Mastodawn

PallasRiot 3d ago

Rules lite TTRPG systems are a scourge on the hobby and a fundamental misunderstanding of what games are. Trying to "streamline" games is largely a pathological drive from capitalist pressures, we can surely make the most efficient rules lite system ever by simply having everyone gather on a Friday, declare themselves heroic, and have a pizza. The point of a game isn't strictly the outcome, it's the process as well. It's primarily the process even!

This doesn't mean that crunchy automatically means better, but the rules-facilitated process of TTRPGs is inherent to the form, it's a requirement, and the crunch is necessary for a reason. Robust rules build shared physics and give contour to the game's reality, they create opportunities for the unexpected and unlikely which requires enough inputs for people to *have expectations*, it provides opportunities for complex meta-storytelling where the rules themselves inform how the world is interacted with, what is trustworthy, etc.

Rules lite systems inevitably eat away at these crucial aspects of tabletop gaming. Just play Munchkin, there's literally nothing wrong with that!

FoolishOwl 3d ago

@PallasRiot I disagree. I find that a well designed rules light system is more comprehensible, so the rules are more likely to be understood and followed. I also favor a lot of improvisation. It's a different style of play.

As for capitalism, I think they want to sell stuff without regard to whether people use it.

PallasRiot 2d ago

@foolishowl There are very nearly zero ttrpg systems that are too complicated for someone to learn if they're interested in the hobby.

Rules lite systems are fast to produce, require far less play testing, fewer contributors, etc, they're in vogue because they're cheap and don't require much labor to pump out. Many of the studios that used to employ a bunch of designers have long since fired their teams down to the bare bones and "streamlined" their games because pumping out cheap material with marketing tie-ins is more profitable, and small operations favor rules lite systems because they don't have the capital. It's the Amazon-ification of the ttrpg market.

FoolishOwl 2d ago

@PallasRiot People will learn complex TTRPG systems if they want to learn complex TTRPG systems. That's not everyone.

Nearly all of the marketing tie-ins I see are specifically for D&D 5E, or Warhammer 40K, or a handful of other games from major game publishers. I've gotten a few buttons and a tee-shirt from crowdfunded games, but I don't think that amounts to much.

Most of the rules light systems I know of are sold for a few dollars online by indie designers. There are definitely some corporations making money off being intermediaries, though.

PallasRiot 2d ago

@foolishowl That's part of my point: the rules-lite-ification of games has hollowed out studios and reduced the labor power of designers, pushing indie designers to focus on cheap, easy to publish rules-lite borderline slop. The studios that once would have supported expensive dev teams realized they could fire most of their workers, and the effect on the market is a push towards cheaper, lower quality output as fast as possible. The market no longer supports multi-year games testing with a bunch of contributors, which is what robust games thrive on.

verified_transgender

@PallasRiot @foolishowl okay all of that can be true without requiring games with complex rule sets to be superior and rules-lite games to be bad. that's just your preference. I think generally most games aren't that good, regardless of how many rules they have. it's just that it's easier to produce lots of mediocre games fast if they aren't heavy on rules, but well designed and thought out rules-lite games totally exist.

FoolishOwl 2d ago

@elexia @PallasRiot Yes, exactly.

Ms. Rachel Andry (Isn't Real)2d ago

@elexia @PallasRiot @foolishowl yep, totally agreed. there's plenty of good, happy mediums to be found between "basically just sparkling improv" and F.A.T.A.L.

PallasRiot 2d ago

@elexia @foolishowl My second post there is saying that more crunch doesn't mean better. Adding arbitrary complexity doesn't make a game better, but games-as-process requires systems more robust than improv with a few coin flips. The prevalence of Powered by the Apocalypse clones and similar rules light game has lead to worse games on the whole, in part because they're not providing sufficiently robust mechanics to actually have real game process to speak of.

FoolishOwl 2d ago

@PallasRiot @elexia You don't even need the coin flips. "Yes and" works as a role-playing game, even if it's not to everyone's tastes.

PallasRiot 2d ago

@foolishowl @elexia I mean that's definitionally not a TTRPG

FoolishOwl 2d ago

@PallasRiot @elexia It's role-playing. It's a game. You can do it sitting at a table.

I think that sort of free improvisation is foundational to the hobby.

I was reading an interview site with one of the players of Ed Greenwood's home campaign. She described how she didn't bring dice to a session because she knew they wouldn't be doing any combat that session.

PallasRiot 2d ago

@foolishowl @elexia It's foundational but not the whole thing

verified_transgender

@PallasRiot @foolishowl look, you have every right to enjoy games with more in-depth mechanics more, but no amount of jargon is gonna make it the one correct way to have fun that everyone should adopt or get out of the hobby. people are allowed to play simpler games if they enjoy them more, not everyone needs to be autistic about games in the exact same way.

PallasRiot 2d ago

@elexia @foolishowl You can say it's jargon to insist there's no difference between a movie and three people reciting lines around the water cooler but I'm just going to insist the difference matters.

verified_transgender

@PallasRiot @foolishowl that's not what we're arguing here though. it's more like you're arguing that movies have to have a certain complexity or they are bad movies and people need to stop watching them because they are ruining your hobby of watching extremely intricate movies. which is a bad argument.

verified_transgender

@PallasRiot @foolishowl for what it's worth I actually agree with you that pure improv without a ruleset isn't a TTRPG

FoolishOwl 2d ago

@elexia @PallasRiot In the 90s and 00s, there were heated debates about how to formally define and classify TTRPGs, which in retrospect were pretentious and tiresome, but at least I felt they articulated that there's a wide variation in game design and player experience.

I'm still puzzled by the idea that "rules light" is about capitalism flooding the market. Most examples of "rules light" games I know are written by individuals, and a lot of them are given away for free. PBTA and BITD have publishers behind them, but small ones that are dwarfed by Wizards of the Coast or Games Workshop.

(Personally I think of PBTA and BITD games as kind of medium. By "rules light" I think of things like 24XX or Cairn, which are only a few pages long.)

PallasRiot 2d ago

@elexia @foolishowl I'm arguing that market conditions that produce a lot of Marvel movie style slop is bad for movies in general, and that there is a difference in quality.

Or to use a different example I don't actually care if someone really enjoys McDonalds, that's their business and doesn't effect me. I'm not making an individual consumptive argument. Economic and social systems that produce a lot of McDonalds and not a lot of home cooked meals are producing worse food though, there is actually a difference in quality that we can point to.

FoolishOwl 2d ago

@PallasRiot @elexia That's the funny thing. I'd have compared rules-light games to home cooking and rules-heavy to prepared foods with a lot of additives.

EDIT: well, I suppose I'd think of the rules as more like cooking utensils and ingredients.

2something 2d ago

@PallasRiot @elexia @foolishowl

I've noticed a trend with people who say PbA is "rules lite."

The people who primarily play D&D and its clones tend to ignore a lot of D&D's rules for things outside of combat. In 3rd-5th edition, a common example is the "diplomacy" or "pursuasion" skill. Almost no one runs it by the book, and many groups have their own house rules without realizing it.

So people who play mostly D&D see the rules for a Powered by Apocalypse game and assume, possibly unconsciously, that they can ignore all the rules that aren't about combat.

So my hypothesis is that the majority (though not all) of people who believe PbA is "rules lite" are people who primarily play D&D and D&D-clones and are paying most attention to the combat rules.

I don't think PbA is rules lite: the core rulebook for Apocalypse World is 300 pages, and the core rulebook for Dungeon World is 400 pages. People called my chess variant too complicated, and the rules fit in 11 pages!

PallasRiot 2d ago

@2something @foolishowl @elexia I've played everything from D&D 2nd through 5th to Exalted to Ars Magica to nearly single page indie games to old d30 adventures and all sorts of other stuff.

No true Scotsman would find Pathfinder too complicated to learn!

CC: @[email protected]

PallasRiot 2d ago

@cy @foolishowl I think once you're saying that Pathfinder is too complicated you're probably being like deeply condescending to hypothetical TTRPG players. I don't think this is a No True Scotsman as I'm not making some non-substantive purity point here. As an example, it's not a No True Scotsman fallacy to say that street racing hobbyists doesn't include people who don't street race. I'm not saying that people who don't learn Pathfinder aren't TTRPG hobbyists, I'm saying that I don't think games with robust rules are actually that inaccessible.

For the record I don't think Pathfinder is too hard to learn, even though it's infamous for its... rather thick and expensive rulebooks. I can definitely understand people who might not be particularly interested in doing so.

CC: @[email protected]

Alex P. 👹2d ago

@PallasRiot
I think the conventional separation here is kinda dubious because it's slapping a linear continuum on what's more of a multi-dimensional space.

This comes from experience with PBTA, particularly seeing a mix of good games and bad games — the former have many of the virtues of the "rules heavy" game you mention with a structure most people call light, while the latter end up committing the cardinal sins of "rules light" (half-baked, generic, doesn't do much) that you mention here.

Alex P. 👹2d ago

@PallasRiot
A lot of this has to do with what the rules *do,* imo.

Part of the hostility towards the big-book games is that a lot of them carried around rules that didn't really work, didn't really add anything, or bogged the game down in reference-hunting or plodding procedural resolution.

But you're very much right that a common failure mode of "rules light" design is "step 2. draw the rest of the owl" — a homeopathic game, a barely-there sketch of a game you gotta finish building in play.