Wild Sheep Chase is a great one for introducing people into D&D. A very silly one shot.

It’s first combat is quite difficult though and tends to blow out the timings when there are first time players.

Edit: oh, old post.

As much as I enjoyed PF1e’s We Be Goblins, I think I had slightly more fun running PF2e’s Little Trouble in Big Absalom. There’s something about the whimsicality of it all that lets the players act like maniacs without disrupting anything too much.

“Chariot of the Gods” for the Alien RPG is on the top of my list.

I usually freeform people through City of Terrors for Tunnels & Trolls, I have a cheat sheet to where stats and major rooms are in the book if I care, but mostly just eyeball good MR for 20 Orcs or jaguars or whatever.

“Amber Waves” in the Apocthulhu Quickstart is really nice, a little road trip, cult, bad food, human sacrifices, fun for the whole family (if by “fun” you mean “dousing in gasoline and setting on fire”). Apocthulhu’s quickly become my favorite horror game, because there’s so few happy endings. One-shot, then do something different.

With a GM? Jailbreak for Unknown Armies, hands down. Needs to have 5, best 9 people for the best experience. There is a newly released freely downloadable version made converted to another system on DTRPG afaik. GMless? Probably Alice is Missing, though I really like 10 Days Without Sunlight (as long as the scoring mechanic is ignored).