What is a "Light" RPG? What is a "Crunchy" RPG?

[Thomas Shey]

Aha - I might see my new term here: book-open or book-closed games.

Though sometimes the former is because a lot of what you actually need to know is already sitting on the character sheet. Most people wouldn't call Hero rules-light but I was quite capable as a player of playing entirely off my character sheet in the day. So I think you have to address how simple you want your character sheet to be, too.

 

[Celebrim]

Let's not forget that the PCs can make decisions too.

Suppose we evolve Celebrim's world's simplest RPG system in which all propositions are resolved by coin flips into something resembling a rules light system.

That system would have at its mechanical core something like:

If the proposition is deemed by the GM impossible, it fails.
If the proposition is deemed by the GM to have no risk, it succeeds.
Otherwise, flip a coin and have the GM narrate what he believes is an appropriate success result on heads and an appropriate failure result on test.

If you compare that to a typical rules heavy system then for a particular task it will say something like,

"A characters running jump is equal to their strength score minus their encumbrance modifier in feet. If a character is willing to land prone they can add half their height to the jump distance. If a character makes an easy athletics check they can add 1d4 feet to the distance jumped. The test must be made after they have committed to the jump but before the jump is resolved. If the test fails they jump their normal distance. If a moderate athletics check is attempted, then add 2d4 feet to the jump distance but on a failed check no extra distance is obtained and a muscle is strained and they take 1d3 strength damage unless they make a moderate stamina check."

And we would expect similar detail for scores of different potential tasks.

As a player, compare which one gives you greater understanding and control over the stakes? Which one gives more authority and latitude to the GM? As a player which one gives you more ability to plan for the outcome of a roll and more confidence you won't be cheated on a whim?

So, the rules hold the authority, or the rules are granular?

Almost as a tautology, both. The more the rules tell you how to resolve a situation, the more authority they have and the less authority the referee has. The more the rules lean on the GMs judgment and the less specific things that they tell you, the more empowered the GM tends to be.

Now, you can of course compensate for this by for example having narrative currency and fortune in the end with stake bidding or negotiating phases if your goal is to have a rules light system where narrative authority is shared. But that act of stake sharing itself is going to complicate up the system especially if by "system" we mean "all the processes of play".

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah. I love RM , never understood why people make it seem SO complicated, as it's kinda unified system no matter what you do.
Though I do remember a painful character creation session trying to explain what 2/6 meant for a skill cost and several people just not getting it.

I suspect part of it is that the older editions had almost as much text and tables for optional rules as for core. And every supplement was multiple options, sometimes incompatible with others in same and/or other supps. And a few (Breaking 150, the pregnancy rules, damage without the to-hit tables, realistic humanoid weights) get downright mathy.

The bittest pushback I've seen was "Whadda ya mean I have to BUY my next hit die!!!"

The optional rules checklists are great for scaring off players old and new.

Oh, and the '83 Character Law/Campaign Law being half ref specific campaign prep stuff, the other half player stuff, and the core player stuff being under 1/2 of that remaining half... lots of options in the core rules...
(Well, it also doesn't help that the core was 4 books in that ed: ChL/CaL, Arms Law, Spell Law, Monsters and treasures...)

 

[Committed Hero]

Speaking in broad generalities, as a game starts differentiating gear and spells it gets crunchy. Consider a spy game in which my PC wants to do something at night. A light game will probably assume that he has the requisite equipment to be able to function when it's dark. The next step up might be a binary choice: I need night vision goggles or I can't do what I want. After that, the game starts to break down varying degrees of darkness, and the equipment gets commensurately more complicated - Do I have an infrared scope on my weapon? Am I using goggles or a starlight scope?

Spells are similar. Without differentiating between damage types, a fire burst and an ice ray are functionally equivalent. If you want to make them feel different, you have to quantify damage types, and introduce resistance and vulnerability, and gear which provides them.

I suppose a corollary to this is that the more a game wants to simulate real-life variables, the crunchier it will get.

I would consider Savage Worlds a medium-crunch game.

 

[pemerton]

Without differentiating between damage types, a fire burst and an ice ray are functionally equivalent.

Are they? One of them can be used to set things alight. The other can be used to freeze puddles of water.

The difference can be an important part of the fiction without needing a mechanical difference between damage types.

 

[Committed Hero]

Are they? One of them can be used to set things alight. The other can be used to freeze puddles of water.

The difference can be an important part of the fiction without needing a mechanical difference between damage types.

Why is it important to the fiction?

9 times out of 10 the spellcaster's next questions become matters of mechanics: What things on the target's person did I burn up? When I froze the puddle the target was standing on, does he fall prone?

 

[GMMichael]

If the proposition is deemed by the GM impossible, it fails.
If the proposition is deemed by the GM to have no risk, it succeeds.
Otherwise, flip a coin and have the GM narrate what he believes is an appropriate success result on heads and an appropriate failure result on test.

If you compare that to a typical rules heavy system then for a particular task it will say something like,

"A characters running jump is equal to their strength score minus their encumbrance modifier in feet. If a character is willing to land prone they can add half their height to the jump distance. If a character makes an easy athletics check they can add 1d4 feet to the distance jumped. The test must be made after they have committed to the jump but before the jump is resolved. If the test fails they jump their normal distance. If a moderate athletics check is attempted, then add 2d4 feet to the jump distance but on a failed check no extra distance is obtained and a muscle is strained and they take 1d3 strength damage unless they make a moderate stamina check."

My point was that people making the assertions (GM or PC) makes for lighter rules than rules making the assertions. I think that you were aiming for "light rules support GM agency, and heavy rules support PC agency." True in some cases, but both of your examples assume that the GM has all authority not allocated to the rules, which is not always true.

 

[Staffan]

Light (or lite) games are, to me, games that are contained in less than 6 pages. Preferably two.

I can make an exception for games that have that much in terms of actual rules, and then give you additional stuff (lore-type stuff) to help explain the setting.

But yeah. Most of the light games I play and design are between 2-4 pages.

To me at least, a definition of "light" that only covers games up to 6 pages is so narrow as to be unusable. I'd suggest "ultra-light" or something for that, to indicate that it goes beyond the "normal" light. It's like saying that to be considered "light", a vehicle has to weigh about the same as a bike or less.

For me, light vs heavy comes down to simple page count of actual rules of the game. This includes all the character creation, combat, equipment, spells, powers, monsters, etc.

I think it's worth differentiating between games with light/medium/heavy engines, and games with a light/medium/heavy amount of crunch. The engine is the rules for actually running the game, while the crunch is the stuff that plugs into the engine. I'd call D&D 5e a medium-engine game (this would basically be the chapters 7 through 10 of the PHB, plus small parts of the DMG and MM), but a heavy-crunch game (spells, classes, magic items, feats, monsters). You need to have a fair grasp of the engine to play the game, but you don't need to know every spell – just the ones that matter to you.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Are they? One of them can be used to set things alight. The other can be used to freeze puddles of water.

I suspect that's, in practice, differentiating damage types on at least a minimalist level.

The difference can be an important part of the fiction without needing a mechanical difference between damage types.

I'd argue if it means anything "can set things on fire" is a mechanical difference. Among other things it brings up questions like "How often will that happen? If it happens to a human how long will they burn and what damage will they take?"

 

[Reynard]

I'd argue if it means anything "can set things on fire" is a mechanical difference. Among other things it brings up questions like "How often will that happen? If it happens to a human how long will they burn and what damage will they take?"

Isn't one of the keys to "rules light" is that we answer those questions with what makes sense in the fiction, and failing any particular aspect of the fiction in that regard, what makes sense in the real world? That is to say, damage type tags like "fire" and "cold" that don't do anything in the game system beyond what they do in the world, are superfluous.