Are rules-light systems more accessible?

[Zuras]

Any RPG system needs to provide a minimum of three things

1. It has to tell you how to do things
2. It has to define the kind of things you can do
3. It has to give you some idea of why you're doing the thing in the first place


#3 is the part where a rules-light system can (but is not guaranteed to) easily fail new players. People with RPG experience can infer the context from the rules themselves, and very likely picked the new system entirely because it fit context they already had. New players, however, who might have picked it up based on the cover art, or subject matter (somebody might, for example, pick up Flying Circus because "oh, this is a game about airplanes!"), need to have "what is the goal of this game" explained to them.

Rules-heavy systems generally define what you can do enough that context comes naturally - by the time you're finished skimming the D&D character classes, you get the idea that you're a group going into dark places, fighting monsters, and taking their stuff. A hypothetical rules-light version with all abilities less defined (to maximize player freedom, counting on the archetype you want to play constraining your actions)? That might not come across.

That said, #2 can also be a big stumbling block. I've had a lot of new players, unable to come up with what their characters would do, start going through their class abilities like a checklist until they find an action that fits. A lot of rules light systems depend on "well, the players will come up with what they want to do, the GM decides which of the small number of skills apply, and you roll for it", which can lead to boring play if the players haven't started coming up with "these are the kind of things I should be able to do" yet.

#1 is pretty much the least difficult to do, not least because most resolution mechanics can be explained in a paragraph no matter how light or heavy the rest of the rules are. In most cases, they can be expressed in a sentence.

I think this is one great way to summarize the situation. I note that you specify “system” and not “rule set”, so maybe the point is that you can have a game with only two pages of rules, but the game system is significantly more than those two pages of rules.

To give a concrete example: Knave, an excellent light OSR system, fits its rules on six pages (arguable less, since some of the pages are random tables). Knave manages this because it is an attribute-based roll-under system. The vast majority of the complexity of the system boils down to two questions: what attribute applies to a given task, and whether the task is more or less difficult than average.

Knave succeeds in meeting requirement #1 (for me and presumably many others) because we already have well-established head canons for what the six D&D stats represent (although the Knave rules specifically call out a few differences with base D&D to balance the utility of all stats equally), and 5e DMs have been stuck assigning difficulty on the fly for ages already.

Additionally, because Knave is intended primarily as a tool to run a cool OSR dungeon, it doesn’t even attempt to fully answer requirement #2. Instead it expects the dungeon you’re running to specify many of the details needed to let the players interact with it. If you’re trying to use it for a dungeon with traps described as “pit trap, DC 12, 2d6+2 damage” instead of one describing how the traps actually work, it’s not going to work very well.

As an OSR dungeon-crawler, #3 is also easy to answer, as your goal is simply to get to the next room without ending up dead, and extract as much treasure from the dungeon as possible.

[Tanarii]

That said, #2 can also be a big stumbling block. I've had a lot of new players, unable to come up with what their characters would do, start going through their class abilities like a checklist until they find an action that fits. A lot of rules light systems depend on "well, the players will come up with what they want to do, the GM decides which of the small number of skills apply, and you roll for it", which can lead to boring play if the players haven't started coming up with "these are the kind of things I should be able to do" yet.

It's a pretty big thing if the rules don't give the players an idea of the scope of the things that are expected to be possible.

Can my warrior leap 60ft to make an attack?
Can my martial artist run up walls, jump off a cloud, or bend elements?
Can I cast spells? How powerful?
Can I shoot a superhero blast of some kind?

[Gnoman]

Some 1 page rpgs do present all the three mentioned elements in a short space.

Correct - I didn't say this was a universal failure of rules-light or even rules-minimum systems. I labeled it as a potential pitfall that means rules-light systems are not inherently easier to comprehend for new players just by virtue of being rules light. Individual player mindsets also matter - some people can't really learn a game just by reading the rules, some need exhaustive rules for things to make sense.

[Cluedrew]

D&d is always had a strong simulationist vibe. It has an equally strong gamist vibe in more recent editions but it doesn't override the prior.

I'm going to just need an longer explanation of how you are using these terms to make sense of this.

It (that bolded part) is not a real problem; it's something you just invented. To assert that "they cannot play anything else" requires far more evidence than a discussion forum can possibly fit.

I'm not making that up. Now, for clarity, I don't mean there is no theoretical situation where they couldn't learn with enough time and energy. But I have played with someone who, even with us actively teaching them, could make no forward progress before they killed the campaign. So practically speaking, I don't think it is going to happen and I am willing to use the word "cannot" in that situation.

[KorvinStarmast]

Now, for clarity, I don't mean there is no theoretical situation where they couldn't learn with enough time and energy. But I have played with someone who, even with us actively teaching them, could make no forward progress before they killed the campaign. So practically speaking, I don't think it is going to happen and I am willing to use the word "cannot" in that situation.

You presented this as something true, as a fact, not an outlier - which is what it appears to be. My experience is that most people are easily able to handle multiple kinds of games.
Hence my response as regards your hyperbole.
Gee, you met one player who can't handle a different game.
Well, tell the truth. That's one player.

[stoutstien]

I'm going to just need an longer explanation of how you are using these terms to make sense of this.

gamist is the style which values setting up a fair challenge for the players (as opposed to the PCs). The challenges may be tactical combat, intellectual mysteries, politics, or anything else. The players will try to solve the problems they are presented with, and in turn the GM will make these challenges solvable if they act intelligently within the contract.

simulationist is the style which values resolving in-game events based solely on game-world considerations, without allowing any meta-game concerns to affect the decision. Thus, a fully simulationist GM will not fudge results to save PCs or to save her plot, or even change facts unknown to the players. Such a GM may use meta-game considerations to decide meta-game issues like who is playing which character, whether to play out a conversation word for word, and so forth, but she will resolve actual in-game events based on what would "really" happen.

It's often confused for realism-simulation where the game is meant to model close to real life.



In short content that is designed for the player is gamist and content designed for the character is simulationist. I think most would agree that they're both important components when dealing with games there is broad as DND.

[Cluedrew]

To KorvinStarmast: In addition I would like to clarify that this is more common with D&D than with other systems simply because the player base is larger and because the chance having only played D&D is larger. It is not because of any innate qualities of the system itself.

To stoutstien: Yes, under that model I would argue that D&D is definitely more focused on the game than the simulation. From the "remember to check for traps" of the old days, to the 1-20 character progressions of 3rd and the continued presence of a squad tactics mini-game across editions (peaking of course in 4th), D&D is loaded with player facing challenges.

[Zuras]

It's a pretty big thing if the rules don't give the players an idea of the scope of the things that are expected to be possible.

Can my warrior leap 60ft to make an attack?
Can my martial artist run up walls, jump off a cloud, or bend elements?
Can I cast spells? How powerful?
Can I shoot a superhero blast of some kind?

Isn’t this the case with most “generic” rule systems? The rules in FATE don’t tell you how to interpret the levels on the high end of the difficulty scale without a feel for the genre conventions.

The issue with players is more when they don’t have a good reference point to start the conversation with the GM. I’ve played in sci-fi FATE games where I wasn’t sure if the limits of what I could do as a science officer, but I knew enough to start by asking the GM ridiculous things like “can I reverse the polarity?” and “can I de-modulate the carrier wave the enemy weapon is using” so the GM could figure things out and present narrative problems.

In the examples you gave, the GM can simply say yes, yes-but (it will cost a metacurrency point or other resource), no, or maybe (providing a DC or other estimate of their odds). We talk a lot about how a good GM can cover a multitude of sins for a system, but the one thing they can’t do is get the players to make the initial ask.

[Jay R]

That depends on what “accessible” means to you.

It’s easier to learn the rules of a rules-light system. Go is more accessible in that sense than chess is. You can learn the rules in two minutes.

But it’s just as hard to become a master of one of them than the other. [Actually, it may be harder to become good at Go than at Chess.]

Similarly, it’s easier to learn the rules of original D&D (printed on 29 8½” x 11” sheets of paper) than to learn all the rules of 3.5e. But system mastery of original D&D is purely based on imagination, cleverness, and reading the DM; merely knowing the rules does not make you a good player.

And original D&D and D&D 3.5e with poor DMs are equally inaccessible to new players

But the crucial observation is this: “accessibility” isn’t an automatic quality of a game system. Obviously, I want my players to be able to play the game, but if the GM is good, he will make that happen with any system. I’ve run several games, and I know that I can make the game accessible. When I ran (or played) Champions, I knew I would have to create the character sheets for one or two other players, since the arithmetic involved wasn’t “accessible” to them. No problem; grade-school arithmetic is not a barrier for me. I was able to make them characters (from their ideas) that they were able to play and enjoy. But that game would not have been accessible to them without me there.

So in a very simplistic sense, yes, of course it’s easier to learn a few rules than a lot of rules. But the GM's expertise has a lot to do with it as well, and getting good at any game requires some effort.

[Lucas Yew]

(...)

In short content that is designed for the player is gamist and content designed for the character is simulationist. I think most would agree that they're both important components when dealing with games there is broad as DND.

May I poach the bolded quote for my enlightening, please? :o

[stoutstien]

May I poach the bolded quote for my enlightening, please? :o

Lol sure. I probably spend way too much time thinking about this stuff.

[Kurald Galain]

Is a game really “rules light” if it only has two pages of rules, but you have to watch several hours of actual plays before you’re actually sure how to play it? Or is this universal to all RPGs (light, heavy, whatever) and I just haven’t noticed it before?

It is pretty universal (and has been for a long time) that RPGs are easiest to pick up when you can watch someone play, or when you have at least one experienced person in the group. It's just that D&D'esque games have a ton of podcasts that make them easy to watch, and have a ton of derived games (most any MMORPG, or boardgames like Arkham Horror) that have a broader audience. So D&D'esque games are accessible in the sense that non-roleplayers are likely to be sort-of-familiar with them already.

It is also pretty universal that almost all RPGs (including rules-heavy ones) can be played by players that don't know any of the rules, in the sense that "you tell me what you want to do, and I'll tell you what (and if) to roll". Of course, this does require that the GM knows the rules, and in this case D&D'esque games are probably more accessible than anything rules-light.

But, for experienced RPG players who want to pick up a new system, yeah, rules-light is generally going to be more accessible than asking them to read yet another 300-plus-page rulebook.

[Duff]

Yes. But only if they are for a game that has limited scope.

As others have said, rules lite games often fail to give inexperienced players enough prompts about what they can do, enough limits so they don't suffer from decision paralysis.

Limited games "You're a private detective and friends, trying to solve the mystery and not get shot" usually limit the options and are easier to write in such a way that characters have the needed prompts without needing too much bulk.

The other thing rules lite games probably need is a GM willing and able to do more of the lifting.
In a rules dense game, the GM will just look up the rule, or look up the difficulty table, and they can tell the player what's going on. What's the difficulty? What will the need to roll? What was the result?

That's either an experienced GM, or a naturally strong one

[Shackled Slayer]

If i may weigh in, I would offer the short answer to your initial question is No.
i feel that almost every RPG has a learning curve, and it takes time for any system to get it's meaning across. rules lite systems aim to minimize that by simplifying chunks of crunch, but they still require a level of familiarization to fully understand. Hell, back when i ran my lasers and feelings game i had to explain the core mechanics about 3 times to get the group to understand how it worked, and that's a game that's SO rules lite that it may as well just be called "Make believe with 3 dice"

another part of it is, in fact, genre familiarity (in direct opposition to an above comment, somewhere). If you haven't played or run more than a couple cyberpunk games, of course it's going to be difficult to play any kind of cyberpunk system. do you know how many D&D campaign obstacles could be overcome with cell phone service? my current pathfinder campaign would simply not work if instant communication over any distance were a thing anyone had access to, as it features the players being messengers for both a courtly romance and political tension between the region capital and a province. that doesn't even touch on the actual meat and potatoes of body augmentations and a setting that doesn't have magic, but does have high technology, science, and advanced medicine. Which is to say, any system that is outside of the genre your familiar with is going to take some time to adapt to, let alone on top of the underlying mechanical rules that dictate how you interface with that sort of thing.

On top of that, every game system represents an entirely different mind set and framework for what players have adapted to already, in the case of D&D players/GMs trying a new, rules lite system. D&D has very strict rules dictating when you can move, take an action, use a bonus action and for what, whether pulling a lever is an action or a free action, how far you can move in a given turn, ECT ECT.
Where as in a more rules lite game, none of that is explicitly written out, and how much you can do in a single turn is much more open to conversation, and can allow players at baseline to do things D&D would require 3 feats and a racial feature to do.
in short, if a player is used to having every possible course of action have a ruling, a system that just says "you can do almost anything you want." seems like a featureless wall to scale, when in fact it's a canvas of possibility.

which is to say that every game ingrains modes of thinking that condition players to think along certain lines, and being presented with something that works radically different can be disorienting and create an artificial sense of inaccessibility, even when it would seem the opposite for one unacquainted with other TTRPG experiences.

[Devils_Advocate]

You presented this as something true, as a fact, not an outlier - which is what it appears to be. My experience is that most people are easily able to handle multiple kinds of games.
Hence my response as regards your hyperbole.
Gee, you met one player who can't handle a different game.
Well, tell the truth. That's one player.

It's statistically very unlikely that that one player is the only person on Earth who fits that description. Even assuming for the sake of argument that Cluedrew has only encountered the one, there are almost certainly others. And using "people" to refer to more than one person isn't really hyperbole, it's just normal use of pluralization. (If you really want to get prescriptive about it, the proper plural is "persons", but I don't think that's your objection here.) Cluedrew didn't say "most people", just "people".

If you acknowledge that someone doesn't believe something and isn't trying to convince anyone else of it, and that's not what they literally said... at that point, there's no non-contrived sense in which that's what they meant, is there?

(Also D&D is "simulationist"?)

D&D is faux-simulationist gamist. It tracks various quantities that can be assumed to very roughly correspond to stuff on the fiction layer, but the gamey details are by default assumed not to correspond. E.g., the player characters "really do" gradually improve their capabilities by testing them against increasingly difficult challenges. But getting better at picking locks just by killing enough kobolds, to borrow an example from On the Origin of PCs, probably isn't how the setting "actually" works.

D&d is always had a strong simulationist vibe. It has an equally strong gamist vibe in more recent editions but it doesn't override the prior.
People often confuse this with saying that the game is a simulation representing something else like the real world which all it really means is it's simulating itself.

Everything is a perfect simulation of itself. If that alone were simulationism, nothing would be any more simulationist than anything else.

But, as I'm learning in the 5e forum, there are a fair number of people who just NEED that crunch to give details and specifics for them to play. They can't imagine being a two weapon fighter, they need the rules to specifically tell them how they are able to roll extra or do something because they're fighting with two weapons.

An RPG's fiction is shared. It's not about whether one person can imagine something at all, it's about getting multiple people to imagine something, if not in the same way, at least in ways that don't contradict each other.

Is fighting with two weapons at once generally worse than using just one, as evidenced by humans usually not doing that? Is it instead twice as effective, because this is flashy cinematic fiction that eschews boring realism? Is there a trade-off that makes dual-wielding sometimes worth it and sometimes not, because different options should have different pros and cons? Or does it work exactly the same as fighting with one weapon, because it's just an aesthetic choice?

It's not even that it's not obvious which approach to use, it's that each approach is obviously the right one to some contingent of gamers. Personally, I'm fine with any of the above, but I do want to have some level of extremely basic understanding of what broad paradigm we're operating under before we even get to the "Ask the GM" stage.

A system may lay out a general approach like "gritty and realistic", "advantages should have costs", or whatever. Failing that, it may be easy to generalize the "correct" approach from examples or setting fiction. Failing that, it's an incomplete "build-a-game" system at that point. Possibly deliberately so, especially if the system is supposed to be genre-neutral. That may even be desirable to a GM who understands how a genre functions. To someone looking for advice on how to achieve a certain sort of tone or aesthetic, on the other hand, "Do it yourself" is rather less than useful.

[Satinavian]

ImE rules light systems are not more accessable.

They require far more common expectations to actually work. It is way easier to skim a couple hundred rule pages and later look things up you don't remember than to develop such an understanding.
Furthermore rules light systems tend to be bad when some people want to subvert genre expectations. Or when themes shift during a game.


And to the side discourse : D&D is not simulationist at all. It is full of monsters that don't work in any proper ecology or make sense in any of its official settings. Its economy is the most wonky i have ever seen in any game. It's magic is purely built for the game loop and PC challenges and mostly ignored for worldbuilding. It's combat system ... sure, it once had many pole-arms etc, but compared to competitors there is very little proper simulation. And how the class system should work in societies is hardly adressed.
Basically nothing in this game is crafted to properly play based on in-game considerations. If it has any focus at all, it is about gameplay loops and appropriate challenges. But actually it is just a pretty unfocused game.

Sure, traditionally people who wanted a more story focused experienced called D&D simulationist and used it as example for how it didn't provide what they needed, but they were pretty much wrong with this assessment.

Just contrast it with another of the old, big systems : SR. Think about how deeply connected the SR rules and the setting traditionally have been and how easy it is to play the game based on what makes sense in the world.

[kyoryu]

Is fighting with two weapons at once generally worse than using just one, as evidenced by humans usually not doing that? Is it instead twice as effective, because this is flashy cinematic fiction that eschews boring realism? Is there a trade-off that makes dual-wielding sometimes worth it and sometimes not, because different options should have different pros and cons? Or does it work exactly the same as fighting with one weapon, because it's just an aesthetic choice?

It's not even that it's not obvious which approach to use, it's that each approach is obviously the right one to some contingent of gamers.

Even beyond that, each approach is right for some specific games and scenarios. As a gamer, the approach I'd prefer depends heavily on what game (not system) I'm playing.

ImE rules light systems are not more accessable.

They require far more common expectations to actually work. It is way easier to skim a couple hundred rule pages and later look things up you don't remember than to develop such an understanding.
Furthermore rules light systems tend to be bad when some people want to subvert genre expectations. Or when themes shift during a game.

I think that's very heavily player dependent. I play mostly rules-light games, and those are issues I just don't have. I think as long as you have a reasonably flexible GM, and reasonably flexible players, and a system that is reasonably set up to allow for the appropriate flexibility, it doesn't come up very much, and is pretty easily resolved when it does.

IOW, it's not really so much about having a shared understanding up front, it's about coming to a shared understanding through play. As a GM, you have to calibrate your "this isn't how it works" meter fairly high, and presume that if a player suggests something, it's consistent with the world to them. Sure, you can override that, but do so when it really really really conflicts with the setting or known facts. And on the same side, as a player you need to accept that on occasion your assumptions will be wrong, and roll with that.

For some players and GMs, this absolutely doesn't work. And those players should probably avoid rules light games.

Two examples from actual play: In one case, a player wanted to go to the Mage's Guild. I hadn't planned or designed a mage's guild. But, there wasn't any strong reason why there couldn't be one, so boom, we went to the Mage's Guild.

On the other side, at one point a runecaster character wanted to do some rune magic on the run. That didn't jibe with my understanding of how runecasting would work, so I said that and asked the table for their opinions. The table agreed with that, the player accepted it, and we moved forward, and made some concessions to the player after about how runecasting would work, and gave an opportunity to modify the character as needed.

One of the biggest tricks as a GM in a scenario like this is to avoid just saying "no" to players. Instead, tell them the requirements to do what they want to do.

[truemane]

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