Verisimilitude versus Rules Lite versus Rules Heavy

[innerdude]

Over on RPG.net, someone started thread trying to define "verisimilitude" in RPG settings, asking participants to talk about their personal ideas about what it means to them, etc.

I don't necessarily want to rehash the whole conversation here, though I suppose it might pop up regardless, but the real point is that it got me thinking about why verisimilitude is sometimes such a "big deal" in RPGs to begin with.

Surely this is one of those things that we all decide for ourselves and our groups, right? One person's verisimilitude may be totally different than someone else's, and that's okay.....

But I think the reason it keeps coming up in discussions, talked about in terms of game design, etc., is that at its core, verisimilitude is about finding the easiest "short hand" GMs and players have for figuring out how the world / game works.

The closer a mechanic adheres to some basic semblance of "real world" property, the faster it is to assimilate and "grok." When a system assumes that a large amount of "hand waving" is the norm, it's also assuming that basic resolutions can be made by players and GMs because the verisimilitude of the game world is consistent enough--either with the "real world," or within its own rules--for rulings to made fairly and impartially.

The fewer the rules an RPG has, the more the system assumes that the GM and players have a clear idea of how the game is intrinsically "supposed to work," and to me that agreement is very much intertwined with verisimilitude.

I think my real question is for those that play, or have extensively played "rules lite" RPGs. I've never actually played a "rules lite" RPG. To be honest, I don't know that I even own one, either in print or PDF formats. I own the Legends of Anglerre version of FATE, but I don't know that I'd even totally categorize it as "rules lite." I might put it somewhere around "medium lite."

My question, though, is in rules lite RPG play, do discussions about "the rules," or what was happening in the game world, or "what my player can do right now" tend to focus more on the group's shared agreement about the "verisimilitude" of the world? Does it change the players' "negotiating" style with the GM, when much more of the world's control mechanisms are grounded in how the GM sees the world working in their head, and not bound by "what my character sheet says I can do"? If you're a rules lite player, how do your expectations about the way you interact with the GM, the world, and players change?

And for rules-heavy play, are we trading one version of verisimilitude for another? Are we simply trading a more GM-centric view of "how the world works," for one where the system largely dictates it for us?

 

[trancejeremy]

I've never understood the obsession people have with "verisimilitude", at least regarding rules.

It's always going to be abstract (which is a good thing, it what lets it be different from the real world). All you can really hope for is consistency.

Which is why edition changes bother me more than anything else. Like "boom" no more assassins when Greyhawk moved from 1e to 2e. Or all the awfulness when Mystara moved from D&D to AD&D

 

[Bedrockgames]

My experience with rules light play is you have less debates about verisimiltude. I think people who play rules light care just as much about it but their disruption of disbelief point centers more on not having to think too much about a given mechanical resolution. I prefer rules light and find that the more rules there are,the more places there are in the game for my attention to be drawn away fomwhat my character is doing and shifted to how and why to achieve his action mechanically. Believability, consistency and immersion are all important to me though, so i like my rules light games to have simple, broad mechanics that canbe applied to a wide range of situations without breaking down.

 

[billd91]

And for rules-heavy play, are we trading one version of verisimilitude for another? Are we simply trading a more GM-centric view of "how the world works," for one where the system largely dictates it for us?

I don't believe there's a trade off in versions of verisimilitude by going with a rules-heavy system. People may have different senses of it, but I don't feel that a single person has multiple different senses of it. Games successfully tweak that sense, or they don't. Maybe they do it to differing degrees from the perspective of the individual player.

The difference between rules-heavy and rules-light games with respect to verisimilitude that I see is the likelihood of encountering cases in which the game's rules conflict with the sense of verisimilitude. Rules-heavy systems may do a pretty good job of building that sense in many cases, but I find that the more heavy and comprehensive the rules, the more likely I am to find conflicts. One hopes they'll really be outliers, but sometimes they're not. Rules light systems and their smaller structural footprint avoid conflicts more, I think, because they leave a lot more of the sense of verisimilitude to the GM and players rather than include structures to simulate it.

So why is verisimilitude important? For me, it's important because it enables the game to make sense. If things happen because of the rules but they don't feel realistically plausible, I have a much harder time getting into the game. This is true for all sorts of games, but I think the issue is more acute with RPGs because a certain level of immersion in the story is one of the goals of playing.

 

[Drowbane]

"why is verisimilitude important?"

Maybe I am misunderstanding the word, but without verismilitude we might as well just be playing any number of board games. Verismilitude *is* all the fluff that matters. And when your Fluff and Mechanics can not play well together it makes for a strange RPG... this was one of the things I really disliked about 4e. "How does this power make sense again?" "Healing Surges / HP represent... what?"

And I consider 4e a "Rules Lite" system. It may be more accurate to label it a "Rules kinda heavy for no good reason" system, but it is very light compared to say... 3e. With 3e I have *far* more choices to make about any given PC I care to make (granted, some of those choices are easy given my experiences).

 

[TKDB]

I'd say pretty much anyone who plays RPGs values verisimilitude in some form or another; the issue is that what some find helps their sense of immersion and verisimilitude, others find to be a hindrance. Some people prefer rules-light systems because those keep the focus on player decisions and, as noted by innerdude, place most of the burden of maintaining verisimilitude on the players and GM. On the other hand, some people don't really feel a sense of verisimilitude unless things are represented mechanically. The mechanics of the game are, after all, the most concrete and tangible method connecting the players to the in-game action, so they can be a useful tool for building immersion.

But then again, game mechanics can also be immersion-breakers in some cases. And when the rules try to be too realistic, it just gets too clunky and bogged down. Personally, I prefer something of a balance between the two. I'm one of the types who likes concrete mechanics to reflect the flavor of the game, but once the basic principles are established mechanically I prefer the system to be as smooth and streamlined as possible, which of course will necessarily mean a fair amount of abstraction and such. Basically, if something's important to the intended atmosphere or flavor of the setting or character, it should be reflected mechanically; otherwise, just gloss it over. For instance, detailed injury systems are well and good for a grim & gritty game where combat is specifically intended to be gruesome and deadly, but otherwise it just gets in the way (even though it might be realistic).