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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 8459705" data-attributes="member: 7023840">I was going to add an additional section to this before it got to unwieldy.Essentially, one of the major axes of conflict for people discussing early RPGs was between those who preferred more rules-heavy games, and those who preferred more rules-lite games (and would often name-check free kriegspiel in the first few years). This same conflict was roughly identical to the one that previously played out in wargaming as a community. The most amusing thing, to me, was that you had these conflicting impulses largely cancelled out by the commercialization of the game. "You don't need rules" isn't really a great selling point companies that want to make money (like TSR) or, for that matter, for designers that want to sell rival products! While you still had the occasional rules-lite game being put out by more indie-publishers or in zines, within five years of the publication of D&D, you already had lost some of that institutional knowledge and drive.Which is why you can have the publication of a parody of a rules-lite game in Different Worlds #2 in 1979 (Lord of the Dice). The game is a half-page, and the rules for adjudication in full are as follows:Whenever the Player wishes to undertake an action with his character, the Gamesmaster rolls the percentile dice. If the  Gamesmaster rolls a high number, the  character has succeeded in his action and  reaps all benefits accordingly. If the Gamesmaster rolls a low number, the character has failed in his action, and must suffer any attendant penalties. If the Gamesmaster is not sure as to whether the roll is high or low, he should roll again until he decides one way or another. The Gamesmaster is, of course, responsible for embellishing upon the results determined via the die-roll. The irony is that this article, which was a parody, was then used as a model for rules-lite games in the post-Egbert explosion of popularity of D&D by some!But the same tension is always manifest; you can have Arneson, complaining about how D&D turned out, while hawking books of rules, yet not running his own rules at conventions and instead choosing to run the much more free-form style of play that he was known for. The maturity of the hobby, in terms of commercialism, arguably led to the bias towards more complexity. IMO- that's not from the ES.</blockquote>

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