I'm looking at starting a game for some friends of mine

Boy, do I have them amazing baby tabletops. Ryuutama and Mouse Guard. Both are amazing, newbie friendly games promoting something more than "hit a bigger enemy with this new ability that lets you roll bigger dice". Mouse Guard wants you to manage in a harsh and brutal world of mud, cramped spaces and overwhelming odds while promoting roleplay and teamwork. There were people doing Dragon's Dogma in that system.
Ryuutama introduces is ridiculously easy to understand, engages gm by making him play a narrator dmpc, and using simple methods, engages your players into item management and party roles. I can't recommend that one enough. Shame I have to post from my phone

>>53705646
>Ryuutama and Mouse Guard
Never read either, but I know one of the players really wanted to do mouse guard because of how much he loved redwall as a kid. I was under the impression that the mechanics were really married to the talking animal fluff though. Will take a look.

A big thing for me is not having to constantly reference a book for spells/abilities/whatever during combat. How are they about that?

>>53705507
Use Fate. Go stronger on the storytelling angle, resolve combat with one roll, 3 tops if the combat is significant or long. Get the players to understand that minis on the map, attack of opportunity and d8 longswords are simply the boring details.
Your heroic paladin does not fight the goblins individually, he charges in the front and clashes with the 3 at once (roll), rallies the footmen to follow his lead (roll, adding the extra +es from the first roll) and coordinates the footmen attack until the goblins are fleeing (roll). The rogue assasinates the warchief (also 3 rolls), the ranger takes out the sige-gang commanders and spots the pilediver group that threatened to encircle your left flank -- also in 3 rolls or less. And that's the combat -- the most boring part of the session, the real challenge was to bring every piece and player together to make the battle happen on our terms.

Anyway, that's what our GM did to us -- we accomplished many a heroic feats without finding out how much damage our weapons did or rolling for initiative. And it put DnD into a correct perspective.

>>53705696
You don't have to stay with the furry angle, but there's something amazing in playing It as mice. Every predator us a fucking dragon to you, rain fucks up roads and forces you to trek around dangeros passes and shit. Swordfighting an arsonist mouse while the towering trees and grass forests are covered in a world ending inferno, trying not to get trampled by running animals is a fucking experience.

And Ryuutama's magic is simple and easy to check in the book. Fighing doesn't really have abilities but relies on teamwork and usage of the environment.

It sounds simple, but is surprisingly engaging

Savage Worlds is a good breakaway point. It's more "pointbuy" style, with some "make your own spells" stuff, but it's chunky enough that it's easy/fast to use even with relative noobs. It's also generic, so you aren't tied to fantasy settings.

Could just pick up a random PbtA game too, I've been wanting to run The Sprawl. I quite like the way they are set up, and it's a good way to make the players think a bit differently about RPG mechanics.

My personal favorite is Strike!, which is good for basically anything, but shines most if you expect the players to get into squad level battles a lot.

>>53706435
I absolutely adore 4e and have been wanting to run Strike! for quite a while now, but I'm not sure it's a good entry point to RPGs simply because of my own experience starting with 4e and having to unlearn all sorts of bad habits. The ease of character creation and compactness of power stat blocks are huge plusses.

PbtA (specifically Dungeon World, although I've played in others) is something I've tried running in the past and just had a really hard time with "success at a cost" mechanics and the total lack of turn structure. But that may have been since my group was mostly 3.5 grognards.

Savage Worlds is one I completely forgot about. Will definitely go back through the rules on that one as I've only skimmed them.

Yeah, Strike! is an acquired taste. If they are new, and not into the gamey combat they probably won't like it.

DW is somewhat unique in that it tries to do D&D style combat, which PbtA is terrible at. When you do damage in DW (which is the result of both of your combat actions) the situation doesn't actually change, which makes continuing a narrative and handing the ball to the next player forced.

I like SW a lot. I feel it has its faults, but overall it's pretty fast.

Check out Barbarians of Lemuria too, OP
Quick character creation, easy system that uses careers instead of skills, very dynamic combat while still leaving a lot of leeway for a variety of problem solving approaches
If you like Sword & Sorcery it's one of the go-to games

>>53705507
Honestly, you're more likely than not just going to end up returning to 5e.

It's good to experiment and learn new games, but there's really not anything as good as 5e out there at the moment.

>>53705646
I need to give Ryuutama a try. Is it finally out in physical form? PDFs are fine for previews but I like an actual book in front of me for the game itself.

>>53707729
This. BoL is really quick and snappy to play and dead easy to work with if you already have some experience under your belt. It isn't as crunchy or laden with special moves but that opens up what you can actually do from the start and players focus more on roleplaying actions that advantage them in the moment and play to their strengths than what is explicitly on their feat tree. I also like the damage tracking and character progression as it leads to a very different style of play that works for sword and sorcery. Sessions have a nice rhythm.

>>53707768
It's hard to go back to d&d once you've played something with different assumptions and conventions.

>>53708026
http://kotodama.bigcartel.com/
You might be able to find it cheaper elsewhere. You have to really love what it does to enjoy it at all but it does that style of Japanese fantasy really well. I wasn't feeling it but the session I played in online was pretty good.