When is Rules Lite Too Lite?

[Thomas Shey]

For me, "fade into the background" = not needing to flip through rulebooks every time you want to do something.

How do you feel about needing to reference cheat sheets when doing that, or just the character sheet in some cases?

I've argued that a lot of exception based designs like most modern versions of D&D are actually more rules heavy than someting like the Hero System, because people using them are liable to have more special cases they need to know. Part of that is things like D&D spellcasters usually having more spells available to them than the vast majority of anyone tapping into powers for any reason in Hero, but some of it is true even when you get away from that (though perhaps less so with 5e than prior editions or Pathfinder because I gather its less feat-centric).

 

[Celebrim]

That said, worth reading for how it argues fictional positioning.

While I want to agree with him and I do like his first order modification of "Celebrim's World Simplest RPG" to explain something, I can't get behind his argument because he cheats to make it, failing to follow even his own rules. For surely, what he assigns to the worst outcome in the first case is not in fact remotely the worst sort of possibility that could happen. Partial failure being the worst possible outcome you can imagine for getting into a fight seems far too generous to his own system. Partial success isn't not only not the worst outcome but doesn't strike me as being in the set described as "a worst outcome". The reverse occurs with the stable boy. The partial failure outcome isn't even among the set of "a best outcome". I could easily imagine something like, the stable boy picks up the rock and tries to defend himself against three bravos with swords with only a rock, and the bravos are so impressed with his courage and potential as a fighter, that they decide to adopt him into their party. That would a "a best outcome".

What the author tries to pretend is solely fictional positioning is really more about GM fiat and prejudice. It's about using fiat to decide what you want to happen and then pretending that's the only outcomes because of fictional positioning.

 

[overgeeked]

Here you go.

If folks don't want to click through, here are the full rules:

That said, worth reading for how it argues fictional positioning.

Thanks for tracking that down. Great game. Works a treat.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

When the rules only take up one page and the book is a pamphlet.

Risus is the OG rules lite narrative first game and it is a whooping 2 pages and is most certainly a complete game.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I've argued that a lot of exception based designs like most modern versions of D&D are actually more rules heavy than someting like the Hero System, because people using them are liable to have more special cases they need to know. Part of that is things like D&D spellcasters usually having more spells available to them than the vast majority of anyone tapping into powers for any reason in Hero, but some of it is true even when you get away from that (though perhaps less so with 5e than prior editions or Pathfinder because I gather its less feat-centric).

First of all, I agree-- with each spell and magic item and feat and such being a modular block of rules text, D&D in play is genuinely very complex. Hero System, despite some* bookkeeping in the character creation, tends to use the same basic rules over and over with mild variation (example: flash effects are just to-hit, damage, damage resistance with alternate numbers, and damage getting through converting to time blinded instead of hit points depleted). In fact, the break-point my group has found with HS is when everything starts feeling too same-y**.
*if you know what Hero System is at all, you've already heard all the arguments over point-cost math. No comment.
**the latest power is themed as a sonic boom attack, but honestly it's just a different damage type defensed against by different armor type, so it might as well be different colors of ray-gun laser against different colors of force-field.

That said, --
There's also going to be places where the difference is in terms of selection effects. While there are jokes about how rogues, barbarians, fighters, and monks are all just 'heroic guy with skills, weapons, and armor (or not)' that's a half-dozen ways of playing a 'martial' character, whereas HS has neigh infinite combinations towards that theme. Likewise fewer problems only magic can solve (and more that skills can). So there will be fewer 'wizards' in HS unless that's the character type someone specifically wants to play. But a 'wizard' in Hero System might very well have a dozen or more spells available to them (particularly if you use one of the power-framework options) -- and they'll be a little less exception-based than D&D, but still likely fairly complex*.
*doubly so if you take them right from the Grimoire books, which tend to solve problems the system doesn't readily solve by instead summoning a X point spirit to (for example) perform guard duty instead of figuring out how to make the Alarm spell using HS.

 

[Xamnam]

While I want to agree with him and I do like his first order modification of "Celebrim's World Simplest RPG" to explain something, I can't get behind his argument because he cheats to make it, failing to follow even his own rules. For surely, what he assigns to the worst outcome in the first case is not in fact remotely the worst sort of possibility that could happen. Partial failure being the worst possible outcome you can imagine for getting into a fight seems far too generous to his own system. Partial success isn't not only not the worst outcome but doesn't strike me as being in the set described as "a worst outcome". The reverse occurs with the stable boy. The partial failure outcome isn't even among the set of "a best outcome". I could easily imagine something like, the stable boy picks up the rock and tries to defend himself against three bravos with swords with only a rock, and the bravos are so impressed with his courage and potential as a fighter, that they decide to adopt him into their party. That would a "a best outcome".

What the author tries to pretend is solely fictional positioning is really more about GM fiat and prejudice. It's about using fiat to decide what you want to happen and then pretending that's the only outcomes because of fictional positioning.

I don't understand why you are assuming that the author does not correctly understand the fictional positioning that they themselves have established for the very purpose of this exercise. In addition, I think it's important to note that the rules do not call for "the" best outcome, merely "a" best outcome.

If you are imagining cases that are so far afield from what Harper is positing, to the point of claiming they are "cheating," then clearly you have different parameters for what the fictional position is establishing here. Which doesn't meant that yours would be wrong if you were running this game, but rather, highlights just how vital accurately communicating that state is.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

That doesn't change that rulings, not rules is also the mantra for 5e. 5e may not have originated the term, but it uses it.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything in 5e that says ruling over rules. Maybe Mearls or somebody else talking about it but those are in the early days (2014 ish) before it grew into the make a bloated mess it is now.

 

[MacDhomnuill]

Didn't someone actually publish the coin-flip rpg?

Prole by Nate Treme, easily fits on a single side of a single piece of letter sized paper and that includes the character sheet. It’s actually pretty fun

 

[Wolfpack48]

How do you feel about needing to reference cheat sheets when doing that, or just the character sheet in some cases?

I've argued that a lot of exception based designs like most modern versions of D&D are actually more rules heavy than someting like the Hero System, because people using them are liable to have more special cases they need to know. Part of that is things like D&D spellcasters usually having more spells available to them than the vast majority of anyone tapping into powers for any reason in Hero, but some of it is true even when you get away from that (though perhaps less so with 5e than prior editions or Pathfinder because I gather its less feat-centric).

Well, cheat sheets and GM screens have always been pretty common, and I used them a lot in younger days, but I find that as I get older, it's pretty easy to know the rule without a reference or a special rule. But ref sheets are definitely great for ramping up on a new system or making sure everyone has something if they need it. I do tend to like systems where I don't need to reference anything to know if someone hit -- it's right in the stat. You have 70% skill and you roll under, you succeeded.

Spot rules are funny ("grappling" lol), but I'd almost prefer to do a simple opposed test to resolve something like that. Spells are interesting because of all the cool effects, but I'd almost go for a simple success roll and then describe what happens. When it gets into tracking rounds, or the minutiae of spell operations, my eyes kinda glaze over.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't understand why you are assuming that the author does not correctly understand the fictional positioning that they themselves have established for the very purpose of this exercise. In addition, I think it's important to note that the rules do not call for "the" best outcome, merely "a" best outcome.

I think I explained that. Note very carefully the bias the author has on the fictional positioning of Pietro the stable boy in the parallel examples of A and B. In the first, the best outcome involves the stable boy's meekness turning the hearts of the bravos in his favor. And OK, that's fine so far as it goes in being "a best outcome" but if that is true, then logically my example of "a best outcome" for Pietro defending himself of Pietro defiant bravery against overwhelming odds turning the hearts of the bravos in his favor must also be among the "best outcomes".

The authors argument depends on the idea that the fictional position absent any rules to quantify the fictional position is enough to constrain the outcomes of the scene such that only some particular outcomes are possible. And while I'm sympathetic to the value of fictional positioning, I think he's just wrong in that.

To make it seem like his fictional positioning hard constraints the outcomes, he's very selective in what he allows the outcomes to be given a stated fictional positioning.

If you are imagining cases that are so far afield from what Harper is positing, to the point of claiming they are "cheating," then clearly you have different parameters for what the fictional position is establishing here.

No, absolutely I don't. That's my whole point. No matter how rigorously you define the fictional positioning, if you aren't quantifying it in some rules way (which his variation of my "World's Simplest RPG" cannot by definition because it only has the given rules) then you aren't actually constraining the possible outcomes. This is particularly true if we are allowed to in our "a best outcome" and "a worst outcome" stakes introduce new facts to the narrative (as many Nar games would allow), but I would argue that it holds true even in the case that we are not. Again, notice the variation in how Pietro's defiance or meekness are treated. Either that depends on introducing new facts to the narrative (in which case why in one and not the other), or else the author is cherry picking to make his argument seem stronger than it is.

UPDATE: Let me try to clarify what I'm saying in more technical language.

Case #2 and Case #3 of his examples are supposed to be the same example with different undertaken actions. The same fictional positioning is presented in both cases.

In one however the participant with narrative authority decides that the best possible outcome is partial failure, while the worst possible outcome is critical failure. While in the same case for a different action the participant decides that the best possible outcome is partial success and the worst possible outcome is critical failure. Nothing however about the fictional positioning explains why one action automatically constrains a best possible outcome to partial failure and another action constrains a best possible outcome to be partial success.

And if the purpose of the examples is not to show that those constraints can be derived from the fictional positioning, then there is no reason that in any of the three cases one of "a best outcomes" isn't always critical success and one of "a best outcomes" isn't always critical failure. And in that case, fictional positioning doesn't actually matter in the sense that the author is trying to argue.