Any good rules light Fairy Tale games?

[Raine_Sage]

Hey, I know this might be a bit of a niche but I was wondering if you guys could recommend any good rules light games that could support fairytale adventures. A something that's a little disney whimsy, a little brothers grimm bloody, a little hans christian anderson wtf.

One of my friends expressed interest in DMing but doesn't want to have to finagle a lot of tables and combat mechanics and numbers, hence asking for rules light, or at least with the math applied more or less uniformly to make it easier to keep track of.

Systems already familiar:
White wolf (a little too crunchy but doable)
FATE (a little light on crunch but supremely flexible.)

[Grinner]

If I may hazard a suggestion, you may consider Urban Faerie. It's quite rules-light, though I wouldn't term it lighthearted. It's less "Cinderella" and more "Cinderella gets chewed up and spat out by the big city".

[Friv]

I think I am legally obliged to put in a plug for the best fairy-tale game I've played to date:

Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.

It's a diceless game, but it is not a crunch-less game; the crunch is, however, entirely narrative - you get experience for undergoing character moments, triggering 'quest actions' from the stories that you are currently a part of, and growing up, and you determine if you can succeed at actions through a combination of how skilled you are, and how important success is to you (you have a small pool of Will to boost your skills). It is pretty much amazing, although it is a little hard to grok at first.

[Airk]

I think I am legally obliged to put in a plug for the best fairy-tale game I've played to date:

Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.

It's a diceless game, but it is not a crunch-less game; the crunch is, however, entirely narrative - you get experience for undergoing character moments, triggering 'quest actions' from the stories that you are currently a part of, and growing up, and you determine if you can succeed at actions through a combination of how skilled you are, and how important success is to you (you have a small pool of Will to boost your skills). It is pretty much amazing, although it is a little hard to grok at first.

Holy crap, you mean we can actually BUY that now? It's about damn time. :P

[Friv]

Holy crap, you mean we can actually BUY that now? It's about damn time. :P

Well... yes and no. And actually, I should have prefaced my statement.

The EPUB version of the game is available for sale, but there was some layout problem that has delayed the PDF and print versions. So you can pick the game up, but only in digital format.

Still, it is totally worth it.

*EDIT* And as far as delays go, I barely even noticed. I backed Exalted 3rd Edition, after all. :p

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Totally seconding Chuubo's!

Heroine would be another great option.

[Raine_Sage]

I've been trying to find more info on the mechanics of Chuubo, but from what I can tell the game comes with a very involved prepackaged narrative. How friendly is it to homebrew settings?

[Geostationary]

The setting is actually pretty/entirely dispensable! Really so long as you're interested in telling the sorts of stories the system was made for, most any setting can work- some of the first games played with it were adaptations of Homestuck for instance. While I definitely recommend the packaged setting, the system can very easily be adapted to existant or homebrew settings.

Anyways, the resolution mechanics are a modified version of Nobilis' core system, so it is diceless with a blind bidding component. The big thing however is the XP system. Characters gain XP through taking actions described by various Quests they're on- these are pretty open-ended and often include things like "theorizing about the underlying situation" and things like that, though there are more specific conditions. Each Quest has a bevy of options. Once you gain enough XP in a given Quest, you complete it and gain what are technically temporary benefits. All your XP also contributes towards your Arc, which describes the general narrative arc you've determined your character to be on; once these complete you gain permanent benefits and get "more powerful". You also gain free-floating XP by taking actions appropriate to the Genre you're playing in or through inciting a particular emotion in your fellow players (the players, not the PCs). For instance, in the game I'm in I can gain XP through the amused disdain of the other players, often through really bad puns.

So that's a basic description. If I've gotten anything wrong/missed anything, please correct me.

[CombatOwl]

Hey, I know this might be a bit of a niche but I was wondering if you guys could recommend any good rules light games that could support fairytale adventures. A something that's a little disney whimsy, a little brothers grimm bloody, a little hans christian anderson wtf.

One of my friends expressed interest in DMing but doesn't want to have to finagle a lot of tables and combat mechanics and numbers, hence asking for rules light, or at least with the math applied more or less uniformly to make it easier to keep track of.

Systems already familiar:
White wolf (a little too crunchy but doable)
FATE (a little light on crunch but supremely flexible.)

Fate is a good choice for anything that isn't strictly about tactical combat. If your fairy tale adventure is about going to fairyland and murdering everything in your path, it's probably a bad choice. Otherwise, it's a pretty good one. If you want to do "regular humans go to fairy land", Fate Accelerated would work even better.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

An interesting feature of Chuubo's: I played in a short game of it, and we rarely engaged with the conflict resolution system. Instead, most of the focus was on engaging with the XP system, which gives you tangible progress when you advance certain types of thematic tones in the story.

Chuubo's is the game where having a slice-of-life scene with a fisherman by the docks will progress your character.

[Socratov]

While the examples don't suggest it outright, the rules admit that you just do whatever you pretty much want to do.

And it's free to boot!

Of course I'm talking about Anima Prime RPG

Just refluff the powers to disney/grimm style, and the tell tale signs to the standard hero/villain signs (you know, heroes with shiny teeth, villains with an evil look). Go nuts, the rules literally endorse the rules of cool and awesome.