Since we've been discussing lately games which drove us away due to the great amount of mechanical prep, it seemed like a good time to discuss the games which we can prep stuff for easily.

My king right now is 4th-ED D&D. I'm running a successful game with players up around 4th level, and if I need to create something on-the-fly the DMG has a ton of tools to help out - from a random dungeon generator to room contents to "package" of monsters encountered (wolf pack, dragon's den, double line, etc.) or traps set, etc.

And with 4th, I'm finding it bleedingly easy to "reskin" monsters as often as necessary - a young green dragon became the "Great Old Pumpkin" monster around Hallowe'en, with special effects on its attacks changed as necessary.

So, what games do you find are easy to prep for? Ones you don't spend 45 hours running the numbers for?

Savage Worlds is very easy to prep for (or not) once you've run a few games.

I frequently run monsters "out of my head" with little or no prep.

It's also fun.  

I haven't run Savage Worlds, only played it, but yeah, I can see prep being a breeze.

The older games, of course: OD&D, Basic D&D, Gamma World, Traveller.

True20
D&D 4
Savage Worlds

I still like the way A|State is laid out - each district of the city and major organisation has an interesting location and a distinctive NPC listed with it. I ran a campaign with pretty much zero prep simply by improvising out of the book.

HeroQuest is very easy to prep for. You just need to know what scenario or story you are telling.

Most of my time is taken up making the props, art, maps and handouts for my games.

Pendragon, once you have the GPC, is very easy to prep the adventure(s) and events for the each year are already lined out and every year follows a similar routine (meet lord during spring, head to royal court, christmas court, etc).

The stats for all the NPCs or besties the knights might have to face in combat are in the rulebook, or the GPC itself, as are the stats for any major batles they might find themselves in.

Tunnels and Trolls is probably the easiest game to prep for ever.

World of Darkness is pretty easy. Just come up with a couple dice pools per NPC (or make them up as you need them and write them down).

Anything from Precis Intermedia preps pretty easy. Genre Diversion 3, Two Fisted Tales, Iron Gauntlets etc.

Quote from: KrakaJak;287147Tunnels and Trolls is probably the easiest game to prep for ever.

World of Darkness is pretty easy. Just come up with a couple dice pools per NPC (or make them up as you need them and write them down).

Anything from Precis Intermedia preps pretty easy. Genre Diversion 3, Two Fisted Tales, Iron Gauntlets etc.

WoD (at least the old version, I'm not familiar with the new one) is an absolute nightmare to prepare, NPCs have to be as fully fleshed-out as characters and the books suffered from a severe lack of  templates.

Unless of course by "coming up with a couple of dice pools" you mean "winging it and bullshiting the party so your version of the story goes on", which is what the WoD ST's I played under did and one of the reasons I stopped playing those games.

It felt like playing a story someone else had made and the dice where rolled just to make noise as they hit the table.

It depends what kind of "prep" you're talking about. There's the mechanical prep, of getting ready the mechanical/statistical side of an adventure, and there's the "setting prep" which involves having to plan out what's going on in the setting during a session or what is going to be happening as far as plot/NPCs in a given adventure.
They're two different kinds of prep, and some games are easy for some and hard for others.  Amber, for example, is incredibly easy for "mechanics prep" but takes a lot of effort to work on for "setting prep".

I would agree that Pendragon, using the GPC, is the easiest I've ever encountered, on both counts. You just have to read what's going on that year, and possibly one of the general adventures you might want to tack in there. It takes hardly any prep time at all.

RPGPundit

If you have the dungeon tiles and a bunch of minis, 4e is stupid easy to prep for.   If you belong to RPGA, you can just download one of dozens adventures designed for 4 hour play so life becomes even simpler.   Personally, I like setting / adventure prep because so much of my gaming fun comes from creating my own shiznack.

T&T is great for quick prep...certainly no more work than OD&D.    I am a huge fan of Mazes & Minotaurs because its an uber-easy prep in regards to creating interesting new adventure thanks to the Odyssey rules.

L5R preps pretty quick once you have run it awhile and know the setting and the characters well enough.  

I find Sci-Fi prep more time intensive in regards to adventures than fantasy.  I find I put more time into prepping Rifts, Gamma World or Traveller than I do in creating fantasy stuff.

From what Ive read of 4th Edition adventures from WOTC, prep time is setting up the miniatures and running the game. They seem to have taken all of the hard work out of running game.

Quote from: Lawbag;287176From what Ive read of 4th Edition adventures from WOTC, prep time is setting up the miniatures and running the game. They seem to have taken all of the hard work out of running game.

In my experience running 4E, this is very true. Not only is prep easy, but the format WotC is using for monster stat blocks and encounter areas makes it a breeze to run from behind the screen.

Over the Edge is really simple and the mechanics flow fast.  Most of the prep you have to do is simple story prep and once you get used to the setting pulling crazy shit out of your ass becomes second nature.  Three stats for the system makes it easy, if you have trouble buy some of the dirt cheap On The Edge CCG booster packs and use the stats from the cards in there.  Hell random draw them for the NPC's that are encountered.

I've also ran old Red Box Dungeons and Dragons with zero prep many a time.  But almost everybody knows of the ease there.

That's my two cents.

FUDGE is a super easy no-prep game.