Rules Heavy v. Rules Light experiment - is it feasible?

[WizarDru]

i answered product surveys from WotC before, during, and after the release in 2000.

i continued to do it by way of the customer cards in the products.

the Harbinger minis line had them too. i sent back over a hundred cards telling them just what i thought of their plastic pieces of...

Ironic, ain't it, that I think you helped improved all of the above products, and you don't?

 

[diaglo]

Ironic, ain't it, that I think you helped improved all of the above products, and you don't?

that's my middle name. instead of iconic.

diaglo Ironic Ooi

 

[woodelf]

Maybe he/they just wanted to learn?

"Is there a time benefit to having less rules in a game system over having more rules in a game system?"

<do some studies>

"Hmm. Well it seems that less rules does not necessarily mean a time saving in actual game play."


Doing the study was more worthwhile and informative than what many people on this board do -- state something as fact without any actual data/facts to back up the statement.

It's ironic that their doing an actual study is poo-pooed. Apparently anecdotes and preconceived perceptions are more than enough evidence for folks around here. "We don't need no steenkin' facts."

Quasqueton

As reported, the "study" is no such thing--it's just anecdotes. We don't know the situation, the backgrounds of the players involved, the systems chosen, or, really, anything useful to judge whether this is meaningful data. Which is not necessarily an attack on Ryan--in his original context, i'm not sure his statement needed support. But the study is, nonetheless, pretty much useless as evidence without knowing more about it.

Hypothetical One: a group of die-hard D&D3E players, who've only ever played D&D3E, are given a single copy of Buffy RPG 4 hours before the game session. It's unfamiliar to them, not drastically lighter than D&D3E, in an unfamiliar setting/genre, and only one at a time can actually read any of the rules.

Hypothetical Two: a group of RPers with widely-varying experiences are sat down to play a rules-lite RPG. The GM is moderately familiar with the rules and setting, but one of the players is an expert who's been following it since it's earliest drafts, and a rules-lawyer to boot. This player is constantly correcting the GM on her "mistaken" interpretation of the rules, and just generally arguing every little point.

Hypothetical Three: Several of the players have had a bad experience with a "killer GM" or really badly-railroading GM, and refuse to let any decision go unchallenged, unless there's a B&W rule supporting it explicitly.

Hypothetical Four: The group plays a crunchy game in the morning, when they're fresh, and then after lunch does a rules-lite game, when they're a bit tired out. Or, the do the rules-lite game in the morning while they're still half-asleep (or hung over), and the crunchy game in the afternoon after they've really woken up.

Now, i'm not claiming the study was as badly conceived as some of those examples, but at least some of those elements certainly could have been present. And several of them could've been there even in a good-intentioned, moderately-well-done study. Some of them also might not be recognized by the study organizers, especially if they had a fairly small sample set.

 

[Turjan]

As reported, the "study" is no such thing--it's just anecdotes. We don't know the situation, the backgrounds of the players involved, the systems chosen, or, really, anything useful to judge whether this is meaningful data. Which is not necessarily an attack on Ryan--in his original context, i'm not sure his statement needed support. But the study is, nonetheless, pretty much useless as evidence without knowing more about it.

I think Ryan Dancey answered at least a few questions in one of the other threads. They used AD&D as one of the games because D&D3E did not exist at that time. I'm not sure what the 'rules-light' and what the 'rules-heavy' games were, but I think he said something along the lines that they took games from the top ten list of that time.

This said, I also see difficulties in performing such a study. Giving people the same adventure to play through won't cut it, because different games, even if they are from the fantasy genre, often promote different styles of adventure. I don't see any sense in guiding a gaming group through a trap-infested dungeon in a fantasy game that usually doesn't deal with traps or dungeons and, therefore, doesn't have any subsystems for dealing with this, like HeroQuest, for example. On the other hand, you have a difficult time playing HeroQuest without properly setting up the social relationships subsystem, which is absent from D&D. Similar problems arise with other fantasy RPGs.

 

[woodelf]

I think Ryan Dancey answered at least a few questions in one of the other threads. They used AD&D as one of the games because D&D3E did not exist at that time. I'm not sure what the 'rules-light' and what the 'rules-heavy' games were, but I think he said something along the lines that they took games from the top ten list of that time.

And, as i said in one of the other threads, i don't think any truly rules-lite games besides Over the Edge and Amber DRP even existed when this study was likely conducted--a few old ones were long out of print and mostly long-forgotten, and most rules-lite RPGs hadn't been invented yet. If Storyteller is your "rules lite" example, well, of course you won't see much difference--there's not much difference between that and D20 System, much less the considerably-lighter AD&D2.

 

[Umbran]

Is this feasible? Do you think it could be accomplished fairly?

I think you're asking the wrong questions. First ask if the results would be meaningful. If nothing else is in the way, you're going to have to run a whole lot of parties through this setup before you'll get anything resembling statistical relevance. Otherwise, you'll have issues with variation based upon the abilities of the players, and the results will not be predictive of the population as a whole.

Then, you get into the GM question - sticking with the same GMs through the whole experiment eliminates some forms of errors, but introduces others. What you wind up needing a a huge number of GM-player combinations. Your feasibility is now dropping like a rock.

 

[der_kluge]

I think you're asking the wrong questions. First ask if the results would be meaningful. If nothing else is in the way, you're going to have to run a whole lot of parties through this setup before you'll get anything resembling statistical relevance. Otherwise, you'll have issues with variation based upon the abilities of the players, and the results will not be predictive of the population as a whole.

Then, you get into the GM question - sticking with the same GMs through the whole experiment eliminates some forms of errors, but introduces others. What you wind up needing a a huge number of GM-player combinations. Your feasibility is now dropping like a rock.

Ha! Don't tell me, tell it to Ryan Dancey! It was his idea.

 

[Umbran]

Ha! Don't tell me, tell it to Ryan Dancey! It was his idea.

Mr Dancey is supposed to have money, access, and sense enough to ask a statistician before he tries to base policy on market research. Message board people may be lacking in any of these. So, Mr. Dancey is on his own, while my fellow EN Worlders are not

 

[jester47]

But all in all, its just a game. This is suposed to be something that we do for fun so why are we trying to find out which system is more efficient? The time you spend with your gaming buddies is still going to be he same.

 

[Breakdaddy]

Mr Dancey is supposed to have money, access, and sense enough to ask a statistician before he tries to base policy on market research. Message board people may be lacking in any of these. So, Mr. Dancey is on his own, while my fellow EN Worlders are not

Are you a statistician by any chance? One of my old pals moved to Boston and is a statistician up there.