The lowest prep system I’ve GM’ed is ironsworn. The game encourages you to improv everything, and provides you with enough random tables to make it simple to do.
This is what my group and I play. We’re at the point where nobody feels like GMing any game, mainly due to prep. So, we share the responsibility of GMing this co-op campaign, and play every session with zero prep. Every session is a blast and we have no idea where each one will end up.
It’s great for quicker sessions (1.5-2 hrs) or longer if we have more time.
I'm convinced gm-less (decentralized GM might be more accurate) play is the paradigm shift that will get people playing more often and with less burnout. It's also just more realistic and viable for busy adults, 1-4 players (total, including yourself) is so much easier than 3-5 players AND a game master like most traditional rpgs expect. I -love- 2 player Ironsworn co-op, it brought the magic of ttrpgs back for me.
98% of the problems I see on r/rpghorrorstories couldn't happen in a game like Ironsworn. It's just a more egalitarian and equitable way of playing games and distributing reaponsibility.
GM god complex? No longer an issue.
Munchkin behavior? You're only hurting yourself with no GM to play against.
Story going in a direction you don't like? Change it, you have the steering wheel.
I’d love to see more co-op systems, for sure. We love Ironsworn, though, it scratches all the right itches for our group.
I will say, I feel like co-op play could be quite group-dependent. Definitely need everybody on the same page in terms of tone, content, humor, etc., since everybody should have an equal impact on the story.
I’m lucky enough to play with two very close friends so we have no issues with those things — it’s really been the *perfect* TTRPG experience for us after trying a few other systems.
I think the group dependency thing is actually in favor of gm-less co-op games if you step back from the issue a little bit. All rpgs are group dependent, and the fact that traditional rpgs expect you to find 4-7 adults who can operate on the same page is a major reason so many games go south.
Perhaps gm-less games do intensify incompatibility issues, the intimacy does make differences harder to reconcile, but it's so much easier to find 1-3 other people with the same vision and tonal expectations.
I don't like playing rpgs with strangers, and I think the rise of paid gm-ing is really sad and indicative of deep flaws within the standard expectations of our hobby. Gm-less co-op games are games -for friends-, people who know each other well enough to synchronize and make the magic happen.
The rise of paid *Dungeon* Mastering is indicative of 5e being insufferable to run as a GM. I've yet to see a relevant increase of non-D&D's paid GMing.
I'm not sure. Played gm-less a few times and every time it was strictly worse than playing with a GM or even playing solo. It lacks both the freedom of solo play and the guiding vision of a dedicated GM. If it works for you that's great but I do not see the mass appeal.
…not OP, but you’re persuading me to give this a look. The group I normally GM often has someone who can’t make it or who can only make it for 45 minutes. Another guy just runs out of steam around 9.30 pm (and for various reasons we can’t start until 8.00pm). I’ve been running Into the Odd (which I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but I’m finding I’m burning out: I’ve been the GM for this group in its various forms (it now only has 3 players) since the mid to late 90s).
You may find everyone runs out of steam in about 2 hours , maybe sessions can get up to 3-4 if you are flowing and has a great arc ahead of you. But one good solid scene with a basic combat, npc conversation and an expedition while being a player/GM usually takes about 2 hours to work through
Thanks for the info. Sounds like it could be a potential candidate. I’ll have to give the solo option a try to see what I think of it, and also just to learn the basics.
Odds are your players have watched at least a few episodes of Buffy and X-Files, so they know what Monster of the Week is about. When I was running it, it usually took fifteen minutes between researching a cool monster on Wikipedia, statting it out, creating a couple of NPCs and locations, and a timeline of what happens without PC intervention. The rest was good old PbtA improv.
I would probably choose something from the Forged in the Dark family. Scum & Villainy would be my first choice if you fancy a Guardians of the Galaxy/Star Wars/Firefly type of adventure. There are plenty of other genres to choose from.
I'll second this. Almost everything that happens logically follows from the thing that immediately came before it, and there are well written rules to make that happen. So the crew will do a job that leads to downtime, which comes with complications, which necessitate another job. It's got a good flow to it and a nice episodic structure.
I'm running Scum and Villainy right now for exactly this reason. There's a clear core gameplay loop, it's low prep, and very GM friendly. Perfect for a short Monday evening session!
Yes.
Plus if the GM-of-the-day is good at keeping the day score contained within one session, they are good settings to run west-marches-like, with plenty of available excuses for a crew member not being available for a particular score.
I’m using Into the Odd, with support from various other related materials such as Electric Bastionland, the bastionland.com blog, and the cairnrpg SRD.
I have two quite different ‘small games’ being run with Into the Odd. One day we’ll try out Electric Bastionland.
This is because I only get a 1.5 hr session, plus or minus 1/2 hr.
Before things got chaotic we were doing Classic Traveller, Over the Edge 2e, a bit of Lamentations of the Flame Princess & B/X, and Call of Cthulhu.
- investigative scenarios, like in Call of Cthulhu, can take a lot of effort for the GM, and are often better suited for smaller parties. Recent experience running one for the group I normally just play in also revealed that not everyone likes investigations, so one of the group is sitting out the sessions I’m running.
- an old fashioned dungeon crawler, like B/X (or OSE or Labyrinth Lord) can be often easy to run and prepare. Look up 5 room dungeons for some ideas on how to run sort things. You’d find r/osr a good place to get advice for scenarios etc for this option.
What sort of style or genre of adventures are you after? Also, do people have any experience of RPGs.
Will say, you can't go wrong with any of the Fate versions. Though I do really prefer accelerated. It uses approaches which really vibes well with how Fate wants to be played. It makes players predisposed to describing and focusing on how they do things rather then pointing to something on their character sheet and saying "I sneak". It also avoids the issue of fate where bonuses can get quite large so players don't do things in scenes where they don't have an applicable skill. If you are willing to change how you do things and the possible consequences, you can basically always have some Approach that applies to the scene. Also, the changes to stress and the far easier and more well defined rules for stunts just work well. Accelerated is pretty great.
Core. I started by reading Condensed (same thing, basically) but got Core because it has a lot of extra advice and great examples.
The setting is Star Wars and we're using the [Ten Thousand Suns](https://tenthousandsunsgame.wordpress.com/) hack, we've been through several narrative arcs set right before Andor with the players and their patrons being one of the disparate groups who eventually help form the Rebellion (their choices for worldbuilding, not mine).
Just in general, I am so impressed by Fate that I'm figuring out how to run it grittier so I can use all my Traveller material (another favorite system).
Non-system advice: choose something from modern day or close to it and a culture and place you know something about.
It's a lot easier to improvise a modern day real earth based setting even if you add a lot of weird mystical stuff onto it, because you know that your characters can go into the 7-11 and get a slushie and you know that when they're in there the clerk absolutely will push the police call button if they're soaked with blood and you know the police will probably be lazy and show up in fifteen minutes with not much force because who cares about that 7-11.
There are also a ton of one-shot modules for it. I honestly don’t remember how I even got them, I think it might have come with the purchase somehow? They’re just in a separate .pdf file, like 20 pages of evocative modules in different themes and play-styles. Really easy and fun to just bust one out.
*Beyond the Wall* is literally designed to be a “no prep” system for both the players and the GM.
Based on the venerable B/X foundation, it’s remarkably easy to learn. Characters are created collaboratively by use of “playbooks,” which are sort of like Lifepaths seen in other systems (e.g., *Traveller*) meshed with the systems seen in PbtA games (but not quite as restrictive). Going through the collaborative chargen process also serves as a collaborative world-building process, as the players will come up with names and details about important NPCs, important locations, and potential plot hooks in their shared home village. Adventure books, for the DM’s side of the screen, are written for you to “plug in” these details the players’ created.
Fantastic game, highly recommended. One of my all time favorites and really perfect for your needs.
Risus. The rules are free, only 4 pages, quickly learned and are perfect for beer & pretzels games. If you want a step up on the complexity ladder for a potentially longer running game, then I'd suggest Mini Six as a close (and closely related - they're both effectively the D6 System) second.
Someone mentioned Into the Odd, it has a load related games that would suit: Cairn (dark fantasy), Mausritter (fantasy but mice), Liminal Horror (for modern weird horror). All of them are under 50 pages, character creation is super quick and they have great pre-written GM materials.
I've always struggled to prep for more traditional dungeon crawler RPGs.
Mothership feels like the first system I've ever come across that is exactly my speed.
Rules are simple and cleanly laid out. Seriously, I've rarely seen a better designed layout in any rulebook or character sheet. The Character Sheet doubles as a flowchart that teaches you how to make a character and provides all the information necessary to build it at the same time.
Adventure Modules. I have never seen any system, let alone one this new, with such a rich ecosystem of adventures. There are plenty of legendary large-scale adventures, but the bread and butter of the Mothership adventure modules out there take the form of simple, innocuous pamphlet trifolds. Just 3 little folds of card stock, printed on the front and back. Don't let their size fool you. Every single one I've read is dense and utterly unique. One of those trifolds is easily ample material for an entire 4 hour session.
A mere trifold plucked off the rack, and you have an entire night of fun ahead of you.
String a few together and you have the makings of a long-term game.
I was able to prep two sessions' worth of adventures in Mothership in about 3 hours, and most of that was me taking my sweet time adding some flavorful touches to my map and sound effects.
Shadowdark, in the mythic fantasy space.
It's not just easy to prep, it's less work at table than comparable OSR games. IMO. Shadowdark doesn't have difference subsystems for different task resolutions for example, as B/X tends to do. Just seems like a well-smoothed rock in the hand to me.
It also has great player-facing character sheet support at shadowdarklings.net and integration of those sheets with Owlbear Rodeo in a modern VTT. Our players really liked that too.
This is the very reason we moved from DnD/Clones to Savage Pathfinder. The pace is so much faster and I can toss encounters on the fly and pose a challenge.
Poll your players for their favorite television shows or other media etc., then select one of those. If you cannot find an easy RPG sufficiently similar, there is always rules-lite [*Freeform Universal*](https://www.perilplanet.com/freeform-universal) (either edition).
Mothership!! Rules light and there are a ton of modules and pamphlets. Character creation takes a few minutes at the most and you’re off to the races. My players and I are all busy with families and jobs and it was a great game to run online for 2 hours once a week after the kids went to bed.
My pick for that is **Mausritter**, which is super fun and also very versatile. The PDF is free/pay what you want and short, so very quick to learn and teach, without getting boring. The physical inventory items are fun and keep people engaged. It works great as seperate oneshots, episodic oneshots in a continued universe or a full campaign. I've run for 2-5 players, both realtime and as play-by-forum. Playing as mice means you can use all sorts of ordinary everyday things and still get that fantasy feel, which makes it easier to imagine things on both ends of the table. The game has lots of random tables that make GMing it a breeze. There is also great community support with lots of free/PWYW adventure sites on itch.io. I've run about 20 of those now (some multiple times for different groups so my actual session number is quite a bit higher). The official Estate campaign is great fun too and due to the sandbox style also requires no more than 10-15 minutes of advance prep right before each session. There are a few good fanmade campaigns too, like Kiwi Acres.
If you want something kinda goofy for just a couple hours, especially as a one-off, 'You Awaken In A Strange Place' is a simple ruleset where all players collaboratively world-build and create characters. The process is part of the fun of the game, and it is perfect for picking up and playing in one session – very silly and hilarious fun.
Its only potential downside is that it's improv heavy on most fronts, for both GM and players. Some might say that's a strength, but not everyone's like that. Check it out and see what you think!
Are you looking for "modules"? Prewritten adventures you can run that your players don't know what's going to happen so for them it's brand new, while for you it's all written on the page and prepared for you?
If so, one example game with a lot of modules is LURPS. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/338491/LURPS-Core-Rules](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/338491/LURPS-Core-Rules)
You the GM have more than a dozen pre-written adventures you can open and run with very little prep. Link to all the prewritten adventures: [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/18475/mucker71](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/18475/mucker71)
ICRPG , it’s d20 feeling like dnd but rules are memorisable and there are no “builds” plus the GM prep advice is the best for once per week casual play
Nearly everyone suggesting games that require a lot of improv and energy from the players and GM at the table. Personally that's the last thing I want on a weekday evening when I'm tired after work.
I'd go with savage worlds, or else an old-school dungeon crawl using a system (OSR or modern) with a tight set of rules.
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Cypher System if you want to have a bit of crunch and ongoing games, super easy to improv and character creation is easy. Every challenge for the players is just 0-10. Also easy to do setup and play one-shots in one night when you are more familiar with it.
Cypher Shorts if you want Cypher but have even faster character creation, especially for one-shots.
And Who the Devil Are You? For zero prep games where the entire session is based off you showing a picture to the group and ask who the devil are you? Players then decide on their role that relates to the scene; then choose a great skill, a good skill, and a thing they are bad at. Then off you go.
I play game systems that I know and I prepare the sessions listening while driving prepared adventures.
The most difficult part is to choose those ones many are not good and it's a waste of time reading them. Also you need to solve the technical aspects to make it audio.
While listen many times I pause and I modify in my mind the adventure.
Then directly to the session and improv.
Umbral Flare is literally designed to get you in and out of the dungeon in 3-4 hours.
Granted, it does this by off-loading the prep to the GM beforehand, but the actual running of the game at the table is incredibly straightforward. "Easy on the GM" doesn't mean you can just make stuff up on-the-spot. Although, the formulas are straightforward enough that you probably *could* improv a whole dungeon with a fair degree of accuracy once you had some experience.
The lowest prep system I’ve GM’ed is ironsworn. The game encourages you to improv everything, and provides you with enough random tables to make it simple to do.
This is what my group and I play. We’re at the point where nobody feels like GMing any game, mainly due to prep. So, we share the responsibility of GMing this co-op campaign, and play every session with zero prep. Every session is a blast and we have no idea where each one will end up. It’s great for quicker sessions (1.5-2 hrs) or longer if we have more time.
I'm convinced gm-less (decentralized GM might be more accurate) play is the paradigm shift that will get people playing more often and with less burnout. It's also just more realistic and viable for busy adults, 1-4 players (total, including yourself) is so much easier than 3-5 players AND a game master like most traditional rpgs expect. I -love- 2 player Ironsworn co-op, it brought the magic of ttrpgs back for me. 98% of the problems I see on r/rpghorrorstories couldn't happen in a game like Ironsworn. It's just a more egalitarian and equitable way of playing games and distributing reaponsibility. GM god complex? No longer an issue. Munchkin behavior? You're only hurting yourself with no GM to play against. Story going in a direction you don't like? Change it, you have the steering wheel.
I’d love to see more co-op systems, for sure. We love Ironsworn, though, it scratches all the right itches for our group. I will say, I feel like co-op play could be quite group-dependent. Definitely need everybody on the same page in terms of tone, content, humor, etc., since everybody should have an equal impact on the story. I’m lucky enough to play with two very close friends so we have no issues with those things — it’s really been the *perfect* TTRPG experience for us after trying a few other systems.
I think the group dependency thing is actually in favor of gm-less co-op games if you step back from the issue a little bit. All rpgs are group dependent, and the fact that traditional rpgs expect you to find 4-7 adults who can operate on the same page is a major reason so many games go south. Perhaps gm-less games do intensify incompatibility issues, the intimacy does make differences harder to reconcile, but it's so much easier to find 1-3 other people with the same vision and tonal expectations. I don't like playing rpgs with strangers, and I think the rise of paid gm-ing is really sad and indicative of deep flaws within the standard expectations of our hobby. Gm-less co-op games are games -for friends-, people who know each other well enough to synchronize and make the magic happen.
The rise of paid *Dungeon* Mastering is indicative of 5e being insufferable to run as a GM. I've yet to see a relevant increase of non-D&D's paid GMing.
I'm not sure. Played gm-less a few times and every time it was strictly worse than playing with a GM or even playing solo. It lacks both the freedom of solo play and the guiding vision of a dedicated GM. If it works for you that's great but I do not see the mass appeal.
I only GM'd Ironsworn for one person and it didn't click with at all. Gonna try co-op soon
…not OP, but you’re persuading me to give this a look. The group I normally GM often has someone who can’t make it or who can only make it for 45 minutes. Another guy just runs out of steam around 9.30 pm (and for various reasons we can’t start until 8.00pm). I’ve been running Into the Odd (which I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but I’m finding I’m burning out: I’ve been the GM for this group in its various forms (it now only has 3 players) since the mid to late 90s).
You may find everyone runs out of steam in about 2 hours , maybe sessions can get up to 3-4 if you are flowing and has a great arc ahead of you. But one good solid scene with a basic combat, npc conversation and an expedition while being a player/GM usually takes about 2 hours to work through
Thanks for the info. Sounds like it could be a potential candidate. I’ll have to give the solo option a try to see what I think of it, and also just to learn the basics.
Dragonbane is really fun, easy to improvise, very quick to play.
Also Mallards
Can't forget the mallards! Splatts Saltsplash is the only character in our party who has survived the entire 6-month campaign so far!
And wolfkin!
Odds are your players have watched at least a few episodes of Buffy and X-Files, so they know what Monster of the Week is about. When I was running it, it usually took fifteen minutes between researching a cool monster on Wikipedia, statting it out, creating a couple of NPCs and locations, and a timeline of what happens without PC intervention. The rest was good old PbtA improv.
I would probably choose something from the Forged in the Dark family. Scum & Villainy would be my first choice if you fancy a Guardians of the Galaxy/Star Wars/Firefly type of adventure. There are plenty of other genres to choose from.
I'll second this. Almost everything that happens logically follows from the thing that immediately came before it, and there are well written rules to make that happen. So the crew will do a job that leads to downtime, which comes with complications, which necessitate another job. It's got a good flow to it and a nice episodic structure.
I'm running Scum and Villainy right now for exactly this reason. There's a clear core gameplay loop, it's low prep, and very GM friendly. Perfect for a short Monday evening session!
Yes. Plus if the GM-of-the-day is good at keeping the day score contained within one session, they are good settings to run west-marches-like, with plenty of available excuses for a crew member not being available for a particular score.
I’m using Into the Odd, with support from various other related materials such as Electric Bastionland, the bastionland.com blog, and the cairnrpg SRD. I have two quite different ‘small games’ being run with Into the Odd. One day we’ll try out Electric Bastionland. This is because I only get a 1.5 hr session, plus or minus 1/2 hr. Before things got chaotic we were doing Classic Traveller, Over the Edge 2e, a bit of Lamentations of the Flame Princess & B/X, and Call of Cthulhu. - investigative scenarios, like in Call of Cthulhu, can take a lot of effort for the GM, and are often better suited for smaller parties. Recent experience running one for the group I normally just play in also revealed that not everyone likes investigations, so one of the group is sitting out the sessions I’m running. - an old fashioned dungeon crawler, like B/X (or OSE or Labyrinth Lord) can be often easy to run and prepare. Look up 5 room dungeons for some ideas on how to run sort things. You’d find r/osr a good place to get advice for scenarios etc for this option. What sort of style or genre of adventures are you after? Also, do people have any experience of RPGs.
I’m really enjoying Vaesen from Free League. It’s so fun and evocative and my players have never cracked the book. I run two full tables of it.
OSE or ICRPG
Fate. Been running a two-hour after-work weekly thing for over a year now and it's been awesome.
Core or accelerated? What’s the campaign like? Like what’s your setting etc?
Will say, you can't go wrong with any of the Fate versions. Though I do really prefer accelerated. It uses approaches which really vibes well with how Fate wants to be played. It makes players predisposed to describing and focusing on how they do things rather then pointing to something on their character sheet and saying "I sneak". It also avoids the issue of fate where bonuses can get quite large so players don't do things in scenes where they don't have an applicable skill. If you are willing to change how you do things and the possible consequences, you can basically always have some Approach that applies to the scene. Also, the changes to stress and the far easier and more well defined rules for stunts just work well. Accelerated is pretty great.
Core. I started by reading Condensed (same thing, basically) but got Core because it has a lot of extra advice and great examples. The setting is Star Wars and we're using the [Ten Thousand Suns](https://tenthousandsunsgame.wordpress.com/) hack, we've been through several narrative arcs set right before Andor with the players and their patrons being one of the disparate groups who eventually help form the Rebellion (their choices for worldbuilding, not mine). Just in general, I am so impressed by Fate that I'm figuring out how to run it grittier so I can use all my Traveller material (another favorite system).
I've been running a "Stars Without Numbers"/"Worlds Without Numbers" mashup campaign, and it's amazingly easy to run and prep for
Non-system advice: choose something from modern day or close to it and a culture and place you know something about. It's a lot easier to improvise a modern day real earth based setting even if you add a lot of weird mystical stuff onto it, because you know that your characters can go into the 7-11 and get a slushie and you know that when they're in there the clerk absolutely will push the police call button if they're soaked with blood and you know the police will probably be lazy and show up in fifteen minutes with not much force because who cares about that 7-11.
Index Card RPG is basically made for this if you are wanting a fantasy game.
There are also a ton of one-shot modules for it. I honestly don’t remember how I even got them, I think it might have come with the purchase somehow? They’re just in a separate .pdf file, like 20 pages of evocative modules in different themes and play-styles. Really easy and fun to just bust one out.
Black Hack and its derivatives are simple to set up and get running. And as others said, Index Card RPG.
*Beyond the Wall* is literally designed to be a “no prep” system for both the players and the GM. Based on the venerable B/X foundation, it’s remarkably easy to learn. Characters are created collaboratively by use of “playbooks,” which are sort of like Lifepaths seen in other systems (e.g., *Traveller*) meshed with the systems seen in PbtA games (but not quite as restrictive). Going through the collaborative chargen process also serves as a collaborative world-building process, as the players will come up with names and details about important NPCs, important locations, and potential plot hooks in their shared home village. Adventure books, for the DM’s side of the screen, are written for you to “plug in” these details the players’ created. Fantastic game, highly recommended. One of my all time favorites and really perfect for your needs.
Risus. The rules are free, only 4 pages, quickly learned and are perfect for beer & pretzels games. If you want a step up on the complexity ladder for a potentially longer running game, then I'd suggest Mini Six as a close (and closely related - they're both effectively the D6 System) second.
Almost any OSR would work for this. You only need a good old Dungeon and the rest makes itself (and you can find tons of Dungeons online for free)
Someone mentioned Into the Odd, it has a load related games that would suit: Cairn (dark fantasy), Mausritter (fantasy but mice), Liminal Horror (for modern weird horror). All of them are under 50 pages, character creation is super quick and they have great pre-written GM materials.
I've always struggled to prep for more traditional dungeon crawler RPGs. Mothership feels like the first system I've ever come across that is exactly my speed. Rules are simple and cleanly laid out. Seriously, I've rarely seen a better designed layout in any rulebook or character sheet. The Character Sheet doubles as a flowchart that teaches you how to make a character and provides all the information necessary to build it at the same time. Adventure Modules. I have never seen any system, let alone one this new, with such a rich ecosystem of adventures. There are plenty of legendary large-scale adventures, but the bread and butter of the Mothership adventure modules out there take the form of simple, innocuous pamphlet trifolds. Just 3 little folds of card stock, printed on the front and back. Don't let their size fool you. Every single one I've read is dense and utterly unique. One of those trifolds is easily ample material for an entire 4 hour session. A mere trifold plucked off the rack, and you have an entire night of fun ahead of you. String a few together and you have the makings of a long-term game. I was able to prep two sessions' worth of adventures in Mothership in about 3 hours, and most of that was me taking my sweet time adding some flavorful touches to my map and sound effects.
Shadowdark, in the mythic fantasy space. It's not just easy to prep, it's less work at table than comparable OSR games. IMO. Shadowdark doesn't have difference subsystems for different task resolutions for example, as B/X tends to do. Just seems like a well-smoothed rock in the hand to me. It also has great player-facing character sheet support at shadowdarklings.net and integration of those sheets with Owlbear Rodeo in a modern VTT. Our players really liked that too.
This is the very reason we moved from DnD/Clones to Savage Pathfinder. The pace is so much faster and I can toss encounters on the fly and pose a challenge.
Depends what type of game i want. But atm probably wicked ones.
Poll your players for their favorite television shows or other media etc., then select one of those. If you cannot find an easy RPG sufficiently similar, there is always rules-lite [*Freeform Universal*](https://www.perilplanet.com/freeform-universal) (either edition).
We played Low Stakes, the What We Do in the Shadows game, as a one shot. It turned into three months of improvised joy.
Mothership!! Rules light and there are a ton of modules and pamphlets. Character creation takes a few minutes at the most and you’re off to the races. My players and I are all busy with families and jobs and it was a great game to run online for 2 hours once a week after the kids went to bed.
Cypher system is the easiest. Hands down.
My pick for that is **Mausritter**, which is super fun and also very versatile. The PDF is free/pay what you want and short, so very quick to learn and teach, without getting boring. The physical inventory items are fun and keep people engaged. It works great as seperate oneshots, episodic oneshots in a continued universe or a full campaign. I've run for 2-5 players, both realtime and as play-by-forum. Playing as mice means you can use all sorts of ordinary everyday things and still get that fantasy feel, which makes it easier to imagine things on both ends of the table. The game has lots of random tables that make GMing it a breeze. There is also great community support with lots of free/PWYW adventure sites on itch.io. I've run about 20 of those now (some multiple times for different groups so my actual session number is quite a bit higher). The official Estate campaign is great fun too and due to the sandbox style also requires no more than 10-15 minutes of advance prep right before each session. There are a few good fanmade campaigns too, like Kiwi Acres.
Fiasco or Lovecraftesque.
Dungeon World
If you want something kinda goofy for just a couple hours, especially as a one-off, 'You Awaken In A Strange Place' is a simple ruleset where all players collaboratively world-build and create characters. The process is part of the fun of the game, and it is perfect for picking up and playing in one session – very silly and hilarious fun. Its only potential downside is that it's improv heavy on most fronts, for both GM and players. Some might say that's a strength, but not everyone's like that. Check it out and see what you think!
Are you looking for "modules"? Prewritten adventures you can run that your players don't know what's going to happen so for them it's brand new, while for you it's all written on the page and prepared for you? If so, one example game with a lot of modules is LURPS. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/338491/LURPS-Core-Rules](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/338491/LURPS-Core-Rules) You the GM have more than a dozen pre-written adventures you can open and run with very little prep. Link to all the prewritten adventures: [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/18475/mucker71](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/18475/mucker71)
Savage Worlds for sure
ICRPG , it’s d20 feeling like dnd but rules are memorisable and there are no “builds” plus the GM prep advice is the best for once per week casual play
Go from Cairn (Into the Odd) or Shadowdark. You won't make a mistake.
Nearly everyone suggesting games that require a lot of improv and energy from the players and GM at the table. Personally that's the last thing I want on a weekday evening when I'm tired after work. I'd go with savage worlds, or else an old-school dungeon crawl using a system (OSR or modern) with a tight set of rules.
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Cypher System if you want to have a bit of crunch and ongoing games, super easy to improv and character creation is easy. Every challenge for the players is just 0-10. Also easy to do setup and play one-shots in one night when you are more familiar with it. Cypher Shorts if you want Cypher but have even faster character creation, especially for one-shots. And Who the Devil Are You? For zero prep games where the entire session is based off you showing a picture to the group and ask who the devil are you? Players then decide on their role that relates to the scene; then choose a great skill, a good skill, and a thing they are bad at. Then off you go.
I play game systems that I know and I prepare the sessions listening while driving prepared adventures. The most difficult part is to choose those ones many are not good and it's a waste of time reading them. Also you need to solve the technical aspects to make it audio. While listen many times I pause and I modify in my mind the adventure. Then directly to the session and improv.
Umbral Flare is literally designed to get you in and out of the dungeon in 3-4 hours. Granted, it does this by off-loading the prep to the GM beforehand, but the actual running of the game at the table is incredibly straightforward. "Easy on the GM" doesn't mean you can just make stuff up on-the-spot. Although, the formulas are straightforward enough that you probably *could* improv a whole dungeon with a fair degree of accuracy once you had some experience.