Interesting Ryan Dancey comment on "lite" RPGs

[I'm A Banana]

Wow, Gentlegamer, that's quite a conspiracy theory you have.

"Rules heavy" system that have an outlined rule for everything can be translated to computer games much easier (including lots of number crunching and calculations).

This is actually wrong. Videogames are *overwhelmingly* eager to embrace easy to understand, light rules. They only have so many buttons on a controller, after all.

The more rules for more situations helps at the table, not on the screen. Adding rules for grappling, weapon sizes, treasure, tripping, etc. is not what a videogame looks for. You have one button to press to swing your sword and hit the guy x number of times to kill him, then you move on and do it again to the next guy.

Think of some of the most complex CRPG's on the market: MMOs like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars, single-player opuses like the Final Fantasy series...every resolution system is astonishingly simple. And I bet to translate D&D into an MMO, Atari has to simplify things, too...because the power and technology doesn't exist to have a character that can grapple, for instance. Or one that can bull rush. Or one that can run a farm. Or one that can knock down any wall given enough time and sword blows. Or one that allows you to cut down trees. Or make jumps. Or climb "unscalable" walls.

Videogames exist in a limited, predefined world where the rules need only be as complex as the things that the heroes do. There's no treasure generation rules. There's no CR/EL rules. There's no rules for object hardness and hit points, no rules for snatching items from someone's hand, no rules for grabbing a rope in the rain, no rules for laying seige to a castle, no rules for winning over a crowd or using diplomacy. These are all rules that D&D has that would largely be ignored in a CRPG based on D&D, and have been. So in a CRPG based on D&D, you actually have to *simplify* the rules. It hardly sounds like they benefit from complexity.

Speaking as the guy taking Final Fantasy and turning it into a Pen-and-Paper RPG, I've had pretty wide experience with the difference between what makes a fun computer game and what makes a fun pen-and-paper game. And a pen-and-paper game benefits from a complex rule system, where whatever option a character can do is already accounted for in the balance of the rules, making sure that no option becomes overwhelmingly powerful.

Systems with a lot of rules (D&D) have to be *reduced* in complexity to accomodate the limitations of computer hardware. Complex rules are a PROBLEM for CRPG's. Which means that the complexity of the rules, far from being there to inspire easier CRPG game play, is actually there in spite of the fact that they make it HARDER to translate into the digital realm, and the complex rules are usually *discarded* in the translation to computer games. While I might need to know in a PnPRPG how to wrestle a hog to the ground, in a CRPG, all I need to know is what button to push to kill things.

In fact, the thing that probably makes D&D compatible with computer games the most is the grid system, which is a *simplification* of rules, forgoing complexity and embracing an artificial simplicity.

D&D is absolutely NOT designed to be a CRPG first and a PnPRPG second. If it was, it would be a simpler system, more abstract...much like FFd20 is, in trying to mirror a CRPG.

 

[Desdichado]

So why did these people have him do their forward?

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?cPath=334_337&products_id=3289&

Sorry, Rush, point still stands.

But, unlike the talk radio model, you are free to believe what you want.

I don't see what that proves at all. But hey, you've got a nice pattern going of making dismissive and insulting brush-offs to cover-up the lack of compelling content in your arguments--we've been there before and probably will be again. Don't let any facts get in your way of having fun calling me Rush Limbaugh.

 

[fredramsey]

Nicely put. This is the very spirit of a "rules lite" game, no matter how many pages it has, or what company puts it out.

I've been playing for over 25 years, and I've read and played in a lot of systems. Only within the last 2 or 3 months has my opinion of mechanics vs. fun really changed.

Savage Worlds got me to thinking about why we roll dice.

Burning Wheel got me to thinking about when to roll dice.

And that's what really matters, in the end.

I think I see the biggest sticking point: None of this stuff is real. Seriously, though, it's not. The GM invented the debris. We're all imaging that it's there, pinning this guy's poor friend. The conflict isn't about mass vs. muscle capacity -- it's about this guy trying to save his friend.

And the thing is, the player was fine with it. He did something heroic, saved his friend, and everybody went "Man, he's strong." Nobody went back with a scale to measure the debris and write down how much weight he lifted.

What I'm trying to say is that it's entirely possible to play a challenging, believable game where the mechanics handle "can you achieve your goal", without knowing concrete specifics about everything.

 

[ThirdWizard]

If I'd played that scene in D&D, I would have looked at the heaviest character's Strength stat, seen how much they could barely lift, and made the weight of the debris that much.

Either way, the difficulty was the same. It didn't make any difference.

Big playstyle difference there. Most people I know would consider that quite "backwards" logic. First determine how heavy the boulders are, then determine if the PCs can move them quickly is how I have always seen it done. Thus it makes a huge difference. In one case, the PCs' ability to succed is based on thier own abilities. In the other DM's whim (if the DM didn't want them to be able to pass by the rubble, then it would conveniently be too heavy for the PCs to move).

Thus, big playstyle difference. One way is governed by PC ability, the other by DM whim. If this is how a rules-lite system is going to be, I personally would not like to play it.

 

[fredramsey]

I certainly won't!

And don't let the spirit of what I was saying get in the way of you lasering in on only pieces of it to drown out the point I was making about big companies picking on small ones!

[hugs and kisses]

I don't see what that proves at all. But hey, you've got a nice pattern going of making dismissive and insulting brush-offs to cover-up the lack of compelling content in your arguments--we've been there before and probably will be again. Don't let any facts get in your way of having fun calling me Rush Limbaugh.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

But BG takes a lot more rules understanding. I pity the poor fool who doesn't know the 3rd edition rules try to make it all the way to the end of BGII because you have to have a lot of game knowledge on how to defeat certain monsters. The Mind Flayer area would be particularly frustrating.

BG is a 2nd Edition game.

[/pendantic]

 

[rogueattorney]

The other point I'd like to make is the concept of character creation. I don't *want* to be able to create a character in 5 minutes. I want a backstory, I want a personality, I want all those things, that should be standard for any character (unless I'm slopping one together at a convention). To this end, rules-heavy can give me more flexibility and more definition, but even it is insufficient for what I want. With a rules-light system, I might be mechanically nothing more than a few ability scores, a class, and some hit points. With rules-heavy, I might be all those things, and some skills and feats as well. But neither tells the complete story of *who* I am.
Aside from trying to create people within the middle of a game (never a good idea, in any situation), I don't *care* if character creation takes 2 hours. I like character creation. It's the rules that come up during game play that I don't want to eat up all my time. Game time is precious to me, and if I can spend that time actually role-playing and propelling the story foreward, rather than debating some rules minutia, then I'm happier.

Check out Everway. You should be able to get a copy off of ebay for ~$10-$15. Makes a very big deal about character creation and background. In some ways that's half the game. And yet it's a very rules lite system.

You can still do involved character creation in rules lite games. The difference is that after presenting your character concept to the game master, he says "duly noted," rather than trying to help you shoe-horn all the character's background into a set of skills, feats, and other abilities. That's where the true pain of character creation lies with rules-heavy systems - the quantification.

R.A.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Big playstyle difference there. Most people I know would consider that quite "backwards" logic. First determine how heavy the boulders are, then determine if the PCs can move them quickly is how I have always seen it done. Thus it makes a huge difference. In one case, the PCs' ability to succed is based on thier own abilities. In the other DM's whim (if the DM didn't want them to be able to pass by the rubble, then it would conveniently be too heavy for the PCs to move).

Thus, big playstyle difference. One way is governed by PC ability, the other by DM whim. If this is how a rules-lite system is going to be, I personally would not like to play it.

You hit that nail soldidly on the head for me, ThirdWizard. You do that alot around here.

Changing the challenge simply to hurry along the story is too close to interactive storytelling for me, and too far away from playing a game. The price of Park Place doesn't change just because you can't afford it this time around...

My players appreciate that, too. If I wanted to have an interactive fiction session, I don't need any rules at all. If I want to play a game, I definately need them...

 

[SWBaxter]

Boy, this one made the rules lite advocates jump up and yelp, didn't it? "It's not troooo...!"

Most of the response I'm seeing is more along the lines of puzzlement. I have no reason to suspect Dancey's lying, but his experience differs fairly dramatically from mine. For example, I'm having trouble figuring out how he gets only 20 minutes of rules interaction out of a four hour D&D session - I ran Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, and if there were many sessions where we only spent 20 minutes using the rules, it would probably have taken four or five times as long to finish the thing.

But I would have to agree I find the supposed benefits of rules light games greatly exagarated, and think that the role of consistency in running a smooth game is undervalued.

The latter does not follow from the former - rules light games almost always trade detail in favour of consistency. Example: a given bad guy can be overcome in any of a variety of ways - PCs could fight him, bargain with him, blackmail him, trick him, whatever. In D&D, the rules cover fighting him in exacting detail, other approaches are handled in a relatively simplistic (and probably incomplete, unless you want the encounter resolved by something like a single diplomacy skill check) fashion. In a lighter game like HeroQuest, whatever approach you take is going to be handled the same way mechanically, with some methods (like fighting) being less detailed than D&D and others more detailed.

 

[Desdichado]

And don't let the spirit of what I was saying get in the way of you lasering in on only pieces of it to drown out the point I was making about big companies picking on small ones!

I got your point; I just don't think there's anything to it. WotC doesn't feel threatened by smaller companies--Ryan Dancey himself, back in the early days of 3e, said that the market share of even the biggest of their competitors was too small for them to even consider it anything but negligible.

Besides, as has been pointed out many times, the comments were more about the marketability of Rules Lite games, and the conversation was fairly objective whether you believe it or not.

You're not actually making a point as near as I can tell, you seem to be getting defensive and lashing out. When it's been pointed out to you that you were actually mistaken about one of the most crucial elements of your claim, you've rather stubbornly clung to it anyway. I must be misunderstanding something, but I can't see what you're even trying to say anymore.