So, my wife is going to GM a one-shot for our Traveller group. This will be her first time being a GM.

We're looking for a lite system that has complete one-shot adventure(s).
By complete, we mean maps, enemies, descriptions, etc.
She doesn't want to be worrying about figuring out technical details about the adventure, while being a first-time GM.

Anyone have suggestions?

Currently, she's looking at some different Monster of the Week adventures. We played a one-shot in this, and it seems pretty friendly to new GMs. We also like how the system is aimed at investigation. A lot of the adventures are not new GM friendly - they give ideas and stats for creatures, but no maps or whatnot. The ones she's looking at are: Time to Face the Music, Meddling Kids, Eaten by the Rich, Honey I Shrunk the Hunters, Stalks of Dread, Too Many Draculas, and Welcome to Ohto Park.

The Stellagama "Quantum" games like Barbaric!, Atom, Sorcery, and Superpowered are good examples of the kind of "lite" she's looking for.

I think stuff like Black Star RPG, Six Gun Fury, and Magnum Fury from LakeSide Games would also work.

In reading old threads, I realized we have a bunch of Cakebread & Walton's OneDice games, so I'm going to get those from our DTRPG account and have her look at those too.

She's played DwD Studios BareBones Fantasy and Mongoose Traveller 2nd Ed, done chargen in almost all Traveller versions. She's played our homebrew which uses opposed dice rolls and careers (like Barbarians of Lemuria and others). We've done one-shots with Monster of the Week (which she enjoyed) and Barbaric! 2nd, which is 2d6 Quantum (which she also liked the system).

Black Star is the only game you listed that I know of.

It's easy on the GM (and playing solo for the same reasons) because it has player facing dice rolling.  The players roll to affect/attack NPCs, but when an NPC goes after a PC, the player rolls to stop them. 

NPC's don't even have stats.  Just descriptions suffice.  IE a local planetary tyrant's combat droids are Fearless, Stubborn, Poor Shots, and Run Slow.  That's it.  That's the stat block of an NPC.  Are they a Minion, a Foe, or a Villain? If they're a Villain, then how many hit points they got?   

Black Star does have a couple of adventures, but they're not super detailed ones.

Another game system to look at might be Tiny-D6 series.  I specifically like Tiny Supers.  Superheroes are easy as we don't need to world build.  It's our literal life, so no need to explain who the Brettlians are, or why they hate the Sindial Khanate.  We do know the cartels of Mexico are dangerous, or that a Russian buying literal truckloads of 7.62x39 bullets for AK-47 rifles is probably a Russian government arms dealer and will send it to Ukraine war zone. 

Tiny-D6 is very simple rules.  Roll 1D6, 2D6, or 3D6 for hard, normal, or easy situations, and succeed if any come up as a 5 or 6.   

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 28, 2023, 11:11:07 AM
Black Star is the only game you listed that I know of.

It's easy on the GM (and playing solo for the same reasons) because it has player facing dice rolling.  The players roll to affect/attack NPCs, but when an NPC goes after a PC, the player rolls to stop them. 

NPC's don't even have stats.  Just descriptions suffice.  IE a local planetary tyrant's combat droids are Fearless, Stubborn, Poor Shots, and Run Slow.  That's it.  That's the stat block of an NPC.  Are they a Minion, a Foe, or a Villain? If they're a Villain, then how many hit points they got?   

Black Star does have a couple of adventures, but they're not super detailed ones.

You mean the ones in the book? Yes. They seem a bit light on details. We're going to look at them this weekend, just in case.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on July 28, 2023, 11:11:07 AM
Another game system to look at might be Tiny-D6 series.  I specifically like Tiny Supers.  Superheroes are easy as we don't need to world build.  It's our literal life, so no need to explain who the Brettlians are, or why they hate the Sindial Khanate.  We do know the cartels of Mexico are dangerous, or that a Russian buying literal truckloads of 7.62x39 bullets for AK-47 rifles is probably a Russian government arms dealer and will send it to Ukraine war zone. 

Tiny-D6 is very simple rules.  Roll 1D6, 2D6, or 3D6 for hard, normal, or easy situations, and succeed if any come up as a 5 or 6.

We have Tiny-Frontiers. Their adventures in the book are "micro settings". I think I'd rather have one or two complete adventures than 6+ "ideas".

I'll maybe check out Axel Station (for Tiny Frontiers) or Quest for Dragon Spire (for Tiny Dungeon). Thanks!

Mothership is pretty light and they have a bunch of pamphlet adventures, which are light and in some cases lighter than I like (in some cases, you have to fill in some pretty big blanks and make some key assumptions).

Quote from: rytrasmi on July 28, 2023, 02:01:18 PM
Mothership is pretty light and they have a bunch of pamphlet adventures, which are light and in some cases lighter than I like (in some cases, you have to fill in some pretty big blanks and make some key assumptions).

They don't make it easy to figure out what you need at the moment.

Although, I like that the player's manual is free/PWYW.

Is the Warden's Manual their version of the GM guide? Looks like it is only currently available via BackerKit.

Index Card RPG is a great light weight game.  The basic rules are only a few pages and very straight forward.  OTOH, it's got enough depth to keep a campaign going and there's some really neat mechanics worth stealing for other games.

Quote from: BadApple on July 28, 2023, 09:17:23 PM
Index Card RPG is a great light weight game.  The basic rules are only a few pages and very straight forward.  OTOH, it's got enough depth to keep a campaign going and there's some really neat mechanics worth stealing for other games.

Thanks! Any fully complete modules?

Systems are easy to pick. But most of them don't have new-GM friendly modules. I wonder if that is why 5E, Pathfinder, and Mongoose Traveller end up so popular?

Currently, we are thinking of having her run DwD Studios BareBones Fantasy. It was the first RPG she played and is pretty light (not as light as Stellagama Quantum games or Black Star though.) And their modules are well written, with lots of different ways to solve the problem. (That whole, situations not solutions thing.)

Quote from: Tod13 on July 29, 2023, 10:48:42 AM
Thanks! Any fully complete modules?

Systems are easy to pick. But most of them don't have new-GM friendly modules. I wonder if that is why 5E, Pathfinder, and Mongoose Traveller end up so popular?

Currently, we are thinking of having her run DwD Studios BareBones Fantasy. It was the first RPG she played and is pretty light (not as light as Stellagama Quantum games or Black Star though.) And their modules are well written, with lots of different ways to solve the problem. (That whole, situations not solutions thing.)

ICRPG has a LOT of adventures written for it.  The 2e book has some right in it as well as several being on DTRPG.  Also, being what it is, many D&D adventures are very easily adapted to it. 

One of the beauties of ICRPG is that making up a stat block for a monster on the fly is easy.  Looking at any module for any system is easy to convert if you get the gist of what the enemy is and how challenging it's supposed to be.

I think it works best as a fantasy RPG but there's settings for scifi, super heroes, paleolithic, and modern horror.  Some are from Runehammer, some are third party.  There's a lot of home brew content as well and much of it's easy to find and download.

Finally, there's a free quickstart in DTRPG and the Master book (all the stuff that Runehammer published for it, core and otherwise) is $17.

I like it a lot and I have definitely taken a lot of stuff to other games I run.  Don't take my word for it though, download the free quickstart and check out some other reviews and over views.

Quote from: BadApple on July 29, 2023, 12:33:07 PM

Quote from: Tod13 on July 29, 2023, 10:48:42 AM
Thanks! Any fully complete modules?

Systems are easy to pick. But most of them don't have new-GM friendly modules. I wonder if that is why 5E, Pathfinder, and Mongoose Traveller end up so popular?

Currently, we are thinking of having her run DwD Studios BareBones Fantasy. It was the first RPG she played and is pretty light (not as light as Stellagama Quantum games or Black Star though.) And their modules are well written, with lots of different ways to solve the problem. (That whole, situations not solutions thing.)

ICRPG has a LOT of adventures written for it.  The 2e book has some right in it as well as several being on DTRPG.  Also, being what it is, many D&D adventures are very easily adapted to it. 

One of the beauties of ICRPG is that making up a stat block for a monster on the fly is easy.  Looking at any module for any system is easy to convert if you get the gist of what the enemy is and how challenging it's supposed to be.

I think it works best as a fantasy RPG but there's settings for scifi, super heroes, paleolithic, and modern horror.  Some are from Runehammer, some are third party.  There's a lot of home brew content as well and much of it's easy to find and download.

Finally, there's a free quickstart in DTRPG and the Master book (all the stuff that Runehammer published for it, core and otherwise) is $17.

I like it a lot and I have definitely taken a lot of stuff to other games I run.  Don't take my word for it though, download the free quickstart and check out some other reviews and over views.

Any thoughts on any of the Bundle of Holding PDFs? https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Index2023

Quote from: Tod13 on July 29, 2023, 04:36:15 PM

Quote from: BadApple on July 29, 2023, 12:33:07 PM

Quote from: Tod13 on July 29, 2023, 10:48:42 AM
Thanks! Any fully complete modules?

Systems are easy to pick. But most of them don't have new-GM friendly modules. I wonder if that is why 5E, Pathfinder, and Mongoose Traveller end up so popular?

Currently, we are thinking of having her run DwD Studios BareBones Fantasy. It was the first RPG she played and is pretty light (not as light as Stellagama Quantum games or Black Star though.) And their modules are well written, with lots of different ways to solve the problem. (That whole, situations not solutions thing.)

ICRPG has a LOT of adventures written for it.  The 2e book has some right in it as well as several being on DTRPG.  Also, being what it is, many D&D adventures are very easily adapted to it. 

One of the beauties of ICRPG is that making up a stat block for a monster on the fly is easy.  Looking at any module for any system is easy to convert if you get the gist of what the enemy is and how challenging it's supposed to be.

I think it works best as a fantasy RPG but there's settings for scifi, super heroes, paleolithic, and modern horror.  Some are from Runehammer, some are third party.  There's a lot of home brew content as well and much of it's easy to find and download.

Finally, there's a free quickstart in DTRPG and the Master book (all the stuff that Runehammer published for it, core and otherwise) is $17.

I like it a lot and I have definitely taken a lot of stuff to other games I run.  Don't take my word for it though, download the free quickstart and check out some other reviews and over views.

Any thoughts on any of the Bundle of Holding PDFs? https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Index2023

I downloaded their quickstart. I hate how the rules are written. They're so casual and cute that it's difficult to follow.