Savage Worlds

[orcinator]

Rusty's rule is garbage.

It's also irrelevant since this is a mid-crunch system.

but mainly the back-and-forth bennies stuff.

Oddly common misconception, fate and/or genesis works like that but not Savage Worlds since the opposing sides' welfare pools don't affect each other outside of very specific abilities.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

OD&D: There are a whole bunch of "retro-clone" systems out there that are basically OD&D or some variation of it. These systems work well enough for dungeon crawls and even hex crawls, and sometimes even bring with them some good "set pieces" such as cool spells, character abilities, monsters and whatnot. These games tend to work well although they leave it up to the DM to give meaningful impact to the player's actions.

Traveller: The original Traveller has a simple resolution systemwhere you try to roll 2d6 higher than a certain challenge (frequently 7 or 8) with high attributes or relevant skills providing a modifier for the dice roll. Personal combat can be quick and deadly, and the game was probably made with ship combat more in mind. Still, it is very serviceable and has many interesting rules crammed in the 3 basic books, especially those concerning generating things such as systems. Newer versions may not be quite rules-light (and even the original might stretch that a bit).

Neither of these are rules light systems, they were created when RPGs barely existed rather than purposely having a streamlined, simplified system.
Marc Miller's Traveller 5 is so thick it's nigh unreadable to anyone but the most dedicated fans, I'm still working my way through it. It's essentially his magnum opus, I have little doubt he'd have gone with that at the time if he could have done so.