Ok So, I Am In The Process Of Learning How To DM And I Really Like The World Of Dnd, But I Wanted To

Ok so, I am in the process of learning how to DM and I really like the world of dnd, but I wanted to know if they are other ttrpgs that have simpler mechanics (like, not as much calculating is needed and keeping track of things is simpler?)

Oh, plenty of them; apart from perhaps for some of the earliest pre-First Edition material, even the most rules-light version of Dungeons & Dragons is pretty firmly on the medium-heavy end of the spectrum.

(Some people will insist that D&D5E is “rules light”. Do not listen to them; it’s one of the lighter iterations of D&D in particular, but it’s still quite rules-heavy by the standards of tabletop RPGs in general.)

If our only criterion is “lighter than D&D”, I could probably name a hundred games in my personal collection alone that fit the bill, so we’re going to have to narrow it down! In the absence of further guidance, I’m going to assume that we’re still aiming for D&D’s general idiom – i.e., games about a bunch of wandering misfits killing monsters and taking their stuff in a vaguely Western European fantasy milieu (as opposed to, say, games where you play as a living city arguing about politics with a robot patent clerk from outer space) – and that we’d prefer a traditional roll-the-dice-to-do-the-thing framework.

First off, if you want to stick as close to the conventional D&D experience as possible, you might have a look at Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures. It’s a simplified variant of OD&D (i.e., from way back before they started numbering the editions) with a novel “zero prep” approach that combines character creation with setting creation. Basically, instead of picking a race and a class and whatnot, you have a set of “playbooks” (six in the core rules, with more available as free downloads) that walk you through a series of questions and random tables that define your character’s personal history. Your abilities and stat modifiers and such come from your answers to those questions. Certain stages in each playbook also instruct you to add a location or NPC of your own devising to the village map; once the whole group has finished creating characters, you’ll also have collaboratively described and mapped out the town they live in, and set up several adventure hooks for your first session.

On the other hand, maybe you’re not much for this newfangled collaborative worldbuilding stuff, and you’re more about D&D’s “multiplayer chess with exploding pieces” approach to combat. In that case, you could check out Hero Kids. Though it’s designed as an introductory title for younger gamers, it’s also a pretty effective pick-up-and-play game for any group if you’re looking to run a casual dungeon crawl. It’s actually pretty remarkable how it manages to boil the complexities of D&D’s battle grid down to something a six-year-old can understand while retaining most of the subtle positional tactics. The big caveat is that, as the game’s title suggests, your group has to be cool with a YA fantasy tone, rather than the more fashionable dungeonpunk stuff.

(If you’d prefer to split the difference and go for a rules-light game that has both a more mature high fantasy tone and a tactical combat focus, you might instead have a look at Tiny Dungeon 2nd Edition. I’m not putting it on the main list because it’s written with the assumption that anyone running it is already an experienced GM, and consequently it’s very light on GM guidance in many areas; this makes it a somewhat steeper learning curve than either of the preceding titles. Still one to keep in mind for later, though.)

Finally, to range further afield, you could have a look at Dungeon World. This one adopts a fully modularised approach, whereby each character class takes the form of a self-contained playbook that includes all of the rules for that class. The dice and path are thus almost entirely player-facing; as a GM, you never roll, and apart from a handful of basic moves – which are brief enough that you can print them out and keep them on the table in front of you – you generally doesn’t have to keep track of numeric resources or complex rules toys. It’s pretty much perfect for GMs who never want to do math ever again.

(A caution, though: while Dungeon World is mechanics-light and math-light from the GM’s perspective, it is not rules-light as such. Instead of dice and numbers, the GM has a complex set of narrative principles and guidelines that shape how you describe the outcomes of players’ actions. It’s very different from running most other dungeon-crawling RPGs, and folks with a D&D background may find it a challenging adjustment. I’m not saying this to discourage, but to advise: if decide to give it a spin, resist the urge to skim the text, as many of your existing assumptions about how to run the show may not be applicable. On the plus side, its instructions regarding how to run the game are very detailed, far moreso than anything else discussed in this post, and those instructions don’t make many assumptions about prior GM experience.)