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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 2421111" data-attributes="member: 10201">It's not a "movement"--that is, those who are enjoying, and possibly championing, rules-lite games are no more homogeneous in their tastes than those playing crunchy games (look at the Hero vs. GURPS vs. Tri-Stat threads, or D&D vs. everything else). But that's just a nitpick.Part of the problem here is, i think people are talking past each other, due to a lack of proper terminology existing. Strictly speaking, "rules lite" means just that: fewer rules. However, in practice, the vast majority of rules lite games currently available also embody a significant shift in playstyle, usually to a more narrativist or narrativist/gamist stance (from the gamist or gamist/simulationist stance of most commercially-visible RPGs). The term has come to imply much more than it says--just as "diceless" in the context of RPGs is generally taken to mean "randomizerless", and not be used to describe, say, Castle Falkenstein (which did not use dice); "rules lite" in the context of RPGs generally means (at least when used by those who are advocates) "uses simple narrative mechanics to empower the players". I think i've even been guilty of this myself in this thread. And it's not just coincidence or blinders--there's a real connection. As several people in this thread have argued, trying to have a heavily-gamist/simulationist tactical RPG with the level of mechanical detail that most rules-lite games provide would be almost impossible. And is probably part of why most rules-lite games have shown up in the last 7 years: it took a fundamental shift in paradigm to make a *viable* rules-lite game--one that didn't just feel like an incomplete or sloppy game.Anyway, i can't speak for others, nor am i an expert in the internal motives of the designers of other rules-lite RPGs (reference "we're not a movement", above), i think you've got it half  right. Initially, fueled in large part by WWGS's rhetoric in their "storytelling" games, the motivation was to "get the rules out of the way" so that better narratives could come from the game. It doesn't really work, however. [At least in part because the Storyteller system isn't really any lighter than the games it was railing against. But even with games that really are significantly lighter, but of that style.] In response to the problems with that strategy [the rules were out of the way, and it didn't make much story difference; those who wanted more tactical detail were sometimes frustrated], people started experimenting more and more with different sorts of RPG mechanics--ones that interacted with the personality, and then the story [rather than just the world].And thus the current rules-lite crop of games was eventually born. These don't try and get out of the way of the story, they actively try and shape it. So, going back to the B5 example, the player of G'Kar might have a character trait something like "will die at the hands of Mollari, 3d" or something like that. His other traits might be, "Narn partisan, 4d" and "spiritual, 6d", and "powerful build, 4d" [and some others--this is just an example]. So, if he wants to succeed at forcing a door open, he gets to roll 4 dice. If he wants to force a door open to kill some Centauri, he gets to roll 8 dice. If he wants to force a door open to kill some Centauri and save a Narn spiritual leader, he could roll 14 dice. And--and this is the important part--if he's in a dangerous situation that could lead to his death in some way other than at the hands of Mollari, he can roll another 3 dice. Of course, in a fight with Mollari, he might have to roll 3 fewer dice than he otherwise would in a fight. Or something like that. All of the proceeding is a contrived example, not in line with any particular RPG that i'm familiar with. The point in a narrativist RPG is to give the players mechanics to influence the course of the story directly, as opposed to influencing the actions within the gameworld, which might then influence the course of the story. It's not that the GM needs more control. Rather, the ability to control those elements has very deliberately been wrested from the GM's sole control and distributed amongst the players. IOW, as several have been saying here, and in direct contradiction to Ryan (and others), playing a rules-lite game generally gives the players more, not less, power relative to the GM.That is a very crude example--most narrativist games are much more sophisticated in their mechanics. BUt the significant paradigm shift is deciding things based on how the players want the story to go, rather than on what is "realistic". But not "deciding" as in "i want X, so X happens"--any more than you get to simply decide your D&D character kills the orc with one mighty blow. Rather, those are the elements upon which teh mechanics are staked. So you might have to bid, or roll, or whatever, to gain the authority to decide the scene. Similarly, in a lot of narrativist games, whether or not to roll (i.e., invoke the mechanics) is decided not based on difficulty, but based on narrative significance. In D&D3E, you technically need to roll any time there is a chance of failure [and you can't skip it by taking 10 or 20]. Whether it actually matters or not is irrelevant. [Though, of course, most groups won't bother rolling unless it matters--just as teh uninteresting parts of the character's life are skipped over.] In a narrativist game, you only roll when it matters--regardless of the difficulty. Let me bring in a specific example at this point: in Dust Devils, when you want to resolve a conflict the involved parties draw and play some cards. The player with the best poker hand succeeds at whatever she was attempting, while those in conflict with her fail. But the player with the highest card [frequently one of the losers] gets to actually narrate how that success comes about--and what happens to the other characters. So, rather than the GM interpreting the results of the mechanics and weaving a narrative, the players do so.Now, there's no reason you can't have crunchy narrativist play. There's no reason you can't have mixed narrativist/simulationist games. But there is a reason why rules-lite and simulationist/gamist tend not to work well together [to be clear: rules-lite simulationist isn't ap roblem; rules-lite gamist isn't a problem; it's putting them all together that is the problem]. So, the rules-lite games that people rave about tend not to be simulationist/gamist, and, more specifically, tend to be narrativist.</blockquote>

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