I used to play in the sameDungeons & Dragonscampaignevery week.
Now my friends and I struggle to arrange a play session every few months.
At one point I tried to make it work with another group.
We made a six-month Doodle calendar to find one date we could meet.
We got together, discussed character creation, and never met up again.
Meanwhile, I made more friends who wanted to play, but didnt know the rules.
I wanted to play outside the house, with minimal supplies, planning, or commitment.
So I had to change my approach.
I figured out how to play RPGs in any setting, with minimal supplies, planning, or commitment.
I got to play RPGs for the first time in months.
I ran two sessions in two weeks, with zero emails or Doodles.
One session with my experienced friends, and one with four Lifehacker staffers who had never played an RPG.
Both games were a hit.
Heres how you’re able to run your own.
Because you start fresh each time, you dont have to keep track of possessions and levels and skills.
Thats a great one-shot on its own.
His favorite game, he tells me in an interview, is The Burning Wheel.
He says he really started sucking the marrow around the thirtieth or fortieth play session.
But his usual gaming group also liked to play out at a bar.
It felt weird to be at the bar and have a very intense role-play scene.
It helped to have a focused mission instead of a grand plot.
The group also playedDungeon WorldandApocalypse World.
You want to make decisions fast, and you want the GM to keep up.
But you cant pull out all this accoutrement at a small coffee shop or a picnic.
What you want is a lightweight, portable RPG.
Ideally a single page.
Some highlights:
The Witch Is Dead: Youre a woodland creature.
Avenge the murder of your friend the witch.
Get a slicker, easier to read versionhere.
One ofseveral hand-written games by Grant Howitt.
Be Gay Do Crimes: Youre pulling off a heist during Pride.
Everyone Is John: Youre all the voices in one mans head, trying to control him.
All Outta Bubblegum: You have one stat: bubblegum.
When youre out of it, you have to kick ass.
Lasers & Feelings: Youre the crew of a spaceship, on a trek through the stars.
Youll notice a lot of these games are silly, and the rules can be vague.
Theyre not built for long campaigns that fully explore your characters backstory as you grow more powerful.
Not until you hack them, anyway.
Some players have collected their favorites into PDF compilations, likethis four-page pack of 12 games.
The better you are at one, the worse you are at the other.
Technically its one stata number from 2 to 5.
Then you roll a six-sided die.
There are no modifiers, though you could roll an extra die to represent preparation or expertise.
Combat is handled the same way as other actions, with no hit point or damage systems.
To play, all you need is a copy of the rules and at least one die.
The game only works if it’s possible for you to common-sense your way through thingsor intentionally go nonsensical.
Everyone needs to be ready to agree with each other, because arguing over the rules would be absurd.
But thats why you chose an RPG and not a board game.
John Harper wroteLasers & Feelingsin four hours in 2013, updating it the next day after a playtest.
He borrowed the over-under system fromTrollbabe, a 2002 game with a 70s underground comics vibe.
There are still fairly unclear rules that people still ask me about, he tells me.
But he likes leaving them ambiguous.
Witches of 1941: Fight the Nazis with magic.
Your two stats are white magic and black magic.
Muscles & Miracles: Stripped-downDungeons & Dragonscampaign.
Dungeons With Dragons: Stripped-down D&D dungeon crawl.
Teachers and Tentacles: Stripped-downCall of Cthulhuparanormal investigation.
Rockerboys and Vending Machines: Cyberpunk based on doing dirty jobs for clients.
Muppet Babies: Play through classic movie adventures with your two stats, Muppet and Baby.
One & Thousands: ItsWatership Down.
Poisons and Perfumes: Arabian nights and palace intrigue.
Logic & Bravery: Internet neckbeards defend Science.
Truth & Daring: A gang of kids outsmarts the bad guys, just likeGooniesorStranger Things.
The Fight Before Christmas: Beat the shit out of Santa Claus.
you might just name a few character classes, describe your setting, and invent an adventure.
For one of my playtests, I whipped up a medieval palace intrigue called Swords and Sorcery.
It was very poorly thought out and it worked great.
Most L&F hacks are based on an existing genre or specific media property.
Theres no room for a compendium of original monsters or extensive lore about the setting and characters.
You have to pull from existing tropes and make up the details.
The rules lawyer in your group might hate this.
So will the GM who likes to rule as a petty tyrant.
In a traditional at-home game, says Harper, the GM tends to be high-status.
Playing out in the world helps to level that playing field.
Lightweight games cant support an antagonistic relationship between GM and players.
Well Im wearing an infinity suit.
The GM also needs to orient the players, guide their level of contribution.
instead of just one player.
You have to ignore (or have fun with) a lot of details in a casual game.
As a player, your items dont have stats.
If youre used to playing RPGs like a video game, you have to think differently.
As a GM, you oughta improvise a lot more.
But this is a fantastic trade-off, because you dont have to plan.
you’ve got the option to literally roll a die to figure out what adventure youll be narrating.
You do owe your players an ending.
Dont let the casual nature of the game lead you to fizzle out.
While microRPGs can be good for new players, I wouldnt recommend them for first-time GMs.
If you prefer real dice, keep a pair of dice in your pocket or bag.
But even that first time, you’re free to get by with phones if you oughta.
If phones get too distracting, ask everyone to go to airplane mode.
After the first session or two, you should know how to start a game anywhere.
Its a great activity for the tail end of a party, or for entertaining kids.
So I needed to infect the crew with these worms.
I, a creative genius, looked at the cup of to-go coffee Id brought over.
And I told my players that the ship had run out of coffee.
We spent two hours on a ridiculous quest on a coffee planet.
There we go, a problem to solve.
So I threw in a fire-breathing dragon to guard the coffee plants.
The coffeebot turns your foraged beans into delicious coffee, and youre all energized.
But in the middle of the night, Zapf Dingbat wakes up.
Zapf, something is whispering from inside your brain: Destroy the ship!
What will happen next time onLasers & Feelings:Im Thinking About Those Beans!?
People introduced ridiculous bits of backstory on the fly.
The alien kept getting new mediocre powers.
And because we only had to sustain the story for two hours, we could pile it on.
And yet somehow it remained a game, and not an improv scene.
We still cared whether the team completed their mission.
Id barely read through the one-sheet before we started, as I amverylazy.
A couple of the others had given it a skim.
It was a relief to play without all the table-setting, literal and metaphorical, of our usual games.
And because we were out at the bar, anyone could stay afterno host to kick everyone out.
Were meeting next week to play a hack ofLasers & Feelings.
Currently arguing whether to theme it on Indiana Jones orBoss Baby.
Case Study 2
So it was easy enough to play a casual game with experienced players.
So I stress-tested the L&F system on four people who had never played a tabletop RPG.
It turned out they were all involved in the palace courtand most of them were related.
You dont say no to the players.
Now our players had to compete for the throne.
Id never run a player-vs-player game before.
But competition turned out to be a great way to jumpstart interaction.
Everyone got used to adding backstory and details to justify their skills and choices.
Character creation never ended, it just turned into gameplay.
NPCs came, went, and died.
I forget who took the castle, only that the end was a Hamlet-level bloodbath.
Conversation flowed faster in this fantasy world than in our usual small talk.
And we did it all over cocktails without a single mechanical pencil.
