about 20 pages without them, but the book is over 200 pages. That makes prep really quick, but the way the trait system works, you can get much more story and play out of the game than you would expect.
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Warthur

Quote from: Soylent Green;289307Well I take "easy to prep" to mean among other things coming up with an adventure. I would imagine coming up with a decent CoC adventure, one with a solid backstory, a trail of logical clues and really scarey moments is actually quite hard.

Of course a ot depends on what you're used to.

It also depends on how averse you are to a bit of illusionism. Think up half a dozen clues, throw them out there, decide what it all means on the fly. Not pretty or Ideologically Sound, but if it's for a short-notice no-prep one-shot it'll do the job.
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In my admittedly limited experience, Spirit of the Century. I've found that we can make up any crazy shit we like on the fly and find a way (often several ways) to represent it mechanically.

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