I'm not much of a fanboy.  I generally don't stand in line for authors at conventions, unless it's for a present to someone else.  I'm not trying to have conversations with authors, either in person or online.  Their books are all I want from them, usually.

 [painting by Darrell K Sweet; image link]

Barbara Hambly is a slight exception.  I do own a signed copy of The Ladies of Mandrigyn.  I did go to a reading / discussion of her ongoing work at ConGregate last summer.  The review above mentions her world building, which I enjoy, but I'm also a fan of her genre-bending.  She often combines sword-and-sorcery low fantasy with horror and romance in a way that is really innovative, especially for the 1980s.  This particular book also looks at sexism in   fantasy in an interesting Rosie the Riveter kind of way, as opposed to a Red Sonja kind of way.

   

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Norman Rockwell's vs. Gil Kane's conceptions of strong, proactive female characters.

I'm re-reading the book this weekend, in preparation for running the first of a series of one-off RPGs for my kid and a couple of friends.  They've been toying with the idea since the first season of Stranger Things, where the middle-schoolers are committed D&D players.

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However, D&D is the wrong game for what I have in mind.  Too generic, too easy to parody, as in JourneyQuest, which I've been enjoying the hell out of on Amazon Prime this weekend (it took me a full 48 hours to realize that the Yellow Wizard is more than a Gauntlet joke).  And too high-magic, even at low levels.  Literally every party has to have a wizard, to maintain "game balance."  Totally inappropriate.  You see, in the ruins of the Empire of Gwenth, there is only one wizard -- Altiokis the Deathless.  The others, like the Jedi in Episode IV, are either dead or so deep in hiding that most people have forgotten they ever really existed (Although BH has written for the Star Wars universe, I don't know if the Altiokis / Vader comparison was ever intended.  It's definitely there, though; people are scared shitless of this guy they've never seen).

What game system would be appropriate?

My own answer is first-edition Warhammer, "a grim world of perilous adventure."  Says right on the cover.

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Warhammer's "Careers" system is still the best one I've ever encountered.  It's more granular and flexible than a D&D-style class system.  It is less granular than a skills-based system like Call of Cthulhu, and so it doesn't encourage the same level of cherry-picking by players.  Encouraged by like-minded GMs, they will often hone in on very narrow definitions of a "good" character, optimized for a single function (usually combat).  

"Why would I ever need Public Speaking as a skill?  I'm not wasting a slot on that!"

Careers are also temporary, so that individual characters can evolve over time, becoming more individual and more interesting, not just more powerful.

For a possible one-shot like this, I just use all-human pregen characters and we're good to go.  I'll drop them into the occupied city of Mandrigyn as residents and let them discover the ongoing conspiracy against the Wizard King.  And we'll see how that goes.  If they like it, there's an obvious follow-up campaign.  If not, I'll have a ready convention scenario, and we'll move on to another genre they might like better, such as 

• TSR's Marvel Superheroes, or
• Call of Cthulhu

Most of the games I own are old-school, left over from my college days.  The newer, avant-garde decentralized narrative stuff won't fit their Stranger Things model of how RPGs work.  I'll have to save those for another day.