Wednesday 19 April 2023

Against being 'rules-lite' and what 'minimalism' really means

I was challenged in comments on a recent entry to explain why I have a level of disdain for the creation of rules-lite systems (Into the Odd being an honourable exception which I will come to later). 

I am on record as being in favour of maximalism. What I mean by that, really, is that I have a lot of respect for people who who want to put the time and effort into making something Big, and often get the sense that 'rules lite' is an excuse for 'can't be bothered' or a lack of genuine ambition. 

There is danger in ambition - it is very easy for somebody to shoot for the creation of something Big, and end up with a bloated, rambling mess. (Oliver Stone's Alexander remains the paradigm example of this. Peter Jackson's Hobbit monstrosities are another; a third is George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.) But at the same time, most of the really great things, the things that are worth committing to understanding, tend to be Big. The Lord of the Rings, the Book of the New Sun, The Tale of Genji, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, The Irishman, The Brothers Karamazov - I could of course go on.

In other words, I would much rather read an honourable failure to try to come up with a new, fantasy heartbreaker, 'rules heavy', crunchy RPG system and unique, detailed setting, or a huge encyclopedia megadungeon, than I would yet another relatively successful B/X hack. 

This is leaving to one side my other concern, which is just that we've got enough rules lite systems already - in fact, we probably had enough of them already when Labyrinth Lord first came out - and we're now far into the realms of diminishing returns with these things. How many more variants do we actually need on the basic chassis of old school D&D, which is still perfectly good for getting from A to B?

I say all of this not to besmirch minimalism, but to defend it. Minimalism does not mean 'small' or 'easy'. Minimalism, done properly, is the pursuit of what is minimally necessary to communicate the whole, and as such is an exacting discipline.

The most famous artistic instantiation of minimalism is the Japanese haiku, and probably the most famous example is Basho's frog poem, which in the original reads:

Furu ike ya 
kawazu tobikomu 
mizu no oto

This can be translated literally as 'old pond / frog jumps / sound of water'. The idea being that if one reads those words in quiet reflection, they are what is minimally sufficient to create an entire scene and mood in one's mind, in which on a hot summer's day a frog is sitting by a pond, and then jumps in to the cool water, causing a splash. This, so the theory goes, itself makes one feel almost refreshed as the frog. And one's mind fills all of this in on the basis of a mere 17 syllables.

Another famous instantiation of minimalism is the later work of Piet Mondrian. See his famous Composition No 10 - 'Pier and Ocean' here:


Again, we see here the attempt to do what is minimally necessary to communicate the whole - that is, an image of the sea, with a pier projecting out into the middle. All achieved through the use of mere short straight lines. The exercise is to strip everything away to the precise point at which nothing more can be removed while still being a representation of what the painting purports to depict.

That kind of minimalism is worth pursuing, and this is where Into the Odd comes in. I personally find the experience of running and playing Into the Odd to be too ephemeral for my own taste, but I recognise in it the same virtues as a Basho haiku or a Mondrian painting (or indeed a William Carlos Williams poem) in that it seems to me to be a genuine attempt to strip D&D down to the barest essence possible while still replicating the experience of playing the game. In its own way, in other words, it communicates the whole of D&D in the most minimal way possible, in the same fashion that a haiku communicates an entire scene and a mood with the smallest number of syllables available. 

If that is what is meant by 'rules lite' then I think it is a worthwhile endeavour, but that is not normally what I see when I see a system that purports to be 'rules lite'. 

The upshot: wouldn't it be great to see somebody try to do, say, Iron Heroes well? Or what about a completely new, sui generis system for running campaigns in the style of the worlds of Lord Dunsany, William Morris, Robert Holdstock or Michael Moorcock? Or - while I am being optimistic - a completely fresh fantasy setting with its own bespoke system of rules that manages to (Ron Edwards alert) be 'coherent' rather than 'just another set of stats, skills and feats', and yet still incorporated OSR sensibilities? Maybe those things would be worth doing in our little corner of the internet (I am fully aware they go on in the world at large) rather than 'a rules lite system for X and Y'.

69 comments:

  1. I suppose, in light of this, I must call myself, what, a 'State Capacity Minimalist'? Punth was a highly developed single mechanic for communication in a certain set of circumstances .... with first reference to a deliberately light-weight set of rules.

    This could well look ridiculous, or at least notably unbalanced - like a joiner of Shaker furniture insisting that this cabinet absolutely needed a pair of gilt griffins rampant.

    More seriously, I suspect my threshold for 'when nothing more can be taken away' is set higher than the norm. Thus, I can understand, even endorse the minimalist desire, my account of it may be rather skewed. What, I ask myself, would I remove from the prose of the Centuries of Traherne?

    I recall someone online talking about the 'murder your darlings' advice of Quiller-Couch who thought that time had made the prose that advice was written in impossibly ornate. My (strictly internal) response was, approximately, "Boy, you ain't seen nothin' yet."

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    1. I think 'murder your darlings' is often misunderstood. What they really meant was not that prose shouldn't be ornate but that you shouldn't be afraid to delete something that isn't actually advancing the argument/story *just because* it is pretty. That's a slightly different thing.

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    2. Yes. Stephen King makes that point in "On Writing" and you would be hard-pressed to find minimalism anywhere in his works (even in his few Carver homages).

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  2. In an interesting coincidence, Basho's poem came up amongst some of my friends and acquaintances the other day and I want to make the same recommendation to you (and other readers of these comments) that I did to them. There is a book called One Hundred Frogs (Hiroaki Sato) that delves into the Japanese poetic forms and history, and then begins to discuss translation. But what makes it a lot of fun to read is that there are one hundred different translations of Basho's famous poem in it - everything from a "straight" translation (like the one you gave above - quite literal) to a version that goes on for something like two or three pages to a limerick to all sorts of other versions of this one poem. It's instructive and a lot of fun if you are in to this sort of thing, which I most definitely am, though I completely understand that not everyone is.

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    1. Yes, there is a website with I think 30 different translations of it.

      Murakami Haruki is interesting on translation as well, as he translated Raymond Carver's short stories into Japanese and has lots of fascinating insights.

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    2. You know, I haven't read his translations, I really should! I like his work, especially his short stories and nonfiction. I think he has also done some translation work on Faulkner. I'd love to hear some of his observations on translation - something else to add to the ever-expanding List!

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  3. I've never understood the appeal of "rules light" systems. Sooner or later, any situations the rules don't cover will have to be adjudicated as they come up in play. If you want to be fair, you need to write these house rules down so they can be applied consistently when those situations inevitably happen again. Eventually your house rules are longer than the original system. What's the benefit of "rules light" at that point? Why not just start with a system that covers more situations in the first place, so you're not having to make rulings on the fly—rulings that might be hasty and ill-considered in the interest of preserving the game's momentum?

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    1. It took me a while to get my head around the OSR principle that you can just talk through most stuff, without bothering with rules and skill checks.

      While I agree that a rules-lite system that is "too lite" will get bogged down in house rules, the question to ask is "Does X need to be a house rule at all?"

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    2. I know what you mean, MP. I think cmrsalmon has half the response. The other half would I suppose be, 'making your own house rules is half the fun'.

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    3. Are you taking into consideration rules-light systems that don't require house-rules? I think that's the ultimate rules-light goal.

      After 3 or 4 years, the number of house-rules I've added to Crimson Dragon Slayer D20 amount to half a page.

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    4. Yes, that's minimalism properly understood.

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    5. @cmrsalmon
      I agree that there's no need to roll dice for trivial tasks. But I'm referring to situations where success isn't guaranteed, failure carries repercussions, and the rules don't cover how to handle what happens. I think in those cases the answer to that question is Yes.

      @noisms:
      To me, that's like a restaurant making you cook your own food. Yeah, cooking can be fun, but what am I paying them for?

      @Venger Satanis:
      I've never seen such a thing. Even rules-heavy systems that try to account for every eventuality still end up having gaps.

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    6. @MP If adjudicating the situation as it came up in play worked well enough the first time, why mess with a good thing by writing down a house rule instead of just doing that again?

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    7. @Anonymous
      I covered all this in my original comment. You write the rulings down for the sake of consistency. But rulings made on the fly may not be good ones, since the DM is under pressure to keep the game rolling; pausing the session to consider all the ramifications of a new rule will kill the game's momentum deader than a doornail.

      That's why I prefer systems that have already accounted for as many situations as possible. There will always be weird edge cases that require interpretation, but far fewer in a rules-heavy system.

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    8. @MP Well, you need a rule philosophy that can easily handle those inevitable gaps. Such as... when in doubt, roll a d6.

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  4. I appreciate your comment and post in response to my question. "Ephemeral" is an apt description, as many lighter systems are seemingly used for a string of adventures. I'm curious how a minimalist system would evolve during the course of a prolonged campaign. Would it become maximalist, and would the emergence of more nuanced, complicated, and consistent mechanics be different? Commenter MP said that accumulating house rules (if you want to remain consistent) would be unwieldy. I wonder if people would transition to more involved systems at a certain point in the campaign. Could some of the principles of a minimalist system guide whatever introduction of/transition towards more rules in a substantive way? Is that even worthwhile? I'm going to look around for campaigns (in the Into the Odd to Cairn range, probably?) that have went for longer. I suspect that they would become standard OSR systems over time, but I wonder what ideas and conventions would be ignored in mechanics that emerge through play.

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    1. I admit to being slightly perplexed by the venom in some circles aimed at rules-lite, particularly in lieu of this question: "how [would] a minimalist system evolve during the course of a prolonged campaign," the implied answer being TRAINWRECK. Given that (1) most DMs are tinkerers by nature, and (2) both AD&D and BECMI are essentially house-ruled versions of earlier texts, it hardly seems to me that gaping blanks spaces in the ruleset is a particularly fatal problem. The utility of reinventing the wheel when you could be polishing up some other aspect of your campaign is perhaps a viable question, as is the Rules-lite lawyers' need to share/sell their little half-formed creation, but some of my happiest rpg memories are playing Jeff Dee's T.W.E.R.P.S. for goodness sake (fast fast fast) and shifting WFRP's slipshod rules back to WFB's.

      "Would [they] become standard OSR systems over time . . . [or] what ideas and conventions would be ignored in mechanics that emerge through play" is a pretty darn good question. I look forward to the upcoming supplements Kettle Cairn, Special Kairn, and W-Cairn-P in Cincinatti for some answers.

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    2. Agreed. This emerged out of me saying I was perplexed by the antipathy towards these systems, so I'm laughing at our wording! I'm reluctant to guess (out of inexperience), but I think that slowly adding things over time could have benefits, especially with the focus on winnowing your rules as you go. The idea that people transition between different levels of intensity isn't unreasonable to me, given the high level of proficiency people have with rules systems. I do wonder about that detracting from the setting, and I accept the broader criticism that focusing on the settings/campaigns/etc. is best spent. To that other question, I have no relationship to many of the norms within the OSR, so the prospect applying "only what is necessary" to larger sets of rules intrigues me.

      It also means we can add/retain the best. For example, I love digenetic growth, but if I were to add experience (whether for depth or breadth of a character's abilities), gold-for-XP is amazing, minimal - so good.

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    3. The big complaint against rules-lite games is definitely that advancement is almost always poorly handled, with the result that you can't really use them for long-term campaigns.

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    4. Ha! I probably unbeknownst to me ingested diessa's original comment in the other post and regurgitated it more or less word for word. That said, I found nosism and Jack Tremain's comments here really helpful to grasp the tooth gnashing, which I have always found a tad overwrought. But of course, the big technological advance was the levelling, not whatever mechanical system out of Avalon Hill could be glommed onto 1d4 manticores!

      I feel compelled to propose an update to the Matt Finch old chestnut that everybody be kept on the right track:

      ADVANCEMENT, NOT ORNAMENTATION

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    5. I agree that meaningful advancement is the key.

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  5. Personally I cynically believe that we will never be rid of the scourge of rules-light systems because it's easy to think you can write better rules than Gygax, but hard to write a satisfying adventure or setting. On the other hand, writing big systems takes big work, and the more connected the game is to a specific vision, the more hard, adventure/setting-like work you have to put into it. So self-important pseuds will always gravitate toward spewing forth Cairn, I mean "rules-lite" game systems with little to no reason to exist.

    (Note: most of the people who think they can write better rules than Gygax are also wrong. For some reason, though, hyperinflated self-confidence is much more common in this arena. Is it just because a content-lite adventure is more obviously a garbaginous skeleton?)

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    1. Yes - it's surprising how, for all of its flaws, the basic essence of Gygaxian D&D just works for what you want it to do.

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    2. I like Cairn, it's quite nice.

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  6. Your article has me kind of feeling like taking a swing at Rules Light Rune Quest just to do something different, but I'd be surprised if someone hadn't already done that. And, there was an Elric RP/War/Board game box set that Avalon Hill produced back in the olden days. That might be worth a look for a re-build in that genre.

    I love rules light. I prefer rulings over rules and the twin rules of fun and excitement over all the others. I think a good single-night adventure is worth more than a detailed campaign world. I returned to AD&D about 3 years ago and have been running a weekly game ever since. There's too much there, even with venerable AD&D, to include it all in a single game with much coherence. I feel you really have to carve your own game out of any rule system, and I'm acutely aware of that now with AD&D having spent most of my life trying to view it as a coherent whole. It isn't.

    That said, I can't imagine how one would create a "new" game and or fantasy setting so compelling that it would be anything more than a blip against the WotC Empire and Paizo Rebellion. Maybe a Harry Potter game, but that ship may have already sailed. Marvel is determined to ruin the Super Hero genre for tabletop RPGs, and I don't know if there is a current ruleset for Star Trek or Wars.

    No, I think the key, if you really wanted to build something new and compelling it would be a game that could be played out of the box with friends on the night that you bought it. I think RPGs as a genre tend to put too much of the burden of the game on the referee and that alone makes them less-than-compelling for everyone. It takes a special kind of person to want to work so hard to produce so much for so few people and so little actual play time. Addressing these issues with RPGs: accessibility, referee burden, and play time, I think are the key to making something truly new and compelling.

    Thanks, Noisms -- I'm a big fan of your work. -C

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    1. On "Rules Light Rune Quest": Newt Newport just published "SimpleQuest", which is a RPG-for-kids version of his OpenQuest, which is itself a simplified version of RQ6 / Mythras.

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    2. Oddly enough, I have recently been toying strongly with the idea of running an AD&D campaign 'by the book' to see what it's like.

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    3. I don’t think it’s possible to run a truly by the book game of AD&D. As I said in my previous comment, there’s just too much there and it’s not a coherent whole. That said, Anthony Huso (https://www.thebluebard.com) has some excellent advice for getting close. Dragonsfoot has a lot, too, of course. Overall, I’ve enjoyed the return but I’ve come to view AD&D as a compilation of Gary’s house rules for his D&D game and I’m ready to start back at the root and build my own game for me and my players rather than publication. I’ve said this elsewhere, but AD&D kind of feels like wearing someone else’s shoes now, to me. Ironically, FR1 Waterdeep is about my very favorite campaign setting (speaking of someone else’s shoes!) and while I may change and alter the game rules I’ll probably keep using that setting forever.

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    4. We'll see. You may very well be right that there's too much there, but I'm intrigued by the idea of at least trying. If anything else it could make for interesting blog posts.

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    5. For sure. Check out Huso's stuff if you haven't already. He's the one who inspired me to go back and give Gary's Game a spin. It's been a good ride. There's a lot to learn and discover there through continuous play.

      This is my third go-around with AD&D, the first being as a kid (that was just D&D for a long, long time), the second when I wearied of 3rd Edition, and finally when the pandemic really got rolling. It's kind of funny that I keep going back to it.

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    6. As a fan of both Noism's and Anthony Huso's blog I think that AD&D by the book can be done and can be done right. But there is a need to thoroughly master the game, and design reference tools that allow for the game to flow quickly.

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  7. A huge strength of rules-lite games is in running one-shots. Something like Into the Odd (or the Microlite rules that inspired it) is perfect for getting straight into a good, gripping scenario without any faffing around over character creation. In particular, "no magic system, just magic items" is a great concept for playing fantasy games without having to absorb (or refresh) subsystems.

    I do a fair bit of miniature gaming, and a concept that I find very important there is "time to table" (perhaps principally because I play these games with my kids and/or friends who live nearby). The best games for me are those that you can start playing in about five minutes flat.

    For skirmish wargames, that normally means Song of Blades and Heroes, Saga or Hordes of the Things - great games, but ones in which it's incredibly easy to stat up a force (just about all units in Saga cost one point, and you typically have either four or six to spend).

    It's the same with one-shot RPGs ("Let's play a game ..."). If character creation takes less than five minutes (as in Into the Odd), you can be up and running in the time it takes to print a one-page dungeon.

    The other thing that carries over from miniatures games is the "closed book". If we're playing Song of Blades, we almost never need to open the rulebook. Into the Odd achieves much the same effect because the rules are on a single page.

    I can't imagine running an Into the Odd campaign - at least, not beyond two or three scenarios; for that. BECMI D&D or RuneQuest or whatever is much more the thing - though that's really down to space for incremental progression; our three-year-plus campaign has just shifted back to BECMI from RQ after a real-time year in Glorantha, and I've set my sights on a switch to Pendragon once this one comes to a natural conclusion.

    But I do think that minimalist games have some things to teach the bigger games outside of one-shots. Trimming down the number of stats is one: I've long argued that D&D doesn't need CON and should use STR to modify HP instead (who's going to soak up more damage in a fight - the marathon runner or the prop forward?). And WIS seems a sketchy stat to me, with INT and CHA on shoogly pegs.

    One minimalist RPG that's worth considering as an exemplar is The Fantasy Trip - especially in its earlier Melee/Wizard version (both free on DriveThru, I think). It has just two or three stats (depending on whether you use magic) but much more tactical depth in combat. Because it depends on hex maps and counters or miniatures for combat, it tends to get overlooked, but it's a really great example of minimalist design - essentially, an elegantly designed skirmish wargame to which roleplaying can be seamlessly attached. But one senses that this is thanks to the effort, playtesting and mathematical groundwork that Steve Jackson and co. put into it beforehand: a far cry from the typical tossed-off rules-lite game.

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    1. Yes, I can see the virtues of time saving and I recognise that we just don't really live in the world you and I grew up in, in which adolescent boys had the time and concentration to learn how to run e.g. Rolemaster.

      The biig issue is definitely campaign play. For that I really do think you need something about as crunchy as Pendragon or D&D (or more so).

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    2. And you quite possibly need the sort of "receding realism" that old-school D&D provides. I confess I can't ever see how long-term RQ campaigns sustain themselves, much as I love the game (our tooled-up D&D converts only got out of Glorantha alive thanks to the many extraneous powers they brought with them); it's just too deadly.

      Now that they're back in the 'real' world, they've got the comfort of 8th and 9th-level hit-point tallies, so I can drop them into Against the Giants without a high risk of immediate annihilation. By contrast, when they started out three-plus years ago in The Keep on the Borderland, they were jittery around kobolds. A great strength of old-school D&D is that it retreats from realistic simulation as things get more epic.

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    3. Interesting observation!

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    4. I suppose it's really been there from the start (and even earlier, in Chainmail): D&D fighters progress from veterans to heroes to superheroes - and beyond.

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    5. The idea of using Rules-lites for one-shots has a surface level appeal but closer examination might dispel the notion. Once B/X has been absorbed by the GM an ounce of thought will allow a set up for one-shots that is about just as fast.

      The apparent simplicity of 'rules-lights' is predicated on a context that exists in other texts like AD&D. Without the context they fall apart. A quick glance at the travesties being put out for Mork Borg or Cairn and passed as adventures illustrate this problem.

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  8. I've become a pretty big fan of Forbidden Land's take on the Year Zero system. It's a complete system, detailing travel, living on the road, equipment prices, magic, combat, diplomacy, resource tracking, and even built into it is a core adventure. I've become enough of a fan that I even ported my favorite setting, Symbaroum, into it and am currently running a game with it.

    But the reason I like it so much seems to relate to what you're describing. Its a simple system, giving you exactly what you need to run your game, without significant bloat rules. To me, it feels like it details its rules exactly as complicated as they need to be, while still being as simplistic as possible.

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    1. Yes, I like the Year Zero system and respect what Forbidden Lands is doing.

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  9. well, rules lite is an option for those who want to pursue it. However, they often miss the point and work on the wrong kind of rules: conflict resolution rules. Anybody can come up with those. The real bulk of work is often forgotten. I'd rather have a ruleslite game that had a bestiary, a chart of XP and advancement unlocks and dungeon/treasure generation, even if it doesnt have many character options or the combat is not very developed, than a bigger game that didn't had some or any of those (LOTFP) and had many character and combat choices. Those are dressing. What I search on a game is MEAT. I can provide the dressing myself, but If it doesnt have meat, I dont need it at all but for light reading

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    1. Interesting point! And actually very true.

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  10. Since you mentioned Ron Edwards... the story games scene has been pumping out coherent, rules-lite systems for decades, one after another, each fit for purpose. Apocalypse World isn't exactly rules-site, but it's definitely whittled down to a set of rules that serve a specific type of genre emulation. Fate is pretty rules-lite. My Life With Master. All of Edwards' stuff: Sorcerer, Trollbabe, Otherkind. None of these games are OSR-style (except insofar as story games and old school play overlap on certain principles). But they're coherent, rules-lite systems that are not based on D&D.

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    1. Yes, that's true, and what I was trying to get at in the last paragraph. I meant specifically in the OSR context.

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    2. I hold to a quixotic ambition to somehow identify a synthesis of OSR and storygame playstyles, despite their many seeming contradictions. What they have in common -- in contrast to the 4E-era splatbook playstyle -- is principles like "fiction first" (as opposed to mechanics-first) and granting greater agency to players (including the GM) relative to the codified rules. Where they seem directly opposed is in the realm of associated vs. dissociated mechanics (or what one might call diegetic vs. adiegetic game elements), as well as the realm of intentional narrative vs. emergent narrative. And I've just never been convinced that the OSR is as married to fully associated mechanics as much as its proponents sometimes claim. Hit points seem to me to be just one example of an OSR mechanic that can easily, based on the fictional circumstanecs, warp from fully associated and diegetic (my 6 hp fighting man suffers a sword blow for 3 hp and is now wounded) to a largely-dissociated "pacing mechanic" (my 60 hp fighting man is down to his last hit point, and when he's finally finished off by a goblin's dagger strike for 2 damage, the DM narrates the coup de grace in full story game mode, decoupled from the numbers involved). Similar stories could be told about hex-keyed encounters and quantum ogres, etc. So I hold out hope that a synthesis is possible. But I'm probably wrong.

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    3. I think that's right, but I wonder if D&D by definition kind of meets that need already for the precise reasons you suggest. It already kind of is a synthesis - which is part of its appeal.

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  11. One thing that bothers me about many rules-lite systems and their general approach is the fact, that they don't really explain procedures and very basic design intentions very well most of the time.
    For a great many rules-lite systems you need to have prior information regarding roleplaying games in general (and older D&D versions specificially).
    They really don't stand for themselves, but always "In the shadow" of older and "bigger" systems.

    I'm not even talking about the obvious "What is roleplaying?" or "This is a d12, don't be alarmed." intro sections.

    Nearly all older D&D version explain some specific procedures that are integral to the experience of the game as intended by the designers. That is what noism in another comment here called the basic essence of gygaxian D&D. And it works like a spell within the limitations of the designers intention. NOw by explaining these procedures you get the ability not only to understand them in play, but also why they are there and how they produce certain elements of the game. And you thus also gain an understanding what happens when you take them out or change them... which is gold for any game designer.

    In many of the rules lite systems i kinda miss these "explanations" of procedure and intention an a deep level. Very often I feel that some changes to mechanics and system in rules-lites don't really come from a place of understanding regarding game design... but are really only in there because a) It needs to be different and b) it needs to be new and/or flashy to work...

    hope I'm making some sense here :P

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    1. I get what you're driving at. I learned more about how to play D&D from the example play transcripts in the books than perhaps even playing live. Rules-lite games, and I think a lot of modern games, lack these kinds of real-world or near-real-world examples of the in action. This is funny to me now because this is was something I struggled with in Traveller for many years. I understood the systems, but not how to put it all together into an actual game. I love that game. It probably taught me more about game system design and interaction than anything else and really stretched my mind on what a role-playing game could be, but even using modules, I couldn't get my head around how to play until many years later.

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    2. Great points, both. I had never thought about that issue, but you're right.

      Amber Diceless is the interesting case where basically the whole book is play transcripts/examples. You learn how to play from reading other people playing it (admittedly fictionalised).

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  12. "often get the sense that 'rules lite' is an excuse for 'can't be bothered' "
    pre-freaking-cisely. %((
    One thing about emulating D&D experience specifically - that always contained a kernel of "something more". There was going to be a future book which adds more on the subject. Both world and rules. The master who DMed using his own original world could get something similar by inventing more new material himself, but would still often get asked whether something new from the latest Dragon has a place in his world... ;)
    Mike

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  13. Here I'm responding not just to the post but to the entire discussion.

    The discussion about "rules-lite" games could benefit from more distinctions. For example, the ones made in this blog entry are useful: https://rpgdiegesis.wordpress.com/2023/01/11/rules-light-vs-rules-sparse-vs-rules-simple/

    The history of "rules-lite" games shows that it's very rarely been about the feeling "I can't be bothered," as partially alleged. There have always been goals in limiting the complexity of rules, the quantity of rules, the details of setting embedded in rules, etc. As far as I've seen, the oldest RPG systems that were advertised as "light on rules" were intended for humorous gaming, or at least games with an element of humor. That's a specific and legitimate play goal (mentioned nowhere in this discussion) met by different kinds of rules. Whether the rules-lite game in question is Tunnels & Trolls, or T.W.E.R.P.S., or Talislanta, or Maze Rats, or some other game, they all come out quite differently and always for a reason. B/X D&D is a *lot* more complex than GURPS when it comes to resolution, making GURPS rules-lite by comparison with Basic D&D, whereas when it comes to the process of character generation it's reversed. It's worth thinking about what each kind of game that seems rules-lite is trying to do. There isn't a single scale of heaviness to lightness.

    The people commenting here who dislike rules-lite games and favor rules growth are hardly chasing after Aftermath! or Powers & Perils or Chivalry & Sorcery, either. If lite rules are distasteful, what is the preferred limit on complexity, and which kind of complexity?

    Let's also not forget that the OGL retroclones favored by many commentators (who turn their noses up at more recent "rules-lite" systems) were often promoted as Rules Lite, by comparison with other WotC species of D&D. Castles & Crusades was actually advertised in magazines in 2004 with the tag “OGL. Rules Lite.” At that time, 3e was deemed too complicated for C&C players. So it's all relative to tastes and preferences, and there's no point in putting down other's tastes.

    Sometimes a "lite" ruleset expressed in a few pages is just house rules nicely laid out without all the settings and tables because it is meant to be used, if wanted, with different settings. I sometimes like those rules because I'm not running games set in Faerun or Lankhmar or Yoon-Suin or the Star Wars universe. As inspiring as those worlds may be, there's too much stuff I don't want in them. They're not my playgrounds but somebody else's. If Rules-Lite means less imposed setting, then I'm going in that direction. Again, there many reasons to have what appears to be "liteness" of gaming, and many kind of "liteness" that should be distinguished.

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    1. Good point that it's not a single scale of heaviness to lightness.

      D&D in general is very heavy on exceptions. This seems a different thing to being 'crunchy' in ithe sense GURPS or Rolemaster is crunchy.

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    2. Obfuscatory equivocation that does nothing to advance the discussion.

      It is clear that with rules-lite we mean the current crop of rules-lites that have come to infest the OSR (Mork Borg, Cairn, Knave, IttO etc.). The historical context of rules-light games is relevant only in how it relates to the current infestation. For a new player used to 5e, a rules-lite can seem as a breath of fresh-air. Fair enough, more power to them.

      But the dedicated rules-lite player, who never moves into old DnD: This is a quisling, someone who, for whatever reason, does not actually like anything about DnD, but wants to be attached to the wider OSR movement, possibly to grift, possibly for clout or maybe something as innocuous as company.

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    3. "It is clear that with rules-lite we mean the current crop of rules-lites" - it certainly wasn't to me.

      Another reason for "wanting to be attached to the wider OSR movement" may be not grokking the original very tight definition of OSR - that was certainly the case with me when I got back into RPGs 3 years ago. At the time I was aware of 5e, and then I stumbled on something called "OSR" which, from the ways I saw it used, seemed to be *either* a term for anything written for LotfP, *or* an umbrella term for indie stuff that's not 5e. It took about 18 months for me to discover that it once had a more specific meaning. I'm sure that original meaning is clear to folks who were throwing it around on G+ 10 years ago, but it's become very muddied since. Mörk Bork, ItO etc now _is_ the wider OSR movement. What you're referring to is a narrower OSR movement.

      Also, "quisling"? "Infestation"? "Obfuscatory equivocation"? Seriously?? Those terms, and your ability to find a bad faith explanation for everything you don't like, seems kinda paranoid/delusional. You do know we're only talking about games?

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    4. The original prompt for this post was my mentioning of a ChatGPT created rules-lite, based on IttO and Knave. I've posted about it. Widening the discussion to incorporate all manner of rules-lites simply muddies the waters.

      I did mention above, in an act of astonishing charity and good faith, the possibility of new players coming into the OSR from 5e via rules-lites, an effect which is by no means entirely negative. I would argue that this is complementary to your second paragraph.

      Experience in the OSR has taught me that very often what seems attributable to incompetence is actually malice. It is hard to view movements that are politicized to a high degree, as is the case with the NSR and to a lesser degree the purple OSR, as humble and earnest participants when a radical restructuring and redefinition of the hobby is their explicit goal.

      My terms are certainly inflammatory at times but they are hardly delusional, nor paranoid. I find bad faith explanations for things that most probably have bad faith explanations. You might find that making such a statement is in poor taste in this neutral ground, but this has no bearing on whether or not it is true. Nor does the fact we are discussing games have any bearing on whether or not it is true.

      You (and anyone) can read my latest review on Fever Swamp, an adventure I didn't like, and consider whether or not it is charitable, or paranoid, or anything else, and consider the strength of your analysis. I wouldn't consider a career change to psychology any time soon if I were you.

      A definition of the OSR that does not have DnD as its core and primary focus is arbitrary.

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    5. Fair enough, I still strongly dispute your claim that "it was clear".

      I also read (after posting my reply above) your post about this topic, most of which I agree with, but again there's a vein of negativity & anger running through it which flummoxes me - in particular the dumping on Yochai Gal and Jim Parkin. The "ItO" games I've run recently were, in fact, mostly games of Weird North - a hack of ItO by Jim, in collaboration with Yochai, which adds just a couple more mechanics: some pretty unusual character classes, and a mechanic for becoming "corrupted". IMO the game is perfectly suited to running Deep Carbon Observatory, far more so than any D&Dalike (I've got got a half-written blog post about exactly this: the Weird North/DCO combo). Aside from that, Yochai surely deserves some kind of award for his community-building.

      I'm equally confused about your comment on the NSR - I've spent a little time on the NSR Discord, and found it to be refreshingly politics-free and explicitly inclusive of *all* approaches to gaming - quite the opposite to having an "explicit goal" of "radical restructuring and redefinition of the hobby". (I'm also not entirely how someone can restructure another person's hobby - do they come around your house at night and hide your rulesets?).

      The inflammatory terms are what drew me to respond to your comment, particularly the fact that they were aimed at another commenter who appeared to me to have spent some time putting together what looked like a valid point (I appreciate you say that your default approach is to assume bad faith, mine is the opposite. TBH I would rather risk interpreting a bad faith take as well-intended than vice versa).

      Anyway, you came across as a bit of a dick. The number one rule I try to abide by when posting online is "don't be a dick", and my number two rule is "if you see someone being a dick, be even more of a dick".

      Funnily enough, I studied psychology at university. Not with any intention of making a career in it though, that's never been something I fancied. In the spirit of equal exchange, I advise you to avoid applying for a job as a diplomat.

      And remember, just because they're out to get you, doesn't mean you're not paranoid. Maybe try pronoia for a change. It's a tonic.

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    6. Hilarious accusations from a person who was not even born when I was playing old D&D. The history of rules-lite games pretty much matters a lot if one wishes to discuss rules-lite games. Otherwise, you don't know much about what you are talking about. Never mind psychology: the sociology of bitter gamers whose hobby is to write long, spiteful reviews of two-dollar products they will never use is fascinating. Thanks for another example. I love it.

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    7. For sheer efficacy, his community building skills are certainly formidable. The pertinent question is of course, a community centred around what? What game design principles are being selected for? What is the community about?

      Jim Parkin is a nice guy. Read his blog about the treatment he received there.
      https://d66kobolds.blogspot.com/2023/04/state-of-blog.html
      These people are evil.

      I cannot envision a scenario where DCO runs better after a sloppy conversion to a ramshackle system but I am open to having my mind changed. Post away.

      What I get from the NSR discord is that as opposed to gaming there is an explicit focus on ideological conformity centred against a long list of supposed untouchables the likes of Alex Macris, Courtney Campbell, Venger, Gabor Lux, Tenkar etc. etc and now Jim Parkin, and a willingness to use pressure to get people like, say, the author of The Sepulchre of the Seven to remove a reference to Gabor Lux's houserules for undead level draining because of a comment in the tenfootpole comment section. But of course 'it's just elfgames.'

      Your engagement protocols are flawed. The first rule is generally true, but there are times when it can be neccessary to be a dick. People respond to different stimuli. Your second rule is predicated on this principle. An unwitting dick might be swayed by reasonable commentary to alter his behavior, while equally acerbic commentary will simply lock in his behavior. Conversely, some people will only respond to negative stimuli. The pain response. That being said, I play a role, and I should not tut if people respond to that role.

      I have a masters in psychology, but this is not the field I work in. I think I would make an suitable diplomat to theocracies, petty dictatorships and inbred monarchies (close to my role as a cultural critic for the OSR).

      I think you are probably a fundamentally agreeable person and your defense here is not ill-intentioned. I don't know if you would be comfortable with an introduction to the various faction wars and petty hostilities that underly the seemingly placid waters of our noble hobby. I envy you that innocence. That said, your barbs are not vicious enough, you do not have that temperament.

      @Lich
      Yes I can just picture the dry, wheezing, rattling chuckle, followed by a coughing fit and a trip to the infirmary. This from the man (I use the term in the broadest sense) with half a blogs worth of posts about how Gygax didn't understand this or how gaming was not actually like that in the 1700s or whatever. Produce something of value that is not senile theorizing from the perspective of a 19th century accountant of stagecoach supplies or consign yourself to a dignified oblivion.





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    8. Genuinely shocked by this, I had no idea about Jim (I was a frequent user on the NSR Discord about a year ago, including playing a PbP game Jim was running on there) but in the last 6 months I've really only been on there even I've had something to promote.

      Don't understand Jim's blog post - it sounds like he's saying he was banned for being a Christian? - but, regardless, IMO banning posts that go against forum policies is fine, but banning people should only ever be used as a response persistently breaking those policies, not because of things days said elsewhere, let alone in private. (Funnily enough I got cancelled myself recently for saying essentially this)

      What I got from the NSR discord was absolutely a focus on gaming, with the primary "political" aspect of that being: don't dump on other people's style of gaming, if they enjoy it, then it's valid - which is why it was so refreshing after being on forums full of edgelords and shitstirrers. I understand now why you call it a political project, but I didn't see any of that stuff in the actual conversations on there, I only saw really great and invariably respectful conversations about games. Which perhaps indicates that Yochai's approach is at least functionally valid. I guess he is also being consistent with your protocol: sometimes it is necessary to be a dick.

      And, yes, obviously my protocols were flawed. That's kind of the point. If anything, I believe that you should *never* be a dick. Although I agree that if your goal is to sway people or to provoke response to stimuli then, sure, being a dick sometimes works (albeit less often than people think)

      My interest in psychology was primarily about discovering how my own brain works - I was too immature/inexperienced/neurowhatever to really apply it to other people. The thing which did teach me about human behaviour was working 15 years as a foster carer. My uneasiness around treating other people badly is primarily ideological (and, to my great surprise, in my old age is even turning spiritual). But it is also based upon my experience during those 15 years, of how both treating people badly and treating them kindly create positive feedback loops. Not always obviously, certainly not always immediately (I've seen the surprising results of tiny acts emerge a decade or more later), and of course not in a "if you treat someone with respect, they will treat you respect" way (though I'm increasingly convinced that something like karma does exist). If your primary goal is bettering yourself in the short term then dickheadism is often the best policy. I like to think that I'm batting on behalf of the universe. Of course this doesn't mean that I'm selfless and in fact, as you've probably figured out by now, it doesn't prevent me from developing an ego the size of a planet.

      You're right that I'm a fundamentally agreeable person, it's perhaps my biggest flaw, though I'm working on it. And, no, an introduction to the factions wouldn't be welcome - I dived into that stuff a bit around 2 years ago, when someone dumped on me (in a comment on this blog, I believe) for no obvious reason, and I wanted to find out why. But there's nothing I can practically do about such faction wars, so I'd rather not waste time, intellect and emotion on them.

      Your comeback to Lich was also dickish, but it was at least funny, so kudos for that.




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    9. Little Prince, that's not as hilarious as the first uninvited attack. Still funny, though mixed with my sadness for you. Perhaps have another attempt, maybe this time with any argument at all, maybe even one that pertains to this blog entry that is generously hosting your angry blathering? Any argument? Or just silly playground stuff? It seems the baobab caught you off-guard on your lonely little planet. Do you need friends? You don't have to be an angry online guy, hoping that readers will laugh along with you at somebody else instead of noticing your displays of arrogance and self-degradation. I'm serious when I say that you don't have to be that way. It takes a little practice and self-knowledge, and that's work, but you did get an MA degree in psych, as you say, so I bet you can do it. That aside, any actual argument based on any actual knowledge is still welcome. Worst case scenario, you provide more insight into the culture of "the OSR" that you claim to represent. It sure is interesting, but I am sure you can do better, in multiple senses.

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    10. BTW I really take issue with your use of the word "evil", specifically to apply to people. What you're saying is that those people set out with the specific intent to make the world a worse place, which is bollocks. I would say that if anything their intents are Malthusian, and on that basis they appear to be hugely successful in that they've created a very big, very productive community of conversation, and have done so by excluding a small number of martyrs like the ones you mention above. That they have done so based on thought crime rather than actual actions might be described as evil, but the people themselves are anything but.

      Your use of language, jumping down people's throats calling them quislings, deploying the daftest of hyperbole, might equally be described as evil: you're not only hurting those you attack, you're discouraging lurkers from joining the conversation because on the whole people don't like being attacked, and as a result you're making the world a worse place. But do I think you're evil? Well.... probably not 😉

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    11. @lich yeah, by the cold light of day that comment doesn't appear so funny, and I apologise for saying so.

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  14. I agree that we have more than enough rulesets - when I'm emperor of the world, all games will be run using the Into the Odd rules.

    My feeling with a lot of rules-heavy systems is that they arise out of lack of confidence or lack of trust. There's something reassuring about being able to say "well on page 1,742 of the manual it says that when running through cold water while a creature of between 23 and 47lbs holding onto one of your legs, if you're carrying a sword and a hot dog, then you have a 17% chance of being able to jump a distance of 6'3" horizontally and 7" vertically".

    For me the reason for rules-lite is very simple: to make for fun, fast gameplay. In almost all games of D&D I'd estimate that the majority of playing time is spent fighting & shopping (when I played 5e, we would have combats last over an hour almost on a weekly basis). For some people, that's exactly what they want, but rules-lite turns that on its head, meaning that you get a lot more adventuring, role-playing and problem-solving for your money.

    I've run several games of ItO recently and it's an absolute delight firstly to be able to get fights done and dusted within a minute or two, and secondly seeing players approach situations with a default mindset of "what might a person be able to attempt in a situation like this" rather than "let me check if I've got an applicable skill for that"/"what are the rules for that". It results in a lot more creativity, and seems to be quite mind-expanding for regular D&D players.

    You've mentioned before that rulesets like ItO are not good for running long campaigns. You are a lot better placed to know about that than I am, but my instinct is that it ought to be possible to do so. Of course there is that dopamine hit of levelling up (and probably also of watching the XP counter tick up to the next level), but I wonder whether a similar sense of progress couldn't also be achieved by, for example, picking up special powers (not necessarily as intrinsic abilities - could be via items. I really like the way that the Cypher system frames this), as well as progressing socially, financially, etc.

    Some of the comments above seem to be conflating the size of the rules with the size of the book. My ideal ruleset is a single page (both ItO and Mörk Borg do this well), but for sure I want plenty of worldbuilding, usually including monsters, treasures, random tables, etc.

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    1. Speaking of cyphers in Cypher, that's a game that *does* have an advancement system that I absolutely love, and that could easily be adapted to a rules-lite system (which Cypher isn't). Basically you get an experience point for doing something of significance (which ought to average about 1-2 points per session) and you then choose when to trade them in: you can use one point to rewind time and alter an outcome/have another roll at something, two points for some sort of temporary or highly localised benefit (like declaring "I'm an expert on the plants in this valley"), three for a bigger benefit (like "I'm an expert in plants") and four for an actual (but very incremental) advancement - which could be a point increase, new spell, etc.

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  15. I agree with Dan on all points. Also, I can attest that rulesets considered "lite" (by comparison with the kludge of old D&D rules) are just fine for long campaigns. The ones who doubt it (1) haven't tried it and/or (2) have been trained to rely on factors like GP=XP or ballooning hit points (the original luck points) to give players the sense that their PCs have made progress. It takes only a little creativity to seed scenarios and locations with opportunities for advancement not based on treasure and slaying (as fun as those are), or complementary with them. There are many methods for character advancement that have been around since the '70s, faithfully ignored by D&D players. Moreover, different methods for advancement can be used simultaneously. Of course, different tastes for different people.

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    1. Yes, it's because we're all ignorant and lack creativity - thanks for that observation! ;)

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    2. Ha! There is a truism that limitations stimulate creativity, something along those lines (I learnt this in spades building websites in the early 90s, when the tech was ridiculously restricted). I currently write a weekly Substack in which I try to condense often quite complex ideas into a sub-one minute read, and it's been enormously stimulating. Likewise, I think that if you are in any way creative, restricting yourself to writing rules-light can only serve to enhance that.

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    3. @noisms: Ha! :) But that isn't what I said, as you know. I said it takes some creativity to find other ways to do character advancement (in a "rules-lite" game). And ignoring well-known methods of play doesn't make a person "ignorant" in the general way that you mischievously suggest I meant.

      [Also, my remark was also physically misplaced, meant to be responding to dansumption's remark of 26 April 2023 at 12:54.]

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  16. I verbalized my problem of view on Rules lites and their inherent problems here:
    https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2023/04/26/the-rules-lite-sickness-gaining-momentum/

    Your talent for finding good topics for discussion is nonpareil.

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  17. Another nice thing about many rules-lite games is that skills/magical items etc are, of necessity less mechanical.

    In D&D almost every artifact either enhances one of your dice rolls/reduces an enemy's, or is fairly obvious and stereotypical in what it does (oh, look, I can fly! Hey, I can turn invisible). I've observed that equivalents in rules-lite games tend towards being far less blatant, and hence require players to think laterally rather than mindlessly reaching for dice. The pinnacle of this is the equipment list for failed careers in Bastionland.

    D&D (at least post Arcane Arcana) has something similar in cantrips, but in my experience they are very rarely used except for setting things on fire.

    Obviously there are plenty of rules-lite games which aren't like that (just as there are games with baroque rulesets purely because their authors think that's how games are supposed to be), but as well as encouraging the players to engage their brain, restrictions force the games' authors to apply more creativity.

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