My favorite TTRPG system that nobody knows
Everyone loves to play a good old-fashioned campaign in Dungeon & Dragons or Pathfinder by Paizo.
It's the classic, a party of 4 or 5 goes on an adventure, getting deep into dangerous dungeons to find lost treasures, rare items to collect or the occasional damsel/bachelor in distress; the scene is directed by the Game/Dungeon Master, a mythical figure that plays as the NPCs, narrator and arbiter at the same time. He is responsible to prepare encounters for the other players (and, most of the time, host the game night).
Eventually, adventurers level up and the stakes in their story get higher: you get an increase in the difficulty of encounters, the rarity of the items and the importance/beauty of the damsel/bachelor... And at some point along this path, the game comes to a end1.
Of course, everyone loves a high-fantasy, magic-filled, LOTR-style kind of dungeon crawling, which is exactly what Patfhinder and D&D give you. The game systems are neatly tied with the settings and general flavors.
Ok, but what if I didn't want any of that high fantasy flavor and I wanted something else?
Well, you'll have to homebrew rules for yourself...
If you're lucky, you'll find someone else's work; otherwise, you'll need to get to work.
In my experience as a GM, this has been a real pain, every time. It's very easy to break these systems, either with overpowered stuff or by screwing up the immersion, if you don't know what you're doing; not to mention the amount of adaptations you have to make in order to fit it to the existing rules (or worse, custom household rules).
That's why, as (an ok) worldbuilder, I turned my attention to different, system-agnostic game systems.
Introducing Risus, The Anything RPG
Ok, what the hell is that?
Risus is a very minimal, simple and free RPG system created by S. John Ross in the early 2000s. The official manual to get started is only 4 pages long and is freely available to download2.
The PDF file is so small that it can fit in a pamphlet. I suggest you read it before going on with the article; it doesn't take that much to do and it's very quickly to grasp!
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... but why? Isn't the system so minimal that it's kind of limited?
Not at all!
First of all, you have the FREEDOM from the game mechanics.
The only real "conflict" mechanic, the Contest, can be used in different ways for different situations.
For example, suppose your charismatic and dexterous scout wants to climb a tree, grab a vine and use it to deliver a flying kick to an enemy.
In Pathfinder, you'd have to roll for climb and check all the bonuses, then roll for acrobatics and do the same, then roll for the hit, which may be infeasible due to a variety of factors... And how many actions does this count for? It never ends!
Meanwhile in Risus, your "Talkative and acrobatic scoutmaster (3)" is able to do so, from their cliché, he will just need to roll for a Conflict.
Secondly, characters are described by their Clichés: they can do stuff because their Clichés say who or what they are. Thus, players are more pushed to engage in actual role-playing, rather than focusing on the numbers and optimization.
Last, but not least, the system doesn't force you to start from a defined setting that you need to adapt into something new, because there is none! It can be anything you want!
Do you want to do some Star Trek inspired space opera? It's doable.
Do you prefer the setting to be a steampunk London, where detectives try to solve mysteries? Sure, why not!
Ok, that's fine - but what if I really, really needed some extra rules?
Don't be afraid! The system is so simple that is super easy to expand!
For the interested, there's a place full of ideas for campaigns, clichés, advanced rules... It's called Risusiverse and it's a community driven archive website; it may be not that active lately, but the contents surely are gold.
I have only one issue with Risus, personally
I have never been able to do more than a single, very silly, improvised, one-shot game!3
I hope to be able to do a more complex campaign sometime in the future.
That's about it, folks
If I managed to poke your interest, I hope you can give Risus a try! It doesn't take long to set up and the fun is guaranteed.
I hope to see you next time!
tenpo suno ni o pona tawa sina!
!
Well, if your player group is sound enough to finish the campaign. TPC (Total Playergroup Collapse, not to be confused with TPK) has happened in many, if not most of the times in my excruciating experience as a Pathfinder GM.↩
There exists a more in-depth guide, equipped with all the tools to help GMs create Risus games and "have a better feeling" of the rules, called Risus Companion. It is paid content, however the author's of Risus stress on the fact that it is not required to play Risus.↩
I forgot to mention: this RPG is so simple to set up that, if your GM has a general idea of what they want to do, it just works↩