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

[pemerton]

the fact you find the lack of constraints of a rules light game freeing is pretty much irrelevant to me

I don't think I said anything about anything being "freeing". I denied that complex combat rules are necessary to have differences of fighting style matter other than as flavour; and denied that using fictional positioning and consequences to do so cannot be anything but arbitrary.

If the participants at the table, and especially the GM, are not able to imaginatively work with the fiction, that will be a problem. But that is not a problem of arbitrariness; it's a problem of lack of skilled imagination.

In complex combat systems, a problem can arise if the GM is not able to apply the rules and their interactions with technical expertise. I know that this can be a real problem, as I've seen it many times, mostly with D&D GMs, and I read posts about it quite often. This is also not a problem of arbitrariness, although it can give rise to one if the GM starts just making things up rather than following the rules that the players have built and planned around (and I've experienced this too).

As far as my preferences go, there are both relatively light RPGs (eg Prince Valiant) and relatively heavy ones (eg Burning Wheel) that I enjoy and try to play regularly. There are also RPGs I like that I would think of as having intermediate complexity (eg Classic Traveller, MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic, and Agon).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think I said anything about anything being "freeing". I denied that complex combat rules are necessary to have differences of fighting style matter other than as flavour; and denied that using fictional positioning and consequences to do so cannot be anything but arbitrary.

As you've noted, we have different definitions of "arbitrary" we're working with, so I don't think you're going to be able to make that argument in a way that moves me here.

If the participants at the table, and especially the GM, are not able to imaginatively work with the fiction, that will be a problem. But that is not a problem of arbitrariness; it's a problem of lack of skilled imagination.

I don't think its an issue of imagination; I think its an issue of limited perspectives.

 

[TerraDave]

I think that's a bit of a shortcut, there's alot of things factoring in to this. Big companies will want a product they can work with for years, games with more depth and a bit more complexity lend themselves well to generating additional content over the years. Why would Wizards of the Coast produce a lightweight RPG that's 30 pages thick? It's a one time sell and if they start adding and adding to it, it loses it's not lightweight anymore.

Most years, all the top-selling movies are all reboots or sequels or part of cinematic universes. They're the big selling games of movies. I can still see how a smaller production could use the word original story as its selling points.

Hence my point. If all the top selling games--and its not just D&D--have at least several dozen pages of rules, then rules light as a selling point needs a major caveat.

Following your analogy, they would be "indy". For its fans, hopefully what indy was for movies 20 years ago.

 

[MGibster]

I'd suggest there are no stakes. They're conversational tools, but that's about it.

Kingdoms rise and fall with every breath uttered during this epic debate!

 

[Umbran]

I also don't think the fact some DM's are too timid ...

I think ascribing an emotional state to it hurts the argument.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think ascribing an emotional state to it hurts the argument.

I'm afraid I'm hard pressed to describe "Its dumb, but its what the rules say" in any more positive term. If you know part of the rules you're using are broken but aren't willing to address that, there are a number of reasons, but none of them are complimentary.

 

[pemerton]

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'm afraid I'm hard pressed to describe "Its dumb, but its what the rules say" in any more positive term. If you know part of the rules you're using are broken but aren't willing to address that, there are a number of reasons, but none of them are complimentary.

The Rolemaster supplement Rolemaster Companion II introduces a variety of spells that block or mislead scrying. One of them creates an illusory result that the scryer receives in place of the truth of the protected individual or place.

One of my players realised that this could be used to circumvent range limits on other information-conveying spells: rather than use an <appropriate range> Mind Speech or Long Whisper spell, for instance, a character could create a "false scrying" of themself writing a message, and then the another character could use an <appropriate range> scrying or detection spell, of lower level than the Mind Speech spell, to scry on the scrying-protected character, thus learning the message.

We established a "gentlemen's agreement" at our table to ignore this loophole. But it remained technically open, because closing it, while maintaining the intended utility of the "false scrying" effect, was a far from trivial technical endeavour. (Which became increasingly clear as changes were made to clean up other issues with the protection-from-scrying effects that couldn't just be set to one side.)

In the context of modern D&D, a well-known loophole which can be ignored by way of "gentlemen's agreement" is the "peasant rail gun" that arises out of the "stop motion" adjudication of declared actions. But there are contexts where this loophole comes into play. For instance, if one character piggybacks (or otherwise carries) another on their turn, and then the carried character takes their turn subsequently in the same round, the second character can end up moving further than normally possible not for any reason that makes obvious sense in the fiction, but because of the action economy and its "stop motion" application. This happened occasionally in my long-running 4e D&D game. There is no straightforward way to close this loophole that I'm aware of, and when it did happen I think we mostly just ignored it or laughed about it - it was never pervasive enough to seriously threaten anyone's overall sense of the fiction and its relationship to the mechanics.

I doubt that I'm particularly unusual in having had these sorts of experiences in RPGs with complicated rules systems and resulting interactions, of just ignoring (in different sorts of ways) rather than trying to fix consequences that are broken or otherwise make no sense.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The Rolemaster supplement Rolemaster Companion II introduces a variety of spells that block or mislead scrying. One of them creates an illusory result that the scryer receives in place of the truth of the protected individual or place.

One of my players realised that this could be used to circumvent range limits on other information-conveying spells: rather than use an <appropriate range> Mind Speech or Long Whisper spell, for instance, a character could create a "false scrying" of themself writing a message, and then the another character could use an <appropriate range> scrying or detection spell, of lower level than the Mind Speech spell, to scry on the scrying-protected character, thus learning the message.

We established a "gentlemen's agreement" at our table to ignore this loophole. But it remained technically open, because closing it, while maintaining the intended utility of the "false scrying" effect, was a far from trivial technical endeavour. (Which became increasingly clear as changes were made to clean up other issues with the protection-from-scrying effects that couldn't just be set to one side.)

In the context of modern D&D, a well-known loophole which can be ignored by way of "gentlemen's agreement" is the "peasant rail gun" that arises out of the "stop motion" adjudication of declared actions. But there are contexts where this loophole comes into play. For instance, if one character piggybacks (or otherwise carries) another on their turn, and then the carried character takes their turn subsequently in the same round, the second character can end up moving further than normally possible not for any reason that makes obvious sense in the fiction, but because of the action economy and its "stop motion" application. This happened occasionally in my long-running 4e D&D game. There is no straightforward way to close this loophole that I'm aware of, and when it did happen I think we mostly just ignored it or laughed about it - it was never pervasive enough to seriously threaten anyone's overall sense of the fiction and its relationship to the mechanics.

I doubt that I'm particularly unusual in having had these sorts of experiences in RPGs with complicated rules systems and resulting interactions, of just ignoring (in different sorts of ways) rather than trying to fix consequences that are broken or otherwise make no sense.

I'd argue having gentlemen's agreements to step around flaws that are hard to address systemically is addressing them. Its not just shrugging and going "Whaddyagonnado?"

 

[Staffan]

The Rolemaster supplement Rolemaster Companion II introduces a variety of spells that block or mislead scrying. One of them creates an illusory result that the scryer receives in place of the truth of the protected individual or place.

One of my players realised that this could be used to circumvent range limits on other information-conveying spells: rather than use an <appropriate range> Mind Speech or Long Whisper spell, for instance, a character could create a "false scrying" of themself writing a message, and then the another character could use an <appropriate range> scrying or detection spell, of lower level than the Mind Speech spell, to scry on the scrying-protected character, thus learning the message.

The false scrying effect seems redundant here. Wouldn't the scryer just be able to write the message in reality and thus convey the same information?

 

[overgeeked]

I also don't think the fact some DM's are too timid to do rules redesign when the original design has failed is much of a counterargument; the same kind of mindset that will produce rules that produce stupid results is going to produce stupid results on the fly fairly often, and with less time to think the matter through.

I disagree. Generally speaking, the DM will come up with something that makes sense in the moment. The rule will be designed specifically to deliver a result that makes sense right now. It's when people insist, rather ridiculously, that precedent be followed to the letter and the rule designed to produce an outcome that made sense in the prior specific circumstances be applied to some new and different circumstance which...completely mysteriously...does not produce an outcome that makes sense now in this new and different circumstance. Unless a DM is going for comedy, they won't design a rule on the fly that doesn't make sense. They will design a rule that makes sense for now. Writing that new rule down and thinking it's now a universal law is the problem.