No More Massive Tomes of Rules

[Maggan]

No need to be coy, friend.

?

 

[Shardstone]

?

I may have misread your tone! Apologies.

I find well designed rukes meant to be fun are high value to me. The fewer rules there are, the more fun the rules need to be for me to enjoy the game. For example, I hate the procedures in b/x, so despite it being a light game, I dont play it. On the other end, Dragonbane has really fun combat rules, so I enjoy that.

Games with large tomes that are well designed have high impact rules, like Daggerheart. But games with non impactful rules, like pathfinders slew of small bonuses, dont do it for me.

So, what I want are engaging rules that enhance the joy found in a games mechanical aspects. The amount or size of the book doesn't phase me, usually.

 

[Shardstone]

To elaborate a little more, for me, the draw to RPGs is not the RP. As a writer and someone who grew up not with D&D but with forum RPing, I know I can scratch the itch of deep, immersive RP in a more satisfying way outside of a tabletop. However, a tabletop can provide an equally immersive experience in addition to hopefully exciting mechanical game rules. Therefore, when I'm buying an RPG, I'm trying to buy something that will be the most fun game, not that allows me the most freedom to express myself creatively.

However, this last bit, the express myself part, I have to expound upon. I don't believe that rules limit tactical infinity (as said by @overgeeked ). Or, rather, I don't believe that well-designed rules for TTRPGs limit tactical infinity. Instead, rules are meant to invoke certain genre, trope, or narrative ideas, and to then reflect them through the mechanics of the game. Thus, well-designed rules guide tactical infinity instead of limiting it.

Well-designed rules are the core rules of PF2E. Rules that I personally consider less well-designed are many of the feats for PF2E that just add small circumstantial bonuses, etc. Well-designed rules are having critical hits for attacks in 5e; worse rules are having so many weapons that are essentially identical. Well-designed rules engage me in a fun mechanical experience or produce a satisfying and tangible result; worse rules are a rote mechanical experience or produce an expected and pure-fluff result.

 

[niklinna]

Yeah, that's the stance of everyone in this thread, there has to be rules to make it a role-playing game. But one of the things discussed is how many rules are needed. 100 pages? 1000 pages? 3000 pages?

And it all boils down to personal preference.

That's an interesting range of page counts you've used!

Mine would be 1 page? 50 pages? 100 pages? 200 pages? (Feel free to add similar amounts for setting material in games that have that baked in.)

 

[pemerton]

That's an interesting range of page counts you've used!

Mine would be 1 page? 50 pages? 100 pages? 200 pages? (Feel free to add similar amounts for setting material in games that have that baked in.)

Cthulhu Dark for the win!

Although it's actually not a complete game: it tells you how to build and read dice pools, but doesn't say how consequences of action declarations are established. But if you have an idea of how to do that already (eg in my case from Burning Wheel; in your case perhaps from BitD) then you can use the rules it does include.

The shortest complete RPG I can think of at the moment is In A Wicked Age, which is 10-ish pages of rules (that include examples) and a similar number of pages of Oracles (which are used to generate characters, setting and situation).

On the flip side, there are RPGs that are many hundreds of pages long and yet not complete - eg AD&D (doesn't actually discuss its basic principle of scene-framing, which is "We open this door .. . .") or Rolemaster.

 

[Maggan]

That's an interesting range of page counts you've used!

Yeah, I used the range that's been the most used as examples in the thread.

For me and my group, 1 page is a bit sparse, but if it's an intriguing premise we might run it. The most rules light we're running now is Mausritter where the first edition has 24 pages and various Mörk Borg variant (CY_BORG and Pirate Borg). The Mörk Borg rule book in text only is 76 pages. And then I run Dragonbane at 128 pages for the rules plus the bestiary at 156 pages.

Then again we played DnD4 yesterday. Don't know about the page count for the rules but must be pushing towards the thousands.

 

[niklinna]

Yeah, I used the range that's been the most used as examples in the thread.

For me and my group, 1 page is a bit sparse, but if it's an intriguing premise we might run it. The most rules light we're running now is Mausritter where the first edition has 24 pages and various Mörk Borg variant (CY_BORG and Pirate Borg). The Mörk Borg rule book in text only is 76 pages. And then I run Dragonbane at 128 pages for the rules plus the bestiary at 156 pages.

Then again we played DnD4 yesterday. Don't know about the page count for the rules but must be pushing towards the thousands.

Ah, that gets into rules proper vs. catalogues of spells and powers and such! Probably worth a thread of its own, catalogues vs. more general approaches that let you assemble such from core mechanics.

 

[pemerton]

Ah, that gets into rules proper vs. catalogues of spells and powers and such! Probably worth a thread of its own, catalogues vs. more general approaches that let you assemble such from core mechanics.

D&D is very much a list-driven game.

 

[niklinna]

D&D is very much a list-driven game.

Yes, it is.

 

[Pedantic]

I've got a half formed thought about rules in general I'm still chewing on, that seems related to this question of quantity. A lot of this seems seems to revolve around who will actually be using the rules.

A lot of the lighter models seem to be focused on the rules being primarily GM-facing or table facing; players will declare stuff, the GM will use the rule framework to interpret it, the system will output whatever it outputs, or the players and the GM will collectively turn to the rules at some specific point in an almost oracular manner, consulting them when they want input outside themselves about the game situation.

I tend to think of "heavier" games as those with primarily player facing rules. Instead of the rules existing to interpret the actions of the players, or to provide context/complication to the actions they present, they exist to be used by the players. Players will call on parts of them to make specific things happen in the specific ways they want (or to try and do that if the rules involve uncertainty). It's sort of the same issue as the rulings vs. rules question, but perhaps one meta-level up from the question of authority that contains. Who gets to engage the mechanisms that alter the gamestate, and why do they engage them?

Lighter rules get into trouble if you put them squarely in the player's hands that way, with the expectation they'll try and use them to some desired end, precisely because there's just not a lot of variety. If you want using the rules to in and of itself be an act of expression, then you have to offer a lot of choice in what functions the player can call to.