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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mythmere1" data-source="post: 2389093" data-attributes="member: 26563">Well, in one sense, Mr. Dancey's comment doesn't need commentary - he's betting money on it and we'll see if his research was right in the sales numbers, which is the measure that he himself uses.I think it's odd to see people defending either rules-lite or rules-heavy in the context of D&D (either edition wars or with Castles & Crusades involved) - some people just have a rules-heavy preference or a rules-lite preference, and it seems that lots of factors go into the preference.  Consistency, prep time, the mode of interaction between the GM and the players, etc.Everyone seems to be more tolerant of those who play very different systems (ie., the rules-heavy players looking at someone who doesn't even roll dice might be befuddled, but the two systems are so different that it's clear there's a completely different approach to gaming going on).  On the other hand, when you've got people posting about games that are pretty similar, the attacks get heated.  Witness the virulence of some of the debates about Castles & Crusades, which is very similar to D&D.  I think people feel threatened by similar games in a way that they aren't threatened by totally different systems.I play Castles & Crusades, and don't personally like the 3e approach, but I think it's very difficult to compare the games for quality - and when you do, you can't make a quality comparison based on whether it's light or heavy - gauging the quality of rules isn't done by reference to other systems, it's how well the game works for what it is.  An apple tastes good or bad compared to other apples, not bad because it doesn't taste like an orange.  Although Castles & Crusades is highly similar to D&D, it's designed around a very different mechanism - with a broad brush, I'll say that the C&C design philosophy is to cover all situations with general rules of application that are interpreted by the GM.  Modern D&D strives to present players with more specific rules so that there is less interpretation required.  With these different approaches, although the games seem similar at face value, they are - to continue my metaphor - apples and oranges.  You can evaluate each game in terms of whether it stumbles somewhere within its own level of complexity, but you can't really use complexity as the benchmark for comparing one game to the other.  They're designed to be different in that respect.I love Castles & Crusades, but that doesn't make me think 3e players are playing an inferior game - just a game that I don't like playing as much as C&C.  Problem is, if I list my subjective reasons for preferring C&C, it sounds like a list of things that D&D fails, rather than a list of gaming preferences.  War results.  On the other hand, if I'm playing a diceless RPG in which the players are all playing the role of wombats, hurling cats into the air for random determination of results, no one will take my preference for this game as a slam against D&D.  They'll just "tsk, tsk" quietly to themselves and click me onto the "ignore" list.</blockquote>

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