Rules-Lite VS "Crunchy" TTRPG Systems

[Thomas Shey]

Sure, but I don't think anyone is talking about unlimited trust, and no one engaged this discussion in good faith interprets trust in this context to mean, "I trust this person to always make the best possible decision, no matter how high the stakes, how high the pressure, how quickly a decision needs to be made, how strong their conflict of interest, how complex the situation, etc..." We're playing a game here, not conducting triage in an emergency ward during a natural disaster.

The problem is, to get a good experience on any consistent basis, I assume I (and other people with me) need to regularly check their work. Anything that interferes with that tends to make for a worse game.

In the context of a TTRPG, I would say that trusting the GM would generally mean that you believe they're capable of using the power they have to make fair, consistent and reasonable decisions in line with established expectations, that will result in a generally fun experience, and they're open to constructive feedback and discussion, with the understanding that everyone is there to have fun. Basically, they're a reasonable person, just like everyone else at the table. In such a circumstance, there should be no requirement for rules that prevent an abuse of trust.

But as I said, I don't think that assumption changes my position above. GMing, especially with a system with any detail or where you need to make a lot of judgment calls, is difficult. Its easy to mess up, and mess up in ways that makes a worse experience, sometimes one bad enough to seriously harm it. It just is.

It's clear that some people want rules designed to prevent GMs (or players, for that matter) from acting unreasonably, when I would simply not play with unreasonable people.

I want rules that are clear and have broad applicability; in a secondary case I want games to teach people not to make bad assumptions (and I think the history of this hobby has frequently failed at this) in how to manage games. Sometimes both of these constrain people at one part of the table or another, and I consider that a perfectly acceptable price to pay for that (and I also don't consider speed-of-play such a priority that throwing these under the bus for speed is acceptable).

 

[Campbell]

Calling Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Apocalypse Keys or Masks rules light would be a big stretch to me. These are games with a fair number of moving parts that all interact with each other. What is true is that the rules involved often require some interpretation based on the fictional circumstances of the game. That does not make them rules light. They just have rules that constrain rather than specify.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Calling Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Apocalypse Keys or Masks rules light would be a big stretch to me. These are games with a fair number of moving parts that all interact with each other. What is true is that the rules involved often require some interpretation based on the fictional circumstances of the game. That does not make them rules light. They just have rules that constrain rather than specify.

I'm only going from Monsterhearts, since I don't own others, but I think you have to be getting way down into into the weeds to have a game that runs all that much lighter. There's a common metric to resolution, a limited number of character traits to keep track of, and not that many subsystems. If that doesn't make for rules light, what does?

 

[Campbell]

I'm only going from Monsterhearts, since I don't own others, but I think you have to be getting way down into into the weeds to have a game that runs all that much lighter. There's a common metric to resolution, a limited number of character traits to keep track of, and not that many subsystems. If that doesn't make for rules light, what does?

You're missing pretty much all of the underlying structure of GM Moves, The First Scene, principles, the Seating Chart, etc. There's a wealth of structure that underpins the game (and is meant to be treated with the same force if not more) that is not contained on the character sheets and basic moves.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You're missing pretty much all of the underlying structure of GM Moves, The First Scene, principles, the Seating Chart, etc. There's a wealth of structure that underpins the game (and is meant to be treated with the same force if not more) that is not contained on the character sheets and basic moves.

I'm really not, I'm just not assessing them as things that add much overhead to the game.

 

[pemerton]

Calling Apocalypse World, Monsterhearts, Apocalypse Keys or Masks rules light would be a big stretch to me. These are games with a fair number of moving parts that all interact with each other. What is true is that the rules involved often require some interpretation based on the fictional circumstances of the game. That does not make them rules light. They just have rules that constrain rather than specify.

This is an interesting post. To me, it suggests the following point:

"Rules light" is a designation that really only makes sense against a supposition that the rules of a RPG are a set of systems for working out certain spatially and temporally local consequences of a character in the fiction performing some bodily action. The supposition can stretch to encompass bodily actions that include speaking, with the consequence being the immediate reaction of someone spoken to.

But that's about it.

Once you start looking at RPGs that have rules that serve purposes differently from the supposition described above - and AW is a paradigm of such a RPG - then the "rules light" designation doesn't serve much use. Or at least, we need to introduce a new frame of reference. For instance, if we take it for granted that the core of the RPG is scene-framed, intent-based resolution than within that framework I can say that Prince Valiant is lighter than Maelstrom Storytelling is lighter than Burning Wheel.

But is Prince Valiant lighter than (say) RuneQuest? It has fewer rules for resolving the kinetics of action declarations. But more rules for actually working out what happens next.