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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Akrasia" data-source="post: 2332749" data-attributes="member: 23012">Well, needless to say I disagree with most of J_D's post.  In fact, reading it I couldn't help but wonder whether he was talking about a game or a legal system (I could at least understand his obsession with consistency in the latter case). The thing is, we don't have consistency and certainty in the real world.  Whenever I encounter a new problem in the real world, I might have a rough idea as to how difficult resolving this problem will be (very hard, or relatively simple).  But I could hardly assign an exact number to it.  Likewise, new problems might be similar to old problems, but I cannot say whether the new problems have exactly the same level of difficulty as the old problems.Likewise, with respect to locks in a fantasy world, why on earth should it be the case that one 'tough' lock will have a DC of 25, but a different lock in a different part of the world should not have a DC of 30 -- and that the character cannot tell the difference between the two locks until he/she tries to pick it?This is not necessarily true.Games can achieve varying degrees of:(a.) 'Fidelity' (detail provided in order to simulate, or provide information about, the game world in question);(b.) Consistency (consistent rules/guidelines for relevant situations).The more 'rules light' a game is, the more it has to 'sacrifice' one of these features (or some combination of both).  However, it need not sacrifice (b.).What attracts many GMs and players to rules light systems, IME, is a desire to stop 'sweating the details' (e.g. adding up endless modifiers, etc.), and 'get on with the game/story'. Hence they are less likely to introduce ad hoc 'fiddly' modifiers in particular situations in order to 'simulate' those situations better (what some people, e.g. Psion, refer to as 'fidelity'). Since the desired level of fidelity has already been achieved by the rules, for the most part, then IME GMs have not been any more arbitrary in their rules light games than they have been in their rules heavy games.</blockquote>

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