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Interesting Ryan Dancey comment on "lite" RPGs
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<blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 2437441" data-attributes="member: 10201"><p>Absolutely not true. What is unquestionably true is that a rules-heavy system gives more power to the rules, and thus less to the players (collectively--including the GM), while a rules-lite system gives more power to the players (collectively--including the GM) and reserves less for the rules. How the players' power is distributed between the GM and others is almost completely unrelated to how much power the ruleset has, at least theoretically. In practice, i don't think i've ever seen a really crunchy system that gave the non-GM players much power. All the games that i know of that give the players disproportionate power (more than the GM, that is) are also extremely rules-lite. </p><p></p><p>[And, to hopefully forestall arguments, i challenge the notion that D&D3E is player-enabling. All the players are expected to abide strictly by the rules. Only the GM is explicitly allowed to defy the rules, even if it is discouraged. So, there is nothing the players can do that the GM can't and there is something the GM can do that the players can't. Clearly, the GM has more power than the players. This is not necessarily the case in all RPGs--there are RPGs where all have equal "rights", and there are even those where the players at least occasionally have more power. In fact, i think i can dig up at least one RPG where the player has the lion's share of power.]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="woodelf, post: 2437441, member: 10201"] Absolutely not true. What is unquestionably true is that a rules-heavy system gives more power to the rules, and thus less to the players (collectively--including the GM), while a rules-lite system gives more power to the players (collectively--including the GM) and reserves less for the rules. How the players' power is distributed between the GM and others is almost completely unrelated to how much power the ruleset has, at least theoretically. In practice, i don't think i've ever seen a really crunchy system that gave the non-GM players much power. All the games that i know of that give the players disproportionate power (more than the GM, that is) are also extremely rules-lite. [And, to hopefully forestall arguments, i challenge the notion that D&D3E is player-enabling. All the players are expected to abide strictly by the rules. Only the GM is explicitly allowed to defy the rules, even if it is discouraged. So, there is nothing the players can do that the GM can't and there is something the GM can do that the players can't. Clearly, the GM has more power than the players. This is not necessarily the case in all RPGs--there are RPGs where all have equal "rights", and there are even those where the players at least occasionally have more power. In fact, i think i can dig up at least one RPG where the player has the lion's share of power.] [/QUOTE]
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