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<blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 6250468" data-attributes="member: 957">I largely agree with what you have said.&nbsp; But I believe you have significantly cut out the sweet spot in this analysis.&nbsp; (I know for my unique personal case you have)There is a real option to learn the bulk of the rules and get to a point where you grasp the rules and their spirit well enough that you can &quot;wing it&quot; when an outlier comes up without remotely being in rules-lite territory.&nbsp; Admittedly, the grey zone between your &quot;learn all the rules&quot; and my &quot;learn enough of the rules&quot; is going to vary significantly from one person to the next both in terms of simple how much of a challenge it is to adequately learn the rules and what a minimum standard of &quot;enough&quot; is.But my rephrasing of your pick your alternatives would be:You have to learn enough of the rules to run it with confidence, or else wing it frequently and inconsistently, or pause the game to figure it out.If you wing it frequently you may as well play rules-lite And you won't achieve the full quality of what you could have either way. (Again, my personal values here)&nbsp; And if you pause the game, you're providing a significantly worse experience.&nbsp; I think it is important to keep in mind that the very nature of RPGs (and particularly RPGs with fantastic elements, as most are) are going to routinely have outliers.&nbsp; So if you sit down at a table expecting the answer to every event to be between the covers of a book (memorized or not) then you are already going to provide a degree of worse experience.&nbsp; So I consider looking for that sweet spot of sufficient rules mastery to be a constructive part of improving the experience regardless of system.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="BryonD, post: 6250468, member: 957"] I largely agree with what you have said. But I believe you have significantly cut out the sweet spot in this analysis. (I know for my unique personal case you have) There is a real option to learn the bulk of the rules and get to a point where you grasp the rules and their spirit well enough that you can "wing it" when an outlier comes up without remotely being in rules-lite territory. Admittedly, the grey zone between your "learn all the rules" and my "learn enough of the rules" is going to vary significantly from one person to the next both in terms of simple how much of a challenge it is to adequately learn the rules and what a minimum standard of "enough" is. But my rephrasing of your pick your alternatives would be: You have to learn enough of the rules to run it with confidence, or else wing it frequently and inconsistently, or pause the game to figure it out. If you wing it frequently you may as well play rules-lite And you won't achieve the full quality of what you could have either way. (Again, my personal values here) And if you pause the game, you're providing a significantly worse experience. I think it is important to keep in mind that the very nature of RPGs (and particularly RPGs with fantastic elements, as most are) are going to routinely have outliers. So if you sit down at a table expecting the answer to every event to be between the covers of a book (memorized or not) then you are already going to provide a degree of worse experience. So I consider looking for that sweet spot of sufficient rules mastery to be a constructive part of improving the experience regardless of system. [/QUOTE]

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