woodelf said:
But what about compared to noe that says "Below are some rules to handle unusual situations." and completely leaves out any suggestion of how to use them, narratively or game-wise? I agree that having both is clearly superior--at worst, you just ignore the half you don't use/need (whether that's the "make the fights cool" part or the "-4 to balance checks when the object you're balancing on is on fire" part). But i think the comparison being made is between the game that only gives you the narrative guidelines (or heavily emphasizes them) [Feng Shui] and teh one that only gives you (or heavily emphasizes) the mechanical elements [D&D3E]. Personally, i'll take the former. But i won't claim it's universally superior.
You won't hear me claiming that either is universally superior either. But the latter is definately superior for our group in the types of campaigns we run most often.
My take is that either of the extremes that you mention (narrative guidelines with no rules or rules with no narrative guidelines) require that the GM be creative. In the first case what you really have is just a big collection of plot hooks and exciting, interesting places for the PC's to act out their derring-do. Beyond that you just have to get creative in your methods of adjudicating what happens. For me, this would create more stress than fun. I'm having to come up with rulings constantly, probably on the fly much of the time. Once I've made a ruling then I've got to either remember it or write it down lest I fall victim to inconsistancy.
If I'm going to that much trouble then I'd just as soon have the rules written down for me in the first place. Which brings us to our second case where we have the rules but no "flavor text":
(Let me mention for a moment that I think these ends of the extremes are largely ficticious and serve only as points for discussion. I don't own Feng Shui but even the most rules-lite system I've ever glanced over had a fair few rules, otherwise it wasn't really a "system". And I'll also point out that if the D&D PHB and DMG are rules focused - and I'm willing to stipulate that they are - they also contain a lot of what I call "flavor text" or suggestions for good narrative to include in your game. The "Running The Game" chapter is full of this sort of thing.)
This circumstance requires that I be creative in my own narrative descriptions and story settings. I'm fine with that. Hell, that's a good chunk of the reason that I play the game in the first place. I enjoy coming up with a dramatic backdrop for the scenes in my campaign and then checking on the rules that apply to them. When there are no rules that perfectly fit the situation that I'm portraying then I'm thrust back into the situation of adjudicating something on the fly. But at least I've got a pretty solid set of rules to use as a guideline.
My point is that I prefer a solid set of rules with less emphasis on telling me cool ways that I could use them because I'm pretty good at the story part already.
I will reiterate something that I think has been an underlying theme of this thread though: If you use a rules-lite system where the players are used to you making constant and possibly not-always-consistant interpretations of the in-game situation then I'm sure you are less likely to get "rules-lawyered". After all, the rules are so loose and open to interpretation that the GM need only say, "There is no clear rule about this and I'm just making this crap up as I go" in order to address any objections by the players. Because the game is so heavily in the hands of the GM, the players will probably quickly learn that there is no profit in arguing about a "rule" because they are unable to give a cite that contradicts what the GM is telling them.
If you use a more crunchy system then the players have more ammunition to use against you if you make a call that directly contradicts the written rules. That means, in part, that you'd better have a very good mastery of the rules or have players who are forgiving (or have a pretty poor mastery of the rules) or you're going to be butting heads a lot. Thankfully the folks I GM for are kind enough and trusting enough to hand-wave any minor rules errors I make and to point it out when they themselve make errors. We like each other and trust each other and the relationship is very rarely anything approaching adversarial.
Thus, the d20 system works well for us. In fact, I can say with confidence that our group would not be playing D&D these days were it not for 3E.
A similar thing happened to the implication Ranger => has favored enemies, and suddenly the world is full of monstrous rangers with favored enemies humans.
