The Dilemma of the Simple RPG

In my experience with contemporary college game clubs, there are many younger people who have not yet tried tabletop RPGs. I was also told that many of the players coming to the evening games at a local shop have been new to tabletop RPGs. This is different from my pre-Internet, pre-video gamegeneration (Boomers), where most game-minded people were exposed to D&D because it had so little competition for leisure time.

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Another reason for the difference may be the “crunchiness” of many contemporary RPGs. That is, the fiddliness and time needed to generate a character and start actually playing the game is offputting. Then there is the difficulty of running a character because there are so many details and numbers (such as skills) involved. The rules interfere with the adventure.

Yet we continue to see the most popular RPGs loaded down with vast rulebooks. Unfortunately, the seeds of long-range destruction of any RPG edition are built into the capitalist economy.

You don't need a Ph.D. in history to know a lot can be explained if you "follow the money". To make money you need to sell product. If your primary business is RPGs you have to produce a game that is not only large but very extensible, so that you can sell additional rules. In the long run, that makes the game crunchy and unwieldy, dooms it to become too complex to appeal to the less than hard-core players.

Complexity may be a boon for some players. 3rd Edition D&D (3e) became "find rules somewhere that give me an advantage." This is a complete contrast to my advice to GMs dating back to the 70s: prevent players from gaining unearned advantages. When I GMed 3e I said "core rules only, no add-ons." When the highly-tinkered-by-additional-rules "one man armies" are present in a game, the more casual players are left behind in several ways.

"Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstien

Complex games also make the GM's job harder. As there are more rules, there's more work for the GM. The biggest problem of tabletop RPGs, compared with other games, is that GMing is work, not play. We need more GMs to "grow" the hobby, yet complex games with constant rules add-ons lead to fewer GMs available.

The typical course of events is that RPGs get more complex as more rules are added, until the entire edition is abandoned and a new one comes out. While D&D Second Edition wasn't much different than 1e, and many more or less ignored 2e (I did), each succeeding edition has changed the game drastically to help persuade players to buy the new version, coming full circle with 5e. In each case, a new edition led to lots of sales. And each was then subjected to the rising pyramid of additional rules.

Money talks. Unfortunately for RPGs, money argues for complexity, not simplicity.

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

SaveSave​

 

[S'mon]

However, and this is the big caveat, if the GM isn't on the ball, the system gets extremely frustrating. Misalignments of play styles at the table get exacerbated to a much greater degree because the player is expecting different results than what the GM is giving. And without a strong rules framework to rely on, there's nothing to appeal to.

IME in a rules light or rules absent game (trad RPG not Indie) the GM presents the world, players say what they do, GM adjudicates the result. Players normally understand they are playing in the GM's world. As a newbie GM
12 years old GMing Fighting Fantasy, I don't recall players (fellow 12 year old boys at boarding school) ever arguing with me about my adjudication. I never really encountered player arguments until many years later running 3e D&D ca 2008, and that was often a sign of highly dysfunctional players.

Like I said, different worlds.

 

[Hussar]

IME in a rules light or rules absent game (trad RPG not Indie) the GM presents the world, players say what they do, GM adjudicates the result. Players normally understand they are playing in the GM's world. As a newbie GM
12 years old GMing Fighting Fantasy, I don't recall players (fellow 12 year old boys at boarding school) ever arguing with me about my adjudication. I never really encountered player arguments until many years later running 3e D&D ca 2008, and that was often a sign of highly dysfunctional players.

Like I said, different worlds.

Hang on a sec. What is this Fighting Fantasy? I thought that was the Steve Jackson choose your own adventure books that added in some dice. Sounds like fun. Was there an actual game based on this? Or was this something different.

 

[Doctor Futurity]

3e is a game that had an incredible amount of choices to make during character design, but that same emphasis on design tended to curtail meaningful decision making during Actual Play. A significant part of the reason I am developing an appreciation for 5e as someone who was a 4e standout for a long while is the focus 5e puts on playing the game and decisions made in the heat of the moment. This is felt in the reduced emphasis on spell preparation, spells that can be cast in different spell slots for increased effect, feats that are less biased towards particular combat options, more broadly useful skills, and a focus on more active abilities in lieu of passive ones.

When it comes to complexity there are plenty of rich interactions designed into the system that provide room for more skilled and less skilled play. It's just less about stacking numerical bonuses and more about rich synergies of fairly simple systems when taken on their own. The math is not as blatant or obvious at a glance. You have to play and adapt to get at it.

Very true.

 

[S'mon]

Hang on a sec. What is this Fighting Fantasy? I thought that was the Steve Jackson choose your own adventure books that added in some dice. Sounds like fun. Was there an actual game based on this? Or was this something different.

https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Fan...ng+fantasy+the+introductory+role-playing+game

$5.58 on amazon.com inc postage.
It's a simple introductory RPG based on the gamebooks. Bad cover art, otherwise great. You
want "Out of the Pit" to get the most from it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I still stand by my original point - rules light systems rely far more on the GM than rules heavy systems in order to produce a particular experience at the table. Take a game like FATE. Now, that's a pretty rules light system. Thing is, there are so many areas where the DM needs to step in and adjudicate and arbitrate resolutions. Which, if you have a good DM, means that the game will run fantastic.

Ookay. I'm not sure I buy that FATE is all that rules-lite, but I've only played the Dresden Files version (it seemed like a thick enough tome that we spent enough time consulting at the table) and read through Spirit of the Century, so maybe other FATE games are as lite as it's predecessor, FUDGE, seemed to be.

OTOH, a rules-heavy game can require just as much DM intervention - to adjudicate rules rather than fill in blanks, or in the case of 5e, both to adjudicate unclear rules, and to fill in and make rulings.

Look, I love rules light games. I do. I would love to play FATE or GUMSHOE, or Dread or any of a host of other light RPG's out there all the time. But, should we embrace rules light as the "better" entrance into the hobby? I'm not convinced.

Maybe 'limited scope' or 'rules-easy' would be better way to put it?

I don't think 'rules-lite' means what we think it means, anyway. People point to B/X or other old editions of D&D, or even to 5e, as 'rules lite' (compared to 3.5, they're fewer books, anyway, but they're also even less consistent/coherent rules, even if there's less physical tonnage of them).

There's a reason that the process of getting into the hobby usually starts with things like D&D

Yes, there is a reason: people thinking about trying the hobby have heard of D&D, and may not even be aware there are any other RPGs to start with.

 

[aramis erak]

Hang on a sec. What is this Fighting Fantasy? I thought that was the Steve Jackson choose your own adventure books that added in some dice. Sounds like fun. Was there an actual game based on this? Or was this something different.

The FF books have character generation, combat, and non-combat task mechanics. Many people used them as a full fledged RPG. So much so, that SJ & IL released them as a core rulebook.

The "Advanced Fighting Fantasy" system is pretty light - on par with Moldvay Basic - but not class based. Very flexible... can't say I've played it, but I did just grab the AFF bundle.

 

[aramis erak]

Ookay. I'm not sure I buy that FATE is all that rules-lite, but I've only played the Dresden Files version (it seemed like a thick enough tome that we spent enough time consulting at the table) and read through Spirit of the Century, so maybe other FATE games are as lite as it's predecessor, FUDGE, seemed to be.

Dresden's a pretty BAD example for Fate. About 60% of the two massive tomes is setting material; about 25% is specific-to-Dresden mechanics. Dresden's a good game, but much crunchier than most fate implementations. Go look instead at Fate Core, instead. (It's PWYW at DriveThru, so no financial risk.)

Fate's excessively wordy for what it does, too.

On a roughly 1-5 point scale, I'd put Fate overall at a 2.5; Core rules are 2, but worked setting corebooks tend towards 3.

 

[Ratskinner]

Ookay. I'm not sure I buy that FATE is all that rules-lite, but I've only played the Dresden Files version (it seemed like a thick enough tome that we spent enough time consulting at the table) and read through Spirit of the Century, so maybe other FATE games are as lite as it's predecessor, FUDGE, seemed to be.

I like Fate a lot, but I don't consider it rules-lite. I would actually argue that the Fate Core engine is significantly more complicated than 5e's core mechanics. Its all the "extras" that come wrapped into 5e that make it appear more complicated.

What I mean by that is that Fate Core doesn't specify for you things like Races, Magic/Spells, setting-specific Skills, special Equipment, cybernetics, etc. You can certainly play Fate just fine without specifying those things ahead of time*, but they can be a big part of enforcing a setting during play. Strip those things away from 5e and I think what's left of 5e is simpler than Fate Core. For example, imagine I want to pick a lock. In 5e, its just a roll to pick the lock. In Fate, I might be picking the lock as either an Overcome Obstacle roll or a Create Advantage roll, which resolve differently and have differently mechanical consequences as the game progresses. (I can't figure out a way that it could be an Attack or Defend roll, but hey, maybe those, as well.) Similarly, while Fate's Zones are in some ways simpler than grid movement, they aren't simpler than 5e's default of just plain movement of X feet, to my eyes.

Most of what we think of as rules "weight" for D&D appears, to me, to be the added heft of dealing with all those spells, class abilities, special conditions, etc. which serve to create the (more specific than we give it credit for) D&D "setting". Many people on many threads have noted that D&D has created its own sub-genre of fantasy. If/When you add all that type of material back into Fate, to enforce such a setting, you can get a very hefty rule system indeed. (The heft proportional to the degree of specificity.)

My $.02, anyway.

*Mostly by wrapping those things into the aspects and the way aspects function, IME.

 

[Caliburn101]

Have a simple set of core rules with all the add-ons being character and monster ability and spell choices which still use the core mechanic but increase choice and diversity without mechanically complicating the game...

... simples...

 

[Tony Vargas]

I like Fate a lot, but I don't consider it rules-lite. I would actually argue that the Fate Core engine is significantly more complicated than 5e's core mechanics.

The core mechanic of d20 is the eponymous, 'roll a d20,' and add a modifier vs a DC. It's possible to be even simpler than that (roll d6, 4+ succeeds, for instance), but not a /lot/ simpler. Doesn't strike me as terribly meaningful, though. FATE and the SRD/OGL version of d20 are open-source games, not just their core mechanics, and d20 has plenty of complexity even in just the SRD (or one of the three SRDs, I guess it is, now).

Most of what we think of as rules "weight" for D&D appears, to me, to be the added heft of dealing with all those spells, class abilities, special conditions, etc. which serve to create the (more specific than we give it credit for) D&D "setting"... many people on many threads have noted that D&D has created its own sub-genre of fantasy.

D&D didn't successfully model a pre-existing sub-genre of fantasy (or science fiction, or science fantasy), though the contemporaneous works of Karl Edward Wagner, which also display the odd mix of sci-fi, fantasy, and Lovecraft, and feature a cynical, almost murder-hobo'ing, protagonist, Kane, were sure close in retrospect.