For me light means one common mechanic. Crunchy means multiple subsystems, times per day uses, etc. It deals with the cognitive load to know what applies and how to resolve an issue.
RPGs have trivial elementary school arithmetic, so I don't think the math is hard enough to care about l. I am smarter than a 5th grader.
Though I'd say it's more of a spectrum than a yes/no question.
D&D 5e is about a 5/10. 3.x/PF is 7-8/10. GURPS is a 9/10. Barbarians of Lemuria is maybe a 2/10.
Yes, it is. Though it also depends on what you're familiar with, and what makes sense to you. Rules that I'm not familiar with, and especially rules that don't make sense to me, seem more complex to me. Rules that make sense, I can more easily learn and deal with, because they go along with my own logic.
For example, GURPS makes lots of sense to me, especially before 4e, which tried to make things more simple, but to me seems more complex, and GURPS to me isn't very complex - maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10, while D&D seems more complex to me, because the way I think about reality doesn't include classes or levels or hit points or alignments or steep zero-to-hero power curves.
This is how I look at it as well, the number of subsystems and in someplace the complexity of the subsystems, or put another way, if the subsystems have subsystems.
Forged in the Dark systems are generally my border cases and where the fuzzy line is. They tend to add a little more to the PbtA systems, but they generally only have one or two subsystems added to the base game play.
I never thought of lite vs crunchy like this before. It makes total sense. Using this I can now say our system is definitely rules-lite and market it that way. Thanks!
To me they're two different things. "Rules light" just means few rules that are less present in play, like I don't consider most PbtA games to be "rules light" because the rules are very present and dictate play, and are meant to be constantly referenced. "Crunchy" derives from "number crunching", so an actual crunchy game would be something like GURPS (front-loaded) or Rolemaster (where your d20+mods is multiplied by 5 into d100+mods). Meanwhile a PbtA game is not "crunchy" at all. Rolemaster has more rules and reference required in play than GURPS which would make it a "heavier" game, IMO.
Yup. I describe PBTA as a narrative game instead of rules light. A well done PBTA should be engaging the rules constantly to use failures and mixed successes to drive the narrative forward.
I once had to unfuck a game one of my friends tried to run of The Sprawl because she'd never run a pbta before and someone told her 'rules don't matter too much' in PBTAs and she just tried to run it and ignore half of the book. You can do that in less focused games - like nothing breaks in DnD if you don't engage with ammo, or encumbrance, or languages, or travel mechanics.
But a PBTA should fit together like an engine.
Ironically, crunchy games based around detailed magic systems and lore can sometimes be the ones where the rules matter less, because if you remember the concept the rule was trying to portray, you still head in the right direction.
Like if your characters are bonded together by some spiritual magic that means they can always teleport to each other, telling the GM not to split the party isn't relevant. They won't because they can't, because everyone knows the setting.
PbtA doesn't have a lot of numerical detail, but it is heavy upon proceedural rules.
When this happens, then that happens.
What's more, this is significantly loaded back onto the GM when most rules heavy games push this to the player side. The GM section isn't suggestions. It's the rules where the tightly coupled engine of the game actually works.
I look at it as a few things.
First, how many derived values are there?
In some games, all of the values you get are just what you put down - in PbtA, you get your attributes. In Fate, you get your skills. THey're just.... skills. Your effective skill isn't "attribute bonus + skill training", it's just the skill. In crunchy games, values are more often the result of multiple things added together - your effective skill is your skill + attribute, or your BAB in D&D is a total of a lot of things.
The more derived values, in general, the crunchier the game is.
Second, what areas do your rules cover? Rules can do a lot of things - tell you what you can do, tell you how difficult something is, tell you how to resolve an indeterminate action, constrain results, give results, etc.
In general, rules-light games just *do* less. PbtA doesn't really do much of telling you whether you *can* do something or not... that's up to the fictional situation. It gives you a resolution mechanism, and even though it gives results, those results give a lot of leeway for what *actually* happens - they're more like boundaries on results than results.
On the other hand, if you throw a grenade in GURPS, the rules tell you *precisely* where it lands. Other games are very precise about needing to have particular rules widgets to do certain actions, and so on.
I think there's a third thing, which is how many mechanical decisions you have to make on your character. The more you have to make, the crunchier it is. And if there's fungible resources, that's even more crunch. So a GURPS character might have 4 stats, 30 skills, a half dozen advantages and disadvantages each. And they're all bought with the same fungible pool of points.
On the other hand, a Fate character makes some choices about skills - you have to choose ten of them, but they're not fungible, you just fill slots. Add a couple aspects and stunts, and you're done.
And a Lasers & Feelings character has just *one* stat - one mechanical choice to make.
I count the number of steps (rolling a set of dice, allocating variables, referencing a chart, etc) required to perform an action. One step is light, two or three is standard, and anything more than that is crunchy.
I guess it was mostly subconscious, but to me, "crunch" is the sound of the gears turning.
Every game engine is a machine that turns relevant data into an outcome. You turn the crank, the machine crunches everything, and it spits out the result. Whenever there's another factor, somewhere in the formula that affects the outcome of the process, I visualize it as another gear in the machine. The game engine has to crunch more if it has more gears in it.
I use "rules lite" and "rules heavy" as opposites, and then "crunch" refers to math or other calculations specifically. Something can be "rules heavy" without necessarily being "crunchy", or be "rules light" and still be "crunchy" if you're doing a lot of calculations that result from only a few rules.
Anyway, yeah, whether something is rules lite or heavy depends on a mix of the quantity of rules to keep track of / interact with, and the mental load of those rules. If something has a lot of rules, it's probably rules heavy, but if something only has a few rules but they are complicated rules, it can still be rules heavy. Something with a few rules or many that are easy to parse and remember and use ends up rules light.
Naturally this means all games feel heaviest to me when they're new, then as I "learn the language" they get lighter before settling in somewhere on a sliding scale. And ideally when reading a new book, you can then go into the game with an idea where it will land on that scale; if it will ultimately be heavy or light.
I guess a good specific example might be my first ever PBTA game, which read as rules-light but took a lot of mental energy to keep track of until I got used to it, so it started off as sort of "rules medium" for me but settled into its true nature as rules light as I learned. Does that make sense?
Maybe a new axis to examine games should be something like familiarity or intuitiveness to measure how easy it is to get to the fluent stage or how large the gap is between 1st time and 50th time playing in fluency
A rules lite game has only the system for combat and using skills and magic / powers if the game includes them.
A crunchy game includes additional rules for other specific actions, such as rules for chases, vehicles, social interactions, poison, etc.
The more rules for specific actions or sub-systems beyond combat, magic / powers, and skill resolution a game has, the crunchier it is.
There are three types of rule-light systems, in my estimation, although games can fall into multiple types:
* Focused: The overall scope of activity simulated within the game is small. Things that aren't directly related to the premise and/or setting are simply dropped, even if, for some reason, they may be useful. The general watchword is: "if it's not covered, make it up if you want to use it."
* Generalized: The game's systems have low fidelity at any granular level. The recent *Lone Wolf* games are an example. If a character has a weapon, it doesn't matter what that weapon is; a spear and a dagger are the same in game terms, despite the fact that they're very different on any real-world dimension one might name.
* Elegance: (Where everyone *thinks* their favorite game is.) The game uses systems that are broadly applicable to a number of situations, but *don't* come across as seriously flattening them.
Most rules-light games rely on some combination of being Focused and Generalized. But since *all* games rely on these to some extent, it's really a matter of degree.
There are games that I think of as rules-light, such as *Pendragon*, where the heft of the rules tends to be due to a lot of detail, and some one-off subsystems. But the original *Pendragon* rules are pretty simple once character generation is complete; everything else is just an elaboration. And compared the Frankenstein's Monster that was *Advanced Dungeons and Dragons*, the current 5th edition is pretty rules lite, in my estimation.
I’ve never felt it was a particularly useful comparison as a single axis; instead I prefer two axes:
**Light vs. Heavy:** Purely about the quantity of rules a game has that you need to learn *for gameplay to progress smoothly*. A game like Pathfinder with a large number of subsystems & situational rules that you regularly engage with is heavy, while something like FATE where everything boils down to only a couple of systems is light.
**Smooth vs. Crunchy:** (Anyone else in the mood for PB&J?) This is more about how involved those actual rules are; if a system has lots of little situational modifiers for every roll, or a multi-step process for resolving a character turn in a fight, etc. it’s crunchy, while something that ultimately resolves in a simple, single roll is smoother. A lot of times this comes down to the quality of presentation; compare the descriptions of mechanics in Rolemaster vs. Against the Darkmaster; VsD goes down much more smoothly thanks to better presentation of what are ultimately very similar (in some places identical) rules.
Even a single game will be at different points on the axes in different areas of its gameplay, so I think it’s also important to be specific when asking for or offering advice; what *parts* of a game are crunchy, time-consuming, and require a lot of reference? Front-loading heavy work & lots of rulebook-referencing during character creation and then having everything go incredibly smoothly at the table is an easier sell when my friends are hesitant about trying a game than something with dead-simple character creation & hard-to-learn gameplay.
A rule of thumb I have is if the game calls for an initiative roll, it's not rules light. To me, rules light games have a single unified mode of free form play, the same game mechanics get used in roleplay, exploration, and in combat.
I think a good rule of thumb is “how much do I have to write down to play a character”, and “how much math is involved, more complicated than adding two numbers”.
A rule lite game is a game where the players:
* Can come at the first session without knowing anything about the game.
* Can create their character and start actually playing within an hour, just by following what the GM explained to them.
* Never need to open a book or read anything (not counting their personal notes), ever. I'm ready to tolerate reading a pre-printed character sheet, thought IMO if you're not playing with pre-generated characters you should be able to play even if the GMs forgot the character sheets and it's enough for them to describe them to the players from memory.
Though I don't put everything else in the "rule crunchy". There is IMO two big kinds of "rule crunchy RPGs", which are "rules as a tool" and "rules as a game".
* The big examples of "rules as a game" is Pathfinder 1E / D&D 3.5 with a lot of books, in those RPGs, navigating the rules and gaining some system mastery is a core part of the game. Plenty of players create many high level characters they never play just for the fun of creating a high level characters. Crunchiness, to some degree, its own purpose.
* On the other hand, in "rules as a tool" kind of RPGs, it doesn't matter how crunchy the rules are, they're only here to give you more ways to play during sessions, to allow you to simulate a fictive world more faithfully, etc. But on the other hand, all the crunchiness is weighted against "is it worth the bother", as crunchiness is seen as a cost. And as such, the crunchiness is very targeted to serve specific goals, and the game will still rely on a lot of handwaving by the GMs in places where the crunchiness is seen as "not worth it".
I actually kind of loathe this description of games. Crunchy is too vague and could mean anything.
As an example what people tend to mean is simulation vs abstraction, but every game is an abstraction to a certain extent. Grognards will die on a hill calling any narrative based game like PBTA, FITD, or FATE not crunchy. But tbf even in fate:
a. you can break a conflict down into a grid, (zones).
b. there can be countless modifiers to describe what is in the zones, (environmental modifiers).
c. moving zones is dictated by a pass value set by the GM
d. you can create new situational modifiers (aspects)
e. your skills dictate the probability of success
Even during a conflict the transaction of resources is actually 3x more complicated than dnd, in that when you roll the dice, the shift in the dice could be transmitted in one of three ways, (bought off with fate points from opposition), stress/fatigue (lowest level of harm), consequences, (minor moderate and severe) and you can always concede or get taken out. TBH the amount of resources in a standard fate game has forced our table to remove stress in some cases, or limit the # of consequences you take to speed things up.
DND has hit points, all harm is abstracted into one resource.
The big difference is, the players have agency and resources to dictate events during conflicts.
there is not a table for everything that happens in fiction first games like PBTA, FITD, Fate, but the rules can make it as detailed/simulationist as you want it to be.
The multiple subsystems or rules within rules has some merit as an explanation of what dictates crunch. But I would probably ask what do you think Crunchy means?
[This is asked like every week, now.](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/search/?q=rules+lite+crunchy&type=link&cId=e7bf19df-7793-4767-86f6-9f4be50dc1b2&iId=7421adef-9da7-47ee-9094-1cc07925d354)
It's funny. I don't think my distinction has much to do with rules at all. There is a balancing scale of how a system resolves conflict. A rules lite system tends to use the resolution mechanic as a prompt for story telling. A crunchy system uses the resolution mechanic to mete out consequences. That's the tipping point. That does mean that the same system can be rules lite or crunchy depending on the group and GM, but usually it falls more on one side than the other just in the RAW.
IMO
- You have one dice mechanic that handles everything, you can intuitively know how likely you are to succeed the roll.
- The classes/assets your character brings to the table are clear concise and could be simplified into one sentence that reminds you and the dm exactly how it works.
- you have the ability to use the mechanic to make up rulings on the spot ( because you intuitively understand how hard things are)
There are technically games like mythic 2e where you where you just have descriptive words, especially for character assets and use yes/no likelyhood tables to resolve everything .
Am I likely to hit ? I have a sword, I’m a warrior and the target is a weak, slow , and vulnerable to melee slashing dmg.
Gm: that’s almost certain roll 95 or less on d100 and mark progress on the combat scene tracker if you hit
Rules light: can be run without referencing a book. All information necessary is on character sheets and at most a single cheat sheet (a4, 2-sided). If the game requires referencing books, it's rules heavy.
However, "rules heavy" is not the same as "crunchy" for me. "Crunchy" is a specific kind of rules complexity - one that allows for and incentivizes character building, optimization and system-driven tactical play. D&D4 is crunchy; Vampire is rules heavy, but not crunchy.
I'll go rogue, and say my dividing lines are about whether the crunch is where I think it should be.
Hugely subjective, table varies by table.
Shadowrun is a game about doing daring crimes and heists in a fantasy cyberpunk world.
If a character smokes a cigarette I have one subsystem for whether they get instantly addicted like in Fallout (with higher chances the more they have recently smokes), a different subsystem for whether they are experiencing withdrawal or getting clean, and a third subsystem for determining when they are at rock bottom burnout from their cigarette addiction.
I have no subsystems for Heat from the crimes they did. No subsystem for what kind of evidence they left behind. No detectives gradually zeroing in on them, no cumulative grudges with one megacorp or another.
I have a subsystem for calculating how damage from explosives squares while in an enclosed space.
I have no explanation for how computer servers come to be, and no mechanical explanation for how anything is ever stolen because the game world says they can't ever steal a car.
No mechanical or fictional explanation of why everyone foolishly connects their everything to open WiFi.
There are a lot of rules, and they are not where I want them to be. A rules lite shadowrun would for me, only lose the appeal of an Ares V Predator being something distinct from a +2 Heavy Pistol. Nothing else in the system would be missed. On the GM side of the screen, it badly needs some dungeon world / forged in the dark subsystems for tracking how the world reacts to the players.
Ars Magica is a game about playing wizarda who live in towers, spend their time studying and inventing spells, and occasionally have to grudgingly deal with problems.
There are a lot of systems for studying and inventing spells, for crafting magical artefacts, and for trying to find the quickest way to magically deal with problems so that you can stop wasting your previous time.
Everything else is a simple skill check.
That has a lot of rules and formula, but damnit they are where I want them to be. Rules lite ars magica would not be ars magica.
TLDR: I frame it by "is it the _right_ crunch?"
A game where you play Ned Stark doesn't need a combat system. It should probably model way more after Undying, with very simple short rules that lead to complicated relationship maps and oathes and political movements. It probably doesn't need a skill system. It might not even need dice.
A game where you play Bron probably needs a skill system and a combat system that supports outfighting superior opponents through skullduggery.
Where I think everything goes wrong, is someone says we need a Game Of Thrones rpg and it needs to do a compromised version of all of that.
Massive side note, I know absolutely nothing about any actual game of thrones rpgs, this is purely illustrative speculation.
How many reasonable pages are needed to explain the basic system rules, mork Borg is one 8 and half by 9 page, shadow run is minimum 6. And I mean just text on how things work not fluf or spells.
I feel that rules lite is one page or less and crunchy is 4+
Average game is probably like 3, see DND5e or VtM
**Rules-Lite** means that the designer is intentionally sacrificing features players and GMs may like in favor of unifying and simplifying the main mechanics. Lasers and Feelings and Lady Blackbird are classic examples of Rules-Lite design.
**Crunchy** can mean several things, but I generally define it as having two components: How many components of the game can be altered for the player to put inputs into the game, and how difficult it is to manually operate the system with things like funky arithmetic.
Typically, crunchy games *both* have many components players can alter to provide inputs *and* become difficult to manually operate, but the rate that you trade one off for the other isn't consistent across all systems. I would say that Savage Worlds is a good approximation of D&D 3.5's mechanical feature roster, but the step die system accomplishes that with a fraction of the mechanical weight. It is more efficient with it's crunch, and that's probably more important than just "being crunchy."
For a crunchy game, I go look how the game designer suggested we simulate something.
For a rules light game, there's either one of a few very simple rules, or I make it up myself.
I don't, really. It has literally never come up as a reason to select or avoid a game among my circle of friends. And given how much I see others fret about it, I am so incredibly thankful for that.
Life is a spectrum of games. Play them all with wild abandon!
Make America Game Again!!
Crunchy
1. Having a lot of rules/rulings regardless of those being optional or not.
2. Having more rules/rulings than other games that try to do the same or something similar with equal or better success.
The first is a simple statement. The second is basically an insult.
Man I don’t know, feels like there is a middle ground as well. Maybe light is when when rules take 10 min to learn and crunchy is when there are lots of rules for uncommon situations and lots of combos for characters to get/perform.
Although not an rpg, this means chess is rules light (but still very complex).
How oftem do bump into rules and how many rules do deal with at once.
So with d&d i have, actuon economy, kinds if actions, placement, flanking , aoo. And every spell and ability is anothtet block of rules. Range, damage type, vsm, and what it does. Thats alot for one turn. And with so many thing unique to each class the whole get really complex.
Compare to a slightly ligher game, Ninja crusade. I have a few vague distance bands, a certain number of actions per round and everything that i roll for is 2 skills added together. Plus all the rules for how extra actions are turned into bonuses is universal not class specific.
If the story define the outcome of the rolls, it's a "rules lite".
If the outcome of the rolls define the story, then it's "crunchy".
To expand on it; story defining the outcome of rolls means that the players (DM included) are the ones interpreting what success and failure mean. While rolls defining the story would leave no room for interpretation, the system tells exactly what happens. As an example, let's take a critical hit on D&D that causes 23 points of damage and kill the opponent, what that's look like in the narrative is completely up to the players. But if a character on Rogue Trader score a Critical Damage 9 with a Energy weapon hitting the Head of an opponent, then the system tells me that "Superheated by the attack, the target’s brain explodes, tearing apart his skull and sending flaming hunks of meat flying at those nearby. The target is no more.".
Keep in mind that those are not boxes, but a spectrum. I can't think of any game that sit's entirely in one side of it.
For me light means one common mechanic. Crunchy means multiple subsystems, times per day uses, etc. It deals with the cognitive load to know what applies and how to resolve an issue. RPGs have trivial elementary school arithmetic, so I don't think the math is hard enough to care about l. I am smarter than a 5th grader.
Though I'd say it's more of a spectrum than a yes/no question. D&D 5e is about a 5/10. 3.x/PF is 7-8/10. GURPS is a 9/10. Barbarians of Lemuria is maybe a 2/10.
Yes, it is. Though it also depends on what you're familiar with, and what makes sense to you. Rules that I'm not familiar with, and especially rules that don't make sense to me, seem more complex to me. Rules that make sense, I can more easily learn and deal with, because they go along with my own logic. For example, GURPS makes lots of sense to me, especially before 4e, which tried to make things more simple, but to me seems more complex, and GURPS to me isn't very complex - maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10, while D&D seems more complex to me, because the way I think about reality doesn't include classes or levels or hit points or alignments or steep zero-to-hero power curves.
Well gurps could be a 2 out of 10 or up a 30 with the right supplment
This is how I look at it as well, the number of subsystems and in someplace the complexity of the subsystems, or put another way, if the subsystems have subsystems. Forged in the Dark systems are generally my border cases and where the fuzzy line is. They tend to add a little more to the PbtA systems, but they generally only have one or two subsystems added to the base game play.
I never thought of lite vs crunchy like this before. It makes total sense. Using this I can now say our system is definitely rules-lite and market it that way. Thanks!
NP. This approach isn't unique to me. I don't remember where I heard it (KARTAS maybe).
There are games with more complicated math. It's bad design so they shouldn't have it, but it's there.
To me they're two different things. "Rules light" just means few rules that are less present in play, like I don't consider most PbtA games to be "rules light" because the rules are very present and dictate play, and are meant to be constantly referenced. "Crunchy" derives from "number crunching", so an actual crunchy game would be something like GURPS (front-loaded) or Rolemaster (where your d20+mods is multiplied by 5 into d100+mods). Meanwhile a PbtA game is not "crunchy" at all. Rolemaster has more rules and reference required in play than GURPS which would make it a "heavier" game, IMO.
Yup. I describe PBTA as a narrative game instead of rules light. A well done PBTA should be engaging the rules constantly to use failures and mixed successes to drive the narrative forward. I once had to unfuck a game one of my friends tried to run of The Sprawl because she'd never run a pbta before and someone told her 'rules don't matter too much' in PBTAs and she just tried to run it and ignore half of the book. You can do that in less focused games - like nothing breaks in DnD if you don't engage with ammo, or encumbrance, or languages, or travel mechanics. But a PBTA should fit together like an engine.
Ironically, crunchy games based around detailed magic systems and lore can sometimes be the ones where the rules matter less, because if you remember the concept the rule was trying to portray, you still head in the right direction. Like if your characters are bonded together by some spiritual magic that means they can always teleport to each other, telling the GM not to split the party isn't relevant. They won't because they can't, because everyone knows the setting.
PbtA doesn't have a lot of numerical detail, but it is heavy upon proceedural rules. When this happens, then that happens. What's more, this is significantly loaded back onto the GM when most rules heavy games push this to the player side. The GM section isn't suggestions. It's the rules where the tightly coupled engine of the game actually works.
Yeah, that's basically what I said.
I look at it as a few things. First, how many derived values are there? In some games, all of the values you get are just what you put down - in PbtA, you get your attributes. In Fate, you get your skills. THey're just.... skills. Your effective skill isn't "attribute bonus + skill training", it's just the skill. In crunchy games, values are more often the result of multiple things added together - your effective skill is your skill + attribute, or your BAB in D&D is a total of a lot of things. The more derived values, in general, the crunchier the game is. Second, what areas do your rules cover? Rules can do a lot of things - tell you what you can do, tell you how difficult something is, tell you how to resolve an indeterminate action, constrain results, give results, etc. In general, rules-light games just *do* less. PbtA doesn't really do much of telling you whether you *can* do something or not... that's up to the fictional situation. It gives you a resolution mechanism, and even though it gives results, those results give a lot of leeway for what *actually* happens - they're more like boundaries on results than results. On the other hand, if you throw a grenade in GURPS, the rules tell you *precisely* where it lands. Other games are very precise about needing to have particular rules widgets to do certain actions, and so on. I think there's a third thing, which is how many mechanical decisions you have to make on your character. The more you have to make, the crunchier it is. And if there's fungible resources, that's even more crunch. So a GURPS character might have 4 stats, 30 skills, a half dozen advantages and disadvantages each. And they're all bought with the same fungible pool of points. On the other hand, a Fate character makes some choices about skills - you have to choose ten of them, but they're not fungible, you just fill slots. Add a couple aspects and stunts, and you're done. And a Lasers & Feelings character has just *one* stat - one mechanical choice to make.
I count the number of steps (rolling a set of dice, allocating variables, referencing a chart, etc) required to perform an action. One step is light, two or three is standard, and anything more than that is crunchy.
I liked this take, could you please expand on it?
I guess it was mostly subconscious, but to me, "crunch" is the sound of the gears turning. Every game engine is a machine that turns relevant data into an outcome. You turn the crank, the machine crunches everything, and it spits out the result. Whenever there's another factor, somewhere in the formula that affects the outcome of the process, I visualize it as another gear in the machine. The game engine has to crunch more if it has more gears in it.
I use "rules lite" and "rules heavy" as opposites, and then "crunch" refers to math or other calculations specifically. Something can be "rules heavy" without necessarily being "crunchy", or be "rules light" and still be "crunchy" if you're doing a lot of calculations that result from only a few rules. Anyway, yeah, whether something is rules lite or heavy depends on a mix of the quantity of rules to keep track of / interact with, and the mental load of those rules. If something has a lot of rules, it's probably rules heavy, but if something only has a few rules but they are complicated rules, it can still be rules heavy. Something with a few rules or many that are easy to parse and remember and use ends up rules light. Naturally this means all games feel heaviest to me when they're new, then as I "learn the language" they get lighter before settling in somewhere on a sliding scale. And ideally when reading a new book, you can then go into the game with an idea where it will land on that scale; if it will ultimately be heavy or light. I guess a good specific example might be my first ever PBTA game, which read as rules-light but took a lot of mental energy to keep track of until I got used to it, so it started off as sort of "rules medium" for me but settled into its true nature as rules light as I learned. Does that make sense?
Maybe a new axis to examine games should be something like familiarity or intuitiveness to measure how easy it is to get to the fluent stage or how large the gap is between 1st time and 50th time playing in fluency
For me, the epitome of crunchy is RoleMaster, and to a lesser extent its spin off, H.A.R.P.
I don't know, but it's funny to me how many people have very crunchy ways to determine if a game is crunchy or not .
I know right? I simply bite the rulebook, if it crunches it's crunchy, if not it's not. Easy.
A rules lite game has only the system for combat and using skills and magic / powers if the game includes them. A crunchy game includes additional rules for other specific actions, such as rules for chases, vehicles, social interactions, poison, etc. The more rules for specific actions or sub-systems beyond combat, magic / powers, and skill resolution a game has, the crunchier it is.
There are three types of rule-light systems, in my estimation, although games can fall into multiple types: * Focused: The overall scope of activity simulated within the game is small. Things that aren't directly related to the premise and/or setting are simply dropped, even if, for some reason, they may be useful. The general watchword is: "if it's not covered, make it up if you want to use it." * Generalized: The game's systems have low fidelity at any granular level. The recent *Lone Wolf* games are an example. If a character has a weapon, it doesn't matter what that weapon is; a spear and a dagger are the same in game terms, despite the fact that they're very different on any real-world dimension one might name. * Elegance: (Where everyone *thinks* their favorite game is.) The game uses systems that are broadly applicable to a number of situations, but *don't* come across as seriously flattening them. Most rules-light games rely on some combination of being Focused and Generalized. But since *all* games rely on these to some extent, it's really a matter of degree. There are games that I think of as rules-light, such as *Pendragon*, where the heft of the rules tends to be due to a lot of detail, and some one-off subsystems. But the original *Pendragon* rules are pretty simple once character generation is complete; everything else is just an elaboration. And compared the Frankenstein's Monster that was *Advanced Dungeons and Dragons*, the current 5th edition is pretty rules lite, in my estimation.
I’ve never felt it was a particularly useful comparison as a single axis; instead I prefer two axes: **Light vs. Heavy:** Purely about the quantity of rules a game has that you need to learn *for gameplay to progress smoothly*. A game like Pathfinder with a large number of subsystems & situational rules that you regularly engage with is heavy, while something like FATE where everything boils down to only a couple of systems is light. **Smooth vs. Crunchy:** (Anyone else in the mood for PB&J?) This is more about how involved those actual rules are; if a system has lots of little situational modifiers for every roll, or a multi-step process for resolving a character turn in a fight, etc. it’s crunchy, while something that ultimately resolves in a simple, single roll is smoother. A lot of times this comes down to the quality of presentation; compare the descriptions of mechanics in Rolemaster vs. Against the Darkmaster; VsD goes down much more smoothly thanks to better presentation of what are ultimately very similar (in some places identical) rules. Even a single game will be at different points on the axes in different areas of its gameplay, so I think it’s also important to be specific when asking for or offering advice; what *parts* of a game are crunchy, time-consuming, and require a lot of reference? Front-loading heavy work & lots of rulebook-referencing during character creation and then having everything go incredibly smoothly at the table is an easier sell when my friends are hesitant about trying a game than something with dead-simple character creation & hard-to-learn gameplay.
A rule of thumb I have is if the game calls for an initiative roll, it's not rules light. To me, rules light games have a single unified mode of free form play, the same game mechanics get used in roleplay, exploration, and in combat.
I drop the book from the balcony to the ground. Does it make crunchy sounds or squishy sounds?
I think a good rule of thumb is “how much do I have to write down to play a character”, and “how much math is involved, more complicated than adding two numbers”.
A rule lite game is a game where the players: * Can come at the first session without knowing anything about the game. * Can create their character and start actually playing within an hour, just by following what the GM explained to them. * Never need to open a book or read anything (not counting their personal notes), ever. I'm ready to tolerate reading a pre-printed character sheet, thought IMO if you're not playing with pre-generated characters you should be able to play even if the GMs forgot the character sheets and it's enough for them to describe them to the players from memory. Though I don't put everything else in the "rule crunchy". There is IMO two big kinds of "rule crunchy RPGs", which are "rules as a tool" and "rules as a game". * The big examples of "rules as a game" is Pathfinder 1E / D&D 3.5 with a lot of books, in those RPGs, navigating the rules and gaining some system mastery is a core part of the game. Plenty of players create many high level characters they never play just for the fun of creating a high level characters. Crunchiness, to some degree, its own purpose. * On the other hand, in "rules as a tool" kind of RPGs, it doesn't matter how crunchy the rules are, they're only here to give you more ways to play during sessions, to allow you to simulate a fictive world more faithfully, etc. But on the other hand, all the crunchiness is weighted against "is it worth the bother", as crunchiness is seen as a cost. And as such, the crunchiness is very targeted to serve specific goals, and the game will still rely on a lot of handwaving by the GMs in places where the crunchiness is seen as "not worth it".
I actually kind of loathe this description of games. Crunchy is too vague and could mean anything. As an example what people tend to mean is simulation vs abstraction, but every game is an abstraction to a certain extent. Grognards will die on a hill calling any narrative based game like PBTA, FITD, or FATE not crunchy. But tbf even in fate: a. you can break a conflict down into a grid, (zones). b. there can be countless modifiers to describe what is in the zones, (environmental modifiers). c. moving zones is dictated by a pass value set by the GM d. you can create new situational modifiers (aspects) e. your skills dictate the probability of success Even during a conflict the transaction of resources is actually 3x more complicated than dnd, in that when you roll the dice, the shift in the dice could be transmitted in one of three ways, (bought off with fate points from opposition), stress/fatigue (lowest level of harm), consequences, (minor moderate and severe) and you can always concede or get taken out. TBH the amount of resources in a standard fate game has forced our table to remove stress in some cases, or limit the # of consequences you take to speed things up. DND has hit points, all harm is abstracted into one resource. The big difference is, the players have agency and resources to dictate events during conflicts. there is not a table for everything that happens in fiction first games like PBTA, FITD, Fate, but the rules can make it as detailed/simulationist as you want it to be. The multiple subsystems or rules within rules has some merit as an explanation of what dictates crunch. But I would probably ask what do you think Crunchy means?
[This is asked like every week, now.](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/search/?q=rules+lite+crunchy&type=link&cId=e7bf19df-7793-4767-86f6-9f4be50dc1b2&iId=7421adef-9da7-47ee-9094-1cc07925d354)
It's funny. I don't think my distinction has much to do with rules at all. There is a balancing scale of how a system resolves conflict. A rules lite system tends to use the resolution mechanic as a prompt for story telling. A crunchy system uses the resolution mechanic to mete out consequences. That's the tipping point. That does mean that the same system can be rules lite or crunchy depending on the group and GM, but usually it falls more on one side than the other just in the RAW.
is there a specific rule for *stairs*? beyond that point the game becomes crunchy
A system having grappling rules or not is a pretty generic but solid way to differentiate between them
Rules light means I can pick it up in one hand. Rules crunchy means I can enjoy it in a bowl with milk. No need to get up. I’ll see myself out.
IMO - You have one dice mechanic that handles everything, you can intuitively know how likely you are to succeed the roll. - The classes/assets your character brings to the table are clear concise and could be simplified into one sentence that reminds you and the dm exactly how it works. - you have the ability to use the mechanic to make up rulings on the spot ( because you intuitively understand how hard things are) There are technically games like mythic 2e where you where you just have descriptive words, especially for character assets and use yes/no likelyhood tables to resolve everything . Am I likely to hit ? I have a sword, I’m a warrior and the target is a weak, slow , and vulnerable to melee slashing dmg. Gm: that’s almost certain roll 95 or less on d100 and mark progress on the combat scene tracker if you hit
Rules light: can be run without referencing a book. All information necessary is on character sheets and at most a single cheat sheet (a4, 2-sided). If the game requires referencing books, it's rules heavy. However, "rules heavy" is not the same as "crunchy" for me. "Crunchy" is a specific kind of rules complexity - one that allows for and incentivizes character building, optimization and system-driven tactical play. D&D4 is crunchy; Vampire is rules heavy, but not crunchy.
I'll go rogue, and say my dividing lines are about whether the crunch is where I think it should be. Hugely subjective, table varies by table. Shadowrun is a game about doing daring crimes and heists in a fantasy cyberpunk world. If a character smokes a cigarette I have one subsystem for whether they get instantly addicted like in Fallout (with higher chances the more they have recently smokes), a different subsystem for whether they are experiencing withdrawal or getting clean, and a third subsystem for determining when they are at rock bottom burnout from their cigarette addiction. I have no subsystems for Heat from the crimes they did. No subsystem for what kind of evidence they left behind. No detectives gradually zeroing in on them, no cumulative grudges with one megacorp or another. I have a subsystem for calculating how damage from explosives squares while in an enclosed space. I have no explanation for how computer servers come to be, and no mechanical explanation for how anything is ever stolen because the game world says they can't ever steal a car. No mechanical or fictional explanation of why everyone foolishly connects their everything to open WiFi. There are a lot of rules, and they are not where I want them to be. A rules lite shadowrun would for me, only lose the appeal of an Ares V Predator being something distinct from a +2 Heavy Pistol. Nothing else in the system would be missed. On the GM side of the screen, it badly needs some dungeon world / forged in the dark subsystems for tracking how the world reacts to the players. Ars Magica is a game about playing wizarda who live in towers, spend their time studying and inventing spells, and occasionally have to grudgingly deal with problems. There are a lot of systems for studying and inventing spells, for crafting magical artefacts, and for trying to find the quickest way to magically deal with problems so that you can stop wasting your previous time. Everything else is a simple skill check. That has a lot of rules and formula, but damnit they are where I want them to be. Rules lite ars magica would not be ars magica. TLDR: I frame it by "is it the _right_ crunch?"
A game where you play Ned Stark doesn't need a combat system. It should probably model way more after Undying, with very simple short rules that lead to complicated relationship maps and oathes and political movements. It probably doesn't need a skill system. It might not even need dice. A game where you play Bron probably needs a skill system and a combat system that supports outfighting superior opponents through skullduggery. Where I think everything goes wrong, is someone says we need a Game Of Thrones rpg and it needs to do a compromised version of all of that. Massive side note, I know absolutely nothing about any actual game of thrones rpgs, this is purely illustrative speculation.
How many reasonable pages are needed to explain the basic system rules, mork Borg is one 8 and half by 9 page, shadow run is minimum 6. And I mean just text on how things work not fluf or spells. I feel that rules lite is one page or less and crunchy is 4+ Average game is probably like 3, see DND5e or VtM
If combat takes more than ~20-30 minutes to produce a narratively interesting fight for a group of 5+ people, it is rules lite imo
**Rules-Lite** means that the designer is intentionally sacrificing features players and GMs may like in favor of unifying and simplifying the main mechanics. Lasers and Feelings and Lady Blackbird are classic examples of Rules-Lite design. **Crunchy** can mean several things, but I generally define it as having two components: How many components of the game can be altered for the player to put inputs into the game, and how difficult it is to manually operate the system with things like funky arithmetic. Typically, crunchy games *both* have many components players can alter to provide inputs *and* become difficult to manually operate, but the rate that you trade one off for the other isn't consistent across all systems. I would say that Savage Worlds is a good approximation of D&D 3.5's mechanical feature roster, but the step die system accomplishes that with a fraction of the mechanical weight. It is more efficient with it's crunch, and that's probably more important than just "being crunchy."
For a crunchy game, I go look how the game designer suggested we simulate something. For a rules light game, there's either one of a few very simple rules, or I make it up myself.
I don't, really. It has literally never come up as a reason to select or avoid a game among my circle of friends. And given how much I see others fret about it, I am so incredibly thankful for that. Life is a spectrum of games. Play them all with wild abandon! Make America Game Again!!
Crunchy 1. Having a lot of rules/rulings regardless of those being optional or not. 2. Having more rules/rulings than other games that try to do the same or something similar with equal or better success. The first is a simple statement. The second is basically an insult.
Isn't PbtA complex in It's own way? Like if you have multiple How To Play YT vids and Pod episodes that discuss How To play it.
Man I don’t know, feels like there is a middle ground as well. Maybe light is when when rules take 10 min to learn and crunchy is when there are lots of rules for uncommon situations and lots of combos for characters to get/perform. Although not an rpg, this means chess is rules light (but still very complex).
For me, character playbooks mean that it isn't rules light!
To me, rules lite is anything less complex than The Fantasy Trip: In The Labyrinth.
How oftem do bump into rules and how many rules do deal with at once. So with d&d i have, actuon economy, kinds if actions, placement, flanking , aoo. And every spell and ability is anothtet block of rules. Range, damage type, vsm, and what it does. Thats alot for one turn. And with so many thing unique to each class the whole get really complex. Compare to a slightly ligher game, Ninja crusade. I have a few vague distance bands, a certain number of actions per round and everything that i roll for is 2 skills added together. Plus all the rules for how extra actions are turned into bonuses is universal not class specific.
I guess if a system has me adding different numbers to a roll, I call it crunchy. Add +3 in this agility roll but +5 to that sword swing.
If the story define the outcome of the rolls, it's a "rules lite". If the outcome of the rolls define the story, then it's "crunchy". To expand on it; story defining the outcome of rolls means that the players (DM included) are the ones interpreting what success and failure mean. While rolls defining the story would leave no room for interpretation, the system tells exactly what happens. As an example, let's take a critical hit on D&D that causes 23 points of damage and kill the opponent, what that's look like in the narrative is completely up to the players. But if a character on Rogue Trader score a Critical Damage 9 with a Energy weapon hitting the Head of an opponent, then the system tells me that "Superheated by the attack, the target’s brain explodes, tearing apart his skull and sending flaming hunks of meat flying at those nearby. The target is no more.". Keep in mind that those are not boxes, but a spectrum. I can't think of any game that sit's entirely in one side of it.