Rules heavy = bad; light = good

[Dungeoneer]

I feel like I'm seeing the above viewed almost as a consensus these days. It's probably confirmation. bias, but I figured it was worth asking. It really seems to be the thing right now - rules light games coming at us from every direction, but nary a new heavy system in sight

There's a thread ongoing right here in EN World about whether DDN will be rules-lite or not. And plenty of really awesome games recently have been billed as light/fast etc.

I have a bunch of rules lite games on my bookshelf. And they're frickin' awesome, each and every one of them. But there's room on my shelf for heavy, crunchy, tactical systems too. Stuff I can spend a few hours optimizing a character, spaceship, NPC, or what-have-you and actively enjoy that process.

Of course, the biggest game in the world right now is Pathfinder, which is a heavy system. So clearly there is a demand for heavy systems. But I stills feel there's an underlying current of "heavy=bad". And heavy doesn't equal bad; it equals heavy.

I'm going to be gambling on a demand for heavy systems soon with N.E.W. and O.LD. These are not rules-lite games. And more than one person has expressed sincere surprise that these aren't rules-lite games. But that's by the by and some time off.

What say you? Is lite a progression thing, a phase, or am I a victim of my own confirmation bias and seeing judgement which isn't there?

Or - and I can see this as a possibility - is an aging RPG demographic (and we are) being drawn towards games which demand less of our increasingly in-demand time?

I feel like as gamers, what we think we WANT is rules-heavy and what we actually NEED is rules-light.

It's easy to get addicted having different options and customizing and optimizing and all that. I have lost many hours of my life fiddling around with various character builds. But once you get to the table a rules-heavy game may mean you spend more time figuring out how things work than actually playing. Especially at first.

Even once you achieve a certain level of system mastery, a rules-heavy system can still slow things down. On a theoretical level I love the idea of 4e's grid-based tactical combat. But there have been sessions where overly-complicated battles with a dozen different enemies, each flagged with various condition markers, turned into a three-hour slog. And then I wanted nothing so much as to chuck the whole thing and get on with the story.

I'm trying to persuade my group to give 13th Age a try because it takes a rules-light(er) approach to a lot of the same things. But they're afraid of losing all those crunchy, tactical bits, even though a simpler system would probably be much more freeing for all of us.

There have been studies that show that human beings are really bad at predicting what will actually make us happy. My extension of this theory to RPGs is that we THINK we are going to get the most enjoyment out of rules and options when actually we will get the most enjoyment out of rolling dice and telling a story together.

Anyway, all this isn't a knock on N.E.W., Morrus. It looks pretty awesome and the rules-loving geek in me rubs his hands together with glee when he sees all those random tables. And I'm sure lots of other gamers will feel the same. So I wouldn't worry about your game not being 'cool' and rules-light. Just make sure that there's space in the game to actually PLAY and you'll be alright!

What is interesting is that WotC already tried rules light(er) with 4E compared to 3E with the known results. So the question is was 4E not light enough or are the ones wanting rules light games just a vocal minority?

4e was arguably less complicated than 3e but it was a long, long way from rules light.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't think rules heavy is bad. However, I think two other things.

One, excessive rules for no good reason is bad. A manual that describes a huge swath of different character types and spends a lot of text doing it is justifiable, for those who are interested. One that spends the same amount of space but doesn't cover the same depth and variety of possible play experiences is less so.

And two, where most of us are coming from is pretty heavy systems, so there's a natural regression towards the mean towards lighter rules.

 

[RangerWickett]

It's much easier to make a bad rules-heavy game than a rules-light one. In my experience, that is the main difference.

When there is a lot of rules, it's more probable that some of them will be bad. It will be harder to detect the bad parts during playtesting. So there will be some rules that are contradictory, overpowered, underpowered or create absurd effects. And when a problem is observed, it's harder to fix at the table, because there are many interacting parts.

I think I could like rules-heavy games. But I know only one rules-heavy game that works for me (D&D 4e) and none that I consider really good (that is, with no need for improvements), while there is a lot of rules-medium and rules-light games in these categories.

Looking at Pathfinder and 4e, there are tons of rules. Even though 4e was supposedly less crunchy (which basically meant "at level X use number Y, just trust us" instead of "assemble five pieces and hopefully you'll get something balanced"), you still had TONS of pieces interacting with the potential of making the game degenerate. I've had 4e players be able to lock down solos so the climactic fight of a campaign was dull unless I completely cheated. I've had PF players stack defenses to the point that in combat I basically ignore them because nothing will ever threaten them.

What I want is a game with a lot of options that don't stack together, and that aren't fiddly. Like, I don't want to feel compelled to track down 7 different ways to increase my AC. Nor do I really want to have to pick between 30 spells that do really niche things (ooh, I can make someone vain for a few minutes, but that spell can have no other effect on their emotions?).

TL;DR
The type of rules-heavy game I want needs a variety of character options, each of which provides broad and interesting abilities, that don't pile modifiers together.

 

[delericho]

Do you see the tinkerability as a strength?

Sort of.

Actually, no, that's not right. The ability to tinker with the system is most definitely a strength. However, what I find when I look at SWSE (and D&D 3.5e, and pretty much every other game I've played) is that the systems are mostly sound, but there are a handful of weaknesses. Not huge, system-destroying problems, but little things that drive me absolutely mental. (Basically, they're a lot like the sort of things Dave Noonan was talking about in his old "Proud Nails" column.)

And so, I find myself compelled to tinker with the system. I feel Force Points don't work quite right, so I change that. Oh, and it turns out that using a 4e-style method for generating threats works much better, so I change that. But then I find that vehicular threats work much better, but they break when the PCs also have vehicles (and besides, the vehicle rules aren't too good), so I change that. Which means a bunch of feats and talents now don't work right. So...

The problem is that every change I make causes the game to become more complex: players who know the system now need to constantly check against my ever-growing house rules, and players who don't have to read two sources instead of one. So to resolve this I decide the way to go is to rewrite the whole thing into a single, consistent source. But if I'm doing that, then there's half a dozen other things that haven't quite annoyed me enough to deal with yet, but since I'm doing a rewrite anyway...

What I really need is a downloadable, editable, hyperlinked (and complete, including supplements) SRD or similar, so that I can change what I feel I need to (and only what I feel I need to) and then quickly send the changes out to players. In theory, that should allow an iterative process getting ever-closer to 'perfection'. For some reason, though, WotC never did produce such a thing. I can't possibly think why...

(And yes, all of the above is, of course, entirely my own particular madness at work. Hopefully, your mileage varies considerably. )

For me, it can certainly be, because the actual process of tinkering can be very enjoyable and rewarding. I like tinkering with complex games.

Agreed.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Do you see the tinkerability as a strength? For me, it can certainly be, because the actual process of tinkering can be very enjoyable and rewarding. I like tinkering with complex games.

I'm a HEROphile, so yes, definitely.

 

[Desdichado]

I think there are a lot of people (myself included) who, as they age and the demands on their time become greater, feel that rules heavy systems are too much work to have fun with. That can come across as them saying Rules Heavy is Bad, when they really mean Rules Heavy is Bad FOR ME.

I think there's almost always in implicit "for me" tacked on to anyone sharing an opinion on gaming on the internet; with the exception of the most strident, my way or the highway type edition warriors. Most people are just trying to discuss, and when they make a claim, of course they mean "for me." Or at most, "for me and my group, and possibly some other folks I've gamed with in the past."

That said, FOR ME, I've always preferred rules-lite games. I've always played rules heavy games as if they were rules-light, handwaving away and ignoring much of the complexity. My level of tolerance of rules heavy games has fluctuated over time; in the past I had more patience for them.

I suspect that if there's any trend in games that are not specifically D&D or Pathfinder, it's to set themselves apart from D&D and Pathfinder, so as to find their niche. Since they are rules heavy games, it's probably not unusual that rules-light is a common approach in games that aren't D&D or Pathfinder.

 

[fjw70]

Do you see the tinkerability as a strength? For me, it can certainly be, because the actual process of tinkering can be very enjoyable and rewarding. I like tinkering with complex games.

I tinker with rules out of necessity. I don't really want to do it but I ususally want a lighter version of a heavier system. That is why I have several attempts of blending 4e D&D and BX.

This is one reason I am still pretty excited about D&D Next. The promise of that game is that all the tinkering is done and laid out in pieces. Then I can just assemble the game I want without tinkering.

 

[Desdichado]

I feel like as gamers, what we think we WANT is rules-heavy and what we actually NEED is rules-light.

It's easy to get addicted having different options and customizing and optimizing and all that. I have lost many hours of my life fiddling around with various character builds. But once you get to the table a rules-heavy game may mean you spend more time figuring out how things work than actually playing. Especially at first.

...

There have been studies that show that human beings are really bad at predicting what will actually make us happy. My extension of this theory to RPGs is that we THINK we are going to get the most enjoyment out of rules and options when actually we will get the most enjoyment out of rolling dice and telling a story together.

While that's no doubt partially true, I also think that a lot of the enjoyment we get as customers from our games is in reading them and thinking about them and playing around with options, and doing other out-of-game tinkering. In that regard, what we want is, to some extent, rules heavy games, because we do get enjoyment out of them. Just not, curiously, at the table.

Although I'm a pretty rules-lighty type of guy, I do admit that the swan song of character customization options and huge lists of monsters sucks me in from time to time. I never appreciate rules heavy at the table, but I don't regret the big pile of 3.5 and Pathfinder books on my shelf either. And, from time to time, I get them out and read portions of them, or think about adapting them, or occasionally even using them.

However, as a customer, I clearly spend the majority of my time buying rules heavy games. I don't need to buy much for rules-light games (part of the conceit of rules light to begin with, after all). And since I'm in a group where almost everyone in the group is at least a part-time GM, I don't get to play them as often as I'd like.

 

[Umbran]

I think there's almost always in implicit "for me" tacked on to anyone sharing an opinion on gaming on the internet;

We want there to be. But in practice that isn't how people talk. Unfortunately, many people state their opinions as broad objective fact, *mean* it that way, and defend it that way.

 

[Janx]

We want there to be. But in practice that isn't how people talk. Unfortunately, many people state their opinions as broad objective fact, *mean* it that way, and defend it that way.

Not only that, the listener never tacks that on when he hears somebody speaks.

So when I say "pizza is the best" the listener should have tacked on " for Janx" or "in Janx's opinion"

But most listeners don't. And some listeners assume that since I didn't explicitly state one of those, that I am therefore dictating the terms of reality on them as a facist prophet of my truth.

Stuff goes downhill when we need our lawyers to proof read every statement.