Looking for a short, rules lite family RPG

[darkbard]

Howdy! A friend is looking to draw his two boys (15 and a precocious 9) away from screen time with an RPG he can play with them. He stressed simplicity as a major criterion, by which I think he means a short rules set, few and simple mechanics, and little game prep. He has little experience with RPGing.

Suggestions (and links when possible that I can point him to) please!

 

[payn]

Sometimes a stepping stone to RPGs works like the Heroquest board game. The Pathfinder beginners box comes with a lot of great gear and has been streamlined to lower the barrier of entry.
PF1 BB (expensive out of print?)
PF2 BB
Heroquest (spendy but comes with tons of minis)

 

[CleverNickName]

I recommend Dread. It's easy to learn, quick to play, and all you need is some paper and a Jenga set. It's not ideal if anyone in your family has mobility or coordination issues, though. If your family loves storytelling and Jenga, they might like Dread.

 

[Mannahnin]

If they like Arthurian legend, anthropomorphic animals, and/or writing short fiction, The Questing Beast seems pretty awesome.

Fiasco, Dungeon World, or Mouse Guard might also be strong options.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

So in other words, his kids have 10x the RPG experience as him just from playing video games. And speaking of video games, knowing what they like to play can go a long way toward a recommendation. Does the older one love the Final Fantasy games or the Diablo games? Does the younger one love Pokemon games? Do they actually like lesser known games? Do they like any CRPGs at all? If they can handle the complexities of CRPGs, then finding something simple enough for the father to run, may very well bore the kids and make them not want to play. Also, the older son is right in the middle of the age range of getting into D&D, and 5E has two different boxed starter sets that can be found on the shelves of your local Target store, in case you do not have a real gaming store in town.

 

[Jer]

Howdy! A friend is looking to draw his two boys (15 and a precocious 9) away from screen time with an RPG he can play with them. He stressed simplicity as a major criterion, by which I think he means a short rules set, few and simple mechanics, and little game prep. He has little experience with RPGing.

Suggestions (and links when possible that I can point him to) please!

Keying off the "he has little experience with RPGing" I would suspect that the simplicity he's looking for might come from something that he can easily learn to GM, rather than being something that just has simple rules. The options for games that are good to learn to GM with are IME poor - simple systems often assume that the GM will bring a lot of knowledge of how to run a game to the table and don't concentrate on giving the DMs the fundamentals of how to run a game.

So I'd agree with @payn that Heroquest as a board game might be a good choice as it really does a good job of giving the GM/Mentor player the fundamentals of "how to run a game". However it's a hefty buy-in for something that might just sit on a shelf.

Oddly for me I think I might suggest the D&D Essentials Set. It's cheap, it does a good job of assuming that the DM is also a novice along with their players, and by examples gives a variety of ideas of how to construct your own scenarios by providing a wide variety of them itself. Yeah the 5e rules are more complex than a lot of others, but for a novice DM trying to learn how to run a game there aren't a lot that are better IME.

 

[innerdude]

Based on the OP's description, Tiny D6 (Tiny Dungeons or Tiny Frontiers) for the win.

All of the books come with 8-10 pre-built mini-scenarios ready to go to help GM's get started.

 

[Greggy C]

Sounds like Gloomhaven is a better fit.

 

[dbm]

I like Warrior Mage & Rogue as a light weight RPG - as a bonus it and its expansions are free.

 

[darjr]

I ran Faery’s Tale for my boys when they were very small.

DriveThruRPG

www.drivethrurpg.com