Comment Try Savage Worlds! (Score 1) 221
Savage Worlds from http://www.peginc.com/ is exactly what you're after. It provides a fantastic play experience with easy to learn, yet comprehensive rules. It's extremely newbie-friendly without being lightweight. It was designed to accomplish everything other games do without their unnecessary rules bloat, slow gameplay and long preparation times. I've been gaming for 23 years and played scores of rpgs and find Savage Worlds peerless. I simply can't bring myself to run any other game than SW now. It certainly lives up to its motto of "Fast! Furious! Fun!".
You'll also appreciate the fact that it does all this in a single rulebook that covers almost every conceivable genre. That's right, you can use Savage Worlds to play fantasy, sci fi, horror, supers, WW2, modern espionage or whatever else takes your fancy. The game's system is robust enough to cover them all in style. It's also a simple matter to convert your favourite game world/book/tv series/movie/whatever to these rules and have a blast immersing yourself in their worlds. Check out the conversions others have made already at http://www.savageheroes.com/ for scores of (freely downloadable) examples of this. The online community for SW is the friendliest I've come across and there's a LOT of cool stuff available on the net to help you out with this game.
Anyway, don't just take my word for it, you can download the FREE Test Drive rules now and give it a crack!
http://www.peginc.com/Games/Savage%20Worlds/DownlIf you're after some fantasy adventures to play using the Test Drive, try these
"The Legend of Jub Jub Lake"
http://www.savageheroes.com/adventures/JUB%20JUB%
... and if you'd like a taster of some of the rules from the main book that don't get mentioned in the Test Drive, grab these two files:
http://www.peginc.com/Games/Savage%20Worlds/DownlFor more free adventures in different genres and other cool stuff visit http://www.dragonsfoot.org/sw/ and http://www.sharkbytes.info/
