The Simple Life

I remember there was a time when complicated systems for role playing games did not bother me at all. I enjoyed the countless supplements and would spend hours writing up scenarios, possible combat situations, and stat blocks. During this time I enjoyed games that had a rule for everything and I considered it a personal challenge to come up with a concept for a character and then figure out a way how to make that concept work in said system. I played a lot of Palladium Games (Rifts), GURPS, and of course anything 3.x (all of the d20 craze). 

I am not sure when it happened but sometime ago I started to become disillusioned with all of the crunch. It really started to bug me when a GM would have to stop to look up one of the those rules for everything or when some rules lawyer would bring the game to a screeching halt to argue some minor point. Another thing that added to this disillusion there were times when I could not get the system to work with the concept I had dreamed up or the GM would not let me adjust something because it was not in the rules (even if it was completely fair/balanced/logical/etc). Then all the time it would take to prep a game, create a character, crunching the numbers, and reading through rule books dense enough to stop bullets got tedious.

At the same time I was really over the crunch I was becoming pretty active in the local gaming community so I started to look for games that were more rules light that I could run as demos or one shots because I wanted to dust off the ye olde GM skills. I ended up running some AD&D 2nd Edition, Savage Worlds, D6, and a few others. I also got to play in some games like Swords and Wizardry. 

In my experience the more rules light games really helps the game flow and keeps everything more organic. The characters personalities and their interactions with each other, NPC's, and the world come through a lot more. It also helps the GM keep the game flowing (even when a players asks to do something out of left field because there are no rules to look up. It is usually either yes or roll X, Y, or Z) and really makes the players think outside of the box instead of the standard, "I hit it with my axe" response. To be honest, games that are rules light are a lot easier on the GM. 

There is also a fine line to games that are rules light though because I think there needs to be some type of skeleton for a system or it just becomes corroborative storytelling. If you want to do that then do that (I have had some great experiences doing it with the classic pass the notebook around) but don't try to disguise it as a role playing game. 

Do not get my wrong, I do not hate on games that are crunchy enough to satisfy a dragons appetite or the people that play them (hell, I even ordered Pathfinder 2e). I am a firm believer in play whatever the hell you want. It is just not my preference and I would never run anything that I feel is to rules heavy. Though, I still enjoy being a player in some of those games and I have had some recent fantastic experiences in a Pathfinder game.