Risus
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Designed by S. John Ross, it is the lo-fi generic roleplaying system that the snobs at RPGforge use for textbook examples. A very good choice for people who are too tired to do math, minmaxing, or any kinda simulation gaming crap. If you aren't turned off by the stick-figure artwork in the rulebook (rules pamphlet?) then you're good to go.
The Rules
"Die" means d6 unless stated otherwise.
Characters
A character in Risus is, essentially, a collection of clichés. "Viking Barbarian," "Disgruntled Postman," "Vampire Wanker," "fa/tg/uy." Each cliché is rated in one or more "dice," which is how many dice you would roll and add up when the character is doing an activity you'd expect that cliché to be proficient in.
- Cliché examples
- Viking Barbarian: swing axe, pillage, drink from mugs made from horns, etc..
- Disgruntled Postman: knowing where everybody lives, walking all day, assault rifles, etc..
- Vampire Wanker: drinking blood, writing emo poetry, seducing teenage girls, etc..
- blah blah, add more here...
Characters start with 10 dice, which are each allocated to the clichés the character has. 1 die means you can do it, but you fail more often than not. 2 dice means you can get by day by day, 3 dice for someone who's actually good at their job, and so on. Characters can't start with more than 4 dice in any one cliché (barring a really good excuse), and clichés max out at 6 dice.
Hooks
If you add a detrimental flaw to your character description, you can add another die to the 10 you start with. This flaw has to be something that can be used to disadvantage the character somehow.
Equipment
It's assumed that every character has the gear they need to perform day-to-day tasks for their cliché. Nothing special, but nothing lacking either. If a character loses their gear, they can only roll half their dice for that cliché. It's also possible to get extraordinary equipment for your cliché that would give 1 or more bonus dice (ie. magic sword, miltiary-grade cyberdeck), but characters cannot start with extraordinary gear.
Conflict Resolution
There's three kinds of conflict: dude vs. environment, quick dude vs. dude and ongoing dude vs. dude.
vs. environment
blah blah, gm target number, rolling dice,
blah blah, helping others rules
quick vs. dude
blah blah, one roll, highest wins
blah blah, teaming up rules
ongoing vs. dude
blah blah, roll, take damage
blah blah, teaming up rules
Character Improvement
At the end of an adventure, roll the dice for each cliché. If all the dice come up even, you can add another die to that cliché, up to a max of 6. If you want to add a new cliché, you can use the die you would've added to one of your other clichés to get a new cliché at 1 die. (This is why you roll for your 6-die clichés, even though you can't increase them.)
Optional Rules
- blah blah, pumping
- blah blah, double-pumping
- blah blah, different dice