Sorry - I think the point was missed...

[Majoru Oakheart]

Maybe for you. I prefer rules-lite systems because they give the players more power, and/or because they are less work for the GM. And one way they can be less work for the GM is precisely by giving the GM less power--power is burdensome. The more power i have as the GM, the more responsibility i have, and the more work i have to do to run the game. The more power the players have, the less work i have to do, because the players are doing the work.

See, I've found that the lighter the rules, the MORE work I has to do as a DM.

I have been able to leave the room during a battle in 3.5E D&D and my players know the rules well enough that they could run almost an entire round of combat before I'd be forced to be there to make a decision as to what the enemies do.

Back as far as just 2E D&D (which isn't really rules light, but a lot more so than 3.5E), I would have to be there to answer question on each and every person's turn. When the enemies went, I'd be having to decide their tactics AND the rules for what they were trying to do (or at least reading them again and trying to make sense of them in this situation).

I was almost completely burned out of running games in 2E D&D because of this. I find, as I've said before, that 3.5E does require a LOT more work before the session if you are writing your own adventures. However, I never prepare for any session at all. Even when I ran the one adventure I made up myself. Most of the time, my villians were a collections of numbers I made up on the fly, however. They tend to look like this: Fighter 6, +11 to hit, 1d8+6 damage, 60 hp, AC 20. Made that up in about 10 seconds. If I need more stats about him, I make them up. I know the rules well enough that I avoid breaking them while making up stuff.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Also, IME, complex rulesets never seem to actually address the things i need when running a game, so they often don't decrease my GMing workload appreciably, anyway. frex, the current game is Arcana Uneathed. Here are the situations, just from the last session, that i could find no rules answer for and had to improvise:

Using the 3.5E rules, I can tell you what seems the most logical and game consistane for these:

[*]a skill for noticing a subtle clue hidden in a mural
Spot, it is used for spotting hidden things, even in plain sight

[*]what skill to invent a code and write something in it?
Decipher Script could be used for this (in the same way that disable device had be used to enable them). I'd allow it to be done untrained, however(i.e. int check)

[*]balance is the skill for not loosing your footing on slippery ground; what's the skill for tricky acrobatic flying?
Tumble. It is used for moving around obsticles no matter what form of movement. Useable untrained in this case (i.e. dex check)

[*]what roll to determine whether a poison that has effected you was inhaled or contact?
This one is hard for modern doctors with tests to determine. If I allowed someone to do it at all in a D&D like game...Heal to identify the symptoms. Maybe a Knowledge (herbalism) or Craft(poisonmaking) skill check to determine the effects, including whether it is a inhaled poison or contact.

[*]determining whether a scent that someone definitely smells is recognizable?
Ahh, memory, that's an int check, as per the DMG, if we are just referring to "that smells exactly like when you were in the palace." It's a knowledge check to identify what it is. Knowledge nature if it is created by a plant, etc.

[*]what do you do about knowledges that don't fall under any of the knowledge skills? do you allow people to fall back to straight Int rolls? Isn't that unfairly penalizing someone for not taking a knowledge that wasn't available to be taken? no roll allowed? that's silly. roll off an inappropriate knowledge? not very satisfactory.
I haven't really come up with a knowledge that isn't covered yet. It is normally related to one of them at least slightly, I use that one. If it ABSOLUTELY isn't covered, I'd probably just use an int check, but I haven't had to do it yet.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

I might be able to make up a good rule on the fly, I might not. I've just had too many experiences where a DM made up a rule on the fly that ruined the entire session for me because of how dumb it was. The DM had no idea whatsoever, though. He was convinced he knew everything so obviously his rule was the best one. I talked to the players after the game, they all felt the same way, but they told me that they had gotten used to the DM doing that and in order to have fun you just had to put it behind you.

I think that experience is coloring your opinion. Because I haven't read a single post that sounded to me like "GM declares any difficulty at random, his word is law." Yes, we were talking about assigning difficulties on the fly, but not in a way that someone has to make a near-impossible climb check to walk up a staircase. (To be fair, 90% of the examples discussed are things I'd let the player narrate, and not roll for.) Heck, if the way I've described something doesn't seem to match the assigned difficulty, my players chime in and we make sure we're in agreement before we roll.

To the extent that we were using "arbitrary rat b*stard DM" in the examples, it was to point out that if someone wants to screw you over, they can do so regardless of the rules if they've been given unlimited rights to create the environment. Which most rules-heavy games assign exclusively to the GM.

One of our points has been that if you've got a GM who thinks they know everything and doesn't listen to the player's input, then yes a comprehensive rules system is going to help the symptoms -- but it won't solve the core problem. It's fine if you like D&D 3.x, but as far as curbing GM abuse, it's just aspirin. No game works very well if the people at the table aren't on the same page.

Now as for your point that the rules-heavy games require less GM work if you want detailed tactical situations, yes, I agree with you. What you described with AD&D 2e was a situation when the rules didn't provide the level of detail and clarity you wanted to do that. I think it's important to note that most of us who are playing rules-light games aren't spending much time in detailed tactical combat. For instance, the combat in my last few campaigns has been more like a wuxia or John Woo movie. We provide a lot of detail because we like the detail, but it's not tactical.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Now as for your point that the rules-heavy games require less GM work if you want detailed tactical situations, yes, I agree with you. What you described with AD&D 2e was a situation when the rules didn't provide the level of detail and clarity you wanted to do that. I think it's important to note that most of us who are playing rules-light games aren't spending much time in detailed tactical combat. For instance, the combat in my last few campaigns has been more like a wuxia or John Woo movie. We provide a lot of detail because we like the detail, but it's not tactical.

It's just just detailed tactical situations that are the problem though.

For instance, there were no rules for buying magic items in 2nd Ed. So, because of that, I argued with my players for hours about how they thought it was dumb that I wouldn't let them buy any. They said "But it doesn't make any sense! Are we the only adventurers on the planet? Where does everyone else sell their magic items to?"

There were no rules for things like how much damage acid did (I'm not sure on this specific point, I can't remember 2E all that well anymore), so whenever I'd make up a damage, it would be argued "Acid should eat away my entire arm if it touched me." or "I only touched it for a second, I shouldn't take anywhere near that damage."

Every time I had to make a decision, there was arguement by one player or another. This is having played with a total pool of something like 30 players. I hated making decisions of any sort, because I knew the game would slow down to a crawl as soon as I did.

If I had to make up the amount of time it took for a house to burn down, there was a chance someone would argue that the time was unrealistic.

I think what I look for in a game is a system that allows me to simulate as closely as possible without being overly complicated *A* reality. My friends and I aren't big on narrative. We don't care about artistic license or anything like that. If I told one of my players "you miss because it would make sense for the STORY for you to do so" they's complain that it was unfair and I was just making things up.

I'm sure my friends would love to have a wuxia type combat as well. However, they'd want to know how far they could jump, what their chance of hitting was, and how many people they just killed this round, etc. They just like to know the detail to go with the style.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Right. Which is why it's clear that you and your group have found a system that works great for your style of play.

But I think you've been assuming that groups who use and enjoy rules-light games play anything like your group does. Often we don't. I think people would have responded differently to your earlier comments if you'd said "That wouldn't work for me and my group" instead of "That can't work". My group's gone to rules-light systems because they fill our needs, just like your group has gone to 3.x because it fills yours.

For instance, focus on narrative doesn't mean "GM tells you what happens, it's his story, suck it up". That's plain bad play in any ruleset. Nobody's arguing for that.

I don't need a system that can provide a concrete ruling for an argumentative player because, and I'm not bragging, but I don't play with argumentative players. When something comes up we're not sure about, the group talks about it for a minute or two, and we make a call. Happens once or twice a session.

So really all I've been trying to say is that whether a system is good or not is all about whether it fills the needs of its target audience. If we're different target audiences, all Ican say is whether its good for me.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

But I think you've been assuming that groups who use and enjoy rules-light games play anything like your group does. Often we don't. I think people would have responded differently to your earlier comments if you'd said "That wouldn't work for me and my group" instead of "That can't work". My group's gone to rules-light systems because they fill our needs, just like your group has gone to 3.x because it fills yours.

Well, it's hard for me to even wrap my head around the style of role playing you are talking about.

I'm not even sure how it works, actually. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or anything. It just seems completely foreign. I've played over 30 different role playing systems and I've never encountered one that worked like that.

I'm thinking back to the simplest role playing games I know, cops and robbers and playing with He-man figures when I was young. I remember continually the same story:
"I hit you."
"No you don't, I'm fast, I dodge"
"No, my bullet is heat seeking."

Since then, it has been a mission of mine to recreate the IDEA behind that, but make it so people can objectively look at a set of rules to say "You are right, the dice say you DO hit me."

I've never met someone who wasn't "arguementative" at one point or another...except for people who didn't really care about the game at all. They just don't say or do anything during the game, though. Which is why, I don't believe people when they say they can get a group of people together to play a game they care about for a couple of hours a week and not argue about the results of things they don't agree with. Don't get me wrong, we can work through things we don't agree on as well. Otherwise we never would have finished a session of 2E D&D. It's just that every once in a while, someone would feel REALLY strongly about a point and refuse to give it up. The session was then no fun and no one had a good time.

Since there are always points the players won't agree on, the final decision has to come from the DM. So, in the end, it is the DM who makes the decision. For instance:

DM:"The house burns down in 2 minutes"
P1:"2 minutes? Doesn't it take hours for houses to burn down?"
P2:"Not if it's a flashfire. I saw this special on it last week, houses burn down in seconds."
P1:"I've never heard of such a thing, I think you are lying."
P3:"Well, the speed of burning actually is determined by the material the house was made of. Last week in my physics class I..."

So, unless the DM makes a decision and says "Look, it burns down in 2 minutes, let's not argue the details, shall we?" nothing gets done that session.

I've never seen a session go well with a rules light system without the DM putting their foot down. Every time they do, it annoys someone at the table. I've never run into a table that consisted entirely of players who didn't question anything the DM said.

 

[woodelf]

Well, it's hard for me to even wrap my head around the style of role playing you are talking about.

I'm not even sure how it works, actually. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or anything. It just seems completely foreign. I've played over 30 different role playing systems and I've never encountered one that worked like that.

[snip]

I've never seen a session go well with a rules light system without the DM putting their foot down. Every time they do, it annoys someone at the table. I've never run into a table that consisted entirely of players who didn't question anything the DM said.

You gonna be at GenCon? Come play one of our [The Impossible Dream's] games, and i guarantee you'll see how it's done. You may still not like it, but at least you'll understand it. Four Colors al Fresco will show you heavily-shared authorial power, subjective character traits, and interpretive rules. Dread will show you narrative traits and resolution, and shared mood control. Advanced Dimensional Green Ninja-Educational Preparatory Super-Elementary Fortress 555 is fast-n-loose BESM, with style and genre trumping rules on a regular basis. And, no, i can't promise you a perfect experience--we *have* had problem players in games in the past. But no moreso than in crunchier systems--the specific details of how they cause trouble may differ from system to system but, for the most part, the same sorts of people cause trouble regardless of the system.

Not that i'm not willing to continue the discussion here, just that showing is probably better than telling in these cases.

 

[JohnSnow]

Snow, perhaps you also object to the title "Game Master." Would you feel more comfortable with "Game Custodian" or "Game Trustee" . . . ?

Ah, well, my favorite terms are "Dungeon Master" (for its legacy) and the far more descriptive "Referee." The primary purpose of the DM is to adjudicate the game. His job is to challenge his players WITHIN the scope of the rules. I don't see RPGs as a strict improvisational theater activity, and storytelling games with no resolution mechanic hold no appeal to me. Allow me to state my position: a game has to have a randomizer with pre-determined consequences or it's not a game. Some games have player choice as the only randomizer (chess, for example). Most add an additional randomizer to player choice.

The choice method only works if there are pre-determined consequences. When I move a piece in chess, certain risks are spelled out (the threat from other pieces). If the other player could simply make up rules to cover every situation, it's not really a game anymore. It might still be fun (Calvinball, anyone?), but it's more an exercise in interaction than a game.

I'd also like to clarify what I meant by the term "squidgy." Squidgy is, in my mind, mildly inconsistent. If sliding down a banister on a skateboard is a DC 15 balance check one time, the same banister should be the same DC the next time or there'd better be a reason it isn't. This is not about "reality simulation" it's about a consistent, logical experience.

You can't use the argument that "an unreasonable DM can make hash of a rules-heavy system" as a counter to "a reasonable, but imperfect, DM can make hash of a rules light system." The former may be an accurate statement, but it doesn't address the claim in the latter. Obviously, a perfect, reasonable DM can run both with no problems. Personally, both as a player and a DM, am more concerned about reasonable, imperfect DMs than I am about unreasonable DMs, who I simply refuse to game with.

I think the rules-heavier side, like me, is arguing the latter point - that a reasonable, but imperfect (i.e. human) DM can make mistakes that wreck the experience for his players if that consistency is important to them. Is there a counter to that other than "I just think it's too complicated for my gaming style?" If so, I'd like to hear it. Personally, that last is my opinion about HERO. It's a fine game, but I find its calculations annoying. I don't need to play HERO though, because there are other games that suit my needs.

I think that's why D&D edition wars are so vitriolic. And C&C vs. 3e is basically an edition war. It's "rules-light, classsic feel" D&D vs. "current standard" D&D. And whether I think C&C is rules-light or not isn't relevant (we all agree that term is relative), since its designers claim exactly that. Throw on top of that people accusing each other of not playing the "real game" or not adhering to the "spirit of the game" the way they envision it and it gets nasty quick.

I suppose there's something to the argument that some DMs decide it's easier to be "unreasonable" in a rules-heavy system than to actually follow it, but that's either a DM issue, or a system one that needs to be addressed. Obviously, not everyone feels the system is too onerous to follow.

And bringing up all the things that other games have rules for that D&D doesn't is another diversion from the topic. Obviously, that means there are areas in which D&D could be considered "rules-light." Near as I can tell, that's intentional. D&D doesn't have rules for everything. It's quite upfront about the fact that it provides more rules for some situations (like combat), less for others (like interacting with NPCs), and covers some not at all from a rules point of view. For example, it mostly provides "guidelines" for politics as opposed to actual rules. Personally, I don't need detailed discussions of NPC behavior - as a human, I can understand human behavior reasonably well without a rulebook. I also think that's largely the point of alignment. Rather than going into the complexity of Illithid society and writing a thesis on the psychology of Mind Flayers, the books simply say "Illithids are E-Vil" because that concept, once grasped, makes it pretty easy for the DM to decide how they'll behave in general. To clear it up, the game even spells out what it means when it says good, evil, lawful and chaotic.

But all that's just my opinion. Play the game you like to play, but don't tell me I should be happy with a game that doesn't suit my style just because the DM doesn't feel like doing extra work. I may still be enjoying myself enough to play, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm dissatisfied.

Guidelines aren't rules - it's that simple. It's true that rules can be used as guidelines, but guidelines aren't as concrete as actual rules.

 

[Akrasia]

...
I'd also like to clarify what I meant by the term "squidgy." Squidgy is, in my mind, mildly inconsistent. If sliding down a banister on a skateboard is a DC 15 balance check one time, the same banister should be the same DC the next time or there'd better be a reason it isn't. This is not about "reality simulation" it's about a consistent, logical experience.
...

I've made this point many times in the past, and I will probably have to make it many times again in the future ...

There is *nothing* intrinsic to 'rules light' game systems that render them more likely to be 'inconsistent/squidgy' than 'rules heavy' game systems.

Rules light(-ish) systems simply provide *more general* mechanisms to resolve situations. These can be used in a perfectly consistent manner through the course of endless gaming sessions. (Indeed, because these mechanisms are more general, and thus involve fewer variables and modifiers, their implementation is likely to be *more* consistent than the use of more complex mechanisms in rules heavy systems.)

Inconsistencies only arise if the GM of a rules light system tries to introduce numerous ad hoc modifiers and variant rules in order to better 'simulate' the environment/situation he/she is describing.

But, as I have also said many times before, if you want a 'simulationist' game, rules light is not the way to go.

 

[Akrasia]

Well, it's hard for me to even wrap my head around the style of role playing you are talking about.
....

If you simply don't understand a certain kind of game, why do you persist in commenting on (and criticizing) it?
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