Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 9357877" data-attributes="member: 6690965">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.</blockquote>

Verification