Reply To: [unofficiall weekender] Rules – who needs them anyway?

[limburger 22463xp 2]

that’s the trouble with visiting shops or fairs where there’s a sale … it is very very hard to resist 😉

@turbocooler I used to think that you need a dozen rules to ‘simulate’ anything with a decent amount of fidelity.
And gamers/designers stuck in that mindset seem to think they still do.

However I believe a simple consistent system is all you really need. The real magic happens when people start playing and those ‘simple’ systems start to interact with each other. There’s a word for that : “emergent gameplay”

It’s why such systems can be very easy to remember and teach.
The problems tend to occur when designers think they need to re-write the same effect using new words to make it appear different.  Best example is the ‘orbital drop’ special rule in 40k 8th edition which every faction has as it amounts to nothing more than being able to place a specific unit anywhere on the battlefield with enemies at least 8 inch away.
I suspect that this needless rules bloat is what makes simple systems hard to balance.