No More Massive Tomes of Rules

[Wofano Wotanto]

I think Celebrim has a reasonable, coherent chain of thought. It just happens not to encompass the way that about 99.5% of us play.

I wouldn't care to guess at the actual percentage, but otherwise agreed. Different people have different norms and experiences when it comes to gaming. Being in the majority doesn't make minority arguments invalid, and vice versa.

 

[Emberashh]

Sure, but the example given was described as being an uncommon occurrence as well. My position is simply that you don't need all that if you have a well designed, robust core system and a competent GM (or even player at the table who can suggest mechanics that would work).

Then the point stands. Its not something that happens frequently, there's no specific need to cover it. No reason it can't be in a supplemental, especially if its important to the setting, but nobodies under a delusion that every single possible activity is gonna have a bespoke subsystem. That isn't practical to design, write, learn, or play with.

And like I noted, theres more typical and interesting things in that kind of setting. Picking that one is kind of a bad argument because it presupposes that the players aren't going to actually buy into the genre you're playing in.

There's a reason the baseball scenes in those Twilight movies were absurd nonsense, and that example isn't very far off.

 

[Arilyn]

I find that too many rules and subsystems bog a game down to the point that versimiltude, that all those rules are trying to support in the first place, gets lost.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

I would love a game that has every conceivable subsystem. But I also think each of them should fit onto a postcard and be ready to use as you read it for the first time, without the GM needing to even know they existed beforehand.

PbtA's move structure comes closest to that.

Play Blitzball
roll STARPOWER 3 times, on 10+ you scored, on 7-9 pick from the following options:

• opportunistic pass, +1 to your next roll but if it fails you got interrupted and the opposing team scores
• tackle their star, you're safe from them interrupting your pass, but need to roll a Save to avoid their counter
• showboat, impress the crowd (but -1 to influencing any of your teammates in the future)
• etc

Boom, some thematic rules structure, play moves along.

 

[Celebrim]

I would love a game that has every conceivable subsystem. But I also think each of them should fit onto a postcard and be ready to use as you read it for the first time, without the GM needing to even know they existed beforehand.

PbtA's move structure comes closest to that.

Play Blitzball
roll STARPOWER 3 times, on 10+ you scored, on 7-9 pick from the following options:

• opportunistic pass, +1 to your next roll but if it fails you got interrupted and the opposing team scores
• tackle their star, you're safe from them interrupting your pass
• showboat, impress the crowd
• etc

Well, exactly. PbtA isn't my favorite system, but having custom moves for doing things in a sport that didn't directly map to the things that the main game covered would I think be the right design for that system and while it isn't my favorite system that sounds like a lot of fun.

But the thing is, the more time you spent thinking about that system, the better it likely is going to be in play. For example, your first attempt to me fails I think because you'd want this to be a team sport where everyone was contributing together at every moment. So you'd probably have some system in place to score how well the team did at each moment based on the collective contributions of the players. You wouldn't want one player to hog all the spotlight. Something really cool could come out of brainstorming about that, and yes the outcome might be something as simple as a postcard you could hand every player.

But the point is, that would be hard to do well on the fly in the middle of a game and well it's wonderful when someone with a brain who supposedly deserves to do this for a living has figured it out for you.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

But the point is, that would be hard to do well on the fly in the middle of a game and well it's wonderful when someone with a brain who supposedly deserves to do this for a living has figured it out for you.

Yes. I do understand where you're coming from.

I think an RPG system's job should be to make the GM's life easier. Having systems in place (at least for the activities that are central to the intended play experience) helps with that, while just rules-lite shrugging and telling the GM to make something up byeeeeee, does not.

But having convoluted systems means they're going to get ignored, especially if it's for a niche activity. So, postcard rules is my dream (with a big blitzball ball in the header to catch the eye faster).

 

[overgeeked]

Hell, yeah. Lighter games, tighter design, shorter page counts. That's 100% my wheelhouse. The lighter the better, honestly. Writing game mechanics like they're actually game mechanics is a great first step in drastically reducing word and page count of games. Remembering the books are reference manuals for play is another. Fewer, more broadly applicable rules instead of a proliferation of overly-detailed rules for incredibly niche situations is another. You can get the math and stat blocks of the Monster Manual down to a business card. The fluff and art that remains is not enough to fill a 400-page book. I bet you could do similar with most of the player-facing mechanics. Maybe not a business card, but a few pages at most. You'd lose some of the granularity, but not that much.

 

[overgeeked]

I would buy that. I’d buy it even more if it came in however many more pages the same content needs for digest size, and epub. But even at standard size, thst would make me happy.

I am constantly surprised that more game companies don't make epubs.

 

[Scribe]

I think Shadowdark is a nice compromise for me: the rulebook is 300 pages, but also A5 sized, and much of it is inspirational tables. The actual rules could easily fit in 100 pages.

So much of my RPG thinking has ended with the answer of "yeah, like Shadowdark." lately.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

But the point is, that would be hard to do well on the fly in the middle of a game and well it's wonderful when someone with a brain who supposedly deserves to do this for a living has figured it out for you.

The abject, sneering disdain toward game designers here. How dare these nincompoops try to entertain you!