Game design discussion: using rules complexity efficiently

[NichG]

This thread was split off of the 'Best Game Mechanics' thread at the request of one of the participants, because the previous thread had gotten a bit antagonistic. So lets try to keep this to analysis and critique rather than attacking eachothers' preferences and playstyles.

The basic question is, what are the advantages and disadvantages of having different parts of the game be 'rules heavy' or 'rules light', and what is the best way to understand the tradeoffs of building a system with more or fewer rules. The outlook of all this is from the point of view of game design, rather than discussing the merits and flaws of particular existing systems (though of course it makes sense to look to existing systems for examples to how things play out in practice). But if there's something negative that certain systems tend to have but don't have to - huge tables of conditional modifiers for example - then for the purpose of this discussion its fine to say 'okay, so we design the hypothetical game without including that particular bad idea'.

In the previous thread, a couple key concepts were brought up that I'm going to try to repeat here to seed discussion:


There's a difference between 'rules heavy' and 'rules dense', where the term 'rules dense' was used to refer to games in which the quality of play and the ability to actually play an effective character was highly damaged for players with less experience with the ruleset - e.g. due to the presence of trap options or having to plan builds far in advance before you know how good or bad various mechanics are.
The idea of having a different degree of rules-heaviness for player character creation, in-game play, and on the DM's side of the screen was brought up as a way to more efficiently handle some of the pluses and minuses of increased rules complexity.
The idea of concrete rules giving the player the ability to know ahead of time and without consulting with the DM what their character can and can't do was brought up.
The idea of lighter rules having more flexibility for improvisation or changing things on the fly to suit meta-rules like the 'Rule of Cool' was brought up.


If there are other particulars that I've left out, please mention them - this is a somewhat one-sided representation of the discussion in the other thread based on the salient points that jumped out at me, but I may not have captured what others would consider the most important points.

[Dimers]

Improvisation is necessarily rules-light; this rewards players able to think quickly on their feet. By contrast, heavy rules reward careful planning and preparation. While charisma and interpersonal influence can certainly affect how a rules-heavy game operates (e.g. DM's significant other or the player who talks so well her character never makes social rolls), in theory it should not.

Many games are heavier in some areas than in others. The social rules for D&D 4e are very vague; the combat side is very tightly defined with only a few tiny areas not totally clear.

Rules-light needs more adjudication by fiat or by priority. Either the GM (if one exists) or the players will need to have overarching guidelines for what rules don't specifically cover. Where player agency is high, what the player declares is what happens, unless another player or the GM is in conflict, and there the few existing rules cover how to handle the conflict. Rules-heavy adjudication certainly doesn't take less time (absent a critical mass of memorization), but it relies more on The Book and less on how the GM/players are trying to direct play.

A tactics game can't really exist in a rules-light environment. Rules-heavy doesn't add anything to role-playing but doesn't prevent it. So games that want to seriously cover both tend to be rules-heavy.

[Grinner]

All games try to provide a more or less complete experience. If the fluff says something is possible, then designers generally try to support it mechanically. There are special cases, but I'll leave those aside.

The difference between rules-heavy and rules-light is one of specificity. Rules-light games tend to be very general about their implementation, while rules-heavy games tend to be very specific. As mentioned in the other thread, rules-heavy games are preferable for certain players, but if you design a game with the objective of making it rules-heavy, you have far more pitfalls to avoid (useless/irrelevant options, loopholes, etc).

I remember there being concerns about how rules-light games are more prone to abuse. That, I think, is a slightly erroneous assumption, since decades of D&D has shown gaming communities what exactly a poor GM can do with Rule Zero. In fact, I'd say all of the games I've read, let alone played, never provide in-built protections against Rule Zero abuse.

What rules-light games tend not to have is advice for handling specific situations; the GM using a rules-light system has to be far more improvisational. That, I think, is where the opinion that rules-light games are more prone to abuse arises from. Games like D&D provide concrete things to grasp onto, like stats and attack rolls, but rules-light games tend to present an approach alien to the likes of D&D fans. GMs and players unused to rules-light methodologies are stripped of their familiar tools, and forced out of their element, they tend to flounder.

[Airk]

I remember there being concerns about how rules-light games are more prone to abuse. That, I think, is a slightly erroneous assumption, since decades of D&D has shown gaming communities what exactly a poor GM can do with Rule Zero. In fact, I'd say all of the games I've read, let alone played, never provide in-built protections against Rule Zero abuse.


I think it's impossible to provide "Rule Zero protections"; Even if you wrote in your PLAYERS section of the book "If the GM does anything that does not precisely conform to these rules, he is cheating and you should leave." (i.e. trying to suspend "Rule Zero" for your game), "Rule Zero" is too ingrained in RPG culture at this point (What with hacks, homebrews, house rules, etc, etc) that it wouldn't do any good. Every GM is convinced they know better than the game designer. Most of them are wrong, but that doesn't stop them trying.

[Dimers]

I remember there being concerns about how rules-light games are more prone to abuse.

I can understand that idea and see where people get it, though I think the word "abuse" becomes less and less dictionary-correct the farther to that end of the spectrum you go. It's certainly easy to turn something up to 11 if there's no rule saying it stops at 10 ... but then that doesn't exactly seem abusive, just extreme. Agree/disagree?

[GnomeWorks]

"Rule Zero" is too ingrained in RPG culture at this point (What with hacks, homebrews, house rules, etc, etc) that it wouldn't do any good. Every GM is convinced they know better than the game designer. Most of them are wrong, but that doesn't stop them trying.

You may, though, be able to draw a distinction between homebrew material - that is, things made away from the table - and sudden rules-changes made at the table, to the benefit or detriment of someone at the table (player or DM).

I'd think that the vast majority of players and GMs have no problem with someone making rules changes away from the table, so long as there's transparency. If a GM explains why they're changing a rule or puts it to a vote or what-have-you, that kind of "rule zero" is something that - I'm pretty sure - everybody can get behind.

It's the weird stuff that some GMs do at the table, making rulings that don't jive with the system or that just straight-up mess things up in some way, shape, or form, even if it's just that they mess with players' expectations of how the system is supposed to work.

[NichG]

Improvisation is necessarily rules-light; this rewards players able to think quickly on their feet. By contrast, heavy rules reward careful planning and preparation. While charisma and interpersonal influence can certainly affect how a rules-heavy game operates (e.g. DM's significant other or the player who talks so well her character never makes social rolls), in theory it should not.

I don't think I agree with the statement that 'in theory it should not', because 'rules heavy' just means that there's more rules, not what they say. You could have a game that is very rules heavy on combat and rules light on social, or which uses social rules that give the players supernatural abilities, but all 'mundane' interactions are left to RP, or other such things. Its a pretty broad design space.

For example, a way to do rules-heavy social interaction while still having it be dominated by personal charisma would be to have powers that let people do things like 'redact one thing that was said', 'ask how a person would respond to a given statement without actually saying it', 'know what a person is thinking right now', 'gain a piece of blackmail-worthy information for a person', etc. All the actual social interaction and decision-making would be done purely through actually talking it out, but there is a complex set of rules that allows players to do things they normally wouldn't be able to.


I remember there being concerns about how rules-light games are more prone to abuse. That, I think, is a slightly erroneous assumption, since decades of D&D has shown gaming communities what exactly a poor GM can do with Rule Zero. In fact, I'd say all of the games I've read, let alone played, never provide in-built protections against Rule Zero abuse.

This is a misrepresentation of what I said. I never said that a rules-heavy game is less prone to GM abuse. What I said was that a game with rules-heavy character generation gives players a much stronger illusion of control over their character and its abilities than a rules-light game.

Yes, of course the GM can always grab that control away. That's not the point, and there's nothing to be done about that in a game with a GM. What you can however do is engineer the player experience and state of mind. The feeling of 'I have control' is more important than actually having control. The base assumption should be that the GM and players behave reasonably to eachother, because the really dysfunctional games are only a small fraction and tend to destabilize due to the personalities involved anyhow.

[Grinner]

I think it's impossible to provide "Rule Zero protections";

I actually had a couple of ideas for this some time ago.

First, you could simply have players compete over control of Rule Zero. I think there's a couple of games which do this, but I'm not sure how effectively it works.

Second, you could strip the GM of Rule Zero and instead have the GM play the game alongside the players*. The intent of the idea is to make GMing more interesting, as GMing typically entails prodding the players into some kind of action, leading them around by the nose, and putting out the fires set by more "rambunctious" players. By giving the GM something to do, the more tedious aspects of GMing can be mitigated. As a side effect, this would set concrete limits on the GM's power, assuming he doesn't enact Rule Zero again.

However, it probably would also limit his ability to arbitrate rules disputes, thus requiring an extremely well-designed system. Perhaps something in the vein of Dungeon World...?

*Edit: Upon reflection, I've realized this fails to describe what exactly the idea entails. Essentially, I'm proposing a separate set of rules, perhaps some kind of minigame, which describes what a GM can do (i.e. spawn a random encounter, have an NPC approach the PCs, etc.). These rules would be set up to interact symbiotically with the players' rules, creating a larger feedback loop.


I can understand that idea and see where people get it, though I think the word "abuse" becomes less and less dictionary-correct the farther to that end of the spectrum you go. It's certainly easy to turn something up to 11 if there's no rule saying it stops at 10 ... but then that doesn't exactly seem abusive, just extreme. Agree/disagree?

Unless the GM is particularly authoritarian, I think that common sense tends to be a limiting factor. If someone steps outside of what is considered acceptable, I think some kind of group veto power should be put into effect, however.

In this fashion, I do like the way Wushu does its thing.


This is a misrepresentation of what I said. I never said that a rules-heavy game is less prone to GM abuse. What I said was that a game with rules-heavy character generation gives players a much stronger illusion of control over their character and its abilities than a rules-light game.

I hadn't been speaking of anything you had written. :smallconfused: Or are you talking about the other thread now?

Either way, yes, that's a good point.

[Dr.Starky]

I can understand that idea and see where people get it, though I think the word "abuse" becomes less and less dictionary-correct the farther to that end of the spectrum you go. It's certainly easy to turn something up to 11 if there's no rule saying it stops at 10 ... but then that doesn't exactly seem abusive, just extreme. Agree/disagree?I think an example of something that skirts the line would be the Wizard's ritual move from Dungeon World.

"When you draw on a place of power to create a magical
effect, tell the GM what you’re trying to achieve. Ritual
effects are always possible, but the GM will give you one to
four of the following conditions:
 *It’s going to take days/weeks/months
 *First you must ____
 *You’ll need help from ____
 *It will require a lot of money
 *The best you can do is a lesser version, unreliable and
limited
 *You and your allies will risk danger from ____
 *You’ll have to disenchant ____ to do it"

This gives GM lot's of built in ways to limit how effectively the player can use the ritual. The GM doesn't have to resort to rule zero because she's granted a broad spectrum of limitations to put right into the. However, "Ritual effects are always possible" means the player is going to get at least something of what he wants and even GM has limit on how many limitations she can grant. It gives the potential for the player to have a far reaching impact on the story.

I like it. I think it helps make the game feel more like a collaborative experience.

[Airk]

I think that even with what you're describing, Grinner, as long as one player is "The Dungeon Master(tm)" (I jest somewhat with the title, but you get the idea) then a certain subset of people is ALWAYS going to feel justified in doing whatever they want because they are The Dungeon Master(tm). And of course these are the only people who are a problem re: Rule Zero in the first place, and they're exactly the ones who will disregard any "protections".

Rule Zero protections are sortof like making murder illegal. Most people ALREADY don't murder people, because it's wrong, and most of the ones who still do aren't going to be stopped by the fact that it's illegal. All the illegality does in this case is provide a system of punishments and such, which isn't really something you're going to get in an RPG. ;)

So unless you can undermine the role of The Dungeon Master completely, probably by a 'GMless' game or similar distribution of creative authority, you're stuck with Rule Zero as a problem, and so far, GMless Games don't produce the same sort of experience as GM'd ones. This is not a knock on GMless games - different is not the same as 'worse' - it's just an observation that the resulting game experience may not be what traditional gamers are looking for.

Oh. And traditional gamers can generally stand to broaden their darn horizons.

[NichG]

I hadn't been speaking of anything you had written. :smallconfused: Or are you talking about the other thread now?

Either way, yes, that's a good point.

Sorry, yes, this point came up in the other thread when I introduced the idea that players would feel more secure about their characters' abilities in a game with rules-heavy chargen. Most of the counterarguments were of the form 'the DM can still undermine your powers', so it sounded like you were talking about that particular segment of the discussion rather than something in isolation.

Anyhow, I think its perfectly fine to leave the GM with full, authoritarian, etc control of the game. Certainly you can do games that distribute authority differently and those can be interesting, but I also think there's nothing really inherently wrong with a game that is at its core highly asymmetric in terms of distributing control. So I guess I'd chalk that up to a matter of taste more than anything else.

[Arbane]

I remember there being concerns about how rules-light games are more prone to abuse. That, I think, is a slightly erroneous assumption, since decades of D&D has shown gaming communities what exactly a poor GM can do with Rule Zero.

No kidding. D&D 3.5 is a fine example of how a rules-heavy game can provide ample unintended opportunity to break the intended power-balance of the system. Conversely, most efforts at munchkinism I've noticed in rules-light games consist of fast-talking the GM, and that doesn't have any 'official rules' to legitimize it.

[Jammyamerica]

What rules-light games tend not to have is advice for handling specific situations; the GM using a rules-light system has to be far more improvisational. That, I think, is where the opinion that rules-light games are more prone to abuse arises from. Games like D&D provide concrete things to grasp onto, like stats and attack rolls, but rules-light games tend to present an approach alien to the likes of D&D fans. GMs and players unused to rules-light methodologies are stripped of their familiar tools, and forced out of their element, they tend to flounder.

[NichG]

So for me, one of the biggest advantagse of having a rules heavy component to the system is basically that it provides extra channels of communication with the players, almost a sort of subconscious communication rather than overt.

By creating mechanics that reward or penalize things, you can communicate ideas about what kind of game its going to be.

Certain mechanics can be used as a form of foreshadowing. Let the players know that there's a Lv16 ability for a particular class that seems kind of weird or special, and they may look for that ability in the world, use it in their mental image of the game world to explain events, etc. This can be more directly personal for the player if e.g. they reviewed that ability in looking for future things for their character.

Certain mechanics can be used as a way to create expectations which you can then fulfill or violate in order to send messages about a situation. An enemy in D&D whose attack permanently decreases the target's maximum hitpoints by 1 is breaking an implicit rule of the game (things aren't permanent) that most experienced D&D players take for granted. That can make said players sit up and take notice of the big glaring exception to how things work. It also tends to have a lot more visceral impact for people when the rules don't work right than the actual mechanics/numerical aspects suggest they should, so you can use it to create strong responses (negative, in the case of stuff like the hitpoint example; positive, in the case of e.g. something that gave out some extra skill points or a free feat; or just confused).

Having sufficient complexity in the mechanics can also give you lots of hooks to communicate distinctions between things in the game world with by associating them with particular mechanical effects in a consistent fashion. Undead always respond this way to particular things. Elementals always respond this other way. Farspawn always have abilities which do this particular style of thing. Temporal oddities always mess with the action economy.

You can do that in rules light too, but its a spectrum. Each of these things involves adding complexity in order to actually achieve the particular communication desired. So eventually the number of rules grows - e.g. you're trading additional rules complexity for some benefit.

[Segev]

What people generally mean, I think, when they say "complexity" in any sort of positive light wrt RPG mechanics, is "options provided by the rules." Usually tactical or strategic, these options abstract some aspect of the role playing that is occurring into a set of rules where meaningful choices determine the outcome. The best mechanics are those which "feel" like the represent accurately what is going on, but with minimal actual need to stop and calculate things. They have options for applying strategies and tactics using resources at your disposal to garner desired outcomes (or to fail to do so, if you are unsuccessful or lack the resources). Ideally, the resources are called something evocative of what's going on, and the mechanics can be mapped mentally with some level of ease to what's "going on on screen."

The benefit of "rules heavy" complexity is that it allows the players of the game to have what they decide their character tries make a difference other than how they describe it. A rules light game will benefit from great flexibility in terms of descriptions, and from very simple resolution mechanics. However, the resolution, in its simplicity, is the same almost independent of what description is applied to the mechanic. Thus, swinging from a chandelier and sliding under a table and simply standing there and slashing at your foe, as long as all three end in "an attack," do the same thing in a rules-light game. (I am oversimplifying, but I hope the point is clear.)

In a rules heavy game, each of those would in some way differ, either in the mechanics for resolving the success of the action or in the ultimate outcome itself. What you chose to do would be a tactical decision based on the game mechanics provided to simulate those results.

[Airk]

What people generally mean, I think, when they say "complexity" in any sort of positive light wrt RPG mechanics, is "options provided by the rules."

You are incorrect - at least, with regard to what _I_ mean when I use it. In fact, you have, essentially, the opposite of what I mean. In a game with relatively few rules, I have LOTS of options (though I suppose they are not 'provided' by the rules so much as 'allowed' by the rules.). In a game with lots of rules, edge cases, exceptions and extra clauses, I have relatively few options because I need to make sure they are all allowed by the rules.

When I say "rules heavy" I mean lots of specific cases, selections from long lists of things you are "allowed" to do, strange interactions between rules that say one thing versus rules that say another thing, and thoroughly spelled out "options" that just really mean "Here is how you have to do this."

[Knaight]

I'd look at this from a marginal gain perspective. The first thing of note is that if rules are being involved at all, it implies that free form is a rejected option. As such, it comes down to the benefits of accumulating rules, versus the cost of doing so. A few obvious things emerge from this:


The benefit of accumulating rules decreases as the rules increase. Highlighting a few broad strokes does quite a bit. Subsystems for particular things do less. Sub-subsystems do yet less. Etc. The potential rules space goes down, and the actual benefit from rules goes down with it.
The hindrance of rules accumulates with more rules. The odds of misremembering a rule goes up constantly as more are introduced. Meanwhile, the amount that has to be sifted through (such as when there's a misremembering somewhere) also continually increases. Thus, the cost of adding rules goes up. Adding just one, unified, obvious rule has a negligible cost.
Efficiency in design and communication affect both of these things. Poorly worded or poorly organized rules dramatically increase the hindrance attached, elegant design which accomplishes things with relativly simple individual rules, unification, etc. increases the benefit gained from a rule.


This dynamic creates a variable equilibrium of desired rules, in which rules keep being added and it's fine until the marginal hindrance is greater than the marginal gain. A rules dense system is an example of inefficiency - there's less benefit and more hindrance than there should be, because the rules, organization, explanations, or some combination of these are clumsy. However, there are also things which modify the acceptability of crunch within a group. Examples include:


Introduction of New Members: If the game has to be taught to new people all the time, the hindrance of the rules is amplified.
Number of systems in play: If the group favors one system and sticks to it all the time, it mitigates the hindrances in a big way.
Memory of the group: If the group has a good head for memorizing rules, or even memorizing the layout of books, the hindrance is mitigated. This also applies to memory of character stats in play.
Frequency of Character Creation: If the group favors short games (or just really lethal ones) in which character turnover is high, the hindrance of rules use is often amplified. This is particular to the character generation rules, and if a generally rules heavy game has simple character generation rules the amplification is negligible, but it's still a concern.
Mathematical Speed of the Group: If the group consists of people who can crunch numbers quickly and reliably, the rules hindrance is generally mitigated.
Preferences: Some people just like having rules. The gain is amplified, and the hindrance mitigated. Some people don't particularly like dealing with rules. The hindrance is amplified, and the gain mitigated.


These factors affect both personal appreciation for rules, and what actually gets employed. I personally am fine with a fair amount of rules - I've got quick mathematical calculations and a reasonably good memory for games. I'm also fine with rules light, and see some advantages there - I favor shorter games in a wide variety of settings, which works much better with rules light most of the time. I also like playing with new systems, which keeps number of systems in play high. In practice, I mostly use rules light games - my personal preference leans that way, though I'm close to neutral, and the group dynamics favor it. Shorter games, frequent character generation, frequent teaching of new players, frequent system change, generally low math speed that usually works out to me doing all the math for everyone - all of these are a total pain with a rules heavy system.

[Segev]

You are incorrect - at least, with regard to what _I_ mean when I use it. In fact, you have, essentially, the opposite of what I mean. In a game with relatively few rules, I have LOTS of options (though I suppose they are not 'provided' by the rules so much as 'allowed' by the rules.). In a game with lots of rules, edge cases, exceptions and extra clauses, I have relatively few options because I need to make sure they are all allowed by the rules.

When I say "rules heavy" I mean lots of specific cases, selections from long lists of things you are "allowed" to do, strange interactions between rules that say one thing versus rules that say another thing, and thoroughly spelled out "options" that just really mean "Here is how you have to do this."

Hm.

I think I see where you're coming from, but I do not think I could address your points directly without getting lost in semantics over what we mean. Instead, I shall attempt to explain what I mean by "rules light" having, from a gameplay standpoint, fewer options.

In a rules light game, you typically have very few actual decisions to make regarding mechanics. To take a particularly dirt-simple system of which I'm rather fond - RISUS - as an example, in this system you have 10 dice divided amongst a number of traits, usually between 4 and 7. (More than that, and you have too few dice in any of them to be useful, fewer than that, and you are likely making traits too broad to be considered "fair," or you're going to be ineffective too much of the time.)

Any time that the outcome of an action is in doubt, such that the player simply saying "I do this" cannot reasonably lead to the foregone conclusion that his character both attempts and succeeds the action, you choose one of your traits and roll it against a target number set by the GM.

Contested rolls are similar, but the target number is "roll higher than the other guy."

How you justify which trait you use depends on what it is you say you're really doing. There is a ton of flexibility; technically, you can use Cooking to create bread so hard and so flat that it works as a bladed Frisbee that you throw at your opponent in a combat, if you wanted (and the GM didn't kibosh it as not possible in his setting), or you could use Beauty in a spelling bee to cause the judge to "miss" the fact that you didn't quite get the spelling right (or to cause your opponent to be too distracted to spell correctly), or whatever you could justify.

But mechanically, the only choice is which trait you're going to roll, and the "game" lies mostly in figuring out how to justify the trait you WANT to roll.


In a mechanically complex game, the rules translate more directly to specific categories of actions. Movement and positioning become more than something you use as special effects in combat. Your social interactions may have more precise things you're attempting within the rules to represent the difference between seduction, intimidation, lying, or logic.

It's the difference between playing War (the card game) with a lot of creativity and imagination to lend a story to it, and playing Chess. In War, with so little defined about what playing the higher card means, you're free to do a lot of elaboration and imaginative description about how your tactics interact with your opponent's in the imaginary battle being simulated. In Chess, the options that are legally possible are fewer, because you have specific pieces and they move in specific ways. But you still have more meaningful choices, tactically speaking. The game is more in-depth on a mechanical level. And, if you wish, within the constraints of what the pieces can do, you can have that represent anything you can reasonably imagine it representing as you describe it.


Rules-light is easy to "refluff" because it rarely has any built in fluff and the choices involved on a mechanical level are minimally different regardless of the fluff.

Rules-heavy CAN be refluffed, but usually has at least a basic intention behind what a given mechanic represents as happening. If you can think of something else that would have similar outcomes and interactions, refluffing is pretty easy (e.g. in D&D 3.5, the Desert Wind style has a number of maneuvers that throw fire in various shapes, including cones. Refluffing that from being your blade casting it to being a breath weapon is not at all hard, but it's still mechanically a cone of fire with specific cone-shaped-fire effects). But you can't just make up anything (that cone of fire has to be fire in a cone; you can't refluff it as ice without discussing it with the DM ahead of time).

[Knaight]

Rules-heavy CAN be refluffed, but usually has at least a basic intention behind what a given mechanic represents as happening. If you can think of something else that would have similar outcomes and interactions, refluffing is pretty easy (e.g. in D&D 3.5, the Desert Wind style has a number of maneuvers that throw fire in various shapes, including cones. Refluffing that from being your blade casting it to being a breath weapon is not at all hard, but it's still mechanically a cone of fire with specific cone-shaped-fire effects). But you can't just make up anything (that cone of fire has to be fire in a cone; you can't refluff it as ice without discussing it with the DM ahead of time).

This is also true of most rules light games. Risus and Wushu are extremes, but something like Savage Worlds, Fudge, or Chronica Feudalis has this much. They are often not list based, in that you wouldn't pick something then refluff it, but they do generally represent particular things. A stunt that gives a character a bonus when fighting outnumbered in melee (which was probably made on the spot) actually represents the character being better at fighting multiple opponents, and generally works out to them being at less of a disadvantage when doing so.

As for your chess analogy - This gets into GNS territory a bit, but that's very much on the gamist end of the spectrum. Essentially, the actual benefit from mechanical complexity comes from a few things. One is the fun of interacting with the mechanics themselves. The abstraction is honestly pretty irrelevant here (though it has a huge effect on hindrance, as regards intuitive understanding of said mechanics), it's the mechanical interactions themselves that are fun. Another is the simulationist end - the mechanics benefit through the creation of a more closely simulated setting. Yet another is the narrativist end, wherein the mechanics create benefit by providing desirable structure to emerging narratives. Generally all three are present to some degree most of the time, and all three are valued to some extent by an individual player, though it's almost certainly weighted well off of even.

[Segev]

This is also true of most rules light games. Risus and Wushu are extremes, but something like Savage Worlds, Fudge, or Chronica Feudalis has this much.

Er, my point was that rules-light is intrinsically easy to refluff, while rules heavy tends to be harder to. I was giving examples of how rules-heavy CAN be refluffed, but has restrictions. Rules light generally lacks those restrictions, but has fewer internal mechanical choices to make. That fire cone and that ice cone and that thrown car might all use identical mechanics in a rules-light game, whereas the three different damage types alone (never mind the fact that the car may not be a "cone" at all) make these notably different in D&D. The car may even have totally different resolution mechanics.

A rules-light game (such as Risus in particular) might represent a physical fight, a political debate, a cooking contest, a foot race, and efforts to impress the new transfer student and get her attention for lunch all the same way. A rules heavy game will likely have variants to its subsystems for at least some of those. (D&D has them for the fight, primarily, but some subsystems exist that differentiate foot races from the others. The remainder would still be abstracted together as one subsystem: competing skill rolls.)

[Knaight]

A rules-light game (such as Risus in particular) might represent a physical fight, a political debate, a cooking contest, a foot race, and efforts to impress the new transfer student and get her attention for lunch all the same way. A rules heavy game will likely have variants to its subsystems for at least some of those. (D&D has them for the fight, primarily, but some subsystems exist that differentiate foot races from the others. The remainder would still be abstracted together as one subsystem: competing skill rolls.)

Again, Chronica Feudalis comes up here. It's built around four differing subsystems, in which all of these would be handled differently. I'd say that a rules-light game will often have some variants here, outside of the extreme lightness end.

That's the thing about rules light games - they often still have a lot of rules in comparison to other games. A 60 page rules set is a rules light game in an RPG. In a board game, it's completely ridiculous. Part of that is that board game writing tends to be way more concise and use way fewer examples, part of it is that even fairly light RPGs are often fairly heavy on crunch in the grand scheme of things.

[Segev]

I think it might be helpful to revive some old terms, and define them wrt what kinds of rules support each aspect of an RPG.

Generally, there are three things that make up an RPG: the story, the modeling of the world, and the choices one can make to effect the two.

Narrative encompases most of what goes on in the story. Something that is 100% narrative almost may as well be a novel, TV show, comic book, or play. Perhaps a cooperative improv play, but this is where free-form games live.

The model of the world is the simulation. This is the first goal, usually, of game mechanics: to provide a simulator within which to make decisions independent of what players/actors/writers might think is "a good story." The goal of the simulation is to model what happens due to the nature of the world in which the narrative/game takes place.

The last element is the "game" part of "role-playing game." Whether the simulation is good or bad, the game is how your choices within the rule set allow you to affect and influence the game world, the story, and the other actors and the props therein.

To some degree, "narrative" seems to be at war with both of the other two, while the other two, to a naive examination, might seem intrinsically aligned.

But the goal of a game is to have meaningful choices that influence outcomes in interesting ways and provide a challenge to the players. In RPGs, this challenge is almost universally mental in nature. Rules-heavy or rules-light, the interests of making it a GAME mean those rules need to have meaningful choices which are not trivial to resolve. Here is where complexity of rules interactions is useful. Risus is not complex in this regard; if you are disregarding everything but "gameplay" in Risus, you always want to use your biggest trait.

The goal of the simulation, on the other hand, is to make mechanics that faithfully model how things work in the physics of the world. This unintuitively includes the way NPCs behave as a sort of physics, because the conceit is that NPCs have drives and desires less directly controlled by the GM's whim than the PCs' drives are by their players. And the NPCs' decisions should be influenceable by the PCs in ways that, perhaps, should not be reciprocated. (There are arguments from strong simulationism that this is not the case, but players tend to get very irritated when they feel somebody else - including the DM - is "playing their character for them," as certain kinds of influence might make it seem to be.)

In Risus, the simulationist wants to use the most APPROPRIATE trait, regardless of how good a gameplay decision it is. In a more rules-heavy game, the simulation demands that the rule chosen match as closely as possible the situation being modeled.

Complexity is of less concern to the simulation; it just wants accuracy. This can lead to a lot of fiddly rules that are almost useless to the gameplay aspect. This is usually where compexity is considered a bad thing, even when it's not really complexity in a gameplay sense so much as just rules glut.

The reason, though, that Narrative so oft seems to conflict with the other two, I think, is that Narrative almost inevitably wants a rules-light system. This is true in most gaming circles if only because when we as humans think of "narrative," we think of a story that somebody is writing. Emergent stories are a relatively new concept, and most don't even think about them. I would wager that some people reading this very forum would ask, "What do you mean by 'emergent' stories?"

What an emergent story is is a story that comes about by turning the simulation loose and seeing what happens. Instead of having a narrative to tell, you assign a narrative to the events unfolding in the simulation.

What we as gamers tend to think of this as is "not railroading." The story emerges from the choices of the players as much as from the GM's hooks, and is influenced by the simulation of the game world. Narrative choices made by all participants combine with gameplay choices made to influence the simulation to create a story that may not have been written by any of those at the table if they were just writing it from their imaginations.


To wrap this up, complexity of the "good" sort aids the game aspect of things. It creates interesting interactions from meaningful choices on how to apply the mechanics of the simulation. Rules heaviness aids simulationism to the extent that it allows for specific things to be represented in specific ways, but the truth is that simulation is able to be represented by rules heavy or rules light, depending on how deterministic vs. random you want simulated outcomes to be. (Rules light will be more random, using a more generic resolution mechanic...unless it's taken out of the simulation's hands entirely and just narratively dictated.) Narrative works in both rules heavy and rules light, as well, but how much of the narrative is written and how much is emergent varies with the heaviness and complexity of the rules.

[Dimers]

The hindrance of rules accumulates with more rules. The odds of misremembering a rule goes up constantly as more are introduced. Meanwhile, the amount that has to be sifted through (such as when there's a misremembering somewhere) also continually increases.

Incidentally, this means that rules-heavy designs benefit considerably from easily searchable references. A good reference does nothing to increase "rules gain" but does mitigate "rules hindrance". EDIT: Actually, handbooks of the sort seen on these forums for 3.X materials would be an example of reference works that increase rules gain, though few of them reduce rules hindrance. I can think of one thing I've seen that does both, for D&D 4e: "The Rules Of Hidden Club" describes how to benefit from stealth and how the stealth rules are intended to operate, increasing gain and mitigating hindrance for that one topic.

Anyway. That adds another world of complexity to game design: the game will ideally also include a search tool, and designing/implementing/maintaining that tool is an entirely separate skillset from the designing/publishing/maintaining the game.

[Knaight]

Incidentally, this means that rules-heavy designs benefit considerably from easily searchable references. A good reference does nothing to increase "rules gain" but does mitigate "rules hindrance".

It also benefits from being organized in a coherent way in the first place, which is entirely too rare.

[NichG]

Another cute thing to do in rules heavy is to basically implement the rules hierarchically in such a way that the rules that each player individually relies on are just a small subset of the whole. A sort of 'amortized rules glut reduction' method. E.g. if you're playing a Fighter you don't have to worry nearly as much about knowing how metamagic feats work.

[Airk]

Another cute thing to do in rules heavy is to basically implement the rules hierarchically in such a way that the rules that each player individually relies on are just a small subset of the whole. A sort of 'amortized rules glut reduction' method. E.g. if you're playing a Fighter you don't have to worry nearly as much about knowing how metamagic feats work.

Unless of course you're the GM and want to know how the characters at your table work.

[Dimers]

Another cute thing to do in rules heavy is to basically implement the rules hierarchically in such a way that the rules that each player individually relies on are just a small subset of the whole. A sort of 'amortized rules glut reduction' method. E.g. if you're playing a Fighter you don't have to worry nearly as much about knowing how metamagic feats work.


Unless of course you're the GM and want to know how the characters at your table work.

The separation of hierarchies also fails to ease character creation unless other restrictions are at hand. If you're joining a group and they tell you "make a Fighter", sure, but if the whole group is just starting to try to learn the game they're probably not going to assign one section to each player to learn. Regardless, yes, there's some mitigation when you don't need to learn all the rules to play.

I find that subsystems introduce discontent and discourage exploration of future character creation options. If a GM knows that a subsystem exists but chooses not to use it, she often feels defensive or guilty about the ruling. Sometimes that guilt comes out as anger or bile. The existence of a subsystem (especially one not published at a game's debut) can thus actively make a group a little less happy -- considerably moreso if a player wants to use it and a gamemaster does not. And players don't necessarily want character generation to involve an educational process or don't want to be seen as dirty optimizers, so they avoid learning new subsystems they don't already know. That can lead to a feeling of being stuck or trapped ... or boring ... or somehow less worthy than other players who seem to put tons of time into char-gen.

Compartmentalized rule density is sometimes inherent, and I can't call it a bad thing (myself having a hierarchical sort of mental structure), but overall I don't find its effects to be positive.


It also benefits from being organized in a coherent way in the first place, which is entirely too rare.

:smallamused: So true.

[NichG]

Unless of course you're the GM and want to know how the characters at your table work.

Often - usually, I'd say - you don't need all the details (and you become familiar with them over time anyhow). So even if you fail to understand this fully (e.g. if you make rules errors in understanding how the characters work) the consequences are less significant in terms of the flow of the game. This is part of why the ideal system for me is rules heavy for players and rules light for the GM - basically let the players choose what mechanics they want for their characters and then give them the responsibility for knowing those particular mechanics very well. It does take a bit of trust in your players, but that should generally be encouraged.


The separation of hierarchies also fails to ease character creation unless other restrictions are at hand. If you're joining a group and they tell you "make a Fighter", sure, but if the whole group is just starting to try to learn the game they're probably not going to assign one section to each player to learn. Regardless, yes, there's some mitigation when you don't need to learn all the rules to play.

This comes down to where the decision branches are and how far in advance they come. E.g. if I choose at Lv1 that I'm playing a Wizard, I don't need to worry about looking through Fighter PrCs 6 levels down the line - my initial choice means I can probably skip Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, and Complete Scoundrel entirely, and focus on Complete Mage and Complete Arcane instead. On the other hand, in D&D in particular you're strongly encouraged by the system to plan your build out far in advance to be able to meet prerequisites, which means that you're forced to consider 'what you might be able to be' rather than just 'what you are', and that reduces this benefit quite a bit.

In the broader question of game design, we can ask 'whats the best way to do hierarchical rulesets to avoid that kind of chargen problem without having dead ends and trap options?'. I think in general the way to do that is to make the long-term cost for an incompletely informed decision very low or zero. Which is probably also good for the learning curve for new players. That's why a lot of the plan-ahead focus in D&D is alleviated by throwing in easy retraining options.



I find that subsystems introduce discontent and discourage exploration of future character creation options. If a GM knows that a subsystem exists but chooses not to use it, she often feels defensive or guilty about the ruling. Sometimes that guilt comes out as anger or bile. The existence of a subsystem (especially one not published at a game's debut) can thus actively make a group a little less happy -- considerably moreso if a player wants to use it and a gamemaster does not. And players don't necessarily want character generation to involve an educational process or don't want to be seen as dirty optimizers, so they avoid learning new subsystems they don't already know. That can lead to a feeling of being stuck or trapped ... or boring ... or somehow less worthy than other players who seem to put tons of time into char-gen.

This comes down to trust again. If the GM is always of the mindset that the players are trying to put one over on him by using 'hidden subsystems' or is calling them 'dirty optimizers' then that's what's going to create this sort of discontent. I'll admit, this is something that took me awhile to learn - I was uncomfortable running for e.g. psionic or Tome of Battle or Incarnum characters in D&D for some time.

What I realized eventually is, it doesn't matter that much if I'm unfamiliar with the details of the subsystem - I can let the players take care of being the experts there. What I have to do in order to make the game work is not focus on 'how' the characters do things, but on broadly what their capabilities are. Its more important for me to e.g. know what a character's damage output and mitigation abilities are than that they come from Time Stands Still comboed with Avalanche of Blades, or that the character can throw a Energy Dampening Field as an immediate action to reduce the damage they're taking. Also because of the hierarchical design thing, eventually I will know those things just by exposure since they're a small subset of the options that actually exist (e.g. that Swordsage is not going to have every maneuver, so I don't really need to know every maneuver - just the ones he has).



Compartmentalized rule density is sometimes inherent, and I can't call it a bad thing (myself having a hierarchical sort of mental structure), but overall I don't find its effects to be positive.


Well, its mostly just an algorithmic thing. Binary search is O(log(N)), and brute force search is O(N). So if you can make knowing the rules more like binary search and less like the brute force algorithm, you can make N larger before stuff breaks.