What I mean is, recently, I've come to see that I really, really, don't like games where there's a lot of hand-waviness going on. I've written about this on RPG.net recently, but this is a different crowd, so I thought I'd post here too:

Bear with me. This is a personal idea, personally conceived, with personal insight on personal views. It is personal.

Basically, my recent fling with Fate 3.0 showed me something about my GMing that I did not know before now. In times past, I felt as a busy adult, that I needed lighter systems that allowed fast character creation and quick resolution of things like combat. I thought.

Turns out that those light, quick games (specifically I'm talking about Savage Worlds and Fate 3.0, as already mentioned), for me, aren't light when you actually run them. For me, I've found, without that "hard base" that many crunchier games provide, I find myself unable to adequately judge "how much or how long" something should be in terms of game resolution.

That's the thing - I find it easier to GM when there is more spelled out stuff, than when I needed to constantly decide and adjudicate on things. Strangely, the more rules I have, it seems, the better I am able to riff off them, ignore them, fudge them, whatever, for the betterment of the game. With less explicit "rules" or concrete terms, I found myself drowning in the constant soup of things to decide on.

Not to say I hate those games - SOTC's GM advice was pure awesome. But the game itself? Yeah, I tried, VERY HARD, to love it, but just couldn't. A very pretty thing, but not enough under the hood, so to speak.

Which was odd because, in many other ways, I agree with what it's trying to do. So, I've recently switch my SOTC game to GURPS, and I think my players were already happier just seeing the characters I converted for them.

Anyone feel the same? Is it just me and the view is off? If you feel opposite, why so? Let's discuss!

Maybe because my memory isn't what it was in my teens and 20s, I find the comprehensive rules systems that give you a mechanic for every situation and go into fine detail, make it harder for me to GM these days. With games like Savage Worlds, I can very easily run a game, with little interruption to the flow. With the medium to heavy systems, I find myself constantly referring to the book. What I like are broad principles that I can apply to specific rules situations. That way, I don't have to look up as much, or memorize a lot of material. Some of this may just be that I don't have the time I used to to read, and re-read the rule books.

I don't need a rule for everything, but I think "rules-lite" (or light, whatever) is bullshit. Once you remove enough rules, you also remove the game, and without the game you might as well just hand out community theater improv exercises.

Actually, Savage Worlds and Spirit of the Century aren't all that light.  SW is medium.  SOTC pretends to be light but tacks on quite a few extra bits that weigh it down.  To really be light, I think a game needs to have < 20 pages of rules or something along those lines.  Then there are ultralights with < 5 pages of rules and character stats that easily fit on an index card.
 
I can run light or medium rules but I'm done with heavy.  I find many of the rules cover things that a trivial and don't matter much.  In the real world, it doesn't matter that much if you are shooting at someone 30' or 40' away, they're both close but not point blank.  Such matters shouldn't matter too much in a game, though theyoften wind up mattering due to range breaks and the limits of a turn structure.    
 
I hate taking time to look up rules within a game. It's ok to have somewhat fiddly vehicle construction rules or the like but I want to be able to memorize the core rules.  There are two main reasons for this.
 
1) Tense situations such as combat should feel tense.  A key factor that most games lose is timing.  If it takes two hours resolve a thirty second battle, the game is a poor simulation no matter detailed and researched the rules are.  You've totally lost the time pressure and the quick reactions of a fluid situation and replaced it with time consuming looking up rules to optimize choices.  Quick resolution will result in players making suboptimal choices - that's great as that's realistic.  If you look at accounts of battles, all sort of stupid things happen because people were in the moment.
 
2)  I like plot and character based games so I want players to focus their attention on a higher level.  I don't want them micromanaging every aspect and be so busy that they don't see all the boring railroad plots most advetnures have.  I wan tthem making decisions that potentially drastically change the direction of the game.  I want them deciding whether to finish rooting out the local villains first or fly directly to Egypt to deal with the leaders.  Do they shoot the monster or the robot?  Do they get the gold or the princess?  I don't want them spending too much time on whether they go with a .44 or a 9mm. as they both work pretty well at killing.
 
I can go with D20 as I know it well and it's easy to find players for.  That's as complicated as I go and I tend to go with simpler when I run things.

Quote from: Mencelus;367338What I mean is, recently, I've come to see that I really, really, don't like games where there's a lot of hand-waviness going on. I've written about this on RPG.net recently, but this is a different crowd, so I thought I'd post here too....

Some people prefer "rules heavy" or "rules medium" to "rules light". Different tastes for different folks. There is nothing inherently "better" about a RPG with rules to cover everything nor is there anything inherently "better" about a RPG whose rules are more of a light framework. Choose rules based on the desires and needs of the GM (mainly as he/she has to deal with them most and the play experience will generally be bad if the GM is forced to use rules he/she isn't comfortable with) and players in the group.

Quote from: Mencelus;367338That's the thing - I find it easier to GM when there is more spelled out stuff, than when I needed to constantly decide and adjudicate on things. Strangely, the more rules I have, it seems, the better I am able to riff off them, ignore them, fudge them, whatever, for the betterment of the game. With less explicit "rules" or concrete terms, I found myself drowning in the constant soup of things to decide on.

I understand where you are coming from here, and I feel the same way some what.  In my personal brand of creativity, I like to scour existing material and then extrapolate from the existing base line of written materials.  As it applies to rules: if there is a good amount of base information, then it's easier for me to extrapolate rulings for things not covered by the rules.

My go-to game for the last 30-odd years has been Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying.  Almost from the very beginning, I found myself stripping the rules down to a "lite" framework.  The benefit of doing this sort of thing with a game like this is that the various rules bits are effectively modular, and I could add crunchier bits as needed.  It's easier to add to something as you need it than it is to remove a thing after it's already been introduced.

I've only used "lite" games for one-shots or short scenarios.  Lengthier games have always seemed to demand a system with a better capacity for broader contingencies.

!i!

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;367351I don't need a rule for everything, but I think "rules-lite" (or light, whatever) is bullshit.

I'm curious -- have you ever played Diplomacy?  If so, did you enjoy it?

QuoteOnce you remove enough rules, you also remove the game, and without the game you might as well just hand out community theater improv exercises.

Simple solution -- don't remove too many rules.  And your personal bias for tactical over thespy roleplaying is, as usual, duly noted.

!i!

Quote from: Ian Absentia;367375My go-to game for the last 30-odd years has been Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying.  Almost from the very beginning, I found myself stripping the rules down to a "lite" framework.  The benefit of doing this sort of thing with a game like this is that the various rules bits are effectively modular, and I could add crunchier bits as needed.  It's easier to add to something as you need it than it is to remove a thing after it's already been introduced.

That's how I use GURPS 4e really - start with the basic stuff, and as needed, add in things. What I don't like is, as you say, such a modular base doesn't exist at all - as I found with Fate. The stuff going on in people's imaginations didn't line up with what was happening at the table with Fate, sadly.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;367342Maybe because my memory isn't what it was in my teens and 20s, I find the comprehensive rules systems that give you a mechanic for every situation and go into fine detail, make it harder for me to GM these days. With games like Savage Worlds, I can very easily run a game, with little interruption to the flow. With the medium to heavy systems, I find myself constantly referring to the book. What I like are broad principles that I can apply to specific rules situations. That way, I don't have to look up as much, or memorize a lot of material. Some of this may just be that I don't have the time I used to to read, and re-read the rule books.

Well, one must point out that when games are "rules heavy" these days, they actually tend to be more complex than the games that were considered "rules heavy" back in the day (AD&D, RoleMaster, for instance).

Personally, I think rules systems are designed for a purpose, i.e. a specific resulting game-play envisioned by the designer(s), or unintentionally derived/perverted from this original vision. As such, the complexity of the rules has a purpose and direct impact on the actual game when it is played.

I will thus choose a specific game system for a specific game play, and my choices will vary from one campaign to the next according to my wishes, those of the players, the tastes of everyone involved, the aims of the campaign, et cetera.

Generally, I find that rules-light games serve as a good base on which to build a very organic, specific game play where house rules are added as need be. Assuming many houserules come into play (which isn't automatically the case, especially if you want fast game play with lots of on-the-spot adjudication involved, which of course isn't for everyone or every group out there), this results in a sort of home system that matches the campaign's intent, while necessitating a modicum of organization, and some non-negligible amount of thought between game sessions. The resulting synergy between the game play desired and the game mechanics used at the table is rewarding in itself.

Consequently, rules-heavy systems provide a specific game experience while saving you the time to have to houserule too many aspects of it. If a particular rules-heavy system matches the campaign's intent, it makes sense to me to just use this game system and devote more of my attention to other campaign related matters rather than the former rules-light approach. Some point here and there may need to be houseruled or clarified at some point, but the extensive rules frame has done most of the work for me already. The counter to this of course is that since these systems provide very specific game experiences, rules-heavy systems won't be appropriate for every possible campaign in every possible case.

There are pros and cons to both extremes, with a world of excluded-middle in-between.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;367342Maybe because my memory isn't what it was in my teens and 20s, I find the comprehensive rules systems that give you a mechanic for every situation and go into fine detail, make it harder for me to GM these days. With games like Savage Worlds, I can very easily run a game, with little interruption to the flow. With the medium to heavy systems, I find myself constantly referring to the book. What I like are broad principles that I can apply to specific rules situations. That way, I don't have to look up as much, or memorize a lot of material. Some of this may just be that I don't have the time I used to to read, and re-read the rule books.

I'm for this . A core mechanic I can extrapolate to cover most of everything. Powers/feats/spells etc can have detailed effects

Quote from: Mencelus;367338What I mean is, recently, I've come to see that I really, really, don't like games where there's a lot of hand-waviness going on. I've written about this on RPG.net recently, but this is a different crowd, so I thought I'd post here too:

Bear with me. This is a personal idea, personally conceived, with personal insight on personal views. It is personal.

Basically, my recent fling with Fate 3.0 showed me something about my GMing that I did not know before now. In times past, I felt as a busy adult, that I needed lighter systems that allowed fast character creation and quick resolution of things like combat. I thought.

Turns out that those light, quick games (specifically I'm talking about Savage Worlds and Fate 3.0, as already mentioned), for me, aren't light when you actually run them. For me, I've found, without that "hard base" that many crunchier games provide, I find myself unable to adequately judge "how much or how long" something should be in terms of game resolution.

That's the thing - I find it easier to GM when there is more spelled out stuff, than when I needed to constantly decide and adjudicate on things. Strangely, the more rules I have, it seems, the better I am able to riff off them, ignore them, fudge them, whatever, for the betterment of the game. With less explicit "rules" or concrete terms, I found myself drowning in the constant soup of things to decide on.

Not to say I hate those games - SOTC's GM advice was pure awesome. But the game itself? Yeah, I tried, VERY HARD, to love it, but just couldn't. A very pretty thing, but not enough under the hood, so to speak.

Which was odd because, in many other ways, I agree with what it's trying to do. So, I've recently switch my SOTC game to GURPS, and I think my players were already happier just seeing the characters I converted for them.

Anyone feel the same? Is it just me and the view is off? If you feel opposite, why so? Let's discuss!

Obviously, the view is not "off".  It's as valid as any one's opinion.

My issue was similar, but slightly different, quite a while ago.  So I need to ask, are you describing the combat rules, character development rules, spell rules?  or all?

I know I agree in some ways.  The rules of the system are the physics of the world; the prediliction and breakdown of the rules shows you waht that particular ruleset is built to do.

My experiences as a GM have taught me this: As a GM I'd rather have rules that I then (mostly) ignore than not have the rules and have to make up shit to fill in the gaps.

The list of things I'm not using from MRQ's combat chapter would be as much as 80-90 of the chapter, but if you handed me a game that only provided that 10% I'd hate it.

Because I do flip to those 'missing' 80-90% of the pages from time to time.

I was SHOCKED (note the all caps) the first time I really sat down as a D&D player in 3E to realize how very little I actually understood of the combat rules. I'd been running it off and on for a couple years (its lifespan at the time) and thought I KNEW it.

Of course, I learn quickly and my current GM is always scrambling to keep up with whatever rule I have chosen to use aside from stick whacking for the current session.  The new edition is out and I can still find new crannies of the rules to mine for interesting solutions to difficult problems.  Like using Engulf to keep a Hag from giving us the Evil Eye while we dealt with her ogre buddies or whatnot...

Quote from: Nicephorus;367357Actually, Savage Worlds and Spirit of the Century aren't all that light.  SW is medium.  SOTC pretends to be light but tacks on quite a few extra bits that weigh it down.  To really be light, I think a game needs to have < 20 pages of rules or something along those lines.  Then there are ultralights with < 5 pages of rules and character stats that easily fit on an index card.

I tend to agree with this. I need to pick up Diaspora one of these days -- I keep hearing that the presentation is much better but I'm trying not to buy games I don't expect to play and the hardcover pricing was a bit high. Maybe the softcover.

The basic FATE rules are pretty light, but the way you apply them is unexpectedly heavy. There's a lot of stuff to track in play, in my experience, without much of a framework for tracking it. I think the variables one juggles in-play have as much of an effect on perceived complexity as the rules on the page.

Quote from: LordVreeg;367384My issue was similar, but slightly different, quite a while ago.  So I need to ask, are you describing the combat rules, character development rules, spell rules?  or all?

Mostly, for Fate 3.0 specifically, it was the interaction between Aspects, Stunts, and the spread of skills. So, all, I guess.

Specifically:

1. What's the difference between taking a stunt as something or listing it with an object?"
2. What's a stunt "worth" compared to an aspect? How about a skill? (some of which are actually attributes but you still roll them all so at least the mechanic is unified).
3. Why don't "skills" modify other "skills?" (the main example was a player who thought his Superb Endurance should help him outrun people - there are rules for this, but they're not clear WHEN to use them, and by how much it should affect things except a flat +1 - even for Superb Endurance).
4. Too many skills! - this turned out to be the skills weren't specific enough, so no one felt their "niche" was protected. Many felt that each character was pretty much like the other ones, with a one or two step difference in skill levels for some stuff, but that's all.
5. WAY too many Aspects - and Aspects didn't mean much past a +2 that you argued for, essentially (even compels were loosey-goosey in effect). The never even got close to using up their Fate points - too many other free-taggable aspects bonuses floating out there.

Basically, the problem was Aspects - they are so loose, even when refined by group agreement, that they were easy to use almost anywhere. Couple this with the fact that all Aspects give the exact same mechanical effect, and I feel everything was just sort of bland. Blah.

Did I get close to answering this for you?