Even character creation can be a blast. It’s a points based system (but a very simple one, no resemblance to GURPS whatsoever) and chargen starts by your players blindly bidding on one attribute at a time. The GM then tries to sell them on said attribute and how useful it is to make them spend more and outbid each other openly. It’s one of the things I miss about every other system I’ve run. In the end everyone knows who’s the best at a given attribute but nobody knows quite where they stand which helps the Makiavellian atmosphere.

Wikipedia link explaining in a bit more detail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Diceless_Roleplaying_Game

@Tommi: True enough, I’ll get to the companion book later this week where Jeff has a very effective and simple approach to setting that I just may steal for building up my own setting later on.

Well-designed pick-up rpgs are interesting to read, though, as are unusual ones. Levi Kornelsen’s Microcosm (http://members.shaw.ca/LeviK/Microcosm.pdf) is one of the unusual ones.

I would like to find something that would bridge the game, we only play every 3 weeks, but it always seems to take an hour before we really get to the point where everybody is into the game and preforming at the right level. Personally, I think that the reason for this is a specific person, whom I am not inviting to tonights game, and I’ll see how my players preform.

There are a few board games that I’m interested in getting, but with prices as they are (I am, after all, poor-white trash) I really cringe at spending money on something that players don’t want. Learning new rules really sucks too. Bare bone systems just don’t work for us!

Not that I don’t respect the Evil DM, I’d love to play in one of his games, he’s got a brilliant mind! A few months ago I caught wind of a campaign world that he wanted to build and it sounded killer!

That is the other side of the Internet sword, while it is easier to discuss gaming with other DM’s in your own home, but now you can’t beg yourself a spot at their gaming table.

Ripper Xs last blog post..Building a Fantasy Calander

My Life With Master is a very player centric freeform narritive game. Not exactly minimalist, but the antagonist/master is created during character creation.

Michael Phillipss last blog post..Avoidance memes

@JFargo: Hey there welcome to the blog, I’ve looked at your own about photography and personal health and I should drop by and siphon you for tips on macro photography for my D&D minis as I did for Greywulf and John Arcadian. (I still need that desk light)

We really really suck as story tellers and we really really like to play with powers on a battlegrid. I have my storyteller moments and so does the group (although Franky is our best yarn-spinner)… I’m really not sure that such a game (Once upon..) would be a hit in our group.

I’ve DM’ed for similar style games, and it can be a LOT of fun going on a one-shot dungeon crawl without having to worry about much of anything except where the next monster is.
And Sandrinnad, you’re not weird; we had a scheduled pick-up night too, where we’d either do something like this, play board games, or if we actually got everyone together (rare), we’d continue on with our normal game. It was great, because if you couldn’t make it, you didn’t have to feel guilty.

JFargos last blog post..Green Grey

Would you play a pick up RPG on a slow Friday where the DM calls in sick or something?
we actually had a regularly scheduled pick-up night for a couple of months (which sounds odd, but…. ) It worked quite well. But we might be strange.

Once Upon a Time is a great game (good call Michael Phillips!). You have _got_ to be quick on your feet though, even when playing to have fun, to keep the flow going. It’s a practice thing though I expect Incredible fun to watch/listen to. (Great before a night of improv or a session that’s going to be mostly RP too. )

I suspect that a lot of the ease of play and setup would be lost in SotC by making it d20. It is a strongly narritivist game, and adding a mechanics heavy system to it would be likely to make it bog down. I’ve not given it a real good reading yet, but it seems that Spirit of the Century is one of those games where the rules should be easy to learn and apply to the point that after reading it and after character creation, you don’t need the book.

Once upon a time works very well. It isn’t so much a role playing game as a group story telling session with cards and a win condition. It is easy to metagame to a win condition, but so long as any hyper competitive sorts in your group can tone it down for the play session, that isn’t too big of a problem.
http://www.atlas-games.com/onceuponatime/

I agree that BESM (2nd Edition) is a great simple game… it’s actually one of the best simple ‘generic’ yet complete systems I’ve read. We played only once and moved on to D&D 3.5 mostly because we had had enough of 8 years of point-based character development with Gurps.

I found (and lost) a link to d20 SotC that I should hunt down again. I like the genre it portrays, but I don’t feel like learning a new RPG engine other than 4e currently.

Does a minimalist narrative game work? I’m curious how that would go…