The Stakes of Classifying Games as Rules Lite, Medium, or Heavy?

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, but it could be something like -- hey, we've all had a stressful week, let's just have fun playing, nobody cares about addressing the rule loophole right now. If that's what the players want to do, and they all agree to it, they are not obligated to fix the rule.

I comment on this later. Putting off the problem is not the same as ignoring it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I want to expand a bit about the whole "Fixing a problem rule" point, because it may come across that I was (in particular) busting Graham's chops to a degree I don't really intend. Some of his points have some validity.

There can be any number of reasons one finds not to fix a rules problem. I, admittedly, think some of them are pretty poor reasons--but I'm not the one dealing with them, so its not up to me.

However, and this is where I'm pretty firm: if you don't bother to fix a bad rule, you then don't get to use that fact as a reason to claim "more rules" are bad. All it says is that rules decisions can be bad, whether they're made by designers or GMs. But if you hit a bad rule and elect to not fix it, at that point its on you; its not the fact its a written rule, but a written rule you did not decide you could change. Written rules get changed all the time, and if you hit a rule that you resent, have the power to change it, and don't do so, to at least some extent that's a self-inflicted wound.

At that point you don't get to complain its a problem with rules; at best you can claim its a problem for how you interact with written rules, but its not intrinsic to the process.

 

[pemerton]

I want to expand a bit about the whole "Fixing a problem rule" point, because it may come across that I was (in particular) busting Graham's chops to a degree I don't really intend. Some of his points have some validity.

There can be any number of reasons one finds not to fix a rules problem. I, admittedly, think some of them are pretty poor reasons--but I'm not the one dealing with them, so its not up to me.

However, and this is where I'm pretty firm: if you don't bother to fix a bad rule, you then don't get to use that fact as a reason to claim "more rules" are bad.

The initial post by @GrahamWills didn't talk about a bad rule:

Players do not accept an arbitrary fiction. In a rules-light system, the GM has to make sure that their fiction makes sense. In a rules heavy system the GM is absolved of that to a large extent; they can always fall back on (as I have heard many times) “I know it doesn’t make sense, but that‘s what the rules say”.

I interpreted, and still interpret, this as being a remark about the result of a rule on a particular occasion of application being wonky fiction on that occasion. That is consistent with the rule being, in general, a workable or even good rule on most occasions (and hence not a rule that anyone wants to change).

As I may have mentioned already upthread, our Rolemaster play experienced this from time to time with initiative: the hard break of rounds, with its implications for movement, allocations of attack-and-defence, etc could sometimes produce fiction that made no sense given that the end of a round isn't a thing that occurs in the fiction. But if that happens once in 50 transitions from round to round, and the other times your initiative rules are either harmless or actively supporting sensible fiction, then you (or at least we) just put up with it.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I was incorrect in my response here; please see the post below.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The initial post by @GrahamWills didn't talk about a bad rule:

I interpreted, and still interpret, this as being a remark about the result of a rule on a particular occasion of application being wonky fiction on that occasion. That is consistent with the rule being, in general, a workable or even good rule on most occasions (and hence not a rule that anyone wants to change).

As I may have mentioned already upthread, our Rolemaster play experienced this from time to time with initiative: the hard break of rounds, with its implications for movement, allocations of attack-and-defence, etc could sometimes produce fiction that made no sense given that the end of a round isn't a thing that occurs in the fiction. But if that happens once in 50 transitions from round to round, and the other times your initiative rules are either harmless or actively supporting sensible fiction, then you (or at least we) just put up with it.

I'm going to correct my post here, because I went back and looked and it was a post Graham made, where he referenced other GM's using the fact of rules being written as an excuse to absolve themselves of the fiction making sense (this is post #56 if people want to go back and see the original context; I have no interest in misrepresenting what someone has said here).

What I'm thoroughly disagreeing on is that this somehow let's them off the hook, which is what I've argued. There are some sound sub-arguments in the ensuing responses (yes, people have a tendency to just move along rather than do rules work on the fly) but they don't seem to actually make the case that this is a worse result than can occur from making decisions entirely on the fly (where the GM is just as prone to not wanting to argue his decision on the fly will be likely to move on for the same pace-related reasons, which I've also seen over the years). It still adds up to acting like a GM is suddenly incapable of making a rules decision when they notice the rules produce a bad result just because the result actually emerges from the written rules. I have little sign that a GM who binds themselves that way is going to suddenly make better decisions because they had no rules in the first place.

Now you point about the Rolemaster round cycle (and I believe the one you made earlier about what we called the three-legged race when we've discussed this in the past, since its a thing that can come up pretty dramatically in superhero games) is sound, but it still requires me to assume this sort of thing is somehow more intrusive more often than failures of agreement between the GM and players or between multiple players in expectations of how on how the fiction should result. This is immensely counter to my experience, which is why I say elsewhere in this thread that there's a gap in experiences when this topic comes up that mostly can't be crossed.

 

[Hussar]

How weird. Must be a generational thing. During the TSR era house rules and home brewing was expected. Too bad the DIY aspect of the hobby isn't as much of a thing anymore. Or is it some weird appeal to authority thing where only official rules are good? There's a lot of great DM's Guild stuff and 3PP putting out great content. I guess they're not regular players and DMs like the rest of us. Their stuff is somehow special because it's in a PDF. Such a weird thing to turn one's nose up at considering the history of the hobby.

During the TSR era, house ruling wasn't so much expected as required. The games were so poorly designed (by today's standards) and had such huge, gaping holes, never minding where the rules were flat out self-contradictory, that the notion of sitting down and playing D&D RAW was laughable. I'm sure it was done somewhere, but, I'm going to guess that it was a very, very rare occurance. When the primary game designer has stated publicly that even he didn't actually use the rules as written, well, that pretty much says it all.

Then WotC comes along, and people's binders full of house rules get reduced down to a page. Because, unlike older versions of D&D, 3e onwards actually functions at the table, most of the time. Add to that, the realization that most people's house rules come from not actually understanding the rules of the game, and frequently give worse results than what is actually in the game, mostly because most DM's have a poor grasp on probabilities, and I can totally see a very strong resistance to house ruling.

It's not a generational thing. It's a reaction to all the garbage gaming that we had to endure for years at the hands of DM's who only thought that they knew better than the game designers.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's not a generational thing. It's a reaction to all the garbage gaming that we had to endure for years at the hands of DM's who only thought that they knew better than the game designers.

While I get that DMs are capable of completely screwing the pooch here, I've seen enough game designers who were absolutely certain a given rules construct was a good idea given it had worked well under specific conditions that didn't necessarily apply to the majority of people who were going to be using it, I'm not sure the average GM is always worse, at least if they'll take the time to get the overall gestalt of the system before doing it. They at least will usually have a clear idea of the dynamics of the people they're preparing rules for.

I mean, seriously here, the 3e era designers apparently in many cases thought people would play 3e just the way they'd played AD&D2e, even though the mechanics had a very different set of incentives and counterincentives. This is not the sign of people that had a really good holistic grasp of game design.

 

[aramis erak]

It's not a generational thing. It's a reaction to all the garbage gaming that we had to endure for years at the hands of DM's who only thought that they knew better than the game designers.

I see other factors at work... and I'll note that OE (core only) was playable as written, not self-contradictory,,, but a frail framework which did a poor job explaining how it differed...
4 years later, 6 supplments later, 100+ magazine articles later, AD&D was a hastily put together compilation ... the PHB being the one most crunched... and the best ideas in the minds of Gygax and crew...

In context, 1976 to 1978 was a whirlwind. The first AD&D 1E books were crashed together, laid out with hot lead, and done by guys who weren't trained editors.

They did a good job for their lack of skill and lack of time to test. And the poor modes of playtesting (mostly in house, the least useful form for publication). It was a major expansion and revision.

Moldvay, tho'... 1981 was the year D&D felt professional. Tom Moldvay did a serious "This is how it should be done."

Molday was the first time we got a professional looking layout and a clear introductory game. It was the point where I went from player to GM. It was the point I first understood the game... because i started playing a cut down AD&D 1E...

But both BX and OE (with and without expansions) are still selling. And AD&D still speaks to many... and it's not generational... as many of those are 20-somethings... in the same way that HP Lovecraft speaks to many despite being clunky and exemplifying horrible values, AD&D calls to some to navigate its clunkiness for deeper meanings.

 

[Aldarc]

During the TSR era, house ruling wasn't so much expected as required. The games were so poorly designed (by today's standards) and had such huge, gaping holes, never minding where the rules were flat out self-contradictory, that the notion of sitting down and playing D&D RAW was laughable. I'm sure it was done somewhere, but, I'm going to guess that it was a very, very rare occurance. When the primary game designer has stated publicly that even he didn't actually use the rules as written, well, that pretty much says it all.

Then WotC comes along, and people's binders full of house rules get reduced down to a page. Because, unlike older versions of D&D, 3e onwards actually functions at the table, most of the time. Add to that, the realization that most people's house rules come from not actually understanding the rules of the game, and frequently give worse results than what is actually in the game, mostly because most DM's have a poor grasp on probabilities, and I can totally see a very strong resistance to house ruling.

It's not a generational thing. It's a reaction to all the garbage gaming that we had to endure for years at the hands of DM's who only thought that they knew better than the game designers.

Another major difference is simply the myriad of games that are out there nowadays. If you want a DIY approach and an old school feel, there is the entirety of the OSR community of games to play. If you want crunchier mechanics for D&D-esque fantasy adventure, there is Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Another major difference is simply the myriad of games that are out there nowadays. If you want a DIY approach and an old school feel, there is the entirety of the OSR community of games to play. If you want crunchier mechanics for D&D-esque fantasy adventure, there is Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2.

Though, as I've noted, the more specific your requirements are, and the more off-the-beaten-path what you're trying to do is, the harder it can get to find an appropriate base game for what you're trying to do without some serious lifting. Back when I ran my Mythras based Fantasy Briton campaign, I wasn't really satisfied with Mythras for it on a few grounds, but I'd looked around for a while before using it and everything else was a worse fit for the job.

You can absolutely argue that's because I had a picky set of requirements between what I was trying to do and what my players wanted, but its a thing.