Rules Light Games: Examples and Definitions

I really like Fate Accelerated because it marries a clear mechanic "Use Aspects to Overcome obstacles or Create Advantages" with a free style story building approach. Having replaced Attributes/Skills with Approaches also really helps with getting into character.

FATE Accelerated was the first thing that came to my mind, as well.

Another one might be Old School Hack The entire rulebook is 26 pages, and like 5 are printable cards/counters, and another 8 are copies of the character sheets.

Not that I've ever played it, or would ever play it, but MAID is a good example a rules-light game. You have six stats, a health track, a method of advancement, and everything else is up to interpretation.

I don't know that it's possible to come up with an objective definition for rules-light or rules-heavy, because it's all relative. Shadowrun is rules-light, compared to Living Steel. Generally speaking, a system moves toward the lighter end of the spectrum as it has fewer concrete rules and requires greater interpretation, but there's no specific dividing line.

If you really need a reference point, though, the current edition of D&D represents the modal average for the community. If your game has fewer rules than that (or a lower rules density, if it also covers a smaller genre base), then it's fair to claim that the game is rules-light.

I would second Old School Hack, its very tight and plays very D&D-like without even as much mechanical overhead as Dungeon World. I wish the game had gotten more complete treatment, but if you're working up your own rules, it shouldn't be too hard to expand upon.

Other games that I would toss out Capes and Fiasco. Although both push the definition of "role playing game". There's also Dread. Additionally, many of the Powered by the Apocalypse Engine games are actually pretty light, IMO.

I love Fate, but I think its just on the edge of what I would call "light", and some of the published implementations actually cross over that line for me. (naturally a matter of taste.)

I'm okay with what folks call "meta" mechanics, so I think "light" games that utilize them are acceptable if not preferable, whereas others wouldn't. I'm a bit leary of games that are "light" but are really just typical games that replace equipment/spell lists with instructions on how to do your own (and yet still leave a "hole" in the system that you need to fill). Its not completely disqualifying for me, but its one thing I look at carefully. There are a ton of "indie" games that basically strip down D20 this way. I think Fate handles this well, because you only need to define the elements of those "listy" things when they will be dramatically/narratively important.

Honestly, since the advent/dominance of a singular resolution mechanic, many games are fairly "light" in their core mechanics. However, the devil is in all the details added by those listy things. I think the recent editions of D&D are good good examples of this. The basic D20 mechanics aren't very heavy at all, but when you add all the different spell effects, maneuvers, conditions, etc. the system gets very heavy in play. (Even without those, the specificity of the movement rules would make D&D fairly heavy.) This is why Fate is on the line for me. The core mechanics are actually a bit more complicated than D20 and involve more decision points for players on each turn. However, by avoided all the "listiness", it plays much more lightly than D&D. (At least IME, IMO, etc. etc.)

I agree with [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] that d20 is not light.

I've never played Fate but I'ver read the Fate Core book and it gives me a vibe of being, in play, comparable in heaviness to MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, which I've played quite a bit and wouldn't call light.

I've played a fair bit of Classic Traveller recently and it can move at a pretty quick pace, but I think it has too many subsystems to count as light.

Two systems I've played recently that I would count as light are Prince Valiant and Cthulhu Dark. In the latter PC build can literally take place while opening up a packet of snacks - choose a name and an occupation (where "occupation" has the real world meaning of choosing a job, not choosing a PC option from a list). Resolution is very straightforward, based on a pool of 1 to 3 dice with the highest die in the pool counting plus bad things happening if the Sanity die is in the pool and comes up highest.

PC build in Prince Valiant takes more like 10 minutes - choose name, archetype and description; allocate 7 points across two stats; then choose six skills from a fairly short list and allocate 9 points across them; then get your basic equipment package (for archetypes that the GM and player are making up themselves, this will have to be extrapolated from the examples for the archetypes in the rulebooks). Resolution is coin-based (heads are successes) though we use dice instead (evens are successes) - pools sometimes get to double-digits in size but counting out the evens doesn't take long. Checks are either opposed or against a GM-set DC. It's versatile, resolution is quick, and the game moves at a good pace.

To go back to [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION]'s post, I think lists are a big thing in the "lightness" or otherwise of a RPG. Cthulhu Dark has no lists. Prince Valiant has one list (skills) and one quasi-list (equipment, but you can basically just make this up - it's not a part of the game as it would be in (say) an AD&D game).

Resolution subsystems are the other thing I would point to. Cthuhlu Dark has none. Prince Valiant has a handful - for archery, for healing, for mass combat, for charging with a lance. (And that last one is very simple.) This can be compared to (say) AD&D or 5E, where many spells are each their own little subsystem, and many players have access to many spells. Or MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, where each power set brings it own bundle of subystems built into its SFX.

Bedrockgames said:

I am working on a rules light game, and one thing I've noticed over the years is 'rules light' means different things to different people. I am curious how everyone defines ruleslight, but also interested in what other posters see as examples of very effective rules light games.

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That Roboto is hurting my eyes. But anyway...

Just curious: are you trying to decide if you want to market the game as "rules light?" If so, you might compare your game's weight to other games that call themselves such. (Hence the examples request?)

I've been calling Modos RPG a rules-light game for a while now (about 5 pages of rules/80 pages of book), but is it? One way to measure it would be to say that D&D sets the bar, therefore it is the normal or the rules-medium-game. If your rules are less cumbersome than D&D's, you have a rules-light game. Another decent metric would be time-to-proficiency for new players. Compared to other games, how long does a new player spend asking rules questions, or how long does it take until other players don't need to help/correct the new player?

Officially, anything that uses a d100 is rules-heavy. And, as we all know, a "ruleslight" is what you use to illuminate your rule book, or when you use a rule to humiliate another player. /snark

By the way, [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION], your OP text was *completely invisible* on the forum skins that use black background. I edited out the color tag that was in your post, which will allow the forum software to use the default color for each skin, so people can read it. I hope that's okay.

This commonly happens when one writes up a piece in a word processor, and then copy & Pastes the text - if you don't remember to paste as text, you can bring along tags for color that are enforced no matter the skin, which sometimes ends up poorly for your post.

Over The Edge was always my go-to definition for a rules-light RPG, and one I enjoyed for a long time.

InVinoVeritas said:

Over The Edge was always my go-to definition for a rules-light RPG, and one I enjoyed for a long time.

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Wow, I haven't thought about Over the Edge for a while now. Yeah, that game was about as light as you could hope for, depending on how you view the setting information/etc. (I personally don't count those as rules, but...)