I have recently started trying to convince a few friends at college to get into tabletop RPGs. Their major complain about it is that they do not often have 3+ hours to play a session, so I set looking for an RPG system that enables a fulfilling experience in 2 hours or less.
Here are a few things I am looking for in this game:
- Should have a focus on exploring character aspects and in character development, much like Fate.
- Should be geared towards or at least capable of providing a great experience on a short session(2 hours or less).
- Should not be open ended, like games such as Microscope. Players should have an objective goals and ways to achieve them.
- Should be easy to teach. Since we only have 2 hours to play we shouldn't be wasting half of that explaining the systems.
- Should enable playing with minimal preparation.
- Should enable both single session plays and long campaigns in case I can get the players hooked.
- Should either have a simple setting or be setting agnostic.
- Should have good mechanisms for player interaction and, if possible, competition between players amidst their cooperation, like in Paranoia.
Not all points are required, but I would be looking for a system that checks all of those. Specially the first two.
