In the 1980's a small company called Dwarfstar Games put out one or two mini-RPGs which had small boxes with a booklet about rules and dice-rolling but also a booklet of "pick-a-path" event-listings. The rules were broken up into paragraphs so you learned them as you went along; they were read just like the event paragraphs. You used a simple character-sheet to note basic stats about your main character, sidekicks, and in the SF game a starship. This was very clever, and was part-way between the pick-a-path paperback books (reading but no dice-rolling) and the full-on dice-rolling RPGs. Quality color maps were included. You can download .pdfs of all the material for these games *free* , as long as you abide by the terms and conditions: BARBARIAN PRINCE (fantasy): " Evil events have overtaken the Northlands. You -- Cal Arath, Barbarian Prince -- are in hiding and the usurper who killed your father, the Old King, now sits on his throne. Now you must flee south and raise enough gold by adventuring to equip an army with which to regain your rightful heritage. The way will not be easy, for the men of the south are strange, and some are schooled in the black mysteries. The passes are guarded by monsters, it is said, and in the ruined cities lurk foul things never born of this earth. But you have your stubborn Northland will and your great sword -- and woe to anyone or anything which stands between you and your quest . . ." <a href="http://dwarfstar.brainiac.com/ds_barbarianprince.h" rel="nofollow">http://dwarfstar.brainiac.com/ds_barbarianprince.h</a>... STAR SMUGGLER (SF): " Life is tough for the starship-era soldier of fortune. Hyper-jumping from one system to the next with a contraband cargo of drugs, weapons, robotics or anything that will turn a quick Sec-- with an occasional planet-side stint of industrial spying or dirty tricks. Duke Springer knows all the tricks, dirty or otherwise -- all the seedy spaceport bars, the glittering gambling areas, the hard-up colonies where they don't ask too many questions, the names of a thousand corrupt bureaucrats on a hundred backwater planets. Duke Springer has to; he lives his life one jump ahead of the Enforcers. He knows you've got to be quick, or you end up dead. That's the way it is when you're a STAR SMUGGLER." <a href="http://dwarfstar.brainiac.com/ds_starsmuggler.html" rel="nofollow">http://dwarfstar.brainiac.com/ds_starsmuggler.html</a> They also put out many colorful board games but you would have many playing pieces to print out, mount on cardboard and cut.