Interesting Ryan Dancey comment on "lite" RPGs

[Nikosandros]

Boy, this one made the rules lite advocates jump up and yelp, didn't it? "It's not troooo...!"

Well, it's just that my experience has been quite the opposite...

Not that I mind more elaborate games... I love both 3.5 and RM.... heck, back when I had much more free time, I used to be a big fan of games such as Advanced Third Reich and Empire in Arms...

 

[Crothian]

I think instead of rules heavy verse rulse light we need rules easy verse rules complex. Some game are just easier for people to learn and understand and those are the ones that truely go faster.

 

[mcrow]

What does sales have to do with actual nuts & bolts of the game? If a small indie publisher had thrown soemthing like D&D 3ed on the market it would likely have gone OOP like many other already have. Many good or average games have gone OOP while others with much more money (and brand recognition) marketing and a lesser system have flourished.

 

[fredramsey]

I think instead of rules heavy verse rulse light we need rules easy verse rules complex. Some game are just easier for people to learn and understand and those are the ones that truely go faster.

You hit the nail on the head.

That is what I like about Savage Worlds. Instead of calling it "Rules Lite", I call it, "Complexity Lite". There are rules for darned near everything (including permanent injury, mass battles, etc.), but the rules are easy to digest and work with.

You bet the people from WOTC are going to jump in there and say these games are inferior. But we are not compelled to listen to them. It is they who need to cater to our needs if they wish to continue ad naseum.

 

[scadgrad]

As an avid C&C Evangelist, I just wanted to add an interesting observation. I ran a game this past Saturday w/ my old gaming group down in TN. We get together about once every 2 months or so and they've continued to play 3.5 while I've moved on to a C&C/3.X hybrid. I was frankly amazed at how long it took them to make characters and 2 of them only had to update characters from a previous C&C sessions (moving them up a few levels). I think much of it had to do w/ the fact that the game is in many ways so different from the "no holds barred" version of 3.5 that they play w/ every supplemental rule imaginable being allowed into the mix.

Surprisingly, the one player who'd dropped out of 3.X had his character ready in a snap. In the future, the work around is for me to help each person w/ their character rather than hand out a couple of PHBs and letting them have at it. Familiarity w/ the rules makes it go much quicker and the advantage to the rules-lite approach is that it's just easier to get familiar w/ a smaller rules set. The gang in my current group can bang out characters in just a few minutes. We playtested a mod for TLG the other night and made characters in about 20 minutes or less and off we went. So, IME Andre's comment is dead on. The sessions really pick up as the group grows more familiar with the rules set.

In the end, I think Dancey & Mearls aren't getting the point, or rather, they've already arrived at the point and are just fumbling around for a way to say C&C and True 20 are pieces of dung without so much as coming out and saying it. I do applaud their sense of decorum though.

 

[sword-dancer]

Here's a simple test:

Name a "rules lite" RPG that remained in print and actively supported by a publisher for more than 5 years..

What test would that be?
How many publishers(like Orkworld or Waste World(Manticore) are gone down becaus of ecenomivcal reasons, not because of their quality?

OTOH D&D i think as DSA had the great advantage of being supported by a majority of players.

Question: How old is sorcerer or CoC.


Amber is perhaps the only exception I can think of (and again, that's a genius design)

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Boy, this one made the rules lite advocates jump up and yelp, didn't it? "It's not troooo...!"

I had to laugh.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

What does sales have to do with actual nuts & bolts of the game?

It's the only ojbective measure of a game's sucess. There are many, many subjective measures, but sales is the only real objective one.

 

[GMSkarka]

You know, the more I read about this guy, the more I think he is a total boob.

Well, to be....very charitable about it, he does have a history of, shall we say, "adjusting" procedures to arrive at the outcome he'd prefer.

In other words, take all of this with a grain of salt the size of Jupiter.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

The term "on the fly game designer" is also quite strange. It's not that rules lite DMs always create their adventure on the fly. They prepare adventures and encounter as everyone else does, at least most of the time. Perhaps he meant that those DMs have to "wing it" more often but if that is the case he somehow doesnt understand completely how rules lite systems are played.

Near as I can figure, he means that game designers are responsible for balance and realism, and all that stuff needs to be figured out ahead of time by experts. Which I think is bunk.

Example: A character is trying to jump a ravine to grab a rope, in the rain. If you can't look in the book to find out what the right modifiers are, then it's on the head of the GM to come up with a target number, and maybe the players will argue, or it'll be too high or too low, or whatever.

To which I go, what the heck game are people playing that this would be worth an argument? If it's dramatic to have a chance of failure, have one, if it's not, don't. Does it really matter if this fictional character is better at grabbing a wet rope than someone would be in real life? Considering that the GM invented the rope, the ravine, and the rain, is there any advantage to measuring the distance and cross-referencing the guy's Jump skill, versus picking a DC that represents how hard you want it to be?

And if picking a difficulty consists of "on-the-fly game design", something that's supposed to be left to the experts, how is it that any of us have run anything other than a published module?

I think the more interesting questions are things like "how do I come up with interesting characters, situations, and challenges", which is something complex rules don't address anyway.

...Roleplaying is not defined by rules, it's defined by how the players interact with the gameworld and how the DM (re)acts toward the players and the gameworld. You can have as many rules as you want, it doesnt make a good DM out of a bad DM or a good game out of a bad game(world) :\

Exactly. The social situation at the game table is the key. If your players enjoy arguing for whatever reason, they'll argue. And the GM could say "Rocks fall, everyone dies" at any time. Neither party does these things, because they want to have a good time, and they can work together as people. If your group can't work together on a basic, person to person level, complex rules just paper over the hole in the wall. If anything, simpler rules make you go "Yeah, there's a hole there, what are we going to do about it?"