Rules Light Games: Examples and Definitions

[Yaztromo]

I'd define Advanced Fighting Fantasy and its cousin Stellar Adventures as rules light games (they are 2d6 games that you can literally learn in 5 minutes from a GM guiding you + the free quickstart guide, plus 3 more minutes to roll your character and you can start playing straight away), but there is an ever faster and lighter ruleset (Lasers and Feelings - one page ruleset for an effective, Star Trek type game, with some extra humour, if you want it.... maybe even too much humour is proposed, although you can remove it)

 

[Aldarc]

I love Fate, but I think its just on the edge of what I would call "light", and some of the published implementations actually cross over that line for me. (naturally a matter of taste.)

Honestly, since the advent/dominance of a singular resolution mechanic, many games are fairly "light" in their core mechanics. However, the devil is in all the details added by those listy things. I think the recent editions of D&D are good good examples of this. The basic D20 mechanics aren't very heavy at all, but when you add all the different spell effects, maneuvers, conditions, etc. the system gets very heavy in play. (Even without those, the specificity of the movement rules would make D&D fairly heavy.) This is why Fate is on the line for me. The core mechanics are actually a bit more complicated than D20 and involve more decision points for players on each turn. However, by avoided all the "listiness", it plays much more lightly than D&D. (At least IME, IMO, etc. etc.)

I've never played Fate but I'ver read the Fate Core book and it gives me a vibe of being, in play, comparable in heaviness to MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, which I've played quite a bit and wouldn't call light.

The actual Fate engine is fairly light IMO, capable of being boiled down to aspects, fate point economy, a four action resolution system, and stress/consequences. It spends most of its page count trying to illustrate its system through examples. I would say that it falls on the heavier side of rules light or lighter side of medium (YMMV). It's very much an adaptable system toolkit that can be easily modified for a far heavier game (see Mindjammer). Fate Accelerated, on the other hand, is full-on rules light. It's a mere 50 pages, and it's again mostly illustrative of its how-to-do-it-yourself principles.

The four actions, however, are meant to be fiction-first mechanics determined primarily by the GM rather than player decision points. The player describes what they are trying to do in the fiction, and then the GM may say "It sounds like you are trying to Create an Advantage with Stealth..." Over several years of running it, I don't think I have ever dealt with a player explicitly indicating, for example, that they are trying to Create an Advantage. My players are generally far more occupied with the fiction.

I am working on a rules light game, and one thing I've noticed over the years is 'rules light' means different things to different people. I am curious how everyone defines ruleslight, but also interested in what other posters see as examples of very effective rules light games.

I have also found it helpful to look at industry standards. What is rules medium? The average rules weightyness that we typically encounter when gaming? From there: What is lighter than that? What is heavier than that? Savage Worlds, for example, is generally regarded as Rules Medium. There have been different iterations of D&D whose "weight" has varied from the heavier end of rules medium to rules heavy. IMHO, a Rules Light Game System entails a series of rules of thumb patterns:
* Can the character sheet be written easily on a standard-sized index card?
* How quickly does it take to make a character? (And at extremes: For a novice? For an expert?)
* How easy is the dice resolution system and subsystems?
* How often would I need to consult the rulebooks for rules and content? (e.g., monsters, spells, character abilities, environment rules, items, etc.)
* How big is the rulebook(s)?
* What is required from the GM to run the game? How much session prep generally goes into running the game?

But a helpful point to remember: a game can trick you into believing the system is lighter than it actually is. It's like designing rooms using white colors: white can make the walls and contours of the room appear and feel more spacious than it actually is.

Some games, such as Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark games, may require a page or two for character sheets, but the playbooks provide players with almost all the play info that they need already baked into the character sheet. This means you can hand them the required sheet and jump into play fairly easily. So this results in a lighter feel since there is little need for players to consult the book for the relevant rules.

 

[GMMichael]

Speculate with me...

A rules-light game has an Average (Max?) Rules Chain no longer than 7.

An ARC is the number of rules required to complete the typical rules-regulated (beyond role-playing) activity. For example, a very common D&D 3.5 activity was the attack. To complete an attack, you needed to consider the following rules:

1. Core mechanic: roll 1d20 for success or failure
2. Ability scores: dictate ability modifiers
3. Ability modifier: STR or DEX added to attack rolls depending on
4. Weapon size: light weapons can use DEX, larger weapons can't
5. Racial size: add +1 or -1 if your race is Large or Small
6. Class/race speed: character can move X squares in a turn
7. Class bonus: consult base attack bonus table for class
8. Action type: attacks behave differently as standard actions or full attacks
9. Initiative count: must wait until your turn to act
10. Weapon range: opponent must be in the correct square
11. Armor class: attack roll must equal or exceed opponent's AC
12. Crit: special result on 1 or 20
13. Weapon damage: add weapon's listed standard damage
14. Ability damage: add more damage due to STR or DEX

Rules Chain: 14

Did I miss any for the average attack?

 

[Celebrim]

FATE Accelerated to me feels like a stretch of the term 'rules light'. I agree with the 'rules medium' description.

Rules light games tend to:

1) Have a complete game in a single supplement.
2) Use a single simple resolution mechanic for all purposes.
3) Avoid simulation of any sort. That is to say, at no point does the game attempt to model the particulars of a challenge, such as the relative position of figures on a map.
4) Have player characters described by a minimal number of traits, usually no more than 20 and often much less.

In my opinion, there is no such thing as a successful rules light game. The main reason for this is that the publishing model for a rules light game is inherently unsustainable. Game makers make money by selling supplements. Rules light games bill themselves as games that don't need supplements, inherently limiting their ability to dominate the market. Typically if a rules light game becomes successful, there is a strong impetus to keep printing more supplements, and at some point it ceases to be rules light.

Also, by being rules light you are inherently eschewing a certain degree of granularity that helps support long term play. I've argued elsewhere that it is the nature of RPGs to be collections of minigames. By minimizing the number of minigames in your system, and eschewing simulation, you are inherently driving people from your game in the long run however much they might enjoy your system for one shots or occasional play.

Finally, rules light system do not actually do what people think that they do, which is greatly reduce the burden of prep. Mechanics are probably the easiest part of prep to wing and improvise. The hard part of prep, the part that shares a resemblance with producing stories in any other literary medium, still remains behind to perform. Rules light almost inherently doubles down on your preparation being really good because it's so much focused on narrative brilliance as its one really satisfying element of play. So people take up rules light thinking its going to get them out of work, and the result are games that crash and burn comparatively quickly because they just don't have enough going for them to engage a group for 40 or 400 hundred hours of play that you normally get out of an RPG.

It's a trap I think that publishers get hung up on. It's easy to create a rules light system. Heck, I've got my own rules light system that fits on a half dozen pages of paper. That very fact means that as a publisher you really aren't selling much to your customers. You aren't actually selling the boutique artisanal rules you think you are selling. You're selling fast food rules. Because the reason gamers buy content from content producers is ultimately because your content saves them time. They want to buy that lavish feast of rules and content that they themselves couldn't make or would spend years trying to make. They aren't ultimately interested in paying for something that they could make themselves and bang out over the course of a few evenings.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

I think the run of Over The Edge proves that this is not entirely the case, Celebrim, even though I agree with you on some of the particulars.

Over The Edge is very rules light, but what it eschews in mechanics, it makes back up in background. Furthermore, by presenting the game as taking place in an ever-shifting web of impossible conspiracies, it leaves the world open to continue to develop that background in a way that can be sold in additional supplements.

One thing that has changed over the years has been the focus of play style on a character. In 1e D&D, character design was far less important than character play; in fact, one's skill as a player was measured by how well he could take a mediocre character through a scenario. If, through system mastery, you found a way to make your character dominate, everyone just rolled their eyes and thought you were working against the game rather than with it.

By the time you get to 3e, however, build became more important than play. System mastery became something that would earn you cred as a player, and a powerful character was a sign of your ability to work with the game instead of against it. With this model, increasing the number of available ways to fiddle with the character was gold. Heck, one can argue that Pathfinder bloat took this to the extreme, and each new supplement meant further opportunity to max out your toon.

With Over The Edge, all that fell by the wayside, and mastery in that system was measured more by how well you could craft an interesting, original story. I mean, no other system would have let me play Jimmy Kuo, feng shui practitioner and master ninja who assassinated targets by breaking into their homes and rearranging their furniture.

It's very telling, though, that one thing that Over The Edge and 3e have in common, is Jonathan Tweet. His stamp for game design can definitely be felt in both systems.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In my opinion, there is no such thing as a successful rules light game. The main reason for this is that the publishing model for a rules light game is inherently unsustainable. Game makers make money by selling supplements. Rules light games bill themselves as games that don't need supplements, inherently limiting their ability to dominate the market. Typically if a rules light game becomes successful, there is a strong impetus to keep proving more supplements, and at some point it ceases to be rules light.

A game doesn't need to be sustainable, for it to be successful. If you put out one book, and people are still using that book twenty years later, then that sounds pretty successful to me.

 

[Celebrim]

I think the run of Over The Edge proves that this is not entirely the case...

I think 'Over the Edge' is more admired than played, and it's recent kickstarter while decently successful garnered like 2000 supporters. That's a tiny tiny slice of what is overall a tiny industry.

One thing that has changed over the years has been the focus of play style on a character...By the time you get to 3e, however, build became more important than play.

How you think about play, and how you prepare to play, and what procedures of play you adopt are almost entirely divorced from mechanics. I knew 1e groups that where build focused. Meanwhile, while build is a part of my 3e play, I run and play the game pretty much like I ran and play 1e. I think it would be a great mistake to move from typical stereotypes of play with respect to a system to a blanket generalization regarding how everyone or even most everyone played.

I tend to measure all RPGs by how they craft interesting stories.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

I think 'Over the Edge' is more admired than played, and it's recent kickstarter while decently successful garnered like 2000 supporters. That's a tiny tiny slice of what is overall a tiny industry.

I tend to measure all RPGs by how they craft interesting stories.

So... is it successful or not? How they craft interesting stories is pretty divorced from Kickstarter supporter numbers.

 

[Celebrim]

So... is it successful or not? How they craft interesting stories is pretty divorced from Kickstarter supporter numbers.

Yay. I'm a successful RPG publisher. Who knew it was that easy?!?!?

 

[Ratskinner]

FATE Accelerated to me feels like a stretch of the term 'rules light'. I agree with the 'rules medium' description.

Rules light games tend to:

1) Have a complete game in a single supplement.
2) Use a single simple resolution mechanic for all purposes.
3) Avoid simulation of any sort. That is to say, at no point does the game attempt to model the particulars of a challenge, such as the relative position of figures on a map.
4) Have player characters described by a minimal number of traits, usually no more than 20 and often much less.

Not that its a bad definition, but I would say Fate (especially Accelerated) fits that definition.

In my opinion, there is no such thing as a successful rules light game. The main reason for this is that the publishing model for a rules light game is inherently unsustainable. Game makers make money by selling supplements. Rules light games bill themselves as games that don't need supplements, inherently limiting their ability to dominate the market. Typically if a rules light game becomes successful, there is a strong impetus to keep printing more supplements, and at some point it ceases to be rules light.

While this makes sense, Fate seems to buck that trend as well. There's a ton of additional settings and modulations on the rules. (not that its dominating the market, mind you) I think this is because Fate has the peculiar option of Extras and is easily modifiable in other ways as well. So, you can play any genre/setting of Fate right out of the box, but if you want a little more suggestion for exactly how to pull something off, you can buy a setting book that has a bunch of "pre-brewed" mechanics in it already.

Also, by being rules light you are inherently eschewing a certain degree of granularity that helps support long term play. I've argued elsewhere that it is the nature of RPGs to be collections of minigames. By minimizing the number of minigames in your system, and eschewing simulation, you are inherently driving people from your game in the long run however much they might enjoy your system for one shots or occasional play.

I wouldn't say that supporting long term play is a necessary condition for something to be an RPG. I think you are over-reaching with your other points here. Nonetheless, I would agree that there is a segment of the role-playing market that revels in its mastery of KOTOTU (Knowledge Of The Otherwise Totally Useless) and that rules light games wont appeal to them because there will not be all those listy things from which they derive their jollies.

Finally, rules light system do not actually do what people think that they do, which is greatly reduce the burden of prep. Mechanics are probably the easiest part of prep to wing and improvise. The hard part of prep, the part that shares a resemblance with producing stories in any other literary medium, still remains behind to perform. Rules light almost inherently doubles down on your preparation being really good because it's so much focused on narrative brilliance as its one really satisfying element of play. So people take up rules light thinking its going to get them out of work, and the result are games that crash and burn comparatively quickly because they just don't have enough going for them to engage a group for 40 or 400 hundred hours of play that you normally get out of an RPG.

Demonstrably untrue (at least for Fate). Starting and running longterm games with little to no prep is a common occurrence for Fate players. The Core system is designed for doing just that. However, it does require a group with the right mindset and playgoals to make it work, and its a slightly different mindset from a traditional rpg like D&D. Additionally, I would say that a lot of the rules-light games that I've played or seen do fit this description, but I don't think its an inherent property of being rules-light. Of course, I've said that I'm not sure I personally count Fate as rules-light, and even in this thread it seems that consensus is that it hovers near the border of light/medium. So perhaps it escapes your concerns by that means.