Happy Father’s Day to all those who celebrate. (Happy Pride Month, too.)

5. Dungeons & Dragons (Any edition.)
Dad will know the older editions better in many cases. This game is an obvious choice due to being the “World’s Most Popular Game” or the “World’s Most Recognizable RPG.” Obviously, if you’re a dad looking for a game to play with the kids, 5E is probably easier to find. Character creations ranges from fast (older editions) to more involved (4 and 5E) If nothing else, the 5.1 SRD gives someone enough to create basic characters and play the game for a few hours with little to no investment needed. There are countless prewritten adventures online if you need a quick one to run.

4. Champions.
This is probably the oldest and most recognizable superhero TTRPG. The PDF is available on DriveThruRPG here. Character creation is a little more complicated than some games, but it’s still fairly easy. The game uses d6’s, so that’s an added bonus. It’s a supers game, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we old timers will definitely recognize the game. Supers games are fast and easy for a 2-4 hours and I hear that Spider-Man movie is pretty popular right now, making this a good time to get into supers gaming.

3. Power Rangers/GI Joe/Transformers TTRPG.
I might catch some grief for recommending this from some of the older crowd out there. Sorry. I love Renegade Game Studios and I make no secret of that fact. Older dads especially can get behind one/all of the games listed because we grew up watching one or all of these on TV. The Essence20 system is easy to learn or teach depending. I love all three of these games. Yes, Essence20 is new. The rules to Essence20 are loosely based on those of a very popular TTRPG mentioned above. There’s even a My Little Pony Essence20 game if the other three are too rough and tumble for some audiences.

2. Fudge/FATE
I was trying to think of games that are easy to learn or easy to teach. It doesn’t get much easier that FATE. It’s Pay What You Wish for download here. Other versions of it are available in SRD form or even for free depending on where you look. You don’t have to have the fancy dice. Any old d6’s will do the job. Both sets of core rules are adaptable to any genre or setting, making it easy to run a fast pickup game.

There are literally dozens of games that probably deserve honorable mention. Dads will probably gravitate toward the games that were big in the 80’s. The younger generation, especially those who started on Critical Role will probably want to run/play the D&D 5E or possibly Pathfinder 2E. There are literally dozens of other games I’ll talk about sometime in the future that we’ll cover. There are plenty of TTRPGs to be found in the world.

NUMBER 1: Old School Essentials
Really any set of Old School Renaissance rules will work. I like OSE because it covers B/X and AD&D to an extent. There are a lot of similar OSR style games available for free download such as Swords & Wizardry Lite and Basic Fantasy Roleplaying. Personally, I like OSE Advanced Fantasy for the old style character classes, simplicity of character creation, and the fact that it’s all contained in two very well laid out books. With the monsters in the GM’s Tome it’s easy to make a challenging dungeon that will last for 4-6 hours or even create a campaign that can span years.
Any way you slice it, dear old gamer dad will love to sit down to a taste of the good old days, and the kids can be introduced to a new, simple, fun TTRPG. In a similar vein to OSE, I’d also like to give a big shout out to Dungeon Crawl Classics from Goodman Games. DCC really brings back that old school feel of the glorious B/X days when dungeons were memorable and deadly to characters. The advantage a lot of OSR games have, aside from simplicity, is their ability to be loosely compatible with one another. Old School Essentials is an absolute treasure in those regards.

Thanks for stopping by today. I appreciate it. I hope you’re having a great day wherever you are, whatever you’re doing.