Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6288870" data-attributes="member: 6677017">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.I find I'm often disillusioned when I see a game specifically advertised in a prominent way as being rules-light. In the majority of my experiences that amounts to a game being overly simplified for my tastes. Either too much is left for abstraction without any firm foundation, or the rules are utterly lacking in information that is going to come up constantly unless the GM is so extraordinarily skillful he can run a setting without actually having a game to run it with.On the other hand, a more rules-heavy approach often turns a role-playing experience into an exercise in high search and retrieval processing and unnecessary degrees of detail.In my own design I find myself risking hitting the same problems. I occasionally find I need to stop, step back from the details, and ask myself, "have I created an unnecessary new system? Can these functions be collapsed into an already extant portion of my design?" or conversely realizing, "Can I really model what I planned with just this level of detail?"I'm occasionally frustrated in my design when I hit that clash between a desire for speed and simplicity, and the difficulty of squeezing what I need together. (This is even more difficult due to my commitment to small numbers, low granularity, and as much as possible avoiding the use of numbers when defining characters.)What I'm looking for are rules-satisfying systems.What is rules-satisfying can vary a great deal, but I think a few main points can express a lot of it.1. Search and handling time shouldn't feel like it slows down the game. I can't think of any role-playing experience where the table considers pausing for 3 minutes while someone looks up something a good thing. In fact, I can't think of any role-playing game where pausing for more than 30 seconds to look something up is a good thing. Occasional pauses allow our brains to rest, but anything longer than a few seconds can probably wait for the next point where the whole table takes a 5 minute break or a longer intermission.2. You should have exactly the information you need at any point. A character sheet shouldn't include numbers that are never used for anything. Rules that are necessary to express a situation that can arise in the game need to be in the game and easy to find.3. You shouldn't feel an urge to houserule in order to patch the system. Either that means you aren't satisfied with what the game is all about, or it means you are trying to use it for something it wasn't intended (which is a recipe for dissatisfaction). 4. Playing the game should feel like it is intended. If it's supposed to be a game of tense horror, you shouldn't need a spreadsheet to do math for you in the game, or a series of charts to frequently consult, or even have to flip through several books looking for info (unless there is a timer and not finding the info means doom). If it's supposed to be all about the story, then there shouldn't even be a game system. It should have a story system instead.5. It should be coherent throughout. This may naturally follow from the others, but nothing should feel out of place in the system, just like nothing should feel out of place in the connection between the system and the setting(s).Having never really experienced a game that perfectly satisfies my (perfectionistic) standards in terms of its rules, I'm wondering if others of you have fared better.Have you found a game that really does everything you want it to in a satisfying manner? That doesn't actually have "just that one part" that you houserule, or gloss over, or leave out to get the desired experience? That plays as smooth as ice and lacks any portions of the system that slow it down, or otherwise make it difficult to reach what you're trying to? Or that doesn't feel like you are jolted out of your experience during play due to the rules in some way?</blockquote>

Verification