First rules-light roleplaying game?

[thrash]

I have been thinking about the recent thread on OSR.

One of the more debatable claims of the OSR movement is that what they describe was at the time a well-defined, intentionally simple and flexible style of play. My recollection is that this is historical revisionism, making a virtue of necessity: there just weren't rules for every (or even most) situations, and what there were didn't always work. As the hobby developed, the trend for many years was towards more rules, more preparation, more complexity. OSR is one of several responses to that trend.

Which leads to my question: what is the oldest role-playing game that explicitly and deliberately offered itself as simple, rules-light, low-prep, or pick-up-and-play? Obviously, many of the oldest games had these qualities by default -- this is the argument the OSR makes in their favor. I'm interested in what game first made the self-conscious decision to advertise this style of play as an alternative to increasing crunch.

Pencil-and-paper, tabletop roleplaying games only, please. Boardgames and LARPs are equally out of order, unless they resulted in a tabletop RPG adaptation. I will otherwise try to avoid "one true Scotsman"-type objections. I'm mostly just curious how far back this idea goes.

[sjard]

First to come to my mind is TWERPS, billed as "The Worlds Easiest Role-Playing System" from '87.

Not sure how much a more or less joke system counts though.

[Anthony]

Toon(1984) was certainly designed rules-light, by philosophy rather than accident, but I don't know if it was specifically an advertising point (the version offered by SJG is apparently copyright 1991 so unclear what first printing was like, but it has a header "Who needs a bunch of rules? let's play!" in its table of contents).

[dcarson]

Last line on back blurb from what I think is first printing.

TOON is quick, simple, and fun. Ready to get silly? Get in TOON -- and be a cartoon star!

[Anthony]

Checking the preview for 1st edition T&T (1975), in the 'troll talk' section, there's a sentence:

(2) the game could be simplified and changed in concept to replace the best parts of the original idea with better ideas substituted for the things I didn't like about D&D

I doubt there's going to be an earlier contender.

[ckosacranoid]

BESM 2nd ed is very ruled light and very easy to learn and play. I Can not recall just how many campaigns my old group did over 10 years in the system.
Everything from magic, superheroes, street racing games, sci-fi, horror, star ship also.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by sjard

Not sure how much a more or less joke system counts though.

It certainly counts as a reductionist take on RPGs.

Originally Posted by Anthony

Toon(1984) was certainly designed rules-light, ...

I'm not familiar with Toon, so that's an interesting datum. There does seem to be a thread connecting humorous games with light rules: Mike Pondsmith's Teenagers from Outer Space (1987) says (p. 2), "There are very few rules in this game..." and throws shade at other games with "2,676 pages of closely packed tables with arcane references to 'protoplasmic systemic shock damage'..."

Does Paranoia (1984) talk about a rules-light approach, or just make fun of games that tend in the opposite direction?

Originally Posted by Anthony

Checking the preview for 1st edition T&T (1975), in the 'troll talk' section, there's a sentence:

I doubt there's going to be an earlier contender.

I wondered about T&T, but didn't have an early edition to check. I agree, though, that we've probably got our winner -- especially for not-explicitly-humorous games.