Does Veeky Forums prefer a game that's rules-lite or one with lots of crunch?

Does Veeky Forums prefer a game that's rules-lite or one with lots of crunch?

Rules-light, if we're talking about RPGs. They aren't wargames, and too many rules get in the way of cinematics, improvising, and quick gameplay. Plus, any decent GM is going to end up tweaking things to fit his group and his campaign, and a rules-light game gives you a better foundation to build upon, where they don't have to worry about any change they make having a bunch of unforeseen consequences.

Rules-light for RPGs, crunchy for boardgames (euros are literally the best boardgames ever mande).

Hard to make an absolute statement either way. Rules light games are fun, they're often quick and simple to play and learn, but they can also lose my interest real damn fast, without some good crunch to hold onto. Some rules light games transcend this, but those are the well designed examples which actually use a light set of rules to create a compelling experience, instead of just having a few barely there generic rules and acting like that's a virtue.

Crunch is also not good in and of itself. I love games which have crunch that does a lot of work, where the complexity adds a lot to the experience and the game as a whole is able to become more than the sum of its parts. This tends to entail focused design and putting the complexity where it matters.

Systems which just make absolutely fucking everything pointlessly granular and complicated, even when they aren't interesting or relevant, bore the shit out of me.

Pretty sure the hivemind is split on this topic. Rules-lite RPGs have some traction, but so does the OSR, which tends towards crunchy.

My ideal game would be crunch heavy as it helps facilitate roleplay much better if everyone has a clear mechanical idea of how the world works. This lets everyone get immersed in a much more realistic feeling world with true cause and effect supported by the mechanics.

The problem is you need a really good group to make this work. One who all know the rules inside out but still will roleplay within the system and not power game for knowing them.

So I favour rules lite in practice as most players are too casual to handle a rules heavy game.

Pretty much this. Both can be done well, and both can be shit. I personally lean towards crunch since for most light systems you can just use a generic light system without losing anything, but there are exceptions.

>OSR
>crunchy
Man, if you think that's what high-crunch looks like, I've got some games that'll blow your fucking mind.

>Man, if you think that's what high-crunch looks like, I've got some games that'll blow your fucking mind.

Reminds me of the process to make a character on Traveller.

Traveller's character creation is actually pretty damn cool (not Megatraveller, fuck megataveller). Crunchy but it's one of the earliest character creation methods that make your backstory with you.

Indeed. I scared some lazy players once with this system, but I absolutely love it. It's a game on itself, I often create multiple characters when bored.

I have the opposite feeling. I find euros very boring. My favorite board games are Encore, Catchphrase, and Concepts.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. I also enjoy solitaire games - Onirim is my favorite.

You know, the historical reasons Taveller's character creation were kind of neat. The apocryphal tale is that the original maker or Traveller was friends with a guy who played DnD and his friend would always tell these great stories about these characters in the games they played. Now the maker never read the rules of DnD, let alone played it, so he made Traveler to replicate those stories.

Traveller was one of the first RPGs to have backstory character gen because he didn't know that all those tales were about events in the game, not backstory for the characters before they got made.

Or possibly that he just felt those stories were more fun to have in character creation than to have only at the table with a blank slate.

Depends on the kind of game I want to run. If I want to run some kind of Conan-inspired high adventure with the PCs hacking through waves of mooks and swinging from chandeliers and shit, a crunchy system that itemizes (or might not include) those kind of wacky shenanigans could get in the way. I might reach for something rules-light. Same thing with Supers games, I think they--as a rule--should be pretty rules-light.

Shooty games, on the other hand, I like a bit more crunch for. In a more heroic fantasy game I might not want to track the players' ammunition at all, but in a tactical shooter I might think it's very important to track things like ammo or wound location. I might want more mechanically-enumerated choices for the players to take in combat rather than the more freestyle actions you'd find in a more rules-light game.

TLDR: Making sure the system you've selected captures the feel of the kind of game you've chosen to run is the important part. Neither rules-light or crunch-heavy systems will work for every game.

As a DM I prefer running rules lite games, lately on the more narrative side. I don't like prep work outside of making maps, visuals aids, and the like. My players are generally friends or people I meet through work instead of other gamers, so they're not super opinionated about any system in particular.

>he didn't know that all those tales were about events in the game
If that's accurate it just upped my respect for the man.

I prefer a game that has a good depth-to-complexity ratio. If a rule/mechanic is gonna turn out to be a waste of my time then I don't want it in the game.
But ultimately I still want a fairly "crunch heavy" game.

It's just that 100% of crunch heavy games right now have shit design and inflated page counts and lots of terrible content you have to sift through. GURPS, Pathfinder, 4e, you name it.

2crunchy4me

4e seems like an odd one out there, unless you're counting essentials. Overall its design is very focused and most of what's available is good. Aside from MM1 and MM2, which were annoying fuckups.

Depends on the type of game you want to run

"Rules-lite" is codeword for "I'm too dumb to play real rpgs". Only tumblrites and furries play "rules-lite" games cause they want to play games cause they're popular but don't want to put any effort in it and because they want to freeform gay sex, respectively.

I played FATAL. Ironically ofc, but I still enjoyed the crunch of it. Somewhat. Bit much maybe.

Rules-lite with solid, specific rules that complement each other.

For me that's systems like B/X or Apocalypse World where there are rules to do A thing, rather than rules to do ANY thing.

Yeah I ironically masturbate to hentai too.

rules-medium. less than rolemaster or shadowrun or even 3.PF. more than narrative crap.
WFRP 1E/2E has about the right amount of crunch.

>WFRP 1E/2E has about the right amount of crunch.

My relation of sub-saharan descent.

Makes me want to play Continuum

"Rules-heavy" is a code word for "I need to be handheld through every potentiality because I lack the imagination to create or improvise". Only roll-players and normies play "rules-heavy" games, because they like the idea of RPGs, but don't have the capability or desire to think for themselves, and because they are crap at narrative and actual role-play, and prefer what is, in essence, a trumped-up boardgame.

At some point you realize that 99% of what makes a campaign enjoyable depends on the players and the DM, not the crunch.

Nobody ever said "Wow you remember last year when we played blah, that was such an amazing abstraction of the back and forth of combat" or "Yeah, I have so many fond memories of incredibly balanced class progression."

The rules are there so you can all agree on what the outcome is in a conflict situation. That's it.
They don't make things realistic without having players that are good at immersing each other in the action and events. The rules don't make your DM more creative or better at improvising. The rules aren't what makes your players show up on time and solve their rp-conflicts within the rp, and their ooc conflicts ooc.

A player who is super-knowledgeable about swordfighting will make you picture everything in vivid detail and can describe super-primitive rules interactions in ways that make you imagine a convincing swordfight.

A player who has no fucking clue about anything will make a fight sound clunky and unconvincing even if he's memorized all the rules from A Song of Swords.

So in the end, do yourself a favour and play a rules-light system, with a great group of players, because you're just streamlining everything and saving everyone so much time that can be spent on actual role-playing, and you are giving players more room to tell an entertaining story instead of being chained to detailed rules that never stop feeling like a game anyway.

You're fucking retarded.

The group and the GM matter, sure, nobody is saying otherwise. But that the system is less than 1%? You're out of your goddamn mind.

You might prefer rules light. That's your preferred playstyle, and that's fine. But trying to argue that the rules of the game never enhance the experience or form part of what people enjoy about roleplaying games you're fucking mad. An RPG is a fucking game, and good mechanics make for a fun gameplay experience.

>"Rules-heavy" is a code word for "I need to be handheld through every potentiality because I lack the imagination to create or improvise".
and that's where you wrong, kiddo. one advantage of crunch is that it works counter to GM arbitrariness. you win because your character had the right capabilities to defeat the challenge at hand and not just because the GM felt like you deserve it because you're such an entertaining dude in general.

That is completely unrelated to whether the game is light or heavy and all about GMing style.

>A player who is super-knowledgeable about swordfighting will make you picture everything in vivid detail and can describe super-primitive rules interactions in ways that make you imagine a convincing swordfight.
without a solid rules foundation, it's completely hollow. it's like reskinning a 3D model in a game: it changes nothing about the game, it's just a surface modification without much consequence.

>So in the end, do yourself a favour and play a rules-light system, with a great group of players,
so that everything depends on how the GM feels like in a given moment. great. NOT!

They also ignore the fact that in actually well designed rules light games the rules can and will help the experience and make it more fun.

The thing about rules is that you don't remember them when they're doing their job. If a system is properly supporting you, of course you'll remember the fluff before you talk about the specific mechanics. Then again, something particularly awesome mechanically can also form part of those fond recollections, but as a secondary thing. Still, without those rules, the fond recollection might not have happened in the same way, or had less weight. Again, in a well designed system.

The reason you might believe, stupidly, that rules are always harmful in anything more than the minimum is if you've played shitty systems. Because if the rules fuck you over, of course you're going to remember that sucky moment being the fault of badly designed rules that brought you out of the experience and didn't properly support you.

But that isn't a reason to abandon good, interesting design or the depth crunchy games can offer. If anything, it's a ringing endorsement of how great they can be.

when "every potentiality" has rules, that is something that the players can hold the GM to. without such rules, the GM can make shit up whatever way he feels like.

moreover, having rules ensures consistency over multiple scenes/sessions/campaign, increasing the immersion because the setting feels more like a consistent world.

the more rules-light, the more everything feels inconsistent and subject to negotiation. fake!

Literally everything in the session is already happening because the GM felt like it.

You are being presented with challenges that everyone at the table WANTS you to overcome, so where's the sense of accomplishment coming from?

>Wow I'm so good at the rules, look, I won a fight in an imaginary game where every obstacle is controlled by my friend who wants me to win. I'm so cool.

The boardgame parts of role-playing are there to let everyone agree on the results of conflict resolution, they're not the point of the exercise.

Saying that rules-heavy games avoid the problem of GM fiat is ludicrous.

You're fucking delusional. You could be playing the crunchiest system in the world, and the GM could be doing whatever he goddamn likes and you wouldn't know it. You can't see his NPC sheets, you can't even necessarily see his dice rolls. He could be making it up all on the fly and, as long as he's equally adept at the system as you are, you would not be able to tell the difference.

The Game part of RPG's is also, y'know, fun.

And this is equally true of rules light games. Shifting labels and moving Masks is as much a game as D&D tactical combat, and both systems are fun to engage with, interacting with those mechanics producing interesting storytelling opportunities that might not have arisen otherwise.

I like both, and rule-lite and rule-heavy both have their time and place. However, I tend to gravitate towards what I call, rule-medium. A balance between the two, the middle ground, ranging from BESM to about 3.pf.

That doesn't even look that bad; it's just a bunch of dots you fill in.

I have a strong opinion on the matter, but it's hard to explain in the terms you gave. So let me put it this way: if I'm not rolling for anal circumference, don't even bother calling me for that game of yours.
I hope that cleared things out, pal.

You're both idiots. Rules are tools and different kinds of rules enforce (or allow) different kinds of play. Whether a system is "rules-light" or "crunchy" is incidental to whether the rules of the system allow the kind of play the designer intended. There are good and there are bad games that would fit soundly in each category.

You've nailed it. Sadly, they're either trolls or opposed flavours of badwrongfun moron who'll never see eye to eye.

>A player who is super-knowledgeable about swordfighting will spout trivia at you until you want to run them through with an actual sword.
Fixed that for you.

>I need to be handheld through every potentiality because I lack the imagination to create or improvise
But that's WRONG you fucking retard, and not only is it wrong, it's also the opposite of reality. Rules heavy gives you a more concise set of tools to shape your imagination instead of having a formless idea that ends up being lame because there's no obstacle to pass. Do you think using a couple of crayons means that you lack imagination to create or improvise? Do you think drawing on a paper is less imaginative than pretending that you've drawn Mona Lisa?

I can teach someone who plays a lot of narrative games how to play a crunchier game, it's not hard. They might not have a great time of it, but they can still keep the game moving because crunch doesn't usually get in the way of being a proactive player. Rules are something you can teach people on the fly. Hell, I've run games for people who are completely ignorant of the rules, multiple times.

I can't really teach someone how to be creative or how to improvise, and people who come from rules lite or narrative games tend to be better at it, because a lot of those games are structured around improv.

I think they're both valid styles of play for different reasons. I would not use a crunchy system if I wanted to run a game that felt like Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones kills Nazis regardless of what is in his hand because he's the hero. In a crunchy game, his weapon would matter, and the game would cease to feel like Indiana Jones. Crunchy games are bad at emulating cinematic adventures.

On the other hand, I wouldn't use a rules lite game for something like Cyberpunk. The allure of the genre for a lot of people is the various pieces of tech and gear you can equip yourself with. They also tend to be heist games, and in a heist there should be multiple obstacles to overcome.

Saying one is inherently better than the other is infantile.

Crunchy does not mean granular and simulationist. It tends to, I'll grant you, but that's correlation, not causation.

For all its flaws, Legends of the Wulin is an example of the alternative- A crunchy, mechanically complex game that embraces narrative and thematic logic over granular simulation. And, once you get past the annoying learning curve and shitty editing, it is fucking awesome because of it.

Yes, I'm speaking in generalities since the thread isn't about any specific game. I should have clarified a bit.

crunch but streamlined. I don't want my characters achievements to feel hollow, but i don't want to spend three hours trying to figure out the mechanics of choking someone out while they stab me. I would err on the side of crunch that, or at least a list of optional rules for different play styles. its why I'm a big fan of dd I love the unearthed arcana

Middle ground. Rpgs are games and stories, not one or the other.

It's also interesting how certain systems divy up crunch between players and GMs, like some systems require a lot to understand on the GM end but then don't require that the players understand much to play the game

The joke's on you; I was only *acting* retarded. Seriously though, while I do generally prefer rules-light for a variety of reasons, I was mostly responding in kind to the troll post (which, I imagine, expresses how he really feels, only hugely exaggerated for the sake of being provocative).

I'd say rules lite, for rpgs. It gives more room for interpretation. Plus you save time not having to look up a billion different special rules or charts.

>Rules heavy gives you a more concise set of tools
>Rules heavy
>concise

Yep. Well designed, complex and satisfying rules can also be presented in a simple, easy to understand way. They often aren't, but that's because the TTRPG industry has goddamn awful standards of editing and layout.

>one advantage of crunch is that it works counter to GM arbitrariness.
That post makes you a bad person.

How so? The more rules light and free form a system the more power the GM has generally

Rules light.

Light enough so you don't have to grab the handbook so often the game grinds to a halt, crunchy enough so that the players can do the actions they want with significant differences and outcomes.

Trying to constrain a GM is stupid. No amount of rules is going to make a bad GM good, but it can still serve to get in a good GM's way. Besides, the very notion that you have to limit and control a GM is objectionable.

They may be presented in an easy-to-understand fashion, but by definition, rules-heavy systems aren't concise, and they certainly aren't *more* concise than rules-light systems.

Eh it depends, even if a GM isn't a shit, rules provide a level of consistency that the GM couldn't even if he tried

Concise doesn't just means short, it means information-rich, conveying a lot with a little, which can just as much be applied to crunchy games as to light ones.

Some rules light systems can be, sure. But a bland, generic rules light system is not by definition concise, if there just isn't that much information there to convey.

WFRP 2nd Ed is pretty good. It doesn't have a skill for every conceivable situation possible, so it's easy to improvise by making certain actions Easy/Hard, etc. Like, if someone wants to swing from a chandelier, you can even give them options to do it gracefully or brutishly ("take a Routine Agility test or Easy Strength test").

Not him, but I disagree.

It's not about "constraining" the GM. The rules are there to convey to you how the game is played. As a GM, if I buy a rulebook, I want it to tell me how to play. This means that when it comes to most interactions I either want:

>1) Rules telling me how to arbitrate those interactions mechanically

Or,

>2) Guidelines on how to arbitrate interactions that are not covered by the rules

Ideally I get both. Me having to make less spot-calls can absolutely be a good thing, and it benefits me as well as the players. Every GM is going to have to make calls regularly, but having rules in place to prevent you from having to make as many can be a tremendous help. It's not just players that benefit from the GM having to be less "arbitrary", believe me.

Either as long as the rules are consistent and not filled with subsystems that work completely different from one another and use entirely different dice.

Also if the system gives you advice on what grounds to make those calls on, directly informing you of its tone and themes and what matters to it, so you can make judgements in respect to the system with a common frame of reference shared by the players.

>it works counter to GM arbitrariness
Arbitrary GMs will still be that way no matter how many pages the rules have.

Source: Played with multiple extremely arbitrary GMs in my dnd 3.5 days.

I'm OK with either way, as long as it's consistent throughout and covers the things the system needs to cover.

What I don't like is when a system has extremely detailed combat rules but boils down riding/driving/investigation/whatever to a single roll.

Good Crunchy Games > Good Light games > Bad Light games > Bad Crunchy games

Lots of rules is pointless if they don't actually make the game better for it. But a good ruleset can make the game more focused and really reinforce the type of play the game is shooting for.

>Literally everything in the session is already happening because the GM felt like it.
there's a huge difference between making everything dependent on arbitrary GM decisions and throwing stuff at players and seeing what happens when you follow the rules.

>You are being presented with challenges that everyone at the table WANTS you to overcome, so where's the sense of accomplishment coming from?
because there is no guarantee. bad decisions or bad dicerolls may kill you after all. if that's not the case, you might as well play freeform.

>The boardgame parts of role-playing are there to let everyone agree on the results of conflict resolution, they're not the point of the exercise.
see above: sometimes PCs die due to bad luck or bad decisions

>Saying that rules-heavy games avoid the problem of GM fiat is ludicrous.
I didn't say there is no GM fiat. I said that rules partially tie the GMs hands (as they should). they bestow a certain physics engine upon a setting which the GM can only modify in a consistent way ("houserules") and is otherwise forced to operate within to affect the game.

>You could be playing the crunchiest system in the world, and the GM could be doing whatever he goddamn likes and you wouldn't know it.
and that's where you're wrong, kiddo. the GM could fudge dice and I wouldn't know it. he could give or take advantages/disadvantages and i wouldn't know it. but if on some rolls a 24 is enough to beat the enemy AC and on other rolls it ain't, this is going to be obvious. if we even ignore the subject of psychology for a moment and it is not transparent which GMs are fudgers and which ain't...

the rules are meant to be constraints on the GM, he cannot violate them repeatedly and blatantly without damaging the consistency of his game world.

no, you're the idiots. we're debating preferences and why we're having the preferences we're having. it's not our problem that you're incapable of expressing your own.

>people who come from rules lite or narrative games tend to be better at it, because a lot of those games are structured around improv.
citation needed. anyway, the point is part of role-playing games has always been bestowing a consistent world feeling, which mightily adds to immersion. Running an immersive game goes beyond writing a compelling novel. If EVERYTHING is subject to the GM's whims and what he thinks is necessary for the plot and his current plot does not operate within the physics of the gameworld he has set-up, that's quite immersion-breaking.

now, granted, some players might not mind as much as others. let them play rules-light. i belong to the othe group of players, however. i want the feeling of adventuring in another, semi-consistent world.

and that's in a nutshell why I think rules-light sucks.

>Indiana Jones
in a cinematic game you can go lighter on rules for weapons and tech and such, yes. but you can get quite heavy on rules for various challenges, such as escaping a pit of snakes, dodging a rolling boulder and so forth.

/thread

underrated. i lean towards heavy workload on the GM, simple for the players.

>Plus you save time not having to look up a billion different special rules or charts.
and that is the actual reason why people prefer rules-light: they don't want to have to put up effort to create a consistent setting, they just wanna tell stories. not my cup of tea.

>Trying to constrain a GM is stupid.
i don't want to defeat the GM, i want my fictional characters to defeat the fictional challenges that have been pre-designed, ideally not wholly with him in mind. part of why i like pre-published adventures: it allows me to find out how my PC/my party does fare within this non-tailored plot.

>It's not about "constraining" the GM.
but it is. If fall damage is d6 per 3m and the players know it, the GM can't just suddenly roll d6 if his bad guy falls 10m to the floor. Not without claiming that he has a trait that allows him to mitigate the damage. Again, it's about conveying a consistent physics feeling, which is important for immersion for a number of people, and forcing the GM to operate within that consistent framework.

>Me having to make less spot-calls can absolutely be a good thing
agreed.

>Played with multiple extremely arbitrary GMs in my dnd 3.5 days.
well, was it GM fiat within the physics of D&D or did the GMs violate the rules at a whim openly and blatantly?

I've typically found that players with an extensive knowledge on swordfighting end up making swordfighting extremely boring. This applies to guns as well, though for some reason actual soldiers seem to be better at having fun with it than our local gun nuts.

Rules light

As military, the probably reason is that we don't have any preconceived notions about how that sort of thing works in combat, we know what does what, when and how. And we also train with it enough that it is pretty boring for us. The local gun nut has probably done a bunch of 'tactical training' from some mall cop playing drill instructor, and has all these ideas about what actually makes a difference. The military guy wants to have fun with it for once.

Having a balanced system, not too heavy but not too lite either is the best all-around option imo. But only when a team is fully composed of players who are comfortable with the rules and know them enough that they don't interrupt the flow of the game.

Rules-lite is a must if you're playing casually or is introducing new players to the game.

And rules-heavy is for that group of dedicated turbonerds that enjoy game sessions that feel like multiplayer flight simulators.

Crunch-heavy, but with unified mechanics that are easy to remember and/or bullshit or make judgement calls for on the spot, AKA *NOT* crunch-heavy systems which involve constantly looking through books, examining tables, remembering 10 different subsystems and fractured mechanical systems that only barely line up (looking at many more recent D20 iterations here), etc.

I like a crunchy, solid foundation which I can then cut down to size or ignore as necessary to keep the game moving without the system buckling or breaking under itself or without some of the moving parts.

You could say I like crunch-heavy systems played like rules-lite games, up until something very important or dramatic/pivotal comes up and the whole table *wants* to dig into the nitty-gritty to parse shit out in the game. It's important to note that while this can be somewhat involved rules-wise, *IT IS ALL IN SERVICE TO THE NARRATIVE AND WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE GAME WORLD*. Enjoying rules =/= "rollplaying", you hyperbole-spouting idiots.

I suppose in practice, this ends up being somewhere in what could be described as rules-medium territory. But honestly, I don't think these are very useful categories for discussion. As others have said, rules "crunch" is more a preference than a means to a specific end, and has virtually no correlation to how a given system actually functions or flows in play. Reeks a little bit of Forge-era GNS discussion, to me.

>I like a crunchy, solid foundation which I can then cut down to size or ignore as necessary
this is a very valid point. it's easier to remove rules rather than to add in a consistent manner. people make fun of MYFRAOG swimming modifiers but the truth is: they don't hurt at all. if you want to use them in a given scene, feel free to do so. if you feel they are too much, just cut down or ignore entirely. MYFAROG may have a number of faults but swimming modifiers ain't one of them.

I prefer crunchy, but flexible games where the GM has the final say on everything.

Or I didn't realize that because I had bad systems ruin my fun even though I had fun with those groups when we played other systems.

For RPG I prefer my games rules-light but option-heavy.

As for tabletop it depends on the group I'm playing with. Crunchy games can become real deep and interesting but a lot of people are not just not involved enough to learn them.

The amount of crunch isn't important. The quality of the crunch, however, is very important.

daym man you're funny, awful at defending this point of yours but funny

Nothing is a constraint upon the GM. The rules are there to support them in creating a fun experience. Nothing more.

If you feel the need to constrain your GM, it sounds like your group has a severe fucking problem with trust.

None of this is about constraining the GM, and it's not the system which creates consistency.

You're right that consistency is good... Which is why a good GM will make use of the rules to provide that consistency. But, again, they are supporting him, not constraining him. The rules are not the foundation of consistency, the GM's focus on the game being fun is. The majority of the time, they might stick to the rules because it works best to serve the fun of the game. But they are absolutely free to, at any time, completely disregard those rules if they think something else would improve the experience of the game. Knowing when and when not to do it is important, because of the aforementioned value of consistency, but that in no way implies it should or could never be done. And either way, the system doesn't actually matter in that respect.

>If EVERYTHING is subject to the GM's whims
Most modern narrative games feature a whole lot of player input into how the word works and how the plot resolves. Some even go as far as to not have a single dedicated GM at all, and instead opt to have the players take turns doing what the GM would traditionally be doing in other systems or have some other way of determining whose input takes precedence.

I find that a system that balances the two is ideal.

That "appearance status" grid is so stupid.
"Menacing, Rough, Elegant," and "Approachable" are so loosely defined that I could fill out the chart in almost any way and still describe my character however I want.

cool argument, dude

>Nothing is a constraint upon the GM.
and that's where you're wrong, kiddo. the player's willingness to put up with his shit are de facto limits to GM power. the rest isn't worth commenting upon.

>it's not the system which creates consistency.
another error. take the supposedly awful swimming modifiers in MYFAROG. these rules ensure that each swimming attempt is subject to the same modifiers. without such a list of modifiers a GM needs to come up with them on-the-fly and if there is 5 sessions between each swimming attempt, there is no guarantee that there is any consistency between those modifiers.

just as one example how crunch provides consistency. feel free to dispute that.

>muh houserules
again, there is a de facto limit (which differs group by group) of how much GM fiat/houseruling a GM can get away with before players start to balk. a theoretical example taken to the extreme: a GM announces a D&D campaign and then shows up with CoC rules, calling them a heavily modified D&D. with most groups, there is a point between that and unmodified D&D where they'd start to rebel.

...So in attempting to dispute it you basically proved yourself wrong. It's not about the system, it's about the preferences and playstyle of the group.

Although I think it's stupid to express that as a 'limit on GM power'. You're not in an opposing power relationship, you're a group of friends working together to have fun. The GM takes actions to create more fun for the group, using or not using the rules as they see fit. There's really nothing else to it.

And your example has no relation to any increase in consistency between rules light and crunch heavy games. A crunch heavy game might have lots of granular modifiers, sure, but a rules light game which enforces a certain kind of thematic logic can maintain that kind of consistency just as well. It is not an advantage of crunchy systems. It might be the kind of consistency you prefer, but you're confusing your opinions with objective statements of virtue and value.

The most important post in the thread. When I buy a rpg book I want it to tell me plainly and explicitly what kind of adventures I'm supposed to run with it, and I want the rules help to reinforce the theme. It's the main reason I dislike generic systems, because being about anything means they're about nothing.

>swimming modifiers in MYFAROG
That's not consistency that's weapons grade autism. Consistency is stuff like NPCs maintaining the same personality between sessions and towns staying in the same geographic location, not having tons of finicky rules and modifiers.

Being fair, both are forms of consistency. The error he's making is assuming that his preferred form is the only form that matters.

>citation needed

Why do I need a citation for common sense? If you come from a background of improv heavy games, it's safe to say you will be better at it. Someone who has never played FATE is going to approach RPGs differently than someone who plays it regularly. It's a game where players have momentary GM powers, they get to make declarations about the universe or what direction the story is going. Creatively, they get put in the spotlight a lot more than they would in something like Shadowrun.

>If EVERYTHING is subject to the GM's whims and what he thinks is necessary for the plot and his current plot does not operate within the physics of the gameworld he has set-up, that's quite immersion-breaking.

What you are describing is the exact opposite of what a lot of rules lite systems do. Especially in recent years with the rise of narrative games, or games without a GM.

It's also shitty DMing.

Generally the former, but I prioritize goid design over everything else.

Like real life cereals, nobody likes soggy mushy shit, and nobody likes eating peanut brittle.

Best rule systems are moderately crunchy and relax the crunch on the last few spoonfulls.

The more rules the better. I can strip stuff I don't need or want to change, and then have something to lean on when I want to make sure things are balanced. It's easy to take away or handwave troublesome rules, but it's hard to come up with reasonable stuff without play testing. For me at least.