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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7714538" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't have time to respond to this essay with the length and attention to detail that it deserves.&nbsp; I feel it's addressing a very important issue in a rather unorganized manner.&nbsp; I will leave a quote behind that touches on my understanding of the issue:&quot;If your game has Rule Zero in it, it's rules heavy. Period. And the more you rely on Rule Zero, the heavier it gets.&quot;And likewise,&quot;If your game doesn't have Rule Zero in it, it's not an RPG; it's a board game.&quot;The problem is that there is no such thing as a rules light RPG.&nbsp; It's a myth.&nbsp; And there is certainly no such thing as a successful rules light RPG, and not just for the economic reasons that the OP describes.&nbsp;&nbsp; The problem is that simplicity in an RPG is actually not an attribute of the rules, but an attribute of the scenarios.&nbsp; An RPG is simple only for a certain set of scenarios that it handles in a simple way.&nbsp;&nbsp; So long as the scenarios match these simplifying assumptions, the rules will seem 'simple' or 'light-weight'.&nbsp;&nbsp; As soon however in the course of play you move away from these 'toy' scenarios and have more organic scenarios things may no longer seem so simple.&nbsp;&nbsp; Dealing with these new scenarios in a simple way will require a new set of simplifying assumptions about things like granularity and process resolution.&nbsp;&nbsp; But, as a result, now you'll have several different resolution methods.&nbsp;&nbsp; A system that ignores that isn't simpler.&nbsp; It's just incomplete.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7714538, member: 4937"] I don't have time to respond to this essay with the length and attention to detail that it deserves. I feel it's addressing a very important issue in a rather unorganized manner. I will leave a quote behind that touches on my understanding of the issue: "If your game has Rule Zero in it, it's rules heavy. Period. And the more you rely on Rule Zero, the heavier it gets." And likewise, "If your game doesn't have Rule Zero in it, it's not an RPG; it's a board game." The problem is that there is no such thing as a rules light RPG. It's a myth. And there is certainly no such thing as a successful rules light RPG, and not just for the economic reasons that the OP describes. The problem is that simplicity in an RPG is actually not an attribute of the rules, but an attribute of the scenarios. An RPG is simple only for a certain set of scenarios that it handles in a simple way. So long as the scenarios match these simplifying assumptions, the rules will seem 'simple' or 'light-weight'. As soon however in the course of play you move away from these 'toy' scenarios and have more organic scenarios things may no longer seem so simple. Dealing with these new scenarios in a simple way will require a new set of simplifying assumptions about things like granularity and process resolution. But, as a result, now you'll have several different resolution methods. A system that ignores that isn't simpler. It's just incomplete. [/QUOTE]

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