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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 9426772" data-attributes="member: 6696971">The economic I'm aiming for here is economic with respect to (a) reducing general overhead and handling time while simultaneously maintaining both (b) the focus of its play and (c) the magnitude of its decisions (both individual decisions in isolation and the throughline of a connected sequence).Economic and light also need to index expectations of proportionality.  If you tell me something is "rules light", well...my expectation is that, while it is going to be a truncated play experience (for all values of "play experience" here) that it still possesses all the means to resolve essential gamestate and situation-state changes.  You don't get to be exempt from that responsibility just because you've written one page (or ten pages) of rules.Here is an example.<a href="https://johnharper.itch.io/lasers-feelings" target="_blank">Lasers & Feelings</a> (this is not a knock on Harper's work...I think (?) you know I'm a big fan John Harper's thoughts and execution as it pertains to game design).  This game is ultralight but I wouldn't classify it as economic because, despite its extraordinary lack of rules density, the experience of running it (and playing it...but I ran it) is way more burdensome than I would like.  That is because it is basically <a href="http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/594" target="_blank">Apocalypse World layer 1</a>. While certainly playable (as an AW layer 1 game is), the blank space inherent to L&F's lightness demands that the GM/table answer some very key, very consequential questions during play about resolution that get answered by AW layers 2 through 3 (or even 4). Put another way, absence of key rules/procedures can be just as confounding and labor intensive to play as presence of rules/procedures (and L&F exemplifies this imo).</blockquote>

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