This is another crosspost from Twitter, brought into a non-threaded form for posterity. Due to the nature of the platform, this is kind of train-of-thought rambly. It will include some one-sided replies, from a (positive, I think) side conversation; not posting someone else's words as my own, but copying relevant parts.
Just last night I was trying poorly to articulate this to some friends: many (most?) rules light RPGs that don’t operate in a very tight, shared-responsibility setup are actually just “the DM api has SO MANY EXTRA CALLS ALL THE TIME overload” extra-complicated.
Elaboration: lasers & feelings is brilliant because it posits a closed-frame game where “the players at the table figure out what is lasers and what is feelings” is actually the core fun of the game; the rule is actually overridingly heavy but people aren’t used to the framing.
It’s not a good structure for “rpg design” but it’s not trying to be, it is playing with a wholly different question than the common conception of “what is a TTRPG and what is it about”. The confusion is not offloaded to the DM: it is actually the core of the game. The two best editions of Paranoia were the first Mongoose run, because it played the conceit straight in multiple different ways without OOC snark… and the west end “5th” edition, because it abandoned any conceit that the textual rules mattered except as props and kayfabe.
The majority of rules-light games that I have encountered seem unaware of their foundation: that they are written for the writer to run and lack context for anyone outside that circle, or that other game cultures differ in their core contexts. They don’t play with the framing like L&F, instead they promise “the DM is the important part of having the traditional RPG experience you’re used to” and then offer no support for that claim, relying on the magic of the DM interaction to process the experience.
Lest I be mistaken: a “good” DM can work magic with minima. The skills are transferable, to certain extents. This is not about capability: this is about support and toolsets, advertising and demand, cultural obligation and perceived abilities and sources.
(In response to thoughtful comments about preferences between "systems-first" vs. "narrative-first/improv heavy" games)
So I'm not specifically talking about "more crunch vs less crunch" here. Lemme see if I can fit it into tweets, because I get what you're saying, but it's kind of off at an angle to what I'm getting with - and I agree: when the energy and effort of the group matches, it's great. There's no small number of "rules-light" games where the rules are very good: constructed to support the game that is being played, not overwhelming with extra detail beyond what is needed. I mention Lasers & Feelings, there's Trophy, MotW, Kids/Bikes, many more on my shelves. But then you get into territory that I've seen a lot over the decades: there's mismatched expectations/misplaced value, and then there's "I don't understand, it worked fine for me/my group, said the designer". And in all cases, if your table clicks, they're still good!
For "mismatched", I'm gonna pick on a game that I like a lot and use it as an example, BECAUSE I like it but this is also an example I had.
Dark Streets & Darker Secrets is almost like "what if the WoD were powered by a Black Hack-styled engine". Tight, purpose-driven design. Because of that, though, there are two different games: the chunk of the rules focusing on ways to navigate through fight scenes, and the approximately-equal chunk of rules for "and here is everything else", which frequently distills to "your DM will assign a difficulty, IDK". With a DM who's got the skill-set, the credibility, and the energy, this is a non-issue. They've the skill for the back and forth, to either do an improv scene or not, to assign a difficulty on the fly, to answer "but why is that a difficulty 7?" comparison questions and more. It's also set up with the expectation that due to the nature of the game, "fight scenes in the modern supernatural, hell yeah" is one of the reasons to play the game; not the only selling point but a big one. It's aware and up-front.
However, I've personally seen at least three DMs pick it up "because it's rules-light", immediately jump in with groups who didn't want to engage with fights (which is ultimately fine) but DID want to delve in for a lot of both improv and rolling and undefined rule-space. Alternately, other groups kept asking "hey can I do this combat maneuver or that one, what are the rules for..." and the DM who isn't used to it, being constantly put on the spot, constantly making rulings with no reference, constantly designing new moves, burned out very fast. This is mostly not the game's fault. I do think more games could do much better at providing tools to teach and support the DM role, but this one is hardly "worse" than most.
It's mostly the fault of "ruleslight = easy resolution for everything, right?" mismatched expectation.
The "I don't understand, it worked for my table" is a further iteration of this: games like the Tinyd6 series or, to some extent Risus or other games which, if I were being dismissive, often boil down to "IDK roll a d6 to do the thing" for literally everything. When your group is on the same wavelength, or playing the same improv game (AKA the "we don't even need to touch the dice, we're roleplaying all night" effect etc) this is not a big deal. You vibe with it, you get it, you're in the shared fiction/game space. Roll that d6 and go! But these games are often built with no support for teaching at all, leaning into "well, the DM will have an answer" but never actually helping a new DM arrive at those answers. This is usually unintentional, because "the game worked fine when I ran it at 20 cons!"
This is what I mean when I say "the game runs on the DM's CPU": not only does the DM have to handle narration, characterization, clarification questions, details, NPC reactions, and be a rules judge, now they ALSO have to be a rules WRITER on the fly as part of the core game. And that's actually my primary experience with "rules-light" games: the ones that everyone knows about actually tend to be the 'better' ones which do offer that support, or which require no extra support (see the aforementioned L&F, etc), or which have big visible followings. And those tend to be "fine", either because they really are fine/good, or because there's plenty of examples to draw from in order to build your skill, confidence and credibility.
But there's a TON of "oh wow it's rules-light" games that don't offer any support or guidance.
Something like Wildsea which uses the same easy framework for everything, but stacks it with evocative interactions, examples and stakes holds my attention because it's invested in helping me create the experience. Something like Tinyd6 just says "IDK, you're the DM, whatever".
I can make magic happen with both of them; I've used "ok now that we've established stakes, just roll a d6.... aaaand GO" to teach RPGs to a complete newcomer.
But if I didn't already know what I was doing, Tinyd6 would be punishingly hard for me to run satisfactorily.
I feel like I've meandered around a bit, but that's a little more of what I'm talking about.
It's about right-sizing the rules to help support the experience and dynamic and messaging that the game is "about", and that the group is looking for, but also picking invested rules.
(In response to further commentary about "I feel like this is more about expectations and matching than rules-weight?")
So re: rules on the fly:
Windo the Wind Wizard has "Wind Magic: d6". The rules say "roll a 5+ on your d6 to succeed at what you're trying to do. The DM can say you have to roll a 6, sometimes".
What can Windo do with Wind Magic? The game doesn't say. Just "you succeed on 5+."
Is it 5+ for a breeze and 6 for blowing away an army? CAN Windo blow an army away? Can Windo put out fires with Wind Magic d6? Can Windo move ships on a 5+? Can Windo open and close doors? Can Windo control it precisely enough to write sentences with blown leaves? Maybe the answer is "the DM shouldn't have let Windo pick Wind Magic as a trait and should have made Windo pick individual spells" but the game didn't cover that, and now here we are. What does Wind Magic do?
A group on the same improv wavelength will share the load, and this won't be a problem. It'll "feel right" and they'll go with it.
A DM with the right mix of experience, confidence and credibility will still have to figure out "oh, ok, sounds right" on the fly, but with practice.
A DM who doesn't have those things, either because they're new, or because they haven't got the group's wavelength for whatever reason, or because their interpretation is out of sync, or because they lack confidence, is going to constantly be expending that energy on rulings.
A "rules-heavier" game which spends more effort on building out "here's what you can accomplish with one d6. Here's what you need to combine skills for. Here's the general shape of what one trait encompasses" does so much work to help save that energy for other things.
("Rules-light" is often a misused descriptor in my experience as well - people tend to take it for 'easy to run' and that's often not the same thing at all, for all of the above reasons and more, etc)
(In response to commentary about "but I feel like saying 'it can accomplish what wind magic could reasonably be expected to do in your setting' is enough though?")
OK, but what if you, the DM, are the one who has to determine that, on the fly, because there is no "reasonable" defined anywhere, and you have to arbitrate "what wind magic can do" whenever someone tries something new?
I'm not saying "the game should provide every answer" - I am saying "the less the game provides, the more the answer has to be drawn from somewhere else, the more often the game facilitator has to be the one providing that energy".
I pick on Tinyd6 because there, the setting is often "IDK it's Fantasy, everyone knows Fantasy it's just Fantasy figure it out" in order to fit in a generic-fantasy-in-10-pages-or-so game, but it illustrates nicely: BECAUSE there's nothing there, now you ALSO have to provide the "something there".
If you HAVE the energy for that, the vocabulary for that, the practice for that, the confidence, the skills, etc, this is only an issue if you run out past your limits.
The hobby is absolutely dreadful at helping people develop that, instead expecting "the DM just has the sauce".
And that's what I was getting at in the first clarifying tweet way up above: I call out Lasers & Feelings for being "good" because it goes out of its way to provide the sauce, if you're willing to meet it on its terms; making the call is part of the group fun, not DM load. And in so doing, helps teach a lot about not only the process of shared-responsibility storytelling, but also the tools and skills that go into "being a (good, skillful) DM" (AND being a (good, skillful, cooperative) player but that's not my slant here)
This isn't me going deep into the woods and splitting hairs over "why I find Shadowrun easier to DM than Neon City Overdrive" or the like, but has been me musing on "because so many rules-light games lack their own textual identity, they rely on extra effort from outside and thus, paradoxically, can be more difficult, more draining, and ironically HARDER to run than a game which puts in the effort to "right-size" its text and rules to support itself, and particularly for new/un-practiced/don't-meet-the-vibe DMs/groups".
Thread reproduction ends here. Corralling some straggling thoughts.
There was further commentary about "but what about having to rule on what happens if you cast a fireball to light something on fire instead of as a combat maneuver, this seems no different" and on one sense, in a broad sense, that's true! This IS the same phenomenon. But I'm very zoomed in - one of the differences is that in the "do fireballs light things on fire" situation, you're getting ONE call on your resources and once it's answered, it's (probably) ANSWERED, but in the typical "rules-light RPG" situation that I keep running into - and this isn't a hypothetical, this is lived experience over and over - the DM isn't making ONE API call, they're making two, five, a dozen, fifty in quick succession, over and over, filling out blank spaces on the fly in every session, and any one of these, individually, might be amazing fun even, but you have to do it to play the game, and when you're coming at the whole thing from a perspective of "but, it's rules-light! It must be easy!" you'll soon be swamped by all of the demands on your energy and attention, unless you already have the skills and practice required.
Anyway: wanted to preserve the thoughts in an easier-to-read form than twitter threads, and possibly a better one to comment on. Or to share. I dunno.
Have some of my unfocused, not great, brainfogged thoughts, or something.
