I mentioned here:
that I might see if we can do a short Quest campaign, but I don’t have much experience with alternative TTRPGs - anyone got recs for good short ones? By short I’m thinking maybe 3-4 sessions max.
Thanks y’all!
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Other than Lancer/Quest, what have you all played in the past?
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If you’re familiar with Pathfinder, the We Be Goblins AP is short and full of potential for goofing off in big ways.
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Just fabula ultima and some d&d 5E for most of us, also a pokemon homebrew game lol
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I have only played one pre-made campaign (A Cortex hack of Exalted) but it was very early when I was still getting into TTRPGs, so I can’t really recommend.
What I can recommend, however, and which is also what I do for my own missing sessions with other players (when possible) is playing a GM-less game. These tend to be focused on a single session, and are also usually very easy to prep (some might involve Tarot cards, but I’ll supply the materials for that below). You create characters and plot hooks on the spot, and see what happens. If you’ve been buying/supporting itch bundles, you’ll have some of these!
A few of my favorites:
And You Shall Shatter Temples - A game about rising up against oppressing forces, literal gods who have been trying to crush you. A couple things made it stand out for me; First, its meant to be a violent catharsis. There’s no dialogue with these beings, no negotiation. You’re here to fell them. And second, you can’t lose. Not to mean you can’t die trying, but you will succeed. This is not a game about reversals or chance, its about how you succeed in your struggle.
Deviation - A game about reading the journals from an expedition that went into an eldritch space. Very inspired by Annihilation, Control and other media involving subliminal spaces, it can be suitably creepy and unnerving, although the game length is uncertain - it ends after you draw all Kings of either deck, which means it can go for a while or end very soon.
i’m sorry did you say street magic - Literal street, and city magic, as you build together a place to be lived in with fantastical abilities.
Chasing the Ace - The final battle has arrived. Your squadron is ready. The Ace that has led you through conflict after conflict will speahead the last assault. Except they’ve confided to you that they will instead steal their mecha and leave at midnight. Will you find why? Will you follow them, even when not in battle?
The Bonds That Tie Us - A game about taking relationships, making them complicated and see where it goes. Pair up or split up people, prod or comfort, develop them into something together.
To play games that require decks of cards, or Tarot cards, I’ve used Playing Cards in the past, with this extension that adds Tarot decks .
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Damn thanks for the recs gamer!
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You’re welcome! I hope you enjoy them!
Be warned, while GM-less games are generally easy to prepare, they tend to be much more exhausting to play, as they’re far heavier on the improv than games with a proper setting or campaign.
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Thinking about stuff in that vein (combat-ish games for the most part, though on the lighter side because short campaign):
- Getting my recommendations for (WARNING!) my own games out of the way: Valiant Horizon is on that similar JRPGish bent as Fabula Ultima while APOCALYPSE FRAME is Lancer-adjacent from squinting distance (though both of them are way simpler and quicker to learn than their comparisons, you could probably teach either in like half an hour). Celestial Bodies is another mech game that’s not particularly adjacent to like, anything but, in my biased opinion, absolutely fucks. (I think all of those have community copies available, if one doesn’t and you don’t have it from a bundle or something let me know.)
- I would basically recommend Slayers to anyone who wants to play a D&D kind of monster-combat game. Extremely simple core mechanic (roll the die it tells you to, if you rolled a 4+ it worked), classes are fully asymmetrically designed, and there’s an absolute ton of addon stuff if you play it long enough to want to branch out. HUNT and NULL by the same developer are other great ones that are specifically made for one-shots.
- FIST whips ass. “It’s Metal Gear by way of Hellboy” is a great description and also kind of undersells it. It’s so cool.
- If you’ve got the time to learn a bigger game, Gubat Banwa absolutely fucks. Incredibly stylish and extremely its own thing while still being in that kind of Lancer/4E vibe of game.
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OH! You know what? I just remembered that a group of friends and I tried to play a mini-RPG called Night Shift. You work as a gas station attendant overnight at a gas station that’s a bit of a liminal space. It can be cosmic-horror-y, it can be X-files-flavored, it’s pretty flexible from what I remember and doesn’t have much crunch. The rule-set is 7 pages. I have a Drive folder somewhere with character sheets as well, I can dig that up if they are wanted by anyone.
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Definitely appreciating these detailed lists! I’m bookmarking the thread so I can try some of these sometime.
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I saw some news about Hotel California today and it reminded me of a game I haven’t got to play yet but whose concept I quite enjoy:
You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave:
Play as a Guest, Staff member, or living Anomaly at the Hotel California, the first and only hotel to exist outside of time and space! Create messy entanglements — ally with monsters, or backstab your friends! Inject the surreal and horrific into everyday life! Solve mysteries! Have strange dreams! Chase someone with a knife! Burn it all to the ground!
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I think it’s called the Hunted? It’s a PbTA game where you’re being hunted in the wilderness by some like supernatural entity? I’ll link it later
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Shocker, I didn’t swing back around to this yesterday. i was right on the name, wrong on the system. It’s a Forged in the Dark, not a Powered by the Apocalypse.
It’s explicitly meant as 1-2 sessions, but those sessions are supposed to be 3-4 hours long (something I have a hard time imagining now), so for most of my groups, probably 3-4 sessions. Looks sick as hell though, really wanna play it.
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If your wanting to spread your wings anything by Grant Howitt is a treat. Ive developed a whole silly talking animal verse with multiple of his games.
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I want to put Heart: The City Beneath forward for this. I’ve only ran Red West which is Briar Sovereign’s (wrote Armor Astir: Advent) hack for it but from what I’ve heard from my friends who have played it it’s great for a short campaign because you pre-set what your experience rewards are going to be with the Beats rules. And if you don’t end up liking the rules it won’t all be a loss because you can play as some real dark souls-ass wretches in the process.
Also, AGON by John Harper is good with just one Island, and Bloodstone by Matteo Sciutteri is a short game I never got to try but always wanted to.
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