Fantastic Mechanics and Where to Find Them

This is Part 2 in a four part series! See Part 1 here for context.

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Personal opinion (and known hot take): there are far too many rules in RPGs. In fact, I'd say the ideal amount of rules for most traditional RPGs is something like Into the Odd or Cairn 1e. Nothing but the barest of bones, to adjudicate the fiction when the GM's common sense judgements are insufficient.

The Intentions of Minimalist RPGs

The goal, to me, in playing and designing minimalist RPGs is to stay immersed in the fiction as thoroughly as possible. Some people play RPGs for the strategic combat element (and I do too - just different RPGs) and others play for structured storytelling. But for the people who play RPGs for immersion and fast moving fun, I think minimalist games are ideal. The lack of structure allows for freedom in play, and the little structural formations that do exist provide for those cases where complete trust in the GM is not enough.

That, then, is the purpose of rules. To provide structure A) for the sake of internal consistency and B) to supplement the GM's ability in determining updates to the fiction.
 

Taking this into consideration, we can say that a rule should exist A) where the situation it accounts for is at least uncommon and B) where the GM cannot easily and consistently determine a response.

 

Stepping Out of the Fiction

In this case, why don't we just cram our game with rules? Then, we could simulate every situation without difficulty!

The problem here is that rules pull us (as in the GM and players) out of the shared fiction. When FKR describes itself as "fiction-first" it references this. Rules temporarily remove us from the fiction, and by removing rules and relying on quick GM judgements and in-universe truths, we limit the duration and frequency of interruptions.

In that case, not only should our rules exist only where they must, we should also make them simple and quickly resolved. A drawn-out combat sequence in which we track hit points (itself an abstraction from the fiction), grids, ranges, etc. keeps the players out of the fiction for an extended period of time. A drawn-out combat sequence based on a few simple rules and fictional truths keeps us grounded.
 

That's It

That's the post. I said everything I wanted to say (for now) on rules and mechanics. Obviously there's more, on topics like traits vs stats, hit points vs health, etc. I'm not going to get into those because while this post was subjective, those discussions would be entirely based on my singular opinion.

 

I've also got some side comments here, so I'll italicize and write them out now.

Side Comment 1: If you're active on the OSR or NSR Discords, you might notice that I'm not. I don't text there, like, ever. This is mostly because I think Discord's (generally) a bad platform for large communities to congregate and discuss, and that more people should rely on post-based systems, like Reddit, Tumblr, or (in my case) *just* the Discords' blogroll channels. That's all really, I just felt like justifying it.

Side Comment 2: Jangli is now rules-complete! It's gone from being a Cairn/Brighter Worlds hack into something more closely resembling Maze Rats and World of Dungeons, and I think that's very good. Less rules, more fiction. In the coming months I'll be reaching out to find artists and tentatively plan on releasing it for free on itch.io in early 2025.

Speaking of, if you're interested in Jangli and A) want to make art for it or B) want to playtest it, please let me know! Either in the comments or on Discord @ashvg.

That's all for now!