Picking a game for a skype campaign

[Yora]

I am seriously considering running a short campaign with some friends from all over the world over the summer using skype and some virtual tabletop. Getting that all set up is relatively easy.

But with potentially some players who never played any RPGs before, I think Pathfinder might not be such a great choice. Some D&D retroclone might be somewhat easier to run, but I'm not ecactly a fan of those.

Dragon Age might do the job quite well since it's easily explained and doesn't have a lot of different mechanics, and I think I should be able to help people with character creation without pointing where to put the numbers on the character sheet.

But I am wondering if anyone else has other suggestions for a good system. The only other one I know is RISUS, which would work well, but might actually be a bit too simple.

What I need is a relatively simple game that does a Conan-style setting reasonably well. If mages have a handful straightforward spells, that will do just fine, without any need for fancy magic items and the like.
Maybe Warrior Rogue Mage? I've taken a look at that one some years ago and it didn't seem quite bad.

[Arkhosia]

Personally, I would say the 4e rules are quite good (also, being a more combat-oriented edition helps with the setting )
The only drawback is the fact that 4e is hard for players of previous editions to adjust to.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Savage Worlds? It's pretty straightforwards, and is built explicitly for Conan-style pulp-y action.

[Fri]

As you might already know from my own thread, I'm planning to play old school hack (http://www.oldschoolhack.net/) for a group of never been playing people. Maybe you could do the same (and test it for me )

[LimeSkeleton]

I'd agree with Grod in saying that Savage Worlds is a good system, especially for pulp adventure/action. Character creation is really easy to manage and it technically doesn't even need a battle-grid, although it definitely helps.

Another choice for a more cinematic game would be some version of FATE, such as the newly-released FATE Core. Rules Lite and excellent for Skype games, I'd highly recommend it for just about any sort of game. I've been running an online FATE Core campaign to great success thus far. The only problem is that some more "rules-lawyer-y" players have a difficult time grasping the spirit of the system, as it is very much focused on the narrative as opposed to mechanical bonuses and crunchy hack/slash.

[Yora]

D&D 4th and 2nd Edition are already bit too complicated for my taste. 1st Edition is... strange. With it's elf and dwarf class and characters being disposable. Never did it for me.

Fate Core combines strange dice rolling, a token pool, and defines characters by ideals and drama hooks. While it looks like a decent game for what it does, I think it's a strong contender for being the game that combines the most elements that I don't like in a game system.

Savage Worlds I hadn't been thinking of. I'll look this up.

[LimeSkeleton]

Hmmm. If you're not a fan of token pools, you may not like Savage Worlds. A big mechanic of the system includes "Bennies", which are Fate Point-esque boosts handed out at the beginning of a session and by the GM.

[Yora]

That seems just like 3 action points you can use to reroll a check per session. That's not really much of a problem.

But the whole thing with Edges and Hinderances seems to make things rather complicated. And actually, it doesn't really look simpler than d20...

Guess it has to be Pathfinder anyway...

[Grod_The_Giant]

But the whole thing with Edges and Hinderances seems to make things rather complicated. And actually, it doesn't really look simpler than d20...

Not really. Edges are feats, and Hindrances are flaws. They do pretty simple things, in general-- no penalty for two-weapon fighting, +2 charisma, stuff like that. And I would say that while the framework is about the same level of complexity as d20, the characters are so much simpler that everything flows much, much faster.