Monday, June 4th

I know we're only four days into June, but I keep wanting to put "May" up there... probably the fact that I didn't do status reports over the weekend.

The Daily Report

Newsletter will be coming out today. It would have come out yesterday, but around noon Jack asked me if I wanted to play Terraria on our shared world and then it was 1 in the morning. I'd say "day well spent", because it was, but it was kind of an "Oh, my aching everything." thing.

Progress on A Wilder World continues to come, which is weird since I figured it would desert me for the duration of my stay here. I'm simplifying the number of choices made in character creation, which not only simplifies character creation but makes it easier to fit things onto the character sheet. More on that in a separate post.

This month I'm working on a number of small side projects with Jack that will be easier to complete while I'm here. More details here as they develop.

State of the Me

Marathon computer game session has left me a little stiff in the knees even after a good night's sleep. My clicking hand has mostly recovered.

Plans For Today

Finish and send out the newsletter, get a good start on the next chapter of Tales of MU.

Rules Lite vs. Light Rules

In thinking about what A Wilder World is and what it isn't, I keep coming back to the identification of it as a "Rules Lite" system... an identification I've made myself at times, but one that I'm not entirely sure fits.

Its rules are relatively light in that there aren't actually a lot of them. It very specifically and very deliberately doesn't include rules for arbitrating or resolving things that have nothing to do with adventuring.

For instance, you never roll dice to see how much money you make at your second job because your first job is Adventure-Haver so the answer might be something like "Nothing worth worrying about. Hey, you found a chest of gold last Tuesday. Big chest, full of gold. The chest was bejeweled, too. You want to know how many horses you shod this week why? Let's say it was 3d4x2 copper coins' worth. How's that compare to your bejeweled chest of gold? It doesn't. That's why there's no space on your character sheet for how many copper coins you earned shoeing horses. And no d4s, come to think of it. Hey, isn't it time for another adventure?"

If your adventures have nothing to do with chests of gold, of course, then you really don't care about the d4s of coppers. Of course, even if you're on the road for some grand purpose or plan it could be that part of the adventure is you being broke and having to do odd jobs to get the coins you need to pay the toll or whatever.

In that case we still don't need to know how many d4s of coppers you get for doing a job, because we're dealing with a locked door/key-type problem: there is an obstacle and you either have the solution to unlocking it or you have to figure out a way around it. The amount of money you have is going to be Not Enough or Enough; the exact amount is as relevant as the material or size of a key that opens a locked door. It might add color to the world, but it's not important on a mechanical level.

Similarly, there's nothing like sailing or nautical navigation rules because if the characters are supposed to get somewhere by ship then they're supposed to get somewhere by ship. If the ship is supposed to wreck and deposit them on the Island of Adventure or get sucked through a whirlpool to another world. This is story stuff. Maybe locating a ship and/or crew was an adventure goal in and of itself, but you should never have to roll dice to see if the thing that carries you to the next adventure is going to randomly kill everyone instead.

If the adventure takes place on board a ship, then elements can be written into it that make use of character abilities. But if they aren't more interesting than "Everybody roll to see if you were washed overboard in the storm and died", don't bother.

Spotting your quarry ship (or white whale) on the horizon? Okay, that's a Perception Check. How difficult is it? Hard enough to reward people for putting points in Perception, easy enough to be possible... it must be so, or what is the point of it all? If it's necessary that the ship be spotted sooner or later, the check is for "sooner" and some advantage will be gleaned for succeeding at it, obviously.

So, yes, the rules are rather light, and the parts of the game that are governed by rules are handled using the same simple, broad rules wherever possible. But those rules, simple and broad as they are, are important. Once the adventure has started or the battle has joined... well, this is a pretty mechanically-driven game, honestly. I talk about the importance of story, and relegate things like character death to the pile labeled "story elements", but it's not a narrative-driven game in the way that games labeled as cooperative storytelling games are.

To me, having solid rules is very important to making things within the game world predictable enough for players to make plans or come up with solutions to problems. Solid rules means that players can come up with stunts for their characters without checking with the GM every step of the way. Solid rules mean that you can look at your character sheet and translate everything on it into actual actions and capabilities.

So the game has solid rules, they're just meant to be broad and flexible in what they cover, and to stay out of the way of the story.

I guess it comes down to what I said on an earlier post about using rules as the skeleton for the game rather than the muscles and skin. It's not that the rules aren't important. They're just not everything.