You only have 30 minutes to prepare and play, what game do you choose?

Story games are also allowed I guess

D&D. Players can roll up characters easily in those 30 minutes, and I've ran enough games (and red enough supplements I never used) that I could easily flesh out something for the night. It would probably be a bit basic, but I've done it before with less prep time.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 02, 2023, 08:40:26 PM
D&D. Players can roll up characters easily in those 30 minutes, and I've ran enough games (and red enough supplements I never used) that I could easily flesh out something for the night. It would probably be a bit basic, but I've done it before with less prep time.

What edition?

Pocket Fantasy.  Super Rules lite.  It's not one page, but it's minimal.  With bonus classes it's about 10 pages long.  And it's free. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/189191

You pick a race and class.  There is no "rolling up" a character.   Your class sets your hitpoints, your combat skill, and list of abilities.  Your race adds a few minor abilities.

All dice rolls are 1D6. 

You get a re-roll for any task involving your prime attribute, what everyone else calls advantage.  Warriors roll twice on feats of strength.  Wizards roll twice for tasks using intelligence or lore.  Additional re-rolls are what separate newbs from vets. 

Combat is simple.  You just roll damage.  No to-hit roll is needed, but the enemy also rolls damage blocked.  If I roll a 5 vs his 3, he takes 2 hitpoints of damage.  He attacks back with a roll of a 2, and I roll a 3, I take no damage as I blocked it all.

Magic is just six pre-made combat spells, with 2 casts per fight.  You will always be useful in a fight.  Out of combat you get to cast 2 spells per session of anything the GM will allow.  The GM sets a difficulty number, and the wizard rolls to equal or beat it.  Anything.  So there is no spell list.  Just six combat spells and your imagination. 

It includes a dungeon builder and a bestiary list. 

Again, it's designed to be easy and fast, yet it has all the bits needed for a full RPG.  So I think it is a full RPG. 

Quote from: Yabba on February 02, 2023, 08:43:22 PM
What edition?

Honestly, I'd be comfortable doing it with anything from Basic up through 3.x. It would depend on my audience. Probably 1E, given the restrictions in question. It's not my favorite edition (That would 2E, the bastard edition nobody loves) but is simpler, lacks some of the archaic idiosyncrasies of Basic, and doesn't have some of the obnoxious fiddly bits like feats and skills from 3.x to bog things down.

Toon, since I can prepare and run a short game of that in 30 minutes. 

If I want it to run longer, would be Basic D&D (in one flavor or another).  Being able to put the characters on note book paper helps.  If I've got a d20 in my pocket to share, all we need is pencil, paper, and raid some board game for some regular dice.  Everything else can be worked around.

Risus or Dread. I don't even need 30 minutes, just 10 minutes is enough to get set up and play lol.

Rolemaster Standard System, I've got plenty of pregenerated characters and the booklet with characters prebuilt to level ten, so no problem.

Savage Worlds Deadlands.
It's a system I know so well, I don't even need a book to run it. Characters can be made in 5-10 minutes (depending on players' familiarity with SW and how much I would need to explain things). The setting itself has such a rich history, going back to the DL Classic days, that I could literally plop the characters down anywhere and pull an adventure out of my ass. For new players, it's also an easy sell: "You're steampunk cowboys in the midwest during the American Civil War fighting zombies and other weird creatures, all while trying to decide which company builds the first TransContinental railroad."

First game that came to my mind was Lejendary Adventure, because it's a great rules lite game with some meat to it.

Then I started leaning towards X-treme Dungeon Mastery because it's got the quickest character creation.

And then I did a hard pivot to 1E. Because you don't need character creation at all. Human fighter with all stats in the average range. No modifiers to worry about. No special skills or widgets. Just you and your wits against the imaginary world. And a hit point buffer to shrug off a small mistake or two.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 02, 2023, 08:40:26 PM
D&D. Players can roll up characters easily in those 30 minutes, and I've ran enough games (and red enough supplements I never used) that I could easily flesh out something for the night. It would probably be a bit basic, but I've done it before with less prep time.

Moldvay or Mentzer Basic seems like a good bet. I can spend 30 minutes & make a decent level 1 dungeon.

Probably EZD6, as it is the lightest rules system that I still like. There's essentially no "rolling" of characters, so even with only a slight familiarity with the system, I think I would whip up 4-5 stock characters in about ten minutes. I bought it about a month ago, and I strongly suspect it's going to become my default one-shot game.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess would be a top contender too, though. Only slightly more involved when it comes to character creation, and since it's basically D&D, most players already know everything they need to to play it. The only downside with Lamentations is it has no bestiary, so I'd be fudging all the monster stats.

You can do any of them with:

Characters:

• Class-based + general standard arrays
• B/X classes
• 2e skill & equipment (& spell) kits
• 5e backgrounds*

World build:

• Regional random monster tables
• Adventure seed random tables
• Nemesis final goal random tables*
• Hexmap terrain clusters

Drag n' drop then rock n' roll, baby! 


** Could also be used to flesh out your big-bad, i.e. the "how to" for his "what end."

Fate Accelerated Edition is super easy for most people to dive straight in to since its attribute describe how rather than what and its aspects are narrative in nature.  It is super easy to hack into many genres.  The only real downside is that it does not lend itself well to campaign games or stuff like gear porn/crunch.

Just for giggles (they're free), here are some 'instant' set up tools that I wrote to get a game up and running quickly.  I've used these with my group when the GM was not available and we wanted to throw together a quick game.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/279728/Its-Not-My-Fortune
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/180168/Its-Not-My-Future