The Dilemma of the Simple RPG

In my experience with contemporary college game clubs, there are many younger people who have not yet tried tabletop RPGs. I was also told that many of the players coming to the evening games at a local shop have been new to tabletop RPGs. This is different from my pre-Internet, pre-video gamegeneration (Boomers), where most game-minded people were exposed to D&D because it had so little competition for leisure time.

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Another reason for the difference may be the “crunchiness” of many contemporary RPGs. That is, the fiddliness and time needed to generate a character and start actually playing the game is offputting. Then there is the difficulty of running a character because there are so many details and numbers (such as skills) involved. The rules interfere with the adventure.

Yet we continue to see the most popular RPGs loaded down with vast rulebooks. Unfortunately, the seeds of long-range destruction of any RPG edition are built into the capitalist economy.

You don't need a Ph.D. in history to know a lot can be explained if you "follow the money". To make money you need to sell product. If your primary business is RPGs you have to produce a game that is not only large but very extensible, so that you can sell additional rules. In the long run, that makes the game crunchy and unwieldy, dooms it to become too complex to appeal to the less than hard-core players.

Complexity may be a boon for some players. 3rd Edition D&D (3e) became "find rules somewhere that give me an advantage." This is a complete contrast to my advice to GMs dating back to the 70s: prevent players from gaining unearned advantages. When I GMed 3e I said "core rules only, no add-ons." When the highly-tinkered-by-additional-rules "one man armies" are present in a game, the more casual players are left behind in several ways.

"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstien

Complex games also make the GM's job harder. As there are more rules, there's more work for the GM. The biggest problem of tabletop RPGs, compared with other games, is that GMing is work, not play. We need more GMs to "grow" the hobby, yet complex games with constant rules add-ons lead to fewer GMs available.

The typical course of events is that RPGs get more complex as more rules are added, until the entire edition is abandoned and a new one comes out. While D&D Second Edition wasn't much different than 1e, and many more or less ignored 2e (I did), each succeeding edition has changed the game drastically to help persuade players to buy the new version, coming full circle with 5e. In each case, a new edition led to lots of sales. And each was then subjected to the rising pyramid of additional rules.

Money talks. Unfortunately for RPGs, money argues for complexity, not simplicity.

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

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[Celebrim]

The core mechanic of d20 is the eponymous, 'roll a d20,' and add a modifier vs a DC. It's possible to be even simpler than that (roll d6, 4+ succeeds, for instance), but not a /lot/ simpler. Doesn't strike me as terribly meaningful, though. FATE and the SRD/OGL version of d20 are open-source games, not just their core mechanics, and d20 has plenty of complexity even in just the SRD (or one of the three SRDs, I guess it is, now).

I still maintain that the basic question is meaningless, precisely because of the issue you are touching on here. You correctly state that the core mechanics of a game can be extremely simple, and yet the rules of the game can be extremely complex.

I'd maintain that the reason D&D's rules are complex is the extensive number of cases and scenarios that it believes needs to explicitly be modeled because they 'matter' and the results of a player interacting with that element of the fiction both matter and should be fairly arbitrated (as by a neutral referee). D&D's rules started very simple and organically evolved to a complex state quite quickly after the game was invented precisely because of these two unstated assumptions. And perusing the rules of D&D encourages the players of the game (including the game master) to think about the game in those terms.

If you have a 'rules light' system, but the participants in the game think about the fictional state as mattering and requiring fair arbitration, then the game isn't going to stay 'rules light' for long. Simply by thinking about the game in that manner, the GM will almost be forced to create rulings which will evolve in to de facto rules, that eventually will if they were ever compiled be an enormous document.

Some people make the mistake of thinking that rules that aren't compiled aren't actually rules, and that if they exist only in head space, then the game is still lightweight, but I think it's pretty easy to see that even with a game like D&D rules for the most part exist only in head space and the only real difference is how you go about looking them up when they are missing from your head space.

That's why any game system that features Rule Zero can't be said to be "Rules Light". Rule Zero inherently makes the rules infinitely extensible. Board Games are 'rules light'. Chess, Settlers of Cataan, Mice & Mystics are 'rules light'. The referee is superfluous in those games because the rules set is closed and there is no need for inventing new rules. RPG's expect to need new rules all the time, which is one of the reasons that they have a rules generating engine - the Game Master. The only real difference is how complete the rules attempt to be on paper.

As such, the whole question of whether FATE or D20 is heavier is not one that I think even makes sense, much less has an objective answer. Both systems attempt to be quite complete, and the more complete a FUDGE based game will attempt to be, the bigger it will get. And it's almost invariable that any designer playtesting a FUDGE based game will feel the need to extend it to cover the cases that they wished they'd covered in an earlier iteration.

 

[Igwilly]

I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but I think the essential word to understand “complex” games is options.
People want options. Not only that, people want their chosen options to be special.
Let’s look at an example: In AD&D 2e, the Gladiator actually has a few kits and one entire class in Dark Sun of their own. One could use a generic warrior class and choose this flavor, but would that choice be special? In a class-less game (or one with few classes), does simply describing a Gladiator feels like it’s different from any other warrior? Or do you need a special option just for them?
That may also explain why there’re so many different systems. You can GM a Mecha game with an anime-based system, but using a Mecha system would give the players a “unique” experience. You can GM a steampunk game with a generic system, but using a specific steampunk system has more “specialness”.
In addition, I think one thing people need to get about having more options: the complexity does not increase with more splatbooks/options. Because they are optional. One doesn’t need them to actually run a table with the system. They only come in if GM and players are interested. You can, in fact, run a game with just 8 classes. Supplemental material adds only that, options. It may seem to people that you need “all the books” to play the game, but you don’t. Me? I just like having tons of options.
Sure, buying all of them is expensive. They’re not meant to casuals, and considerable money is needed. But that’s ok, because there are people who want that and devote more time to this game. People who like their game simple have their piece of cake, too (for much less money, in fact). Your game doesn’t change.

 

[lewpuls]

Well, while not trying to pick out all of the really long comments, I've seen 603, 605, 713, and 1,320 word comments, all longer than my original post.


I think the fundamental roles in RPGs are wizard, divine (cleric), and fighter. With fighters having various combinations of strength and stealth (Fafrhd and Gray Mouser). I don't see a reason to classify rogues separately.


(Actually, to get really simple, I eliminate classes entirely. What skills you choose (and some are mutually exclusive) determines what you are and can do.)

Hussar: Oh, that's crap. I'm sorry, but, that's complete crap. Back in the day, groups often had 1 PHB and 1 DMG. The idea that they've been trained by video games for games to be free is a load of hooey. Casual players who never buy anything have made up a majority of players since day 1.

Hussar, I started playing D&D at age 25 (when you were three years old), and had been playing other kinds of games long before that. I'll rely on my experience (which includes a lot of experience teaching younger adults full time), my knowledge of the game industry as a whole, and my experience (starting 37 or so years ago) as a published board game designer, and disagree completely with you about who and what is "complete crap."




Zurg, I do not say whether simpler or more complex are easier to GM; only that prospective GMs, faced with the more complex, will often decide not to GM, or faced with simpler or more complex, will usually choose simpler.



Funny thing about the reaction, J. L. D. I thought it had died at 31 comments, and didn't look for most of the week, then found 91. Heavens.

 

[Hussar]

Hussar, I started playing D&D at age 25 (when you were three years old), and had been playing other kinds of games long before that. I'll rely on my experience (which includes a lot of experience teaching younger adults full time), my knowledge of the game industry as a whole, and my experience (starting 37 or so years ago) as a published board game designer, and disagree completely with you about who and what is "complete crap."

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ilemma-of-the-Simple-RPG/page10#ixzz4gMIl7yRJ

Really? In your experience every player at the table buys a PHB? The majority of the time? That certainly hasn't been my experience, nor is it the commonly recounted experiences of pretty much every industry individual for years. "Only GM's buy books" has been a truism since day 1. Heck, it took 2e before you saw game publishers shift to start specifically targeting players over GM's. Prior, in virtually every RPG system, you had you core game, and then every supplement was geared towards the GM.

And, IMO, I'd say it wasn't until d20 and 3e that we saw consistent targeting of players. Even in 2e, the overwhelming number of supplements were still geared towards DM's. Sure, you had the Complete guides, but, for every Complete Guide, you had setting books, monster books, and adventures in at least equal numbers.

So, yeah, I'll stand by the idea that the notion that "games should be free" is hardly a new thing for RPG's.

I think the fundamental roles in RPGs are wizard, divine (cleric), and fighter. With fighters having various combinations of strength and stealth (Fafrhd and Gray Mouser). I don't see a reason to classify rogues separately.


(Actually, to get really simple, I eliminate classes entirely. What skills you choose (and some are mutually exclusive) determines what you are and can do.)

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...ilemma-of-the-Simple-RPG/page10#ixzz4gMK3nU1M

Is that actually simpler though? I've never found proficiency based games to be any simpler than a class based one. I've actually seen far more complicated skill based systems - HERO, GURPS, Rolemaster - than D&D.

I guess the question in my mind is, what do you mean by simple vs complex? A class system where you have virtually no choices at any given level, like Basic/Expert D&D for example, would seem to be a fair bit simpler than a system where you have to make choices every level for what gains your character makes. Which would seem to have several implications further down the line. For example, in a skill based system, adventure design gets a bit trickier because you cannot presume what the group will have. Whereas in a class system, so long as a given class is present, you can make all sorts of assumptions. The more common the class, the more you can make that presumption.

 

[Celebrim]

Hussar, I started playing D&D at age 25 (when you were three years old...

I'm not generally one for defending Hussar, but he sure seems to have called the "get off my lawn" aspect of this thread correctly.

I think the fundamental roles in RPGs are wizard, divine (cleric), and fighter...

Preach that OD&D religion; there is only one true RPG.

But you lost me when you claimed skill based systems were less complex than class based ones.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I think you are giving too much credit to publishers and manufacturers and retailers.

If manufacturers were pushing the more expensive products (more moving parts, more distinct shapes, more manufacturing steps) then no-one would be playing checkers or go; they would be all be playing chess.

After all, a chess set is more expensive to make than a checkers set (5 distinct pieces in two colours compared to one piece in two colours), and its rules are certainly more crunchy, yet people still buy and play checkers. The same argument applies to games like reversi and backgammon and mancala, and even tiddly-winks.

The short answer is, sometimes you want to play a long, rules-heavy game and sometimes you don't.

Additionally, the simple, rules-light games sometimes take a lifetime to master. For example, go. One piece, two colours, a simple board with a grid. It doesn't get much non-crunchy than that.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The choice in favored complexity level depends greatly on what aspects of play are preferred. Mechanical options in great quantity rarely add that much flavor to a game. They are more often simple rules widgets used to build a better mousetrap and cause characters to resemble magic decks. It is fascinating to hear how such options are supposedly there for the sake of variety, but in reality all such options are quickly sorted into winning and losing propositions so that the majority of characters of the same class end up being fairly identical mechanically speaking, once the cream of the options rises to the top.

So option complexity for the sake of variety is kind of an illusion.

 

[aramis erak]

Thanks for the comments. Keep in mind, folks, I am editorially constrained to 500 words. If I had a thousand, I’d have more thoroughly addressed/explained many of the points people are making or questioning (or explaining, thanks). Of course.


It would be interesting to know what proportion of, say, D&D revenue comes from additional rules, what proportion from settings, what proportion from adventures. I don’t know enough to say which is the “optimal” one, though one commenter thinks he/she knows. If, as another says, one of the 5e rulebooks is #33 seller on Amazon for all books, I suspect the base rules themselves generate the most income of all.


Yes, a really simple game is more GM dependent. But a complex game causes shrinkage of the GM base. There’s a sweet spot somewhere in there.


The VOCAL players push for complexity. I suspect the average player does not.


In board and card games, we’ve seen significant “dumbing down” of hobby games in the past decade to accommodate the influx of new gamers as the hobby gets larger, who are often from “party game” roots. Games on average are much simpler and considerably shorter.


This is now a world where many people cannot do simple arithmetic in their heads - even college students. Where people want the “Easy Button”. It’s the Age of Convenience as well as the Age of Instant Gratification. You don’t have to read any rules to play video games. The more complexity in a tabletop game, the fewer people will want to play and especially, the fewer who will want to GM.


JeffB, there’s a large college-aged segment who go to game clubs to play tabletop board and card games regularly, but never buy any. Besides a (self-perceived) lack of money, they’re been “trained” in video games to expect games to be free in many cases. I’d say most of them are “naturally” RPGers (the focus on an avatar), but I don’t think they spend on RPGs either.


Lew Pulsipher

Lew, much as I respect your corpus of work (Just reread some of it in Dragon)...

I think you're misreading the evidence.

D&D 5E is simpler than 3E or 4E... or Pathfinder ... but it's still mid-complexity.
There are a LOT of new players coming in via D&D and Pathfinder, and Star Wars. Top 3 sellers.
All three have beginner boxes. All three have medium to medium-heavy (3-4 on a 5 point scale) rules, and plenty of newbs. And print-runs in the 40K copies or more range.

The hypervocal crowd are those buying the under 4K print-run indie games with ultra-light rules. I don't see nor hear people talking about them on social media anywhere near as much as the heavier ones, and then, far fewer of those talking about them are talking of them as introductions to the hobby.

Most of the kids I've run recently for are dissatisfied with the lower complexity systems. Even the ones who need a calculator for D&D... after about 6 months of weekly sessions, they've memorized their addition facts up to the sums in the low 30's... because the more they use it, the more they remember it.

 

[aramis erak]

Really? In your experience every player at the table buys a PHB? The majority of the time? That certainly hasn't been my experience, nor is it the commonly recounted experiences of pretty much every industry individual for years. "Only GM's buy books" has been a truism since day 1. Heck, it took 2e before you saw game publishers shift to start specifically targeting players over GM's. Prior, in virtually every RPG system, you had you core game, and then every supplement was geared towards the GM.

And, IMO, I'd say it wasn't until d20 and 3e that we saw consistent targeting of players. Even in 2e, the overwhelming number of supplements were still geared towards DM's. Sure, you had the Complete guides, but, for every Complete Guide, you had setting books, monster books, and adventures in at least equal numbers.

Been mulling it over... since release of 5E, my experience with AL play is less than half, more more than one-third, of AL players buy the PHB within the first year.

In my games, all editions since 1981, it's been that way - including play of AD&D2 under the Retail Play - about 2/5 of players have a PHB; half of those who don't live with someone who does. I'm seeing much the same in 5E. If anything , I'm seeing MORE with PHB's than prior.

My last 2 D&D groups (running concurrently through last month) Discounting me as I GM'd:
1) GD, SB, EO, W, SA, BH, and C - GD, SB, EO, W and BH had PHB's BH and I were the only over-30 players.
2) J, G, K, C1, C2, C3, E - G, C1, C2 and E have PHB's; J and C3 used the SRD and the PBR instead.

My prior group - my wife, kids, a V and her BF, and a mutual friend of theirs and mine - I had a PHB, V had a PHB. 3 households, 2 books, 6 players.

Other game systems, yeah, most of the players leave the book to the GM. Casual players, again, sure. But NOT D&D amongst the west US coast gamers I've talked to and/or played with.

 

[GrahamWills]

I still stand by my original point - rules light systems rely far more on the GM than rules heavy systems in order to produce a particular experience at the table. Take a game like FATE. Now, that's a pretty rules light system. Thing is, there are so many areas where the DM needs to step in and adjudicate and arbitrate resolutions. Which, if you have a good DM, means that the game will run fantastic. Probably, depending on the experience you want, better than a rules heavy system. It's faster, cleaner and gets out of the way more.

However, and this is the big caveat, if the GM isn't on the ball, the system gets extremely frustrating.

Look, I love rules light games. I do. I would love to play FATE or GUMSHOE, or Dread or any of a host of other light RPG's out there all the time. But, should we embrace rules light as the "better" entrance into the hobby? I'm not convinced. There's a reason that the process of getting into the hobby usually starts with things like D&D and then moves into more indie game, like, say, Blades in the Dark. These rules lighter games are a lot harder to run successfully. Hand a 12 year old a copy of the 5e basic rules and a couple of the Adventure League modules and you're off and running. Hand that same 12 year old a copy of FATE and it's going to be a train wreck.

Curious. My experience is pretty much the opposite. By far all the worst experiences I have had have been with heavy systems. If I had to list my 30 worst experiences (and I might be able to!) I would expect 25-29 of them to be rules heavy systems. I have been running 4e recently for a group of young adults (8-15 years) and, frankly, even though I know 4e inside out, the heaviness of the rules gets in the way. A lot.

Focusing specifically on new players experience, here is what I have seen, as a new player and GM and as an experienced player/GM working with new people: Rules heavy systems (as in, systems with lots of rules) are not a good intro to the hobby. Here are some observations:

• In a rules heavy game, when people don't know something, the game stops and there is a 10 minute search and discussion before the situation is resolved. It is usually resolved correctly, but very often the complexity of the rules means that you don't even get that benefit. I cannot tell you the number of times a 3.5 game has ground to a halt because a new guy does something that appears very natural like grabbing someone to stop them attacking, and we have to abandon playing the game to play "explain the rules". A good GM will just hand-wave and carry on, but that's exactly a rules light approach. In the rules-light system, the GM knows there isn't a rule, so makes a call and moves on. They may spend a while thinking and it may be a bad call, but the overall experience is far, far better than the rules-search.
• In a rules-have game, I allot 30 minutes to explaining a character sheet. In FATE, I allot 5 minutes. During play it takes a significant amount of time even to FIND things on a rules-heavy character sheet (quick check -- where's initiative on your favorite heavy system? -- very week I run 4E, this gets asked. Every. Single. Week.)
• In a rules-heavy system, character creation requires effort. So much so that I have *never* had a good experience where we rolled up characters at a convention session. Near the top of my worst-ever games would be the 6 hour Aces and Eights game that featured 4 hours character creation and 2 hours combat, of which 1 hour was looking up rules. That does not happen in rules-light systems. I've rolled up full characters for Fiasco, Fudge, Hillfolk, and "finished off" characters in 13th Age, FATE and other mid-weight systems. Many people really like to create a character. Much harder to work out which of 100+ feats to take than write down a descriptive aspect.
• Rules trump GMs. Especially for beginning GMs. If you are splaying in a rules light system, then the players default mode is to *trust the GM* and look to support them. If the GM looks at the battle and says "I guess the low-light should make it harder to hit" then in a rules-light game players suggest ways that the GM's vision might be true: "You could invoke it for defense", or "it makes all vision related tasks one step harder". In a rules-heavy game, a very common response is from the rules expert who belittles the GM letting them known that within 10 squares low-light doesn't affect to-hit ratings. He's not wrong, but because the player knows the rules, they have more influence over the game than the GM. I'm not saying that player isn't a dick, or that people don't do that in rules-light games, but it happens a LOT in rules-heavy games. Not so much rules-lawyering as rules-one-upmanship.
• As sated before, we must consider RULE ZERO. In a rules heavy game, rule zero is the rule of last resort. It is seen as a form of failure -- the game has failed to be complete and so we must fall back to imagination. Because the goal of having lots of rules is (at least in a good system) to cover many situations, I really feel that in those games rule zero feels like an admission of failure. In rules light systems, rule zero is so much more likely to occur that it has good support. Take the case of a player using a shield a sled. In the rules heavy game, you have a lot of choices -- in D&D I might go acrobatics, or athletics, or endurance and I have not a ton of guidance on the difficulty levels. I'm on my own to make up a rule in a system that judges a GM on how well they follow the rules. In Fate Accelerated, even a novice GM is going to get something reasonable rapidly: Rules light systems provide support for rule zero much more at the same level as they do for the rest of the game, instead of treating it like a rules failure.

Honestly, I cannot support the contention that rules-heavy systems are easier for new GMs. I think the basic issue I have is that by implicitly elevating the rules over the GM, it undermines the new GM and forces them to check with their superior all the time, and provides both a measure and a stick by which the players can rate and berate their GM. I find that unhelpful.

Or, thinking of it another way, if everything goes well, any system is good. If you assume there are issues with a new GM, would you prefer to spend 4 hours looking up rules, or 4 hours playing a wildly inconsistent game with odd interpretations.

My answer is the second, by a lot. I'd prefer to actually play a Captain America who the GM has decided wrongly that the shield is a useless attack, rather than spend the time working out that I need to take the Heavy Shield feat to use it, then the Thrown Shield Feat to throw it, and cross-reference that with the thrown weapons (improvised) table, adding a +4 bonus for the heavy shield to the attack, but NOT to the damage.