Rules-lite fantasy system?

[Grod_The_Giant]

I would not by any means refer to M&M as anything but rules-heavy. >.> It is literally a laundry list of rules for how to build superpowers by combining rules and subrules together.

I'll go ahead and also vouch for Dungeon World. If what you want is basically to get to the end and have something like an HBO Fantasy tv series, then Dungeon World is the way to go.

I call it "rules medium" because it's crunchy, but not finicky or memorization-heavy in the same way that, say, 3.5 D&D is. You can build straightforward characters quite easily, as the rules for each effect (and there aren't that many, and a good portion of them are situational) include all the modifiers you'd expect to need. Besides, it sounds like whisperwind1's complaint is about rigidity, rather than complexity-- they mentioned disliking how vague FAE characters are, for instance-- and M&M is all about flexibility-without-being-vague.

As for Dungeon World, unless it's been significantly tweaked from the version of Apocalypse World I played (which doesn't seem likely, based on Friv's summary), it has a major tone difference from traditional RPGs: the expectation is failure, and plot progression by "failing forward." You will screw up fairly consistently, with nasty, nasty consequences throughout. Which can be fun, but it's a drastic departure from many other games.