Why More Rules?

[Segev]

I never said it was. I'm merely pointing out that both rules heavy and light games have their advantages, and to simply state that "rules heavy games make creativity easier" is not a blanket truth, but rather a situational one.



... but RPGs don't give you a totally blank sheet. They give you a situation to resolve.

And rules give you a list of what definitely can be done. They give you a tool kit. They also give you an idea, sometimes, of what can't be done; they provide more of that situation to resolve without the GM having to say "and no, you can't spontaneously add specialized gear to the princess's possessions." Or other such things. They help you know what is within the realm of possibility, and also help you answer questions of "can this creative solution even work?" They also can help you come up with creative solutions. You look at your box of tools, and see "oh, she has extremely long hair that can support her own weight? That could be useful!" whereas you may not have even thought of the Rapunzel solution without the reminder.

And I find the "a solution good enough to accept" argument non-compelling, to be frank. Or, more accurately, it sounds like a bad GM.

Nonsense. You apply it yourself later on when you say the GM will call the convenient perfect-for-the-situation sword "silly." That solution is not "good enough to accept." But why? Because it's "silly," of course. But...what makes it "silly?" Sure, I am pretty sure that most people in this thread agree with that assessment (I certainly do), but by what objective standards?

Everything in a free-form game is basically trying to find "a solution good enough to accept." Because there is no objective standard. In a rules-lite game, the objective standards are fuzzy, so the question is whether the solution is close enough to within the rules to accept it. More rules-heavy games have much brighter lines of what is "a solution good enough to accept" or not. If the d20 system Princess does in fact have that +5 dragonbane sword of fire immunity on her list of equipment, well, she has it. It stopped being "silly," since clearly she planned for such an occasion and it wasn't pulled out of a dark southerly location once the situation was known. (Or, if it was, it was done according to other rules; perhaps Her Highness has a rule that empowers her to be a brilliant planner by letting her claim to have prepared for just such an occasion so many times per day.)

OTOH, sometimes the rules-based solutions are based on abusing the wonky edges of the math, and that stuff has no interest to me.

Sure, but that's just as likely in a rules lite game; in fact, they invite it more because there's more room to wiggle "but it SAAAAYYYYYS..."

Or the GM can say that's silly, or more likely the table as a whole will say that's silly.

As noted above, this is where the GM is saying "no, that solution isn't good enough for me to accept."

Which is really the most universally useful part of rules.

Absolutely.