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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2402712" data-attributes="member: 27012">In my own anecdotal experience, that's not the case.  In my experience, rule-light vs. rule-heavy has to do with the style of the participants, the length of the game, and the detail level of the game.  Certain styles, campaign lengths, and detail levels seem to be better suited by one or the other.  We don't have a "comfort" problem (I am starting to really hate the word "comfort" in all of it's variations because it's become a soft way to claim that a person or group has some sort of unatural and embarassing psychological hang-up).  We don't have an interpersonal communications skills problem.  Our social contract is just fine.  By the way, I answered your poll about the GM assigning situational modifiers as saying that I'm OK with it so long as they are applied equally to PC and NPC.  That's a stylistic answer, not a trust or deep-seated psychological hang-up answer.  My own sense of verisimiltude and suspension of disbelief depends on my not feeling like my character is starring in The Truman Show.And I think the mistake you keep making is that you assume that every decision that a GM makes that impacts a game world is equivalent.  That's not true.  If the GM decides that the sky is purple, that's not the same as deciding that an NPC doesn't like the PCs, that a PC can't jump across a 20 foot chasm, or deciding that a PC that falls trying to leap a 20 foot chasm dies instantly.  Nor is it the same for the GM to decide that a chasm is 20 feet wide as it is for the GM to decide how hard it is for the PCs to jump it.  If you can't see that distinction, I suspect that's a style issue.  For certain styles of play, there is no difference between the two because a GM puts the 20 foot chasm in front of the players to create an obstacle of a certain difficulty.  With other styles of play, that's not necessarily the case and a 20 foot chasm might be there simply because it's a logical feature of the game world.  In fact, a dungeon can feel very different if every challenge is crafted to provide a certain challenge to the PCs than a dungeon that simply makes sense for the setting.In my experience, in the absence of (1), (2) is very time consuming.  Thus it's not a "comfort" problem but a tedium and effort problem.  It's a pain in the neck.And here I think you are missing the point because you want to get a certain solution.  It's not a matter of what a group can do but how they can get the best game on balance once you count up all the benefits and problems.  Of course my group can run a game with no rules except "high rolls are good".  Heck, I've even role-played with no rules at all, flipping a coin when I needed a randomizer.  Can I do it?  Sure.  But the "pre-packaged AOR' provided by a more complicated set of rules is, in my experience, an easier and better solution.  On what basis do you make the claim that groups who have trouble establishing a shared AOR in a rule-light game that doesn't provide much of one won't have an easier time if they have a pre-packaged AOR provided by a more complicated rule system?  Not only is that counter-intuitive (Why wouldn't being provided an AOR help a group that has trouble establishing their own?) but it defies my own long personal experience designing systems and experimenting with different levels of system complexity.And in my experience, that's just not true.  Neither part of your claim, in fact.  If the group has an AOR problem, why do you assume that the rules providing an AOR won't help?  Apply what you are saying beyond the narrow subject of role-playing and ask yourself if it really makes any sense.  Would you really argue that following a software development methology makes no difference and that programmers would be better off just winging it?  Do you really think a baseball game would work work just as well if the umpires got to make up the rules on-the-fly?  Do you really think the roads would be just as safe without formal traffic laws providing a shared set of rules for driving for everyone? In fact, if what you say is really true, then why use any rules at all?  Why not simply use "high rolls are good and low rolls are bad" as your only rule or, heck, just let the GM make it all up as they go?  And if some rules are useful or helpful, why is it difficult to imagine that more rules might be more useful or more helpful in at least some situations?</blockquote>

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