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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steenan" data-source="post: 6253522" data-attributes="member: 23240">The way I see it, there is several factors that, together, make a game rules-heavy.The first is the number of interacting pieces on the character sheet. The more things need to be calculated from other things, or are only made available by other things, or strongly depend on other things in their usefulness, the more work is necessary in character creation and character advancement. A game can have a lot of information on the character sheet and still be, at worst, rules-medium if there are few if any interdependencies.For example, there is significantly more numbers on a beginning character sheet in CoC than in D&D 3e. But in CoC, nearly all of them are skills that work by themselves, while in D&D 3e most values are calculated from other things.And, of course, it can get even worse if the character creation process isn't written clearly and in the correct order, so you learn at a later stage that you need something from the previous stage that you didn't know when making the earlier choices. All versions of WoD are guilty of this - you select supernatural powers after assigning attributes and skills, but the powers often depend on specific attributes and skills, so you need to go back and make changes to make them useful.The second part of rule-heaviness is the use of lists. Choosing one of a few things, assigning priorities or distributing points among a small number of categories is fast and easy to understand. Choosing from long lists of items is time consuming. Long lists of items, each with its own specific rules, make the choices hard, because comparing the items is difficult.Dungeon World is a perfect example of rules-lightness here. Everything one needs to choose from, during character creation and advancement, is on the character sheet; no decision point during character creation has more than a few options. In contrast, D&D 4e - also a fun game - forces a player to browse lists of powers and feats that are quite long in core only, and truly enormous if more books are in use.Freeform items, like Fate aspects, are a strange case here. On one hand, they flow directly from character concept and require no list browsing. On the other, they can be time consuming when a player is not in a creative mood, and they require some system familiarity to make both fun and fully useful.Then comes the third part of rules-heaviness, that is, how many rules are typically used in game, and when. Two games may have the same amount of rule text, but one of them requires you to use most of them during typical play, while the other gives rules for more areas, some of them rarely used. The second game is rules-lighter, though probably worse designed. Also, each game leaves some areas as "player decides" or "GM decides", and gives rules for others. If it clearly communicates how it is to be played and the rules are consistent with it, great. If not, players expect the rules to resolve things they weren't designed for (which often leads to conflicts and rules disputes) and use rules to resolve things when they don't really need it (which leads to wasted time and teaches players to ignore the rules).A well made rules-light game is very specific in what its rules resolve. Ignoring it will break the game. For example, expecting Fate or Dungeon World to simulate how the setting works, is a recipe for disaster. A well made rules-heavy game has rules that interact in balanced way, while being clear in how they work. Resolution of typical situations is interesting, but reasonably quick. Ignoring rules or changing them on the fly in such game makes it significantly worse, because it disturbs a fine-tuned system.A poorly made rules-light game has a few mechanical pieces and no guidelines on what exactly to use them for. It effectively becomes a freeform with rules that players or a GM engage when they feel like it, leading to chaos. A poorly made rules-heavy game is confusing. It uses layers of rules that don't really resolve anything, because they hinge on an arbitrary decision of some participant (typically the GM). They have a lot of things that are made possible by the rules, but shouldn't be used in game (underpowered, overpowered, not fitting the genre), thus making the rules undependable.</blockquote>

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