Your level of Granularity

[Niccodaemus]

storytelling

To me, it is all about storytelling. There are details required in a story to create atmosphere, and to foreshadow future events. If you don't want to give the real clues away without a little, you have to scatter enough random detail that the clue is hard to find.

I think a great example of this is how you keep time. Do you make the players play out every single day of their existence, or do you haze over long road trips or stays in villages or cities?. Lord of the Rings is a great example. While the hobbits are traveling with strider, every single day of their adventure is spelled out until they reach Rivendell. Once there, time is glossed over. However, while they were on the road, they were constantly pursued by Ringwraiths. In a time where there was no imminent danger, the accounting of time on the road might be much different (such as on their way back to the Shire).

If the architecture of a building is inherent to the adventure, as it would be for a theif, then it is important how sound the masonry of a structure is, and how well it is lit. If spell casting depends on a specific type of plant for a component, then the description of not only flora, but weather season, may be important.

The answer should always be... enough to give the players what they need and room to make choices... but not so much as to needlessly bog down playing time and tax attention spans.

 

[Desdichado]

I've given this some thought, and I'm not sure where to map my preferences vis a vis your categories. I like a lot of detail and granularity around character definition. I prefer a lot of detail and a lot or rules and a lot of options on how to build my characters, and describe them mechanically.

When it actually comes to playing the game, though, I prefer a much more hand-wavey, abstracted approach. I like having the tools of a robust skill system, or something like that, but I don't want to feel straight-jacketed by too much detail on how to interpret it. Tell me what you want the characters to do, and I'll tell you what skill to roll against and what DC to hit--using a handwavey judgement call as GM. Roleplay out social interaction, and I'll have you roll a skill check to introduce an element of randomness and risk to the interaction--after you've already roleplaying enough of it for my liking.

Combat in particular I think suffers from becoming a game within a game with all kinds of tactical details, which I don't particularly enjoy.

In general, I'd say that I strongly prefer a very rules-lite, improvisational, ruling vs. rules approach--except that, like I said, I love having a very robust toolset for character generation and definition, and consider such to be a make or break lithmus test for any roleplaying system I'd potentially want to adopt.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

My favourite game is HERO system so I'll have to admit to liking high granularity. Especially with "Skills/abilities" (character design?) and "Depth of Detail."

But that being said I'm happy to handwave/be flexible on a lot of stuff during actual play. Especially with the "RP/Interaction" aspect. For instance, Man in the Funny Hat mentions players with poor communications skills playing characters with high communications skills. I have one of these and I give him a lot of leeway.

I do get a lot of pleasure out of character design. I suspect many HERO-philes are the same. I LIKE mucking about with the points and trying to ring a little bit more utility* out of them. Like when my power armour hero gets a handful of XP and decides to upgrade the sensor system or put in a back up power cell.

cheers.


*Sometimes it's less about utility and more about modelling a particular power set complete with advantages and disadvantages. But hey, utility is a good word.

 

[Croesus]

My favourite game is HERO system so I'll have to admit to liking high granularity. Especially with "Skills/abilities" (character design?) and "Depth of Detail."

Hero is also my favorite system, and I would argue that it's in large measure because it gets the level of rules detail right for what it is trying to model. The rules for creating characters are very detailed, very granular - you can design pretty much anything you want, which gives players incredible flexibility in crafting exactly the character they want (within the limits of the genre, of course). This isn't every player's cup of tea, but for those who love to tinker, it's a major plus of the system.

Yet once you get to actual play, how many times do you really have to crack open one of the books? Energy blasts use the same rules, regardless of whether you're talking about throwing a club, shuriken, Cyclops' eyebeams, or Superman's heat vision. The special effects may be different, but the basic rules don't change. Same for armor piercing attacks, explosions, area effect, no normal defense, and so on.

Similarly, skill use is simple to apply. Most skills have a target number, or an opposed check. Roll the skill and compare. No checking a half page of details to see if you successfully tracked the bandits back to their hideout, or succeeded in hacking the villain's mainframe.

With the exception of a few clunky systems, such as turn modes for flight or vehicle movement (rules which have been improved and streamlined with each new edition), there are very few corner cases during play, and rarely does a GM have to make a judgement call.

Compare this to 3.x, where every spell, feat, skill and item seems to work differently, with different corner cases that have to adjudicated on a case by case basis. Both systems have roughly the same page count in the core books, but I find myself checking the Hero books once or twice in a game vs. constantly in a 3.x game. Fundamentally different designs, despite both systems being considered rules heavy.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Oh yeah, that's what I like about the HERO rules: consistency!

What I LOVE is that there are rules for punching someone through a brick wall. And that they're consistent with the basic damage rules! (No separate mechanic for breaking stuff.)

I love you HERO.

 

[delericho]

What level of detail do you like in game, and in the different areas of the game?

It really depends on what I'm doing. Also, my tastes vary with time - what I want now may not be what I want in five years.

Skills/Abilities: I consider this area to include the skill system, class and racial abilities of the characters.

For player characters, I want my players to be able to make a large range of characters, with a decent range of customisation. I don't want them to have to micro-manage lots of fiddly little details - give them a few, big questions to answer at character creation, and then one or two big questions to answer each time they level up. And allow plenty of scope for re-fluffing.

For NPCs and monsters, I don't need anywhere near the same level of detail, since these are essentially black boxes to the players. It really doesn't matter all that much if a bandit does 1d6, 1d6+1 or 1d8 damage with his sword - all the player knows is that he loses "5 hit points". I initially opposed the move in 4e away from monsters using the same rules as PCs, but I was wrong to do so - 4e is better in this regard.

RP/Interaction: This area I primarily consider how the players and DM interact. The level of detail here could range from the player essentially being their character; what they know, say and are capable of are directly what their character says and is able to do, to the other extreme where attributes are delineated for what the character can do, regardless of the player's actual ability - a Diplomacy skill for influencing others, Knowledge skills for relating facts about enemy creatures and so forth.

This will depend on the player, so support must be given for all styles. Over time, I hope players will gradually move from "I use diplomacy!" to something a bit more detailed, but starting players may well not be comfortable with that.

I certainly don't want RP elements to ever be completely divorced from rules elements - if the game supports the charismatic bard as a valid archetype, then there must be some support for social skills.

Depth of Detail: This is the area where the player character's interact with the world around them. This could range from simple, generalized rules or guidelines to highly detailed rules that take into account minutia of detail.

This is the big one. Broadly, the closer things get to the PCs, the more detail I require. The larger the canvas, the lower the required detail.

More specifically:

combats (with or without battlemats, powers, feats, maneuvers)

The game should be playable without a battlemat, and should not lose much in the translation. 3.0e is about right in this regard, 3.5e is a bit worse, and 4e is unacceptably tied to the mat. There should be some scope for specific powers and maneuvers, but this is probably best handled with some sort of freeform system, rather than 4e-style fixed powers.

encumbrance rules

The encumbrance rules are a really good example of too much detail. By calculating weight down to 0.1 of a pound, the game almost forces groups to ignore the rules (or at least play really fast and loose with them) - very few groups are going to recalculate encumbrance every time the archer fires an arrow!

A much better encumbrance system must be possible - just count major items, and let a PC carry 10+Str mod, or something!

to the subtle differences in gear

I like the idea of characters have unique, modified and custom gear, but subtle differences are just too much. Basically, give them the opportunity to apply some fairly big modifications to their items (like masterwork, but with rather more flavour!).

Even things like monsters

In general, monsters are a black box to the players. Very often, the DM is rolling a hidden die, adding an unknown modifier, and thus getting the result. Therefore, they can really be aware of small differences in modifier - the difference between a +5 to hit and a +6 is marginal (especially if the monster only ever makes a few attacks). Likewise, small differences in damage calculation are meaningless. Therefore, I would argue for less granularity even than is seen in 4e monsters - instead of modifiers going up by +1 every few levels, instead put them up by +5 less often (and differentiate monsters more by powers). For damage, don't worry about minor differences, but instead give a roughly-correct range - in a mixed group of bandits some will have swords, some maces, and some axes... but they might as well all do 1d8+Str damage!

In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that the only dice a DM should ever need to run that game are the d20 (for attack rolls and the like), d6 (for damage rolls), and d% (for treasure generation and similar)!