How to RPG Anywhere, Anytime

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I used to play every week in the same Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Now my friends and I try our best to arrange a game session every few months. At some point, I tried to get this to work with another group. We drew up a six-month Doodle calendar to find the date on which we could meet. We got together and discussed character creation and never met again. A campaign requires so much customization, homework, scheduling, scheduling, and rescheduling that it’s hard to keep pace. In the meantime, I made more friends who wanted to play but didn’t know the rules. How can I find the time to introduce them to the game if I can’t find the time even for more experienced players?

I wanted to play away from home with minimal expense, planning, and commitment. So I had to change my approach. I was looking for games that met my needs: mechanics that anyone could learn in one session, but still strong enough to bring structure and prevent it from popping up; scenarios that we could go without additional planning or character creation lessons; no stacks of dice, bunches of paper, or GM screen; no commitments after the first session.

I figured out how to role-play in any setting, with minimal expense, planning, and commitment. This was the first time in several months that I had the opportunity to play role-playing games. I did two sessions in two weeks, no letters or doodles. One session with my seasoned friends and one with four Lifehacker staff who have never role-played. Both games were huge hits. This is how you can start your own.

Play one shot

If you and your friends are too busy to run an extended campaign, you’ve probably already tried the one-off. Since each invests less, they can recruit characters faster and start mid-action. Everyone, including the GM who runs the game, is interested in being less bogged down in side quests, negotiating, or foreshadowing visions. Since you start from scratch every time, you don’t need to keep track of possessions, levels and skills.

This style is great for casual play, when you don’t have a constant date with games, and when you are playing around. You can start a three-year campaign with deep character development, but I would suggest starting with a few single shots until you feel fun enough to keep playing.

Many RPGs are too powerful for one shot – when you need to complete a story in two hours, every minute you waste looking for weapon damage seems like a waste. But if you are already familiar with the set of rules, you can only follow the basics. Dungeon Crawl Classics has one built-in feature: the DCC campaign traditionally begins with a level zero funnel in which each player controls several unskilled peasants, most of whom die by the end. By itself, this is a great one-off trick. Character creation is minimal, players have few stats, and all characters are equally suited to the task. (The DM still has many characters to watch out for and many dice to roll.)

Game developer John Harper , creator of the popular one-page RPG game Lasers & Feelings and the three-page spin-off Dungeon World World of Dungeons , loves challenging games. He told me in an interview that his favorite game is The Burning Wheel. “This is one of the rare games in which the more work you put in as a player, the more you get out of it.” How much work? He says he really started to suck the brain around his thirtieth or fortieth play session. But his regular playgroup also loved to play in the bar. “It was weird to be in a bar and have a very intense role-playing scene.” So they played more “energetic, adventurous things,” often pausing the game to chat, switching back and forth. This helped to get a focused mission instead of a grand storyline. One of his favorite games for this kind of game is the 48-page Into the Odd , a gothic game in which each character has only three stats and a session can last for about two hours. The group also played Dungeon World and Apocalypse World .

Use a one-page role-playing game

In a casual setting, you want a game that is mentally and physically smaller. Mentally, you want you to learn fewer rules, fewer details to choose for your character before you start playing. You want to make decisions quickly and you want GM to keep up. The more you can rely on imagination and collaboration, the less you will have to rely on a reference.

Physically, you don’t need everything that is used in a typical RPG: reference books, specialized dice (or fun dice ), printouts, cards, GM screen, pencils and paper, figurines or tokens. It’s all cool and fun when you’re in a campaign with a group: one person shares their handbook, GM keeps character sheets between games, and everyone loves to collect bags full of weird cubes. But in a small coffee shop or at a picnic, all this equipment cannot be taken out. And you can’t rely on one man with extra dice if he doesn’t show up at every game.

You want a lightweight handheld RPG game. Super light weight. Ideally one page. Fortunately, there are dozens of popular microRPGs online with rulesets that fit on a page or two, which their creators give away for free. Most require just a couple of hex dice (D6, in gamer terms), although some use the typical RPG specialized dice set , especially the famous D20.

You can see dozens of these games on the one-page RPG subreddit or by searching the general RPG subreddit . Some highlights:

You will notice that many of these games are silly and the rules can be vague. They are not meant for lengthy campaigns that fully explore your character’s backstory as you grow stronger. At least until you hack them.

All of the games listed above and below are free, and many of them are explicitly licensed under Creative Commons that allows others to remix and redistribute them. Several players have collected their favorites in PDF compilations like this four-page 12-game pack .

If you want to watch someone else play the game, the Tempting Fate series (from the Saving Throw channel) is all about playing microRPG.

In fact, just use lasers and senses

I was immediately attracted to Lasers & Feelings , which uses a simple system with two characteristics: lasers and senses. The better you do one thing, the worse you do about another.

Technically, this is one characteristic – a number between 2 and 5. Every time you try to do something difficult, you decide whether it requires “laser” skills (logic, science, research) or “feeling” skills (passion, seduction , morale). Then you roll a six-sided die. You need to roll higher than your stat to excel at senses, and lower than your stat to excel at lasers. There are no modifiers, but you can roll an extra die to indicate training or experience.

Like the Powered by the Apocalypse system , you can get results other than success and failure: critical success, which allows you to ask a question to the master, and mixed success, which comes with a price or qualification.

As with PbtA, GM spends most of its time introducing the next complication or twist and asking players, “What will you do next?” Combat is handled the same way as other actions, without hit points or damage systems.

All you need to play is a copy of the rules and at least one die. Character creation takes about five minutes (besides stats, there are several class and flavor options), and the GM can choose a scenario from the given options, or roll for a random one.

The game only works if you can use your common sense or act meaninglessly on purpose. All crunch – the amount of crunch, the game mechanics – sit in one stat and one roll of the dice, so everything in the game depends on the interpretation. Everyone should be willing to agree with each other, because arguing about the rules would be absurd. Players need to be flexible, the GM needs to be consistent enough, and everyone needs to be creative. But that’s why you chose an RPG over a board game.

John Harper wrote Lasers and Senses in 2013 in four hours, updating it the day after the playtest. He borrowed this system fromTrollbabe , a 2002 game with an underground 70s comic-book vibe. He mainly created L&F for experienced gamers who could use their knowledge of RPG conventions to interpret his concise rules. “There are still some pretty vague rules that I’m still being asked about,” he tells me. But he likes to leave them ambiguous.

The Lasers & Feelings system is so robust that the game quickly spawned dozens of hacks that adapt the rules system to different genres. These games still use hex dice and one or two rule pages, but they change the setting, character classes, stats, and possible scenarios. The Writing Alchemy blog has over 40 such tricks [UPDATE 2/28/2019: If site is down, use this Wayback Machine link ], including:

You can customize any of these, or hack your own, which doesn’t require writing a new separate sheet. You can simply name a few character classes, describe your setting, and come up with an adventure. For one of my playtests, I played out a medieval palace intrigue called Swords and Witchcraft. It was very poorly thought out and worked great.

Most L&F hacks are based on an existing genre or specific media property. There is no room here for a collection of original monsters or extensive knowledge of the setting and characters. You have to start from existing stereotypes and come up with details.

Everyone is playing well

The less written material there is in the game, the more players and GM have to deal with each other. The rules lawyer in your group might not like this. So will GM, who loves to rule like a petty tyrant. In a traditional home game, GM usually has a high status, Harper said. Playing in the world helps level the playing field. Light games cannot maintain an antagonistic relationship between GM and players.

These games have pretty much everything, so you need to show your social skills if you don’t want to turn into a “Oh yeah? Well, I’m wearing an infinity suit. ” The GM must also guide the players, determine the level of their contribution. At the L&F, Harper says it’s helpful for GM to ask the entire spreadsheet, “What are you doing?” instead of one player.

You have to ignore (or enjoy) a lot of details in a casual game. As a player, your items have no stats. It doesn’t really matter if you wear leather armor or chain mail, unless you want to attach importance to it for some creative reason. If you are used to playing role-playing games like video games, you must think differently.

As a GM, you have to improvise a lot more. You have to know how to have fun and keep you going, but also how to avoid the “crazy city” – an improvised term for a situation where there is nothing normal to hold on to, so all nonsense is irrelevant. But this is a fantastic compromise because you don’t have to plan anything. Generally. You can literally roll the dice to figure out what kind of adventure you will be telling.

You need your players to finish the game. Don’t let the casual nature of the game piss you off. In most cases, you want your players to succeed, unless the nature of the game (like anything inspired by Lovecraft) suggests a high likelihood of failure. But even if after that you are going to spend half an hour just walking, you will feel better if you have a little time.

While microRPGs can be useful for new players, I would not recommend them for aspiring grandmasters. If you want to run a microRPG, it will be much easier for you to run or at least play multiple RPG sessions (whether traditional or micro).

Always be ready to play

You can comfortably play most micro RPGs using just your phone: open the PDF to find character types or scenarios.Google is a dice roller and Google willroll the hex dice for you.

If you prefer real dice, keep a couple of dice in your pocket or bag. Or see if your local bar or cafe has a few board games in the corner and grab them.

The first time you play a specific system, it may be helpful to print the rules, perhaps even an additional copy for the players. But even for the first time, you can get by with phones if you need to. If phones are too distracting, ask everyone to go into airplane mode.

After the first session or two, you should know how to start the game anywhere. You just need a few friends to gather for at least an hour in a space where you can all hear each other comfortably: at a barbecue, at a late night dinner, even in the car during a trip. This is a great activity at the end of a party or to keep the kids entertained.

Example 1

My first game was with three members of my regular group: Tim, Molly and Jason. We met at our local High Dive Bar – good beer, free popcorn, pinball in the back – and after a little chatter and pinball, got down to business with printouts of ” Lasers & Feelings” . Everyone chose their role in the SS Raptor team and their own style – a sexy engineer, an alien doctor and a tough pilot.

I added a secret threat: (1) brainworms trying to (2) protect the crystals of the void, (3) fix everything. Not that big of a threat – unless I make it a real threat to the crew, who no longer have problems to tackle across the galaxy once the brainworms pacify the universe. So I needed to infect the team with these worms. I, a creative genius, looked at the cup of coffee I brought with me. And I told my players that the ship ran out of coffee.

We spent two hours on a ridiculous quest on the coffee planet. At one point, I looked through images of coffee plants and found that (at least on the phone) they look a lot like the various poisonous red berries you see in the forest. So the problem to be solved. Elsewhere, Jason mentioned this science book he was reading , where a dragon appeared out of nowhere and practically winked at the camera, and how out of place it was with the story. So I dropped a fire-breathing dragon to guard the coffee plants.

I intended to inject the brainworms in a few minutes, but only stuck them in at the end – they burrowed into the coffee beans. “The coffee robot turns the beans you collect into delicious coffee and you are all energized. But in the middle of the night, Zapf Dingbat wakes up. Tsapf, something whispers in your brain: “Destroy the ship!” Oh no! What’s next for Lasers & Feelings: I think of these beans !? ” End.

We were just a little more grounded than the Comedy Bang Bang episode: if someone joked and everything went well, now it was canon. People came up with ridiculous backstories on the go. The alien received new mediocre abilities. And since we only had to endure history for two hours, we could accumulate it.

And yet, one way or another, it remained a game, not an improvised scene. We still wondered if the team had fulfilled their mission. Since the characters were constantly trying to complete tasks, we threw the dice more often than in our regular D&D games. Before we started, I barely read this sheet as I am very lazy. A couple of others looked at it. But we quickly mastered the mechanics, although when we got drunk we had a little trouble remembering the over-less rule.

It was a relief to play without any of the literal and metaphorical table setting that is common in our regular games. And since we were at the bar, anyone could stay after – there was no owner to kick everyone out. We’ll meet next week to play Lasers & Feelings . Now we are arguing about whether about Indiana Jones or Boss Baby .

Example 2

So it was easy enough to play a casual game with experienced players. But, as Harper tells me, with such a simple system, “you don’t have many things to hide behind.” So, I stress tested the L&F system on four people who had never played board RPGs. And it worked great .

I rounded up four Lifehacker staff – EIC Melissa Kirsch, screenwriters Alicia Adamchik and Josh Ocampo, and senior video producer Joel Kahn – to play happy hour at a bar across the street. They asked for a medieval setting, so during lunchtime I cracked Swords and Sorcery by inserting some medieval imagery into the rules of the Lasers and Senses game.

Alicia became Princess Peach, Melissa played a hairdresser-surgeon, Josh – a secretive dwarf knight, Joel – an insidious wizard. Rather than suggesting goals for the characters, I borrowed a trick from the Powered by the Apocalypse system and asked everyone to describe their relationship with the character to their left. It turned out that they were all involved in the palace court – and most of them were relatives.

You don’t say no to the players. Therefore, instead of going through dungeons or quests, I arranged for them a game of palace intrigue: the king and queen gathered all the important people in the throne room to name their successor, but before they could make their announcement, all the torches were extinguished, and the king and queen were killed … Now our players had to fight for the throne.

I have never played player versus player before. It seems harder to maintain a friendly imagination when everyone is competing, especially when “who wins” really depends on the grandmaster. But competition has proven to be a great way to start engagement. I saw how even experienced players took a while to assemble their fun group, but here we had characters who knew each other canonically well, which was not difficult for newcomers. This is one of the ways a lightweight game relies more on the players: you can’t justify things by pointing out your character’s stats, so you have to come up with excuses in the world. Everyone is used to adding backstory and details to justify their skills and choices. The character creation was never finished, it just turned into a gameplay. It was perfect.

Everyone stomped around the castle, trying to seize power by persuasion or force, stabbing each other in the back, forging coalitions and raiding the arsenal. NPCs came and went and died. I forget who captured the castle, only that the end was a bloody massacre at the level of Hamlet. In this fantasy world, conversation proceeded faster than in ordinary small talk. And we did it over cocktails without a single mechanical pencil.

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