What do you consider "rules light"?

[Kiero]

Recognising that it's a loaded term with no accepted definition, I'd like to avoid the usual wrangling over semantics if possible. Instead, what do you personally consider to be rules light, by whatever means you understand the term? How do you distinguish such a thing?

I've seen people say D6 and Unisystem are rules-light for example, where I'd consider them solidly rules-medium. Not heavy, but not light. Feng Shui, one of my favourites I consider rules-medium too. D&D and Exalted are rules-heavy to me. Savage Worlds and GURPS medium-heavy (though GURPS with all options switched on tends towards heavy for me). Heroquest, tSoY and FATE are medium-light.

The only systems I consider rules-light are (off the top of my head) Risus, The Pool, Wushu, InSpectres and There Is No Spoon. Minimal chargen, minimal rules in play. Probably ultra-light by most other people's definitions.

What about you?

[Indon]

I'm pretty sure I play "rules-light" (or med-light) regardless of the actual system I'm using.

[Tengu]

Whatever I play, is rules-heavy in combat and rules-super-ultra-feather-light outside combat.

[Funkyodor]

Well, I consider games like HeroScape to be ultra-light rules wise. Or games we come up with on the fly for a beer and peanuts RPG evening (Warhammer 40K missions using individual models as PC's etc...). You get drunk enough the rules don't matter. Either everyone is laughing or you're wrestling with your friend on the floor because he rolled that 6 to kill your player.

Otherwise your list of light games goes with what I would consider a rules light RPG.

[Swooper]

I haven't had the oppurtunity to play anything but D&D (2.0, 3.0 and 3.5) and several awful homebrewed systems from back when I was a kid, so to me, anything less rules-intensive than D&D is rules-light.

I heard of some system Gary Gygax was developing that was based off of D&D, but exponentially more complex. You had your six base stats, like D&D, then you had six substats for each stat. Creating a character was an 8-hour progress - twice that if you wanted to play a mage. That's propably a good deal too complex for me, although I propably wouldn't mind playing in it a bit if I had a group that was used to it.

[Bosh]

For me rules light would be: don't have to do enough mental math to distract you from RPing during combat. Different people can deal with mental math easier than others, so its a bit subjective.

But its things like: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0034.html that make D&D rules heavy for me. I'm too much like Durkon :(

For me rules light would be Star Wars d6 (without Force stuff, that gets heavier) or Fate. Rules medium would be perhaps WoD.

One of my main problems with D&D is its rules heavy without being tactically complex. There's a whole ****load of mental math that's involved in doing nothing more complicated than walking up to someone and wacking them (especially at higher levels just rolling to hit and rolling for damage can get damn confusing) due to having to calculate in buff, magic items, feats, etc. etc.

[Tormsskull]

Rules light to me means that anything that isn't incredibly important to resolving situations is left up to the GM. When a player wants to break down a door, for example, it makes much more sense to me for the GM to just determine a number in his head rather than searching through a book to determine how thick the door is, what material it is made out of, if the character has the skill (Break Doors), what his bonus is to it, does he have any synergy with other skills, etc.

[Kurald Galain]

Light: Amber DRP, Over the Edge, Paranoia, Squeam

Moderate: World of Darkness, Call of Ctulhu, Warhammer FRP, TORG

Heavy: D&D, GURPS, Exalted, Nephilim

[ZeroNumerous]

Light: Any D6 system. They're inherently designed to be soft, easy to pick up, and easy to run.

Medium: D10 systems. Pretty much D6 but with a few extras.

Heavy: D20 systems. Often complex, but within reason.

Ultra-Heavy: Freakin' GURPS.

[Qooroo]

Personal definitions:

WoD (either system) is fairly distinctly rules-medium

D&D and Exalted are starting to blur between medium and heavy.

Gurps and Hero are heavy.

Unisystem is light.

Savage Worlds is medium-light.

Wushu and the like are ultra-light.

That's kind of how I've always done it. Me, I prefer something in the light/medium-light kind of range, but will play anything up to medium-heavy. Either extreme (heavy/ultra-light) starts to be too much for me.

[ZeroNumerous]

Atleast we can all agree that GURPS is in it's own class when compared to D&D, WoD, Paranoia etc..

[SpikeFightwicky]

Light: Amber DRP, Over the Edge, Paranoia, Squeam

Moderate: World of Darkness, Call of Ctulhu, Warhammer FRP, TORG

Heavy: D&D, GURPS, Exalted, Nephilim

I'm pretty much in agreement. And, BTW, the funnest RP experience I (or my players) ever had was GMing a Paranoia game. I'm not familiar with any of the 'Light' options other than Paranoia, though, and I'd put CoC at Moderate-Light.

My definition:

Rules-Light: Any system that doesn't have rules for any possible action a player can take, and breaks apart when a player tries something not written down (try finding the DC/benefit of jumping from a stair-case onto a chandelier and swinging into an enemy to deliver a powerful blow powered by awesome cinematics). Also, a system that quantifies everything (1 round = 6 seconds; the DC to diplomacize your worst enemy into a friendly chap is 35, convincing the king that he's a hippo gives a -20 penalty) is, IMO, a rules-heavy system. Take Call of Cthulhu (Chaosium ruleset): one player round = 'enough time to do something significant'.

I'd like 3.5 to be more rules light (like 2nd ed.), but all the rules make the learning curve a little more gradual. My big problem with rules-heavy is when players succeed at absurd things that the rules state are do-able, and then get angry and quit the game if the DM tries to disallow it on grounds of realism (happened to someone in my group as a DM and as a player, and it's not pretty from either side).

*Anecdote*: My most memorable/least memorable encounter with a monster as a player was during 3.0 (before 3.5) and was semi-rules light. We were fighting a giant we should have run from, and as some of the party kept it busy, I climbed a tree and jumped onto the giant. After many skill checks and reflex saves to avoid be swatted or smashed by the distracted giant, the PCs managed to take him down. A couple of the players thought that the encounter was a waste because it should have entailed a grapple check, attacks of opportunity and so-on, and got mad at the DM for allowing it (I was fresh out of 2nd ed. at the time). It kind of spoiled the encounter, though technically what I did would have required alot of opposed checks I couldn't succeed using regular rules).

As for GURPS, we played one game of GURPS, which was awesome during character creation and non-combat, but fell apart after our first encounter. One of the players got into an altercation with another tavern drinker, and a brawl started out. After 3 hours of combat to defeat 3 drunken hoodlums, we determined that the quarterstaff is the ultimate weapon in the game, and that combat is alot more in-depth than we realized (not only that, but we weren't even using half the rules for combat, like shock and such).

[Tormsskull]

I'd like 3.5 to be more rules light (like 2nd ed.), but all the rules make the learning curve a little more gradual. My big problem with rules-heavy is when players succeed at absurd things that the rules state are do-able, and then get angry and quit the game if the DM tries to disallow it on grounds of realism (happened to someone in my group as a DM and as a player, and it's not pretty from either side).

I agree 100%. If the DM goes too far from the rules then the players think they are being railroaded, and if the players go to far from realism then the world tends to break apart.

The only way to solve it is for the DM to tell everyone up front that anything very unrealistic is out, and then the players trust the DM to make fair judgments.

This is why I laugh when I see posters say things like "I'll make a wall of iron, and then sell it, and then make another wall of iron, repeat, and be rich." If my players tried those exploits I'd say to them:
"Have you ever heard the story of the mage that tried that same trick 100 years ago?"
"No."
"Think about that."

[Kiero]

Atleast we can all agree that GURPS is in it's own class when compared to D&D, WoD, Paranoia etc..

I'd say GURPS is one of those variable ones. If you've got all the options switched on, it's pretty heavy. If you're using GURPS Lite, more in the medium spectrum (or even light for some).

[Diggorian]

D6 was very rules light to me, I felt required to make more houserules to reign things in. Even in the high flair of Star Wars, not even Jedi can fly around like Supes, but by the rules they could. PCs could quickly make X-Wing lifting Yoda look Force feeble.

Hero System is the densest rules set I've ran into, even as a player. My friend that DMed is a geneticist and would make characters for us. Even he had a steep learning curve as evidenced by how newer PCs outclassed older ones.

D20 is a medium for me. The core mechanic is pretty simple but gets bogged down in all the options available. It reminds me of D6 but with firm restrictors.

I just took a look a Wushu Open, from your very sig Kiero. That is THE lightest rules I've seen, although the full book maybe more complex.

[Kiero]

I just took a look a Wushu Open, from your very sig Kiero. That is THE lightest rules I've seen, although the full book maybe more complex.

Just on this point, there is no "full book". Wushu Open is a primer to help people write their own Wushu games. Reloaded is Open with some discussion to help genericise the game. There is literally everything you need to play Wushu into perpetuity in Open.

The pay-versions have no new rules (well one or two little bits, but nothing drastically different), but lots of discussion on genre, examples of play, sample settings and characters and so on. That goes for Wire-Fu and Pulp-Fu, Roanoke, and I think Hard Budo as well.

[Pronounceable]

My definition: If the entirety of rules won't fit in a 10 page word document, it's rules heavy. If a character sheet has more than 50 words, it's rules heavy.

[Dairun Cates]

As 200th paying member of the International Order of the Risus, I feel it is my duty to point out the quintessential rules light system. There's literally 2 rolling mechanics, and the rest of the rules can be said in 3 sentences. Still, Risus is an amazing system in the right hands. Still, even with the thousands of house rules out there, it seems impossible to make a rules heavy system.

Oh, and the book is a free 10-page download. The paying members just get the nifty 200 page supplement book on adventure design and alternate rules.

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm

[mikeejimbo]

I'd say GURPS is one of those variable ones. If you've got all the options switched on, it's pretty heavy. If you're using GURPS Lite, more in the medium spectrum (or even light for some).

My group seems to play GURPS as very rules-light most of the time, actually. I think it's even more variable than you think.

[Raum]

What about you?

If the rules can be summarized in two pages or less (Over the Edge, Wushu) I consider them rules light. If they take more than a single book of ~250 pages (D&D) they're rules heavy. Then there are all the games in between which take more than a couple pages but less than a book.

Just my 2c of course.

[Diggorian]

Just on this point, there is no "full book". Wushu Open is a primer to help people write their own Wushu games. Reloaded is Open with some discussion to help genericise the game. There is literally everything you need to play Wushu into perpetuity in Open

Well then it IS the most rules game I've ever looked at.

I'd be interested in running (directing?) a game with a my group when player unexpectedly cant make it. If I can improv D&D, this'll be cake

[Dark Knight Renee]

Rules Lite. I'm probably not the best person to ask. If I'm not playing entirely systemless, I play Rules Light D&D, which is a contradiction of terms, really. I use character builds, saving throws and magic rules as guidelines, and often pretty much ignore everything else. That's pretty much what I consider "Rules Lite."

Because sometimes, D&D is just not worth the effort.

[kjones]

Anyone here who hasn't played Hackmaster or Aces & Eights doesn't know the meaning of "rules-heavy".

[Swordguy]

What do you consider "rules light"? Rolemaster.

But I come from heavy-simulation wargames, with Advanced Squad Leader being on the light end of the scale...

Also, my players mildly (read: violently) disagree with my tastes in games, so I'm forced to run "Ultra-lite" systems like d20.

[Dairun Cates]

Anyone here who hasn't played Hackmaster or Aces & Eights doesn't know the meaning of "rules-heavy".

I've seen. Dear lord Hackmaster is scary at points. Still, I've seen even worse examples. One of the quintessential ones is, of course, Fatal (Don't go looking for it if you don't know), but I've seen a few other homebrewed or fan-made systems that just seem to go on forever. There's also the one's that take the d20 system and practically add an entire system on top of it. I know I've picked up a few used game books at half-priced books based on being needlessly complicated or poorly designed.

Oh, and I just realized the other extremely obvious rules light system. Paranoia XP. The rules for players are insanely simple. Don't die, and say what you do. As for GM's...

Spoiler

Show

The entire 2/3rds of the book dedicated to GMs that players can't read details maybe half a page worth of rules, and 200 pages on how to BS to your players and control them.

[Kurald Galain]

I'm pretty much in agreement. And, BTW, the funnest RP experience I (or my players) ever had was GMing a Paranoia game. I'm not familiar with any of the 'Light' options other than Paranoia, though,

Amber DRP is a diceless roleplaying game based on Roger Zelazny's excellent book series. It is effectively almost entirely rules-less.

Over the Edge is about weirdness and investigating it, a bit like Ctulhu only more mystery and less things that want to eat you.

Squeam is hilarious. It's an RPG about those cliche slash B horror movies, you're encouraged to play characters like the Jock and the Bimbo, and your characters have "anti-stats" like curiosity, which means that if you find a suspicious door that is obviously dangerous, you must roll against curiosity to avoid looking into it anyway. And yes, your character is intended do die from a chainsaw-wielding clown or whatnot.


For overly complicated, let me nominate SWORD, as well.

[Kurald Galain]

I'm pretty much in agreement. And, BTW, the funnest RP experience I (or my players) ever had was GMing a Paranoia game. I'm not familiar with any of the 'Light' options other than Paranoia, though,

Amber DRP is a diceless roleplaying game based on Roger Zelazny's excellent book series. It is effectively almost entirely rules-less.

Over the Edge is about weirdness and investigating it, a bit like Ctulhu only more mystery and less things that want to eat you.

Squeam is hilarious. It's an RPG about those cliche slash B horror movies, you're encouraged to play characters like the Jock and the Bimbo, and your characters have "anti-stats" like curiosity, which means that if you find a suspicious door that is obviously dangerous, you must roll against curiosity to avoid looking into it anyway. And yes, your character is intended do die from a chainsaw-wielding clown or whatnot.


For overly complicated, let me nominate SWORD, as well.

[Kiero]

Well then it IS the most rules game I've ever looked at.

I'd be interested in running (directing?) a game with a my group when player unexpectedly cant make it. If I can improv D&D, this'll be cake

There's an article on running Wushu with zero-prep for pickup games.

[Diggorian]

Thanks. That article is about how I'd imagine a game is formed.

[Kiero]

Thanks. That article is about how I'd imagine a game is formed.

Something I'd strongly recommend if your game is going to have a lot of action: fix everyone's fighting Trait to the same number (4 works best, IMO). On past experience the person with the lower number can feel pretty ineffective when those who went with higher are romping through the challenges. It's discussed in more detail as an Optional Extra in Reloaded.