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

[Aldarc]

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.

This is one reason, IME, why I find D&D is not as generic for fantasy adventure as is sometimes claimed. There are a lot of setting assumptions built into the magic and spells of the game, which IMHO are not particularly appropriate for other varieties of fantasy, even of the action-adventure variety, that I also happen to enjoy.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This is one reason, IME, why I find D&D is not as generic for fantasy adventure as is sometimes claimed. There are a lot of setting assumptions built into the magic and spells of the game, which IMHO are not particularly appropriate for other varieties of fantasy, even of the action-adventure variety, that I also happen to enjoy.

Yeah, people have painted it as more general purpose than it is for a long time. In fantasy, this is a generic problem for games with a singular magic system, honestly; you saw it in the early days of GURPS too, where they'd try to use their (admittedly more generic) magic system in places it just didn't fit. You either need to have multiple magic systems to work from, or a build-a-magic-system process.

And magic is just the low hanging fruit here.

 

[GrahamWills]

How weird. Must be a generational thing. During the TSR era house rules and home brewing was expected.

Actually, the cited reasons were pretty much correlation. Not that house rules were bad per se, but that the sort of games where the GM felt the need for house rules were, in their experience, more likely to be a bad experience.

 

[Hussar]

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.

Let's not forget that 3e and 4e as well, suffered under the "Let's bang out books as fast as humanly possible" syndrome. So, yes, stuff didn't get tested or at least tested rigorously.

And, I do disagree that DM's will usually have a clear idea of dynamics. We all get tied up behind our own confirmation biases and, with a very, very tiny selection and typically very little actual empirical evidence, we will start fiddling about with rules because we just know better. Again, I've seen this (and most certainly done this) fail so, so many times. Heck, I'm in the process right now.

We have an owl folk PC in the group. In the last session, the owl folk PC fell into water. Then took off from water. "Wait," I said, "You can't take off from water."

"Why not?" was the reply. And, in the player's defense, there is absolutely nothing in the rules regarding this that I could find. There is no rule reason why you can't do this.

Now, I could certainly add a house rule for this. Sure. No problem. But, the response was twofold - 1. What does it add to the game? 2. How often is this actually going to come up?

And, frankly, the players are right here. It doesn't really add anything to the game other than make me happy. It certainly doesn't make the player happy and no one else really cares. And, well, it's the first time in a year of play that this has come up and very likely will never come up again. So, what's the point of me making a rule here? What am I trying to achieve?

It reminds me of a DM I used to play with that insisted that my Forge Priest ability to make a magic weapon was WAYYY over powered. He absolutely refused to allow it in the game. The fact that 1. Every cleric in 5e D&D already HAS a magic weapon via cantrips and 2. It would have made a difference in exactly 1 encounter in 11 levels, did nothing to change his mind.

I am very much not convinced that DM's have a "really good holistic grasp of game design". IME, DM's have a very poor grasp of game design.

 

[Hussar]

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.

Being poorly designed =/= not fun. Lots of poorly designed things have fans. Having people play it does not make it well designed.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Let's not forget that 3e and 4e as well, suffered under the "Let's bang out books as fast as humanly possible" syndrome. So, yes, stuff didn't get tested or at least tested rigorously.

I think you meant to write 2e and 3e there. I think 2e had an actively faster book tsunami than 3e - and 4e's was significantly slower than either (but still too fast) and also got substantial errata.

I am very much not convinced that DM's have a "really good holistic grasp of game design". IME, DM's have a very poor grasp of game design.

IME DMing is largely independent from game design. Most DMs have a grasp of game design that's as divergent as most enthusiastic players. And expecting the DM to redesign to make up for the mistakes of bad designers is admitting that the supposedly professional designers haven't done their jobs.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Let's not forget that 3e and 4e as well, suffered under the "Let's bang out books as fast as humanly possible" syndrome. So, yes, stuff didn't get tested or at least tested rigorously.

Bluntly, and I know this will come out as insulting to game designers but its functionally true: the number of games that get really well tested is vanishingly small; its especially notable that the amount of blindtesting done by anyone is very small.

And, I do disagree that DM's will usually have a clear idea of dynamics. We all get tied up behind our own confirmation biases and, with a very, very tiny selection and typically very little actual empirical evidence, we will start fiddling about with rules because we just know better. Again, I've seen this (and most certainly done this) fail so, so many times. Heck, I'm in the process right now.

By dynamics, I'm talking here about how their players operate. Not about the rules on whole, but how their players will likely interact with them.

(Mind you, its not an absolute given GMs will be as clear on that as they could be, but when that's not true, screwed up rules aren't the only problems you're going to have.)

We have an owl folk PC in the group. In the last session, the owl folk PC fell into water. Then took off from water. "Wait," I said, "You can't take off from water."

"Why not?" was the reply. And, in the player's defense, there is absolutely nothing in the rules regarding this that I could find. There is no rule reason why you can't do this.

Now, I could certainly add a house rule for this. Sure. No problem. But, the response was twofold - 1. What does it add to the game? 2. How often is this actually going to come up?

And, frankly, the players are right here. It doesn't really add anything to the game other than make me happy. It certainly doesn't make the player happy and no one else really cares. And, well, it's the first time in a year of play that this has come up and very likely will never come up again. So, what's the point of me making a rule here? What am I trying to achieve?

Well, cynically, I suspect it would matter a great degree to them the moment an NPC did it. While rules aren't symmetrical, they aren't things that only exist to limit PCs; they limit their equivalents on the other side, too.

It reminds me of a DM I used to play with that insisted that my Forge Priest ability to make a magic weapon was WAYYY over powered. He absolutely refused to allow it in the game. The fact that 1. Every cleric in 5e D&D already HAS a magic weapon via cantrips and 2. It would have made a difference in exactly 1 encounter in 11 levels, did nothing to change his mind.

I am very much not convinced that DM's have a "really good holistic grasp of game design". IME, DM's have a very poor grasp of game design.

They may not. But the truth is, I've actually seen little evidence that most game designers do, either.

 

[Thomas Shey]

IME DMing is largely independent from game design. Most DMs have a grasp of game design that's as divergent as most enthusiastic players. And expecting the DM to redesign to make up for the mistakes of bad designers is admitting that the supposedly professional designers haven't done their jobs.

I think there's an emormous amount of evidence that many if not most game designs are compromised on all kinds of levels, the commonest being designers thinking they understand the player and player group behaviors better, or at least most broadly than they do. A big part of this comes from insufficiently broad playtesting, or people convincing themselves that the parts of playtester feedback they don't like are outliers.

 

[Hussar]

I think you meant to write 2e and 3e there. I think 2e had an actively faster book tsunami than 3e - and 4e's was significantly slower than either (but still too fast) and also got substantial errata.

IME DMing is largely independent from game design. Most DMs have a grasp of game design that's as divergent as most enthusiastic players. And expecting the DM to redesign to make up for the mistakes of bad designers is admitting that the supposedly professional designers haven't done their jobs.

4e banged out what, a couple hundred page hardcover every month for 4 years. Something on that order. Never minding Dungeon and Dragon Magazine as well. 4e had an insane release schedule. Granted, not as insane as 2e, but, certainly not far behind 3e. There were 43 hardcover 4e releases in around 5 years. That's not exactly significantly slower than 3e. And, well, the fact that there was substantial errata pretty much shows that the books were not being properly playtested before they got shoved out the door.

OTOH, I do agree that DMing is largley independent of game design.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

They may not. But the truth is, I've actually seen little evidence that most game designers do, either.

I find this very hard to believe. 4e, for its issues, is often touted as a very well designed game. Despite my point above about errata, in the years of 4e, the math held up surprisingly well. Yes, they adjusted a couple of things, sure, but, overall? That's a damn well designed game. 5e as well really. Ten years and there's barely any cracks, at least in comparison to what you used to see, in game balance or mechanics.

Considering they had a year of public play testing, it does show how well designed the system is.

I know it's all the rage to paint DM's in this glowing light that they know how to design games for their groups. IME, it is very, very much not true. Virtually every single time I've experienced or read about DM's having mechanical issues at the table, it's almost universally a problem of their own making.