What's "rules light" to you?

[Darkness]

Um... assume the second one says "Buffy".

Changed it to that.

 

[Napftor]

Sheesh... what're you, a noob?

The latest version of vbulliten puts up the post while you are making the poll. FYI.

I'm pretty computer-illiterate. It's a wonder I can even post!

 

[Kanegrundar]

I don't consider 3E/3.5 to be rules heavy. Sure there are a lot of components, but overall it's not hard to get down. Now, depending on how much a GM adds on to the CR's it can get hefty. However, no one says that you need to add on any supplemental material, hence the term supplemental. IMO, 3E/3.5 is rules moderate.

That said, there are other games that take less time to get the rules down. Storyteller, FUDGE, FUZION, Feng Shui, and Savage Worlds are examples of these. The each take less time to learn and get to playing than D&D.

On the heavy end of the spectrum would be Rolemaster and (maybe) HERO (from accounts of my friends, I haven't acutally played it myself). They take more to learn whether from more base material or using a more complex dice mechanic.

For what it's worth, I'll take the 3E/D20 system over either end of the spectrum. I don't want a complex system, but I want one that will have a good, concrete set of guidelines to direct my rulings in play.

Kane

 

[Akrasia]

Or maybe "Unisystem", to cover most of Eden's games (Buffy, Angel, Witchcraft, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, and whatever else I'm missing off the top of my head). ....

There is a not insignificant difference between "Cinematic Unisystem" (Buffy, Angel, Army of Darkness) and "Classic Unisystem" (AFMBE, Witchcraft, etc.). The former is noticeably 'lighter' than the latter.

 

[Turjan]

No votes for HERO or Rolemaster so far...

 

[Terwox]

Generally, I'd say "Rules Lite" is something which is self-defined as being more rules lite than D&D, or another system.

Or something where you can easily completely generate -your statistics- in small amounts of time. The equal generation process between rules lite and rules heavy might mean the difference between "story generation stuff" and "stats generation stuff." But, that's abstract, arbitrary, and possibly completely incorrect.

 

[Akrasia]

I would describe the games that I presently like the most as "rules medium":

~ Cinematic Unisystem
~ WFRP (2e)
~ C&C
~ True 20

However, when posting here, I tend to refer to these games as "rules light" for the sake of convenience (well, not WFRP, although it *is* lighter than 3e). That is, I use the term to mean "lighter than 3e D&D".

I guess I should be more precise, but most people here seem to understand what I mean by "rules light". Over at RPG.net, I would probably have to be more precise.

 

[Turjan]

Other fairly popular systems that I've seen called rules-light include:

HeroQuest
...[snip]

To me, a game's "rules-lightness" is determined by how close it comes to having a single resolution mechanic. 3E D&D, for example, is a lot lighter than 2E or 1E AD&D because there aren't as many weird subsystems, though there are still a lot of differences at the detail level. Even a game with a whole whack of rules (like HeroQuest) is rules-light in my eyes if every situation is resolved in pretty much the same way.

Are you sure HeroQuest qualifies as rules-light? How do you make a character without a slightly more than basic understanding of Glorantha? The resolution mechanics look simple enough on the first glance, but the devil lies in the detail. Just look at the magic system: The actual resolution mechanics are simple, but all this how and when and lots of the details can be mind-boggling. Let's see how the core system divorced from Glorantha will turn out. At the moment, I'd give it a 'rules-medium'.

 

[Sledge]

Are we only looking for in print stuff here, not like Fighting Fantasy and ?Fifth? Age?

 

[der_kluge]

It's funny, on page 1 of the C&C PHB, it describes itself as "rules-light". Some here seem to disagree with that.