Rules Light Modern RPG

[Thomas Shey]

My group decided on Green Ronin Modern AGE. Rules light to me is,,,("I don't condone it, everyone should make their own decision"), can I have a few beers, smoke a bit of pot and run/play a game is rules lite.

The problem is, I've known people who could do that with pretty heavy rules--if they already knew them well.

I really don't mean to bust your chops about this; its just that people's definition of rules light can be an amazingly moving target. As an example, back in the day it was fascinating to see whether people thought RuneQuest I or AD&D1 were more rules light.

 

[aramis erak]

Same.

And almost anything would be considered lighter in the rules department than Alternity which was also mentioned. Gosh I loved it, but boy was it heavyyyy

Your scale is rather badly skewed... it's not even Medium-Heavy.... You should see some of the real supercrunchy stuff of the 1980s... Like Phoenix Command or TriTac. TriTac hit locations are around 4×4 inches.... and matter for more than armor reductions.

Noting that I'm using the scale:

1. Light
2. Medium-light
3. Medium
4. Medium-heavy
5. Heavy

That scale is the default for RPGGeek.
At 8 ratings on RPGGeek, 5 say Medium; 2 say Medium-heavy, 1 says Light. (Mine will be the 6th medium vote, when it recalculates during nightly maintenance)

 

[aramis erak]

The problem is, I've known people who could do that with pretty heavy rules--if they already knew them well.

I really don't mean to bust your chops about this; its just that people's definition of rules light can be an amazingly moving target. As an example, back in the day it was fascinating to see whether people thought RuneQuest I or AD&D1 were more rules light.

AD&D had (and all D&D flavors have) the huge issue of played weight vs RAW weight being a wider gap than almost all other RPGs, save maybe Traveller and Pathfinder. (Traveller due to intentional modularity, Pathfinder for having a fanbase of mostly people who think of it as D&D and treat it the same way.)

The greatest issue of light vs heavy is that so few people have seen the truly heavy games - games where every mechanical interaction is a unique rules case, where many interactions require table lookups on bespoke tables, where there are lots of special case rules that are unlikely to be used by 90% of tables, where detail levels result in dozens to hundreds of hit locations, where complex formulae encourage use of an HP41C or TI-60 (programmable sci-calcs) or a computer.

I don't see many new games that even really approach a true 4 of 5...

And, as for AD&D 1E? I'd put it, RAW, as about 4 of 5; RQ 1e/2e as at the border of 2 and 3... But AD&D1 game as played (GAP) ranged from 1 (the FKR type users) to 4 (rare, but plenty did exist), with some using all the whiz-bang articles in Dragon pushing their GAP up to a 5.
RQ 1e/2e, like AD&D 1e, have organizational issues, but not as many. Personally, I'd put it on the border border of weights 2 & 3, but the GAP being fairly consistently 2. It's real issue is not rules complexity, but that the game was focused upon a details-rich setting: Greg Stafford's Glorantha. RQ was intimidating due to the sheer scale of the setting...
RQ3, however... much better written, but also more complex. Definitely a 3.

But that ignores the added heft upon players of deep settings.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And, as for AD&D 1E? I'd put it, RAW, as about 4 of 5; RQ 1e/2e as at the border of 2 and 3... But AD&D1 game as played (GAP) ranged from 1 (the FKR type users) to 4 (rare, but plenty did exist), with some using all the whiz-bang articles in Dragon pushing their GAP up to a 5.

And yet back in the day you'd see plenty of people claiming that AD&D was a more rules-light game than RQ1.

RQ 1e/2e, like AD&D 1e, have organizational issues, but not as many. Personally, I'd put it on the border border of weights 2 & 3, but the GAP being fairly consistently 2. It's real issue is not rules complexity, but that the game was focused upon a details-rich setting: Greg Stafford's Glorantha. RQ was intimidating due to the sheer scale of the setting...

Less so in the RQ1 days because, well, much of the setting was simply missing. And that's not counting the people who used it for non-Gloranthan games (albeit ones with semi-Gloranthan assumptions...)

My real (albeit unstated and kind of snide) point was that people will claim games that have less subsystems but have a million special cases are "lighter" than games that have more actual subsystems but everything runs as extensions of those.

But of course part of it, as you reference in the part I clipped, is that a lot of people are used to playing these games so ad-hoc that as long as they can ignore rules and get by its "light" where a game with less rules (but also ones less easy to blow off) are "heavy".

 

[R_J_K75]

...people's definition of rules light can be an amazingly moving target...

Its hard to define and then find a game that suits what you want. Is ModernAGE rules lite. IDK but I think anything other than a d20 system game will be welcomed. Not that the d20 system is bad, (I dont think Ive played anything other than that since 2000), but sometimes you need change in your life. Last non d20 system game I played was WEG Star Wars about 1998-1999. Im looking forward to this come Fall when we plan to play it.

 

[Bagpuss]

Anyone know of a rules light modern RPG? Any suggestions?

Feng Shui 2nd Edition.

Even if you don't use the setting it has you covered for anything you've seen in the movies. Be it spy movies, martial arts, magic and mayhem, you name it they have it covered.

Actually to be fair it isn't that rules light, the core mechanic is simple and straight forward, and it plays fast compared to something like D&D, but there is a lot of abilities and features characters can get so it has complexity at that level.

 

[R_J_K75]

My group of 4 (including myself), are starting a ModernAGE game Sunday. I'm going to run the Wild Hogs adventure. This is the first time I've changed game systems since d20 came out in 2000, so the system changes and new terminology is pretty daunting for all of us. We haven't read the Basic Rulebook cover to cover because even if we did, we wouldn't remember it; so, we decided that we'll look up rules as we need. We're going to fake it through the first few sessions. Does anyone have any quick and dirty tips on running a ModernAGE game or the Wild Hogs adventure?

 

[Aldarc]

My group of 4 (including myself), are starting a ModernAGE game Sunday. I'm going to run the Wild Hogs adventure. This is the first time I've changed game systems since d20 came out in 2000, so the system changes and new terminology is pretty daunting for all of us. We haven't read the Basic Rulebook cover to cover because even if we did, we wouldn't remember it; so, we decided that we'll look up rules as we need. We're going to fake it through the first few sessions. Does anyone have any quick and dirty tips on running a ModernAGE game or the Wild Hogs adventure?

I have never run Modern AGE, but I have run Fantasy AGE and Blue Rose AGE. My biggest tip?

Print out several copies of the Stunt tables for the group. Have the players look at it in advance so they have a rough idea of what they can do with their Stunt Points. Referencing and selecting Stunts tends be where the game can slow down depending on the choice paralysis of your players.

It should be relatively easy to search for online resources like pdf copies of the stunt tables.

 

[R_J_K75]

I have never run Modern AGE, but I have run Fantasy AGE and Blue Rose AGE. My biggest tip?

Print out several copies of the Stunt tables for the group. Have the players look at it in advance so they have a rough idea of what they can do with their Stunt Points. Referencing and selecting Stunts tends be where the game can slow down depending on the choice paralysis of your players.

It should be relatively easy to search for online resources like pdf copies of the stunt tables.

We've already discussed this. I told each player to pick one stunt each from Action, Exploration and Social categories before our first game. I have the DM screen so and I think there's stunt tables in there so I can use those, but I will search for a pdf online so the players can have their own copies.

 

[R_J_K75]

We played our first ModernAGE game on 9/24. I bought the "Feral Hogs" module and we got up to the point where the players are leaving Preston Heights. It went well. I'm sure we totally screwed the rules up but we're reading and digesting things in small chunks, and plan to implement more rules as we go. Everyone has their own copy of the Basic Rulebook for the table and had at least a passing knowledge of the rules pertinent to their characters, and we just winged it as we went along. Our next game is this coming Monday so I was watching this play through to get a better idea of game play and the adventure itself. The irony being that the GM in this video had never GM'd the game before, seems they all had a decent handle on the rules, more than us. I never watch play throughs of other people playing RPGs, by this one is hilarious because of "Hogman" alone. I was laughing so hard I was crying at times. Definitely a nice, fun change from fantasy RPGs. I will say (as others have said) the stunt system plays a huge role in the flavor of this game and watching this video made me realize that.

Why does this happen in EVERY RPG, at the ~1:30 mark theyre talking to the leaders of Preston Heights, theyre still covered in hog blood and guts but no one notices or says a thing. LOL. When I ran the first hog attack the players watched Cletus get eaten by hogs before they got within encounter distance, then killed a few hogs by drive by, Clarence got trounced by the Squealers and as they were evading the situation, Mary Sue tried jumping onto their vehicle and got ran over so they never had blood on them. The NPCs just didn't Stunt!