Rules-Satisfying

[1of3]

I think in many cases preferences for rules-light or rules-heavy miss directly addressing one of the most important aspects--which I'm calling "rules-satisfying."

Rules-satisfying games have precisely the degree of rules necessary to create exactly the experience you want them to.

While the criteria you offer for a good game are useful, what you are saying about rules-heavy and rules-light, frankly, doesn't make sense. That is because there are no such games in absolute terms. You can only observe that a game has more or less extensive rules than another gamer. The terms therefore are relative.

 

[Jhaelen]

Rules-satisfying games have precisely the degree of rules necessary to create exactly the experience you want them to.

I don't get it.

Aren't you just trying to find a way to explain/justify why your favorite system is your favorite system?
Instead of saying 'because I like it', you can now say 'because it's rules-satisfying'.

In and of itself, the term doesn't mean anything, since it's entirely subjective.

 

[GMMichael]

One obstacle that D&D 5 is up against: the GM is the game.

If you don't have a good GM, you don't have a good game. This is why the D&D writers are trying to make the game simpler, easier, for GMs to use.

TRPGs are up against eRPGs in a battle for survival, and the GMs in eRPGs (the CPUs) have a major advantage: they get sound, pictures, and instant-XP calculation.

So does rules-satisfying enable GMs to be better GMs?
Does rules-satisfying allow you, then, to have better games?

 

[Neonchameleon]

I don't get it.

Aren't you just trying to find a way to explain/justify why your favorite system is your favorite system?
Instead of saying 'because I like it', you can now say 'because it's rules-satisfying'.

In and of itself, the term doesn't mean anything, since it's entirely subjective.

Oh, it's subjective. But I know exactly what they are trying to get at. Where Sword of Spirit talks about Rules-Satisfying I'd rather talk about elegant rules. Rules sets with no wonky or unplanned pieces. It's a design aesthetic that says to do what you do as hard as possible. (It also IME makes for great short campaigns but not especially good long ones).

 

[Neonchameleon]

One obstacle that D&D 5 is up against: the GM is the game.

If you don't have a good GM, you don't have a good game. This is why the D&D writers are trying to make the game simpler, easier, for GMs to use.

TRPGs are up against eRPGs in a battle for survival, and the GMs in eRPGs (the CPUs) have a major advantage: they get sound, pictures, and instant-XP calculation.

So does rules-satisfying enable GMs to be better GMs?
Does rules-satisfying allow you, then, to have better games?

The GM is not the game. The game is a mix of the GM, the players, the rules being used, and the local social contract. Few GMs are system-independent - and I wouldn't want to be because it means that I'm not using what the game brings.

As for games with elegant rules (I'm using my term just in case I've misunderstood), in my experience their biggest plus is that they allow me to run game styles I simply couldn't in other systems - and run games well I wouldn't do well. They are also games I find much more inspiring than rules heavy or even orthodox rules light games.

To use one example with my experience of Feng Shui and D&D I thought I couldn't run gonzo games. My games just aren't. Then I tried running Marvel Heroic with a gonzo aesthetic. It worked! Stunting insanity and things going wrong at relevant times in relevant ways.

On the downside there's no game with elegant rules I've run yet I'd want to run for more than half a dozen sessions. But in those half dozen sessions, the games have always been more intense, more inspiring, and had better roleplaying than a non-elegant game could manage in a dozen. (There will also be fewer rules questions and looking things up in those half dozen sessions than there would be in D&D or GURPS in three - even if the elegant rules game is entirely new to the players).

Elegant games aren't just about simplifying rules (although they do, with all the advantages that brings). They are games that add spice, flavour, and tone and invite everyone to join in. (The blandest of them I know is Fate Core, which is pretty trad in most ways - and even that is inviting everyone to say what is important by means of aspects and showing the DM where the targets to pitch to that the players want are).

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Savage Worlds hits on all of those for me. Sometimes it gets tagged as a rules light game but its not, its just lighter than D&D/Pathfinder. Its tagline is Fast, Furious, and Fun and all the design of the rules align to that goal. Even after playing 4 or so years now the elegance and Rules-Satisfying aspects continue to surprise and please me.

I'm glad it's working so well for you. That's what I like to see. I still haven't had a chance to play it, but Savage Worlds looks like a very good system from what I can tell by reading through it (twice).

The main place where I might express dissatisfaction is that it seems like the level of details on certain things (such as the various skill and combat modifiers) isn't harmonious with the overall rules chassis and general feel of the game. Couldn't you accomplish the vast amount of that with the GM applying a simple +2, -2, or -4, as recommended at the beginning of the rules chapter?

So in that case I might not be satisfied because it feels like a very light framework has had unnecessarily heavy components added to it, which increases search and retrieval time from zero to however long it takes to find those parts of the book. (I wouldn't try to modify it until having played it, as you mentioned.)

It's not a glaring degree of discontinuity, but it's enough for me to notice. Note--I think Savage Worlds is a good system, and I still have those criticisms. Don't let get me started ripping apart bad systems...

Sounds highly subjective. And similar to the search for the One True System. Yet intriguing...

I'm not looking for one true system. I think that's kind of like looking for the one true sport. It doesn't make sense, because they hit a variety of different play experiences. I think, instead, that there can be a system that is as perfect as possible for its intended goal, and that part of that is the degree to which the rules are satisfying. And you'll need a different system for different types of games. Some scenarios work great with some universal systems, while others might kind of need their own thing to feel right.

Or a battlemech system that has technical tables for big, technical robots?

Indeed! In that case, I'd say that you'd want some sort of app that allowed you to do things such as select a weapon, and then before taking a shot simply clicking on a variety of checkboxes to set range, movement by you or your opponent, etc. That degree of complexity is generally going to be necessary for a certain experience you're likely to be looking for with battlemechs to be satisfying. Of course, anything that can reduce the end-user time spent doing math and looking things up, rather than blowing holes through steel armor, is a major asset.

You mean, like one skill system that applies to all skills? Instead of a fixed progression, varying by class, for attack bonuses? Or instead of a thievery table, usable only by thieves, that uses percentage scores instead of a d20 system?

I think rules-light systems are more in danger of breaking this rule than the heavies, just because it's hard for a rule (or subsystem) to feel out of place in a sea of rules.

Good point. A game that is designed as a bunch of unrelated subsystems can accept new subsystems without throwing off the feel, while it's harder to pull off some of those subsystem functions with a universal resolution system.

Hard to do in a roleplaying game, because roleplaying games are expected to do so much. You know what games feel seamless? Monopoly. Chess. These games give you satisfying rules, but limit your experience in exchange. If you make the experience limitless, every player is going to want a slightly different experience, and then it becomes very difficult to satisfy everyone.

But to answer the first question: I'm working on it.

I think it can be done, as long as the system is devoted to a specific goal. Yes, you do limit your experience--but that's a good thing! Trying to make a gritty horror game system work for cinematic supers just (dare I say) shouldn't work. If it does, it means that "working" is a pretty low bar.

I'm thinking we can work on getting the seamless level a lot closer to Monopoly or Chess than it is now.

Fate Core/Fate Accelerated. There's a reason that Fate is lying behind only D&D on the Hot Games Tracker, and Fate Core is the most elegant of them all and keyed to pulp action for larger than life characters. Powerful, flexible, simple, and delivers exactly the experience it promises.

Another game that looks very well designed. I'll play and enjoy (to a greater extant) just about any game, but I'm really hard to please when I'm critiquing a system (whether I've actually played it or not), so that's high praise from me.

I still haven't played it, so I'm not sure how it works out in play. I can tell that there is a learning curve. The proof in the pudding would probably be how much mental overhead is required to apply all the details regarding aspects, invoking, compelling, and all that stuff.

Fiasco. ...
Cortex+ ...
Apocalypse World. ...
Monsterhearts. ...

Still haven't really examined any of those. The Apocalypse World system doesn't grab me--but that's mostly a matter of taste. Fiasco looks like it flows fairly smoothly--probably because it's a hybrid role-playing/party game and therefore needed to be designed to function quickly with new players.

Been meaning to look at Cortex and Corex+, but haven't gotten to it yet.

I completely agree. To me, when someone pushes "rules lite" as a key "feature" of a rules system, it's nearly always a turn-off. In my experience, most of the "rules lite" stuff I see bandied about is generally little more than a core resolution mechanic wrapped in minimal character advancement packaging. For fans of these kinds of systems, I'm sure they're fantastic, the point of using a system like this is when you're a group that's willing to hand over dramatic amounts of power to the GM. If your group trusts the GM, then "rules lite" is probably a great experience. For me, I simply want more from my systems than freedom to improvise.

I'm a fan of having "fluid" rules that expect GM decision making all the time. I'm not a fan of the way a lot of these systems have "gaseous" rules that seem to be there just to make the air smell pretty. In other words, a lot of these really light systems provide rules when they'd rather just give you a book telling you how to tell stories in a setting. The rules are like, "oh, well, I guess we need a way to roll dice while we're collaboratively telling stories...right?" They really aren't intended to be role-playing games at all, but they throw in a resolution mechanic, some sorts of point buy or attribute distribution system, advancement rules, etc, when they could really accomplish their goal with just describing each character with a couple of paragraphs of prose (and maybe a haiku for good measure), and then saying, "As the storyteller, feel free to flip a coin if you need help making a decision regarding the story every now and again."

In such cases, it's actually unsatisfying to have rules at all. Make a system that wants rules, and where those rules actually contribute in a meaningful way, or entirely skip them.

This I also agree with, though to be honest, I'm more about a system achieving its aims satisfactorily than being attached to any arbitrary distinction of "rules lite" or "rules heavy."

*Nod*

That said, it's not my One True System. My One True System would ultimately use the die-step mechanics of Savage Worlds crossed with a bell-curve probability distribution, and would definitely NOT use the Savage Worlds shaken / wound / soak mechanic.

Degree and type of randomness is a big system decision that I don't hear discussed much. In my own system you can use one of three types of randomness, depending on the type of scene (one of them being "none"). I find many (even most) systems put a lot of swinginess in their system, and that it's done because they haven't considered trying less swinginess. A bell-curve is a good alternative, as is simply reducing the contribution that randomness makes to the overall outcome of an action.

After watching Crafty Games rip the 3.x engine apart, then put it back together into something dramatically more consistent and elegant with Fantasy Craft, I realized that "coherence" is something that's hard to fully pin down, but remarkably tangible when present in rules presentation.

Definitely. It just makes everything feel a bit smoother. The game system feels like it's your buddy rather than your adversary when it's coherent.

Burning Wheel: A modular game. There are bits of it I've never used. There are bits of it I will never use. But it's designed like that. The base system works a treat and then there's all the extra bits to flesh out whatever scene needs it. Definitely not rules-light. But a game that gets better as you learn its nuances, for sure.

How fast is it in play? I looked at a bit of the quick start material and it seemed to have some intriguing ideas. I'm always uncomfortable with subsystems that have to be referenced just for certain situations. I'm pretty sure there is a way to design a game where summoning and implementing the subsystem you need at any particular moment can be very smooth and satisfying, but I'm not sure how that would look.

I'll try to reply to some more posts later.

 

[Balesir]

Lots of good systems mentioned, here - some I have tried (FATE Core definitely works for me, and Fiasco), some I haven't (Savage Worlds, which I own and want to try but need time, for example) - but I'll try to add some new ones.

I actually find D&D 4E hits the marks, for me.

1. Search and Handling time: I don't need to know all the character abilities - the players deal with that, and have cards with the technical details to do so - and the monster stat. blocks have everything I need to run them. We rarely need to look anything up during play; the core of the rules just make so much sense to me that I can remember them all. I just grok them, I suppose.

2. Information Handiness: We use power cards and monster stat. block cards; with those and the GM's screen I have almost everything I ever need to hand at all times.

3. No need to houserule: In running a complete campaign up to Epic levels, the only thing I have felt the need to houserule is to not change the magic item rules when the "rarity" stuff was foisted in as part of Essentials. Other than that, I am hankering to try out a few ideas when I start my next 4E campaign, but feel no need whatsoever to houserule the current one.

4. Playing Should Feel as Intended: I'm not entirely sure what was intended, but it feels like generic high fantasy adventuring, to me, which is what I associate with D&D (so it can't be failing completely).

5. Coherence: I think this is a key 4E strength and it's probably the reason I just "get" the rules and hardly ever need to look them up. Internal consistency is sound, as far as I can see.​

All that said, I definitely don't believe in "One True System", and these other games have done a super job, for me, with different styles of game:

- Pendragon. It's tied to Arthurian Knights, but for them it just *works*. Any edition would do, but I think 3e is my favourite.

- Universalis. Like Fiasco, it's not traditional in form, but it has simple, clear rules that cover all the cases (and there is no GM, so you don't have that crutch to rely on when rules are missing).

- DragonQuest. Long out of print and with a very different ethos than D&D, this nevertheless provides rules that Just. Make. Sense.

- Theatrix. Needs the right group, and is very non-traditional, again, but this is the best take on how to make diceless, pure GM-judgement work in a game. Coming from me, that's some compliment!

- HârnMaster. It's old and it looks scary complex at first glance, but once it "clicks" for you it's actually smooth and simple in play. Also gives a very, very different feel from "standard" fantasy RPGs. You could run a soap opera game in HM, and it would work a treat.

- Bushido. Tied to Mythological Japan, although the related "Daredevils" uses the same basic system for pulp tales (and is also good). Bushido is almost the "original E6"; it uses only 6 levels, and you can lose as well as gain levels (if you lose "face", you can lose level). Captures the theme brilliantly, and is simple yet makes sense (for the genre) as a system.​

I think those cover all the ones I have run that work (for me). Several others look very good, but I haven't actually used in anger. 13th Age, Hillfolk and the aforementioned Savage Worlds would be the main ones, there.

Hope that helps!

 

[Neonchameleon]

So in that case I might not be satisfied because it feels like a very light framework has had unnecessarily heavy components added to it, which increases search and retrieval time from zero to however long it takes to find those parts of the book.

This sums up about half my experience with Savage Worlds

I think it can be done, as long as the system is devoted to a specific goal. Yes, you do limit your experience--but that's a good thing! Trying to make a gritty horror game system work for cinematic supers just (dare I say) shouldn't work. If it does, it means that "working" is a pretty low bar.

Agreed absolutely! Or you're half designing the game yourself (see GURPS 4e for details).

I still haven't played it, so I'm not sure how it works out in play. I can tell that there is a learning curve. The proof in the pudding would probably be how much mental overhead is required to apply all the details regarding aspects, invoking, compelling, and all that stuff.

Not a lot in my experience.

Still haven't really examined any of those. The Apocalypse World system doesn't grab me--but that's mostly a matter of taste.

The really cool thing about Apocalypse World to me is easily overlooked and not actually mentioned in any of the design documents I've seen. AW is based around freeform roleplaying and causing as little disruption as possible to a freeform experience, while adding as much as possible from the rolls of the dice. (Meguey Baker is a freeform roleplayer). It's also the first published iteration using the engine and there's a reason a lot of designers hack using it. For rules elegance Monsterhearts is better - but it might not be a game that you are able to play with your current gaming group.

Been meaning to look at Cortex and Corex+, but haven't gotten to it yet.

Avoid Classic Cortex I'd suggest. Somehow I don't think that any RPG where you can have a stat of d12+d2 is going to be your thing. Cortex+ is a very different thing (and it's a toolkit for creating games while Classic Cortex is a one-size-fits-all game).

I'm a fan of having "fluid" rules that expect GM decision making all the time. I'm not a fan of the way a lot of these systems have "gaseous" rules that seem to be there just to make the air smell pretty. In other words, a lot of these really light systems provide rules when they'd rather just give you a book telling you how to tell stories in a setting. The rules are like, "oh, well, I guess we need a way to roll dice while we're collaboratively telling stories...right?"

I know exactly what you mean

In such cases, it's actually unsatisfying to have rules at all. Make a system that wants rules, and where those rules actually contribute in a meaningful way, or entirely skip them.

Being fair, resolution mechanics are useful. But I'm working at the level of Apocalypse World here which, as I mentioned, starts off with the idea that no rules is a perfectly fine way to play then builds a structure around that disrupting it as little as possible while adding as much of value as possible into those disruptions.

Degree and type of randomness is a big system decision that I don't hear discussed much. In my own system you can use one of three types of randomness, depending on the type of scene (one of them being "none"). I find many (even most) systems put a lot of swinginess in their system, and that it's done because they haven't considered trying less swinginess. A bell-curve is a good alternative, as is simply reducing the contribution that randomness makes to the overall outcome of an action.

All the games I've mentioned have things in them to make them less random than a simple d20 roll (Cortex+ is roll your dice pool, pick your best two (Classic Cortex just adds up your dice pool, another reason to avoid it) - Fate uses four fate dice for an equivalent of 4d3-8, and Apocalypse World/Monsterhearts uses a 2d6 bell curve with threshold values on 7 and 10).

 

[chaochou]

- Bushido. Tied to Mythological Japan, although the related "Daredevils" uses the same basic system for pulp tales (and is also good). Bushido is almost the "original E6"; it uses only 6 levels, and you can lose as well as gain levels (if you lose "face", you can lose level). Captures the theme brilliantly, and is simple yet makes sense (for the genre) as a system.
​

Just highlighting this as an example of how incredibly subjective this all is... because Balesir's posts generally suggest quite a similar style of gaming to my own. And yet while I appreciated the wonderful historicity of Bushido, the beautiful source material which really tried to capture the culture and aesthetics from feudal Japan, I found it a real soulless pig of a game to actually run.

As for Burning Wheel - is it 'quick'? I would say no. It is designed for long-term play. I mean, in a specific context a single contest (and therefore a dice roll) could move things on real fast, but not at the speed that a failures or 7-9s can (and probably should) completely alter the situation in Apocalypse World. BW needs the characters to be making regular rolls as central to the advancement and artha systems, and there are benefits to giving these some thought (due to systems like help and fields of related knowledge). So I find it has a more measured pace than the in-your-face mayhem of AW or rollicking knockabout feel of FATE.

 

[Balesir]

I'm a fan of having "fluid" rules that expect GM decision making all the time. I'm not a fan of the way a lot of these systems have "gaseous" rules that seem to be there just to make the air smell pretty. In other words, a lot of these really light systems provide rules when they'd rather just give you a book telling you how to tell stories in a setting. The rules are like, "oh, well, I guess we need a way to roll dice while we're collaboratively telling stories...right?" They really aren't intended to be role-playing games at all, but they throw in a resolution mechanic, some sorts of point buy or attribute distribution system, advancement rules, etc, when they could really accomplish their goal with just describing each character with a couple of paragraphs of prose (and maybe a haiku for good measure), and then saying, "As the storyteller, feel free to flip a coin if you need help making a decision regarding the story every now and again."

In such cases, it's actually unsatisfying to have rules at all. Make a system that wants rules, and where those rules actually contribute in a meaningful way, or entirely skip them.

Given all this, if you can find a copy, I recommend taking a look at Theatrix - not necessarily to run, but for ideas/concepts.

It majors as a diceless system (GM fiat on all tasks, basically), but it covers stuff like:

a) You, the GM, are going to decide outcomes in a way that makes for the best story. OK - how do you actually do that? What criteria should you be using?

b) If the GM is deciding outcomes of skill-based tasks, what is the point of character skill? What difference does it make if my character is expert at this task?

c) When and how should the GM give up control and hand the reins to a player? Assuming the aim is still "the best story", of course...​

And it actually gives solid guidance/"rules" for this stuff. Not perfect, naturally - and not up to date with more recent thinking (it dates from around 1995) - but interesting and servicable nevertheless.

Just highlighting this as an example of how incredibly subjective this all is... because Balesir's posts generally suggest quite a similar style of gaming to my own. And yet while I appreciated the wonderful historicity of Bushido, the beautiful source material which really tried to capture the culture and aesthetics from feudal Japan, I found it a real soulless pig of a game to actually run.

Hmm, it's a long time since I ran it - I may have rose-tinted spectacles for some bits. I remember battles where samurai characters were comparing head piles and flavourful training sequences (finding teachers and uncovering secrets) - but I have hazy memories of actual fight sequences being a bit slow...