I am working on a rules light game, and one thing I've noticed over the years is 'rules light' means different things to different people. I am curious how everyone defines ruleslight, but also interested in what other posters see as examples of very effective rules light games.
BX D&D is my go-to as a Rules Light game.
I know others define down to things that can barely be counted as actual RPGs and some amount to "Take turns telling a story. Roll some dice when in doubt."
5e Basic D&D is also a fairly rules light game. The basics are pretty basic really and they could have pared it down a little more and not lost anything really.
Barbarian of Lemuria is a good example I think, Into the Odd as well, Index Card RPG more recently, Prince Valiant of course, many OSR games, the old WEG Ghostbusters...
I think (but I may be wrong) that people sometimes confuse "rules light" and "bare bones". Having a rules light game shouldn't prevent a game designer of giving lots of advice/pointers/examples to the reader (which I assume is the GM most of the time) to help him run his game. Of the above games, Prince Valiant and ICRPG are particularly good at that.
I'll second some of the games already listed like Barbarians of Lemuria and Ghostbusters. For me, probably my favorite rules-light game would be Scarlet Heroes. You can fit all of the basic rules of the game on a single page, and honestly you wouldn't even need nearly that much if you wanted to be really concise. There are some magic spells later on for those that want to play a spellslinger but they're far from necessary and each one is fairly short and to the point, too.
Another outstanding example is Barebones Fantasy. It's kind of on the edge between light and medium, perhaps, but if you look at how much goodness is packed in such a tiny book, I honestly don't think that any game has ever surpassed it in that regard. The sheer ratio of usable content per word is mind boggling.
I have undertaken writing a simplified / abbreviated rules set, that I can generically use with resources from all editions of D&D. So far I have 10 handwritten pages in a medium sized journal. I am thinking of adding more to it though?
I already have:
Roll High to Hit, Roll Low for Ability Checks, a Much Less Wide Variation in Monster To Hit numbers, Monster CRs, Advantage / Disadvantage, Planes of Existence, a Small Sample Dungeon Map, a few Encounter Roll Charts, a little DM Advice, etc.
My Precious!!!
As few different mechanics as possible, and as few exceptions to and/or variations on those mechanics as possible. D6, especially WEG SW, is a decent example (although it got a bit heavier toward the end of WEG). Advanced Fighting Fantasy is pretty close as well.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1065735I am working on a rules light game, and one thing I've noticed over the years is 'rules light' means different things to different people. I am curious how everyone defines ruleslight, but also interested in what other posters see as examples of very effective rules light games.
Lite rules are under 28 pages. Ultra-lite rules are 1 page.
I think of rules lite as minimizing the number of mechanics. D6 is a good example, it basically only has one. You can make it more complicated, like in Star Wars, adding the Force and space combat, but it's not inherently so.
Something like Basic D&D is simple only because they deliberately limited the scope (to levels 1 to 3) and even then you have various different mechanics - roll d20 high to hit, roll d20 (or 3d6) low to do ability checks, roll 100% for thief skills, roll 1d6 for some skills, roll 2d6 to turn undead, and having different classes (which is simple in Basic, but rapidly expands to probably 100 classes in all of B/X when you count the Gazetteers and Creature Crucibles)
Gamma World 1e - an entire game in less than 100 pages.
HeroQuest - Key rules all fit on 1 page, easy to adapt to any situation, easy to run a game with no preparation.
Something like Openquest (couple of pages) vs Runequest (hundreds of pages), where both use the same base mechanic/attributes, but the difference in 'lightness' is readily apparent. Also the difference between Fate (med crunch, thick book) and Fate Accelerated (super-light, pamphlet-sized book). So basically a stripped down med-crunch game, or one created with a similar end goal in mind.
Pocket Fantasy. About 4 pages from memory.
Honey Heist (https://www.docdroid.net/KJzmn5k/honey-heist-by-grant-howitt.pdf).
It's an insane game (premise), but the mechanics, as simple as they are (1 page for players, one additional page for the GM), are remarkably thematic and effective. I would also think the serial numbers could be filed off for many other genres.
I reckon something like 3:16 or adventures of baron Munchausen are rules-light. Basic D&D is more medium to me ...
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1065735I am working on a rules light game, and one thing I've noticed over the years is 'rules light' means different things to different people. I am curious how everyone defines ruleslight, but also interested in what other posters see as examples of very effective rules light games.
I'm not sure you can define rules light just by the length of the rules; a lot of lengthy rulebooks don't contain overly complicated games, and there are a few fairly short games that I wouldn't call rules light (although they often are that short only because they implicitly bring in all the traditional RPG conventions).
I think a good indicator might be how frequently rules questions can be resolved without major forays into the rulebooks; but there are probably GURPS experts who can do this for most questions.
Quote from: rawma;1066029I'm not sure you can define rules light just by the length of the rules; a lot of lengthy rulebooks don't contain overly complicated games, and there are a few fairly short games that I wouldn't call rules light (although they often are that short only because they implicitly bring in all the traditional RPG conventions).
I think a good indicator might be how frequently rules questions can be resolved without major forays into the rulebooks; but there are probably GURPS experts who can do this for most questions.
Agree. Not saying HERO is rules light, but the game has grown from 80 pages in 1st ed Champions, to 700+ in 6th ed HERO. The page count has grown tremendously, but the actual game mechanics have not grown terribly in complexity, certainly not 10x.
Phoenix Command is definitely not rules light, but if you ignore the pages and pages of weapon data, it actually has a fairly low page count.
I think what throws people off from having a good sense of calibration on what constitutes rules light, medium, heavy, etc., is limited exposure to different games. There are lots of people in this hobby who only play Dungeons & Dragons and so come away with a warped perspective of how many rules there should be in a roleplaying game. D&D, in most editions, is actually a lot heavier than most systems. But player perspective is warped because it's familiar. Whatever you've played most is normal and therefore, no matter what it is, medium in rules heaviness.
However, just to be persnickety:
Rules-lite games are things like Wushu, Fudge, the aforementioned Honey Heist - games that generally hinge on a central mechanic, have fewer pages, or demand limited memorisation from players and GMs.
Rules heavy games are your Champions and your Hero, some editions of GURPS, etc - games that look and read like text books and require a night course and graded essay to understand.
Rules medium games are everything in-between. You can decide on the gradient yourself, because there lies the realm of internet arguments.
//Panjumanju
Dice Rolls to Attack, Defend, Use a Skill, Use an Item, Save vs Condition, Save vs Death, etc. must be part of the game's mechanics for me to be interested.
That Can be Simple, but it doesn't always end up being simple in every rule set.
Well, there's rules-easy and then there's rules-light.
There's games that are easy to grasp and play. Most OSR games are like this, which is why sometimes people consider them "rules light". Because they don't have the later added complexity you saw in 3e, to say nothing of non-D&D games with complex systems.
Then there's games that have very light rules, stuff like Amber/Lords of Olympus, or Over the Edge.