No More Massive Tomes of Rules

Reynard said:

Slightly over 100 words:

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So the most elegant ("rules concise") set of chase rules I'm familiar with is from 1e WEG D6 Star Wars, which is an utterly brilliant set of rules. I haven't counted but it runs at about 3 pages or 1500 words roughly. It's also subtly flawed in a way that isn't obvious until you try to use it for a while. Once you notice the flaw through play though, the rules become some parts annoying and hilarious. 2e WEG D6 Star Wars patches the underlying problem but at the cost of actually ruining what made them 1e rules so brilliant. Since I'm running WEG D6 now at some point I'm going to have to break down and fix the problem by combining ideas from the two editions into something that actually works particularly as chases become more important to my game. But in both cases, you have a complete system that really is only breaking in subtle ways.

In both cases, they present the rules twice once for on foot and once for vehicles just for clarity. That about doubles the page count but does have a purpose.

Your rules are nothing like that. I'm not going to critique them too harshly, save to point out something someone else already pointed out is that you have written no way for the fleeing party to win. Almost everything about it is actually wrong, either in obvious or subtle ways that suggest you haven't actually ran many chase scenes. I'm not meaning to be insulting, I'm just saying that your quick stab at the idea looks about like the mess I would expect if someone made a quick stab at the idea without thinking it through. In an equally short amount of time or space, I'd probably do no better.

Probably the most comprehensive chase system and the one that was most influential to me and one I consider one of the top 50 or so most important gaming documents ever written is Corey Reid's (@barsoomcore ?) "Hot Pursuit: The Definitive D20 Guide to Chases". It clocks in at 42 pages so lets call it 21000 words, plus it ended up having a supplement because it didn't spend enough time talking about chases on foot. Other supplements probably would be worthwhile if you were really interested in a pirates game or a space opera. It's also a system you could quibble with in about 10% of its rules, but it is in fact an actual system for chases which your 100 word rules doesn't really manage to be. If you haven't read it before, then you really should. It's one of those "every gamer should own a copy" sort of works in my opinion.

Maggan said:

EDIT: Btw 200 pages of weapons for Call of Cthulhu? Two pages is plenty for that, IMO.

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To be fair: at least the German version of CoC had a weapons source book which has 300 pages (Link). Now it's not merely mechanics, and also not very relevant for my personal playstyle, but apparently there is a target audience for such a book, even among CoC players.

kenada said:

What exactly constitutes a “mini-campaign”?

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As I would use the term, games that I would expect to play out their story arc in about 60 hours or less. So yeah, a 40 session game is now up to a full campaign. I personally can't imagine doing that in a rules light system, though perhaps we need a definition of "rules light" as well, as someone early suggested BRP as rules light and that's in my "rules heavy" category. Savage Worlds is more in the rules medium level. As a generic system it's going to run over 200 pages of rules, but you wouldn't probably need more than about 200 for a particular game. Goblonia or Dogs in the Vineyard would be more what I'm thinking about in rules light.

Emberashh said:

Both of the examples provided hinge their low word count on you being familiar with a full system.

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Thanks for the clarification. That you have this covered elsewhere makes sense. However, I’ve played games where that’s not the case, so I didn’t want to make assumptions.

B/X and Pathfinder 2e have chase rules, but there’s no trigger. That’s a problem because players will convince themselves that escape is impossible and never invoke the chase rules even when it makes sense for them to do that. We nearly had a TPK when I ran Old-School Essentials because my players believed the monsters would run them down no matter what.

schneeland said:

To be fair: at least the German version of CoC had a weapons source book which has 300 pages (Link). Now it's not merely mechanics, and also not very relevant for my personal playstyle, but apparently there is a target audience for such a book, even among CoC players.

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Wow, cool for those who like that! IMO that's totally unnecessary but I have no problem with people wanting more rules for their table.

Something important to note about Call of Cthulu is that the combat rules aren't there to check a box. They're there to reinforce the theme of the game.

The effort to contrive a way to deal 800+ damage to Cthulu is meant to juxtapose with the fact Cthulu wouldn't even be phased by it. Your efforts are supposed to feel meaningless and that feeling doesn't get conveyed very well, if at all, if you try to abstract all of the effort out of it. You can't really drive home the point that its arrogant to try and impose man's will over the cosmic if you have no actual way to viscerally represent man's will to try and overcome, and especially the despair that results from realizing it.

Its one thing to say theres ways to say a character feels that despair, but its another to experience it yourself. Games are about doing things, not writing about doing things.

Thus, COCs combat mechanics, including all of its weapons all serve a collective point in the game's design. We can compare that to say, 5e Spell Components, which have no point beyond a very weak suggestion towards balance.

kenada said:

Thanks for the clarification. That you have this covered elsewhere makes sense. However, I’ve played games where that’s not the case, so I didn’t want to make assumptions.

B/X and Pathfinder 2e have chase rules, but there’s no trigger. That’s a problem because players will convince themselves that escape is impossible and never invoke the chase rules even when it makes sense for them to do that. We nearly had a TPK when I ran Old-School Essentials because my players believed the monsters would run them down no matter what.

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Indeed. A lot of designers seem to be too trusting in the idea that Players will know to just say they want to flee, rather than being explicit about it.

schneeland said:

To be fair: at least the German version of CoC had a weapons source book which has 300 pages (Link). Now it's not merely mechanics, and also not very relevant for my personal playstyle, but apparently there is a target audience for such a book, even among CoC players.

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I don't know if it is the same book, but the Investigator Weapons series for CoC is one of drivethrurpg's all time best selling titles for BRP. That's like three 120 page volumes. And really, not a bad purchase for any CoC Keeper.

Celebrim said:

As I would use the term, games that I would expect to play out their story arc in about 60 hours or less. So yeah, a 40 session game is now up to a full campaign. I personally can't imagine doing that in a rules light system, though perhaps we need a definition of "rules light" as well, as someone early suggested BRP as rules light and that's in my "rules heavy" category. Savage Worlds is more in the rules medium level. As a generic system it's going to run over 200 pages of rules, but you wouldn't probably Goblonia or Dogs in the Vineyard would be more what I'm think about in rules light.

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My system is just a mess of notes right now, so I have no idea what the final page count will be. My goal is to keep the player-facing rules low. That doesn’t include character customization, setting information, GM procedures, or stuff like that. All of that builds on the core though. A chase is just an application of those core procedures just like a negotiation or other situations would be.

Combat is special because we want some of that old-school D&D combat feel, but the intent is to have resolution be harmonized as much as possible. Things like difficulty, margin, mitigation, defense checks, etc would function the same way between them. (Assuming this weekend’s session goes well, and I don’t end up reverting like I did after my last attempt at a big-ish revision.)

In terms of system size and scope, it’s probably somewhere between light and medium. The design of things (items, procedures, etc) should feel verisimilitudinous, but actually trying to create a detailed model is a non-goal. Usability and playability are more important to me.

Wofano Wotanto said:

As written, there's no way for the fleeing party to escape. Presumably if the chase distance reaches some arbitrary non-zero value the pursuit has failed.

Good way to demonstrate the drawbacks of improvising rules - it's easy to miss things.

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yeah. I wrote them in 2 minutes.