Interesting Ryan Dancey comment on "lite" RPGs

[Gentlegamer]

And now we have someone else stating anecdotal evidence as fact, and pulling the thread back on topic. So...do rules light systems run faster? Anecdotal evidence claims yes. Dancey (who, AFAIK conducted the only observational market research ever done on roleplaying games) claims that wasn't what he found in his research.

He did more than claim that wasn't what he found in his "research." He claimed the ONLY reason most people think "rules lite" is "simpler" or "better" is because they desperately want it to be true: that their own experience and abilities have nothing to do with whether "rules like" is actually simpler, faster, or "better" for them, but that it is merely a mantra that they have chanted enough to delude themselves into believing, when the "hard facts" show that the belief is false.

 

[fanboy2000]

Good point. All Dancy did was replace subject bias with experimenter bias. If there were a way to do a double blind experiment with different game systems, that would be something. Without a double blind experiment, all we're left with is a lot bias.

 

[maggot]

He claimed the ONLY reason most people think "rules lite" is "simpler" or "better" is because they desperately want it to be true

Actually, he marked that as his opinion for the discrepency between what people thought and wha he observed.

But I think that a "rules light" approach works well for "rules light" gamers, while a "rules heavy" approach works well for "rules heavy" gamers. So a blind study wouldn't work.

If you took a bunch of rules-heavy D&D players and had them play an extremely rules-light game like say Everway (the lightest I can think of), I could see a lot of problems with deciding how to handle situations. The rules-heavy players would search the book for answers when the answers are not there. But rules-light games have very little rules, so the rules-heavy players would eventually figure out that these things weren't covered, and probably start making lists of house rules making the rules-light game heavier.

Similarly, if you took a bunch of rules-light players and had them play a rules-heavy game, they would have a hard time as well. Maybe not as hard because they would just make things up as always, and they would thus ignore large portions of the rules-heavy game making it effectively rules-lighter.

I think the problem is when you have a mixture of gamers. As a rules-lighter GM with some rules-heavier players, I can tell you that is true.

 

[woodelf]

OTOH, aren't rules lite games promoted as being "easier" to start with and to play, in general? I don't know much about these systems, but if I were a newbie, I would want to start with something "easy" and a rules lite system would be more attractive because I wouldn't have to learn as much to start playing. But it seems, at least from Ryan Dancey's peepshow, that is not the case and could, in fact, turn off people who think "If this is rules lite, I'd hate to try the rules 'heavy' games!"

On the flipside, i've known several people whose first intro to RPG was D20 System of some flavor, and they had no idea that not all RPGs were that complex, and probably would never have given them a secnod chance if i hadn't let them know that fact.

Ryan's comments are ambiguous, but it sounds like he was talking about D&D players trying out a "rules-lite" game. If a game is unfamiliar to you, you won't be quick about it. If a game is in a style that you're not comfortable with, you won't be quick about it. If you insist on playing a game in a different style than it's intended for, it won't be quick-n-easy. I'd love to hear more details, to determine how much relevancy his experiences actually have. Guess i better figure out what a livejournal is, and how to contribute to it.

 

[woodelf]

I think there is a pretty good chance he has never played a lite system before. If he did he would realize that the learing curve and prep time is much lower in lite systems. Lite systems will typically have less realism than d20, but d20 is not exaclty the most realistic system either.

Well, this gets to "what's 'lite'?" Frex, lots of people refer to Cinematic Unisystem (B:tVS RPG) and Storyteller as 'rules-lite'. Personally, i don't think they've really gotten anywhere near the threshhold. If i'm going to divide all RPGs into two categories "lite" and "heavy", those games fall on the heavy side of the divide--albeit at the absolute lite end of the heavy games. When someone says "rules-lite" i think of games like Trollbabe, Risus, or Over the Edge. That is, i think there's more in common between Unisystem and D&D3E, than between Unisystem and, say, Over the Edge. [That said, i only rarely consider a dichotomous categorization useful in this area--usually, recognizing that we're dealing with a spectrum, probably on multiple axes, seems more useful to the discussion.]

 

[woodelf]

Name a "rules lite" RPG that remained in print and actively supported by a publisher for more than 5 years.

I think only Amber (a completely genius design, BTW) meets this criteria.

In the current marketplace, I can't think of a single rules light game that's thriving. What I think is interesting, and this ties in Ryan's point that people *want* rules lite gaming to succeed, is that I suspect a lot of people think a game is rules lite when it's not.

What's even more interesting is that if you look at the industry over the past 30+ years, only rules heavy games have found and sustained audiences. Amber is perhaps the only exception I can think of (and again, that's a genius design).

Um, Fudge? It's got a bigger audience than Amber DRP, i'll wager (not that that's saying much). And, depending on where you put the threshhold, BRP and D6 System might both qualify--certainly, compared to D&D3E, they look awful light.

Sorcerer's been in print for more than 5 years, hasn't it? Didn't Castle Falkenstein make it 5 years before RTG all but evaporated? Also, why does support matter? Part of what attracts me to rules-lite RPGs is precisely the lack of the supplement treadmill--i'm actually turned off by games with a stack of supplements. I want to buy an RPG, and play it, and never buy another book for that RPG ever again, and then play it some more. And i suspect i'm not alone. The desire for simplicity, rather than completeness, is likely to express as much in the desire for fewer books as in the desire for fewer rules.

And surely, continued playability is a better judge than continued saleability. That is, if someone gets sick of a game after a few years, that's a problem. But if everybody who wants the game buys it--if you satisfy your market--is lack of further sales really an indictment of the quality of the game?

But i think i agree with you: i think most people think of fairly crunchy systems when they hear the term 'rules lite'.

Oh, i just thought of a way to make my point more clearly:

If we rate crunchiness on a scale of 1 to 10, with, say, Risus and Over the Edge at about a 2 (yes, i can think of noticably less-crunchy RPGs), and, say, Phoenix Command or Albedo at about a 10, D&D3E would be somewhere in the 9 range. Cinematic Unisystem, Storyteller, and Fading Suns would all be around a 7. BRP (CoC, specifically) would be probably a 5. IOW, something like CoC might be right on the cusp of "rules-lite-ness", if the dividing point is the middle of the range. However, the fact that 95%+ of all RPGs ever commercially available, and an even larger percentage of sales, fall into the 6-9 range on the crunchiness scale really skews things. So, the median result might well be, say, 7.3. Thus, some see that as the logical split-point, and consider anything less crunchy to be on the "lite" side. But, IMHO, looking at the whole spectrum, and acknowledging that there are a ton more games on one side of the line [which is at 5.5] than the other is more useful.

 

[woodelf]

Only if you change the yard markers. Remember that back in 91, VAMPIRE was being touted as an example of rules-light gaming. It certainly has endured, for more than the Dancey-Mearls-requisite 5 years....

Of course, since day one i've never considered V:tM to be rules-lite. Lighter than most D20 System stuff, yes, but not "lite" in a pseudo-absolute sense. And i love the WoD games (well, except for Vampire), so this isn't meant to be disparaging. It probably stems in part from having discovered OtE before V:tM.

 

[woodelf]

I thought about that earlier; that might be more indicative of sales than popularity. But what about persistence? Perhaps it's the case that it's fresh product that keeps a game alive, something oft asserted elsewhere, and it's more than rules heavy games lend themselves to this model than rules light games moreso than any enduring appeal of the rules which leads to the enduring popularity of heavier games compared to light games.

In fact, I'd go so far to say I beleive that is the case.

That said, GURPS (a game I do not consider rules light) consistently produces supplements that are usually somewhat to very light on actual rules material. Why couldn't a rules light game follow the GURPS model?

Or is it just that none have?

Isn't that pretty much what the CityBooks did? Sure, they were pretty much compatible with AD&D, but the actual rules skeleton in them was pretty light-weight--much more in line with D&D Basic Set.

Oh, and i just had to share: my primary complaint with GURPS books, and what keeps me from buying more of them? Way too crunchy, with too much of the content expressed only as mechanics (as opposed to being redundantly expressed in both fluff and crunch forms). So maybe my perception is similar to the general markets, and part of why the GURPS books sell is the plentitude of crunch within, and that's why a rules-lite equivalent wouldn't work--because you'd be stripping out a significant chunk of what makes them sell.

 

[Akrasia]

Well, this gets to "what's 'lite'?" Frex, lots of people refer to Cinematic Unisystem (B:tVS RPG) and Storyteller as 'rules-lite'. Personally, i don't think they've really gotten anywhere near the threshhold....

I don't disagree with you. But since this is a d20 website, most people use the term "rules light" to simply refer to games "lighter than 3e".

 

[SweeneyTodd]

This assessment of reality discussion is interesting to me. I wonder if anyone is interested in discussing how it relates back to elements of the game that are not covered by the rules, such as, well, character interactions?

The reason I'm curious about it is that I could see there being far more disagreements in perception (or however you want to phrase AOR) with things like interacting with NPCs. I mean, a pit's a pit, you jump it or you don't, but people are very complex things to interact with.

Is part of it perhaps that when it comes to NPC reactions, players just go "OK, this I cede to GM fiat" and roll with it?

I ask partially because I'm fascinated that so many rules-heavy systems are either rules-light or no rules at all for things like character-to-character interaction, and partially because I have a group where the one thing the players are most likely to battle with me about is how a NPC might respond to something. (Okay, part of that's due to the fact that we have shared ownership and authorship of NPCs, but it's still relevant.)