TTRPG’s have been around now for about five generations of gamers. I am making a very loose generalisation that ten years is the sweet spot for a new to experienced gamer, often a decade encompassing their whole gaming life (high school to Uni/college).
In the beginning of the hobby, games were spartan, rough and ready, full of potential and flexible by their very nature. They needed player and game master pay in, but that was where imagination and communication filled the gaps.
Traveller for example came as a boxed set, half filled with three small black books capable of outlining everything from starship design and combat, world building, character generation, combat and encounters and even a trade and commerce section. None were comprehensive, but all gave you (1) enough to get going, (2) an idea of in-game expectations to work from, (3) an idea of what was important, or as importantly, not.
The half empty box could hold character sheets, pencils and paper, dice and a few books you may later add.
Most people added the few most exciting expansions (Mercenary, High Guard, Scout), some went all in, but no one way was the right way. My first high school group managed to fill the lunchtimes of a year or two, with just that small start. We covered Space 1999, Star Wars, The Stainless Steel Rat, Strontium Dog, Star Trek, Asimov, Heinlein, Judge Dredd even Moorcock style games filling in the near infinite gaps with……imagination and immersion.
As testament to the value of a one book/box gaming dynamic, when Mongoose omitted starship building rules in their second edition (Mongoose 2e), there was enough backlash to force them to add them back into their 2022 reprint. People just want to be able to go with one book as an option, even if it is likely an illusion long term.
A lack of constraints means something is highly flexible, but also makes it hard for it to be consistent across all facets of a given genre, so inevitably more and more rules creep in.
High production values were replaced by player pay-in and the desire to create. It should by rights be possible to write a usable TTRPG on five sheets of paper and many have.
Source materiel is often as much use or more than more rules.
The Big Gold Book (BGB) and it’s much slimmer Starter Guide for Basic Role Playing (BRP), the Mythras equivalent, GURPS basic, The Hero System 4e or Savage Worlds Adventurers Edition (SWADE) are surely enough to play any genre, any style.
Is more than this needed?
Most of this is fluff. Maybe three books per shelf and a healthy time and imagination investment could get gamers mostly there, or even better, there in their own way. I can pick out a half dozen books easily, that could be my “desert island” games.
Every group has a different dynamic, different expectations, different interpretation of the genre, rules and guidelines. A lot was on the shoulders of the game master, almost as much on the players.
This freedom was as close to perfection as a TTRPG can achieve. In it’s purest form it is round table story telling as humans have done for ages. In it’s worst form, when rules become all, it is constrained, often held back by oppressive or even illogical rules lawyering.
My heart still yearns for the naive play I enjoyed while young. Literally anything could happen, because apart from a limited lists of skills, weaponry and gear, vehicles, careers, monster or alien stats, there were almost no rules for “the rest”. If you wanted more meat on the bone, you added it yourself.
We drew stuff, made stuff up, even exhaustive lists and got by. I remember writing in the margins of most books (usually mono mat paper), to make the many house rules “official”.
I don’t think I even saw an colour internal illustration other than a rare set of plates (often loosely connected examples at best) for the first decade.
We played in character or not, had ambitions outside of imaginary material wealth and advancement, or not and settled into an odd duality of “theatre of the mind” with systemic grind.
It only fell apart when people failed the system and each other. A bit like religion, the guidelines are sound, the application sometimes lacking, but faith can conquer all. Every failure had a feeling of “next time we will avoid that, but there will be a next time”.
A game master with few or weak ideas, a group fighting rigid plans at every turn while exercising their own imaginations aggressively and a lack of backup plans all added up to the occasional log-jam, but this freedom also created some of the best memories I have of gaming. Some of my favourite childhood memories in fact.
At what point did we become so obsessed with rules, that we needed to make rules-lite games to renew this, feeling of freedom? Games like Tiny D6 or Fate try to make games mechanically translucent by removing most mechanics, often falling back on gimmicks or simplistic systems to achieve this, but is even this needed?
My answer to anyone who is unhappy playing any RPG is “make it your own”.
Ironically, the introduction of almost every RPG I have ever read says just that, but rules lawyers, with encyclopaedic, inflexible memories or even just people trying not to rock the “rules as written” boat are occupying this space.
WHFRP 4e is an example of the convolution that plagues us and the difficulty that brings.
The all too sensible D100 core system, that to be fair, WHFRP never did perfectly align with, has been turned into something it is not. In an effort to make something basically something else, it has become a set of checks and balances that made the simple difficult and fixing it even harder. The mechanics are so entwined in themselves, fixing one thing breaks others.
A good example of a game that can be simplified, simply by role playing the sometimes overly convoluted and focussed systems and ironically sticking closer to the designers intent is The One Ring.
I have been reading comparison reviews of the first to the second editions*. My main take-way on every limiting mechanic, streamlined or not, is that most can simply be role-played through. The designers want it to feel like Tolkien and the players should also (or why play?), so do they actually need their chins wiped? Can’t we get there without corralling or limiting the players?
If everyone is working towards the same goal, nothing is gained by placing mechanical obstacles in the way.
If you love Tolkien however and get what it is about, you could easily play basically any fantasy game this way. My argument is, if you want to, then do it, if you don’t then don’t let the game force you, but above all, play the game you want.
The 1990’s seemed to be the age of maximum “crunch” in gaming of all types. Simple slim pamphlets like the original Star Fleet Battles, turned into manuals possible denser than an actual starship flight guide. Simple RPG’s became heavier in every sense, less flexible and more “word of god” like. We broke it and it has yet to fully recover.
As a new generation comes through, things are taken as gospel.
No other mainstream entertainment hobby has this much freedom, so why squander it.
One of my least liked genres is the board game RPG simulator. Games that try to cover everything a player may want to do, while keeping the game board-game limited. Lots of rules, lots, providing the illusion of freedom without any.
In comparison to a true TTRPG it is like the difference between jumping off a cliff or taking the roller coaster.
Root the TTRPG is the closest I have seen to a board game made RPG, but is still really a board game.
I intend to take the core ideas of The One Ring and play it with Mythras, because they are sound, really only making official what we all should do anyway. A journey should have structure, a council have tension and respect for the players involved, down time put to use.
The freedom Mythras offers is desirable, the depth and cross compatibility and the reality that once learned, it can go where you need is also. Here are all the tools needed for a Tolkien themed campaign and the lethality and heroism matches TOR.
Would I create a Dwarf with superlative horse riding skills or a Hobbit with high martial prowess or spell casting? No, because I respect the story and that is what it all comes down to.
If the story matters, then how it is told also matters, so the system used only needs to make sense of the questions that arise. Did I outrun the beast, could I talk to it, sneak around it, do it in? These are systemic questions for the most part, so mechanics are needed, but no specific ones.
The rest is role playing.
What is the point otherwise?
*My take away if the base system is more streamlined, but the more convoluted ones are still limiting if a little less so. My game has less convolution from the start, mainly by role playing through it, so the 2e starter may be ideal as a rules refresher, but not a complication, allowing me enough room to cherry pick.