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Old 02-23-2021, 05:06 PM   #1
thrash
 
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Default First rules-light roleplaying game?

I have been thinking about the recent thread on OSR.

One of the more debatable claims of the OSR movement is that what they describe was at the time a well-defined, intentionally simple and flexible style of play. My recollection is that this is historical revisionism, making a virtue of necessity: there just weren't rules for every (or even most) situations, and what there were didn't always work. As the hobby developed, the trend for many years was towards more rules, more preparation, more complexity. OSR is one of several responses to that trend.

Which leads to my question: what is the oldest role-playing game that explicitly and deliberately offered itself as simple, rules-light, low-prep, or pick-up-and-play? Obviously, many of the oldest games had these qualities by default -- this is the argument the OSR makes in their favor. I'm interested in what game first made the self-conscious decision to advertise this style of play as an alternative to increasing crunch.

Pencil-and-paper, tabletop roleplaying games only, please. Boardgames and LARPs are equally out of order, unless they resulted in a tabletop RPG adaptation. I will otherwise try to avoid "one true Scotsman"-type objections. I'm mostly just curious how far back this idea goes.
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Old 02-23-2021, 05:38 PM   #2
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Default Re: First rules-light roleplaying game?

First to come to my mind is TWERPS, billed as "The Worlds Easiest Role-Playing System" from '87.

Not sure how much a more or less joke system counts though.
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Old 02-23-2021, 06:24 PM   #3
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Default Re: First rules-light roleplaying game?

Toon(1984) was certainly designed rules-light, by philosophy rather than accident, but I don't know if it was specifically an advertising point (the version offered by SJG is apparently copyright 1991 so unclear what first printing was like, but it has a header "Who needs a bunch of rules? let's play!" in its table of contents).
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Old 02-23-2021, 07:20 PM   #4
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Default Re: First rules-light roleplaying game?

Last line on back blurb from what I think is first printing.

TOON is quick, simple, and fun. Ready to get silly? Get in TOON -- and be a cartoon star!
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Old 02-24-2021, 03:49 PM   #5
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Default Re: First rules-light roleplaying game?

Checking the preview for 1st edition T&T (1975), in the 'troll talk' section, there's a sentence:

Quote:
(2) the game could be simplified and changed in concept to replace the best parts of the original idea with better ideas substituted for the things I didn't like about D&D
I doubt there's going to be an earlier contender.
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Old 02-24-2021, 04:25 PM   #6
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Default Re: First rules-light roleplaying game?

BESM 2nd ed is very ruled light and very easy to learn and play. I Can not recall just how many campaigns my old group did over 10 years in the system.
Everything from magic, superheroes, street racing games, sci-fi, horror, star ship also.
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Old 02-24-2021, 09:33 PM   #7
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Default Re: First rules-light roleplaying game?

Quote:
Originally Posted by sjard View Post
Not sure how much a more or less joke system counts though.
It certainly counts as a reductionist take on RPGs.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Toon(1984) was certainly designed rules-light, ...
I'm not familiar with Toon, so that's an interesting datum. There does seem to be a thread connecting humorous games with light rules: Mike Pondsmith's Teenagers from Outer Space (1987) says (p. 2), "There are very few rules in this game..." and throws shade at other games with "2,676 pages of closely packed tables with arcane references to 'protoplasmic systemic shock damage'..."

Does Paranoia (1984) talk about a rules-light approach, or just make fun of games that tend in the opposite direction?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Checking the preview for 1st edition T&T (1975), in the 'troll talk' section, there's a sentence:

I doubt there's going to be an earlier contender.
I wondered about T&T, but didn't have an early edition to check. I agree, though, that we've probably got our winner -- especially for not-explicitly-humorous games.
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Old 02-24-2021, 09:46 PM   #8
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Default Re: First rules-light roleplaying game?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ckosacranoid View Post
BESM 2nd ed is very ruled light and very easy to learn and play...
Indeed -- but even BESM 1st ed. came out in 1997, which is very late by comparison.

It does contain the interesting observation (p. 8), that I'm not sure I agree with:

"The rules are very simple to use, and thus do not afford a measurable level of realism."

Complexity and Realism are only vaguely correlated, if at all, and mostly by level of focus and resolution. Certainly, it is possible to have games or mechanisms that are very complex but also unrealistic (armor class and hit points, I'm looking at you).
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Old 02-24-2021, 10:25 PM   #9
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Default Re: First rules-light roleplaying game?

I was actually reading this article on ENWorld a few days ago that talks about the history of Tunnels & Trolls. It seems like Ken St. Andre's two main goals for T&T were to make a fantasy RPG that was cheaper than D&D and easier to learn (i.e. slimmer rules).

A quote from St. Andre about his motivation:
“When I had finished reading I was convinced of several things: (1) that the basic ideas were tremendous, even revolutionary, but that (2) as then written, the mechanics of play were nearly incomprehensible, and (3) that the game rules cost far more than they should, and (4) that 4, 8, 10, 12 and 20-sided dice were too much to bother with."
And this is from the author of Playing at the World (which is heavily quoted in the article):
Magic items he neglects entirely— aside from an occasional mention in passing of staples like magic swords, he says nothing about them whatsoever. A few pages of charts list the properties of various prosaic and exotic weapons, but rather than provide a glossary on the nature of these implements, the author “decided to let you do that work for yourself in order to save space.”
That last bit seems like the "rulings not rules" OSR maxim. And things like T&T's "combat stunts" (I don't know if those were in the first edition) are also good examples of that approach. I've been playing some Deluxe Edition T&T recently, and it's a little surprising to me that T&T hasn't gotten more attention from the OSR crowd, since I think it actually embodies a lot of the OSR spirit better than early D&D. The way combat works is an issue, though, since it's often quite one-sided.
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Old 02-25-2021, 04:49 AM   #10
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Default Re: First rules-light roleplaying game?

First Swedish RPG (Drakar och Demoner) was a rules-light BRP clone.
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