Seven tables, one engine

Competent people with complicated lives. Your flaws are mechanically valuable, which is the whole point.

Narrative-first play built on aspects, skills rated on a ladder, and four fudge dice. Success is measured in shifts, and the interesting results are the ties and the costly wins.

One turn

Roll four fudge dice, add your skill, beat the target. Ties and costly wins are where the story lives.

Best for

Long campaigns with people who keep making the same beautiful mistakes.

Weight

Medium · Any genre with a premise

Iron, cold, and promises you should not have made. You will keep them anyway.

Sworn vows in a harsh land. An action die races two challenge dice, and the weak hit, success that costs you, is where the game actually lives. Oracle tables make it the natural fit for solo play.

One turn

An action die against two challenge dice. A miss is not a wall, it is a complication.

Best for

Grim solo fantasy where the vow is the engine of the story.

Weight

Medium · Grim fantasy

Dark, dangerous woods. You are not a hero, you are a person with a lantern, ten inventory slots, and reasons to be careful.

A rules-light OSR fantasy game. Three abilities, d20 roll-under saves, attacks that always land, and death that arrives quietly through accumulated wounds rather than a dramatic failure.

One turn

Roll under your ability to act, or the DM rolls under the danger. Attacks always hit; the question is what it costs.

Best for

Dungeon crawls where survival is the story and the slots are the strategy.

Weight

Featherweight · Dark fantasy

The one everybody already knows the shape of. Bring a character sheet and a grudge.

The familiar d20 engine: six ability scores, a d20 plus a modifier against a Difficulty Class, advantage and disadvantage, hit points and conditions.

One turn

Roll a d20 plus a modifier against a Difficulty Class. Meet it or beat it.

Best for

Players who already know the shape of it. The most familiar option by far.

Weight

Heavy · Heroic fantasy

The captain is down and the ship is drifting toward something enormous. Everyone is competent, nobody is prepared.

A one-page science-fiction game. Your character is a single number from 2 to 5. Low is good at LASERS (technology, cold logic); high is good at FEELINGS (intuition, passion, diplomacy). You cannot be good at both.

One turn

Roll d6s and count those under your number for LASERS, over it for FEELINGS.

Best for

One-shots and short arcs. A character is literally one number.

Weight

Featherweight · Space opera, one-shots

Whatever you want it to be. Point it at any genre and it works.

One d6 answers any question about what happens, on a six-step ladder from "no, and" through to "yes, and". The universal fallback when no other system fits the table's idea.

One turn

Ask a yes or no question, roll 1d6, read the ladder from "no, and" to "yes, and".

Best for

Any genre, or when no other system fits what the table wants. The floor everything stands on.

Weight

Featherweight · Anything at all

Cheap ships, worse contracts, and a crew that will absolutely take the job anyway.

An ultra-light science-fiction engine. Skills are die sizes, not numbers: roll the die your training gives you and read the highest face. One roll, three outcomes, no arithmetic.

One turn

Roll the die your training gives you, d6 untrained up to d12 expert, and read the highest face.

Best for

Fast sci-fi jobs. A whole session with no arithmetic at all.

Weight

Featherweight · Science fiction