I often run things on a moments notice, so I've often got to cook up a campaign idea quickly. I often have lots of ideas, and get feedback from players, but because of this I do sometimes have to just grab a game and run.

For many years this game was GURPS, simple at its core, useable, and with most the options turned off it worked fine for us. It wasn't apt for many of the heavy genre games I like: Supers for example.

Then for a time it was BESM, mostly because I liked the elegant simplicity of it.

When GOO went nuts and decided to try and muck up BESM (Tri Stat DX/SAS, other more complex forms--no thank you I already had Gurps) I started looking around, I've tinkered with Unisystem (cinematic) and Savage Worlds, but both have a few hiccups that have not let me settle on them completely. OVA looks interesting but I admit to needing to try it out first (same with Savage Worlds which I haven't yet, but I like the IDEA of mostly--its combat emphasis bothers me..)

Anyway, so what's your goto game? Do you have one?


I also like True20 but it lacks some genre bits that I'd liked it to have to be more solid for a goto game.

For not-supers, not-traditional fantasy: Savage Worlds.  It feeds into my inner GM laziness in a way few other games can.

Warhammer FRP.  We can whip up interesting, fun characters quickly, we all know the basics of the setting, it's easy enough as a GM to churn out adversaries on the fly if needed.  Works great for us.

I run a lot of stuff at conventions, often at the drop of a proverbial hat, and so I've got a lot of games I feel totally comfortable running on five minute's notice.  "Yep, lemme go print out a Town from onlie ... I'm thinkin' Kettle Lake ... and we'll play Dogs," for instance.

Among the dozen or so games that I can say that for I don't really have any clear favorite.  Right now I'm most interested in playing the new short-form game I've got in development, and I could see it becoming my long-term favorite (just because it's much easier to say "Let's play a whole game in one hour ... then we can play cards, or else another game" than "Let's commit to setting aside the rest of the evening for this one purpose"), but right now it's probably just getting first place due to novelty value and development effort.

D&D 3.5.

For one shots for most genres it's either BESM or OVtE. Both systems are fairly simple and I can more or less mesh the rules with whatever I was thinking of running. The key, here is simplicity. I don't want to be bogged down with too much rules esp since I'm not a rules kind of guy.

For long term play, it depends. I normally put a lot of thought into the system I going to use.

Regards,
David R

I'm experiencing thread deja vu. Seems like we had this one recently.

Anywhossier, D&D 3.5, MegaTraveller, or fudge, depending on how specific my demands are.

To me, the most important thing about running a game on a moments notice is a "mental library" of scenarios and conventions. My beaus there are D&D style fantasy or Traveller style space opera. FUDGE is a fallback for handling other genre variations on the fly.

true20

Quote from: jrientsFor not-supers, not-traditional fantasy: Savage Worlds.  It feeds into my inner GM laziness in a way few other games can.

Ditto, killer of fascists.

Quote from: TonyLBI run a lot of stuff at conventions, often at the drop of a proverbial hat, and so I've got a lot of games I feel totally comfortable running on five minute's notice.  "Yep, lemme go print out a Town from onlie ... I'm thinkin' Kettle Lake ... and we'll play Dogs," for instance.

Among the dozen or so games that I can say that for I don't really have any clear favorite.  Right now I'm most interested in playing the new short-form game I've got in development, and I could see it becoming my long-term favorite (just because it's much easier to say "Let's play a whole game in one hour ... then we can play cards, or else another game" than "Let's commit to setting aside the rest of the evening for this one purpose"), but right now it's probably just getting first place due to novelty value and development effort.

Tony, I've been enamored of short-form gaming for a while now - partially due to the current time constraints of my schedule. Let me know when you have something ready to review, I'd love to give it a look-see.

Doh!

-clash

Another Savage Worlds guy here.  It used to be BESM 2nd, and I still would use it for some things (though not the versions after 2nd).

Hey Silverlion, I was wondering what your reservations on Savage Worlds were (just curious, not out to "fix you" or anything)?

For me, even though I try to be familiar with a lot of systems, there are a few that I can come back to when I need to run a game at the drop of a hat:

1) Dust Devils (for Westerns or Samurai Drama). I don't know why, really, but for some reason the system sticks plus I never have a lack of ideas when throwing down. Takes about 10 minutes to get everything together.

2) Savage Worlds is quickly getting to that level. Out of all the generic systems out there, including d20, this system really blew me away with its simplicity yet its careful development.  Especially in one area, Hindrances and Edges. In most every game that has such a system, especially generic systems, there's always a ton of Advantages and Disadvantages that are thrown in because "most games have them" (I dunno, a throwback to GURPS or something), but are pretty ridiculous (either stupid/huge drawbacks or really weak-ass advantages). When I was going through the HUGE list of advantages and disads in Savage Worlds, I was really impressed that very few stood out to me as clearly useless or "no one would ever conceivably choose these".

And on top of that, when I was demoing it to the group, I laughed and stated, boasting, "This system is pretty robust, but still I could make a complete character in like Two Minutes." One of the guys jokingly pulled out his watch and said "OK, GO". I laughed, thinking he was joking, and when I realized he was only half-joking (thus wasting about 10 seconds), I quickly generated a character: A space pilot/leader type, complete with Edges, Hindrances, Skills and Gear. Even flipping back and forth in the book for some of the time, I finished in one minute forty-nine seconds.

I like that. Especially in such an otherwise robust system that lets me roll my "funny dice" too (d8s, d4s, d12s).

3) The Shadow of Yesterday, for fantasy or a game based on the SF RPG "Fading Suns".

4) Oh, I almost forgot Prime Time Adventures. But seriously, anyone can probably run that at a drop of a hat after playing once or twice.

There's a few other systems that are getting close to that level, but nothing at quite that level of familiarity and confidence.

-Andy

Right now, if I were asked to get a game together at a moment's notice, I'd pull out Trollbabe, Bacchanal or It Was a Mutual Decision. You may notice that two of those options don't have GMs, so they'd be the breeziest; still, I'm pretty confident I could get a game of TB  together in about fifteen minutes.

Warhammer.  We can whip up a party of interesting characters in less time then it would take to make 1 character in most other games.  Plus since everyone I play with has a rough - excellent understanding of the game world at hand I don't have to go over the ground rules on what this setting will be about.

Plus depending on how 1 shot it's going to be I can easily accomodate a fitting game ending TPK without having to drop a dragon on them to ensure it.