#RPGaDay2017 Day 21: “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

Monday rolls around once more on #RPGaDay2017. So, let’s get going with a quote from the Bard of Avon. posts, thanks for dropping by for a read. Today’s question is:

August 21: Which RPG does the most with the least words?

As stated before, we usually play longer campaigns which benefit from more complex games than the one discussed here, but I love short games for one-shot sessions, for game demos at conventions, or simply to teach people about RPGs. So, what are my pics for today?

I’m a fan of Michael’s, aka Stargazer, game, Warrior, Rogue & Mage. I was lucky enough to be privy to his development of the game. It’s a simple and concise game, but for today’s discussion, I’m going with even shorter games.

The first game that comes to mind when I think of short games is RISUS: The Anything RPG. A short concise 4-page RPG that lets you play any genre. I’ve had RISUS in PDF form for years and have toyed with using it, but never have. I think it is amazing what they do with four pages and the versatility of such a simple system.

Another short game I did play was Weird West. Michael posted about it when it came out, and I made some characters for a convention game. The game is 8 pages long but it is meant to be a pocket-mod game, so it is tiny. It is a LOT Of fun and I cannot recommend it enough.

For fantasy games, there is Swords & Sorcery Light. It delivers the D&D OSR three level experience two pages. Amazing! Microlite20 is another option, simple, but you need to use the SRD for the spells.

And then there is Grin by Arcana Games. A short one-page horror RPG. I must say that it is so simple and elegant that I want to run a game using it. Really impressed by this game. It does a lot with very few words.

The companion to this series of posts are our vide responses to the questions of #RPGaDay2017 over at the Desde la Fosa YouTube channel. Me and the team at Desde la Fosa are recording our answers in Spanish. If you speak the language we appreciate the views, if you don’t, we are thankful for any shares.

Where do you get your out-of-print games? Let us know here in the comments or tag us in social media.