For years, fans of so-called ‘rules lite’ games have been telling us that the big benefit of such systems is that the “rules get out of the way during play”. The claim is that by having fewer rules to learn, we can be free to improvise the results as we make rulings during the game.

Last night, we enjoyed another session of our Karameikos campaign powered by GURPS. The experience was very positive with all six players deeply immersed in-role as their characters for the full four-hour session. As for the rules, they were out of the way.

But, I hear you cry, GURPS is not a rules lite game! On the contrary, it’s a system with so many optional rules that surely that ‘heavy’ load would bog down the play. Not so. The reality is that with clearly defined characters, the game is easier to run than you’d expect.

The problem with rules lite systems, at least in my experience, is that you spend an awful lot of time improvising adjudications for everything that arises through play. You have to think about each situation and decide how to resolve it: is this a moment of GM fiat, or not?

A Paladin and a Priest walk into a tavern. No, it’s not the beginning of a joke… but it was the beginning of a scene in our most recent session in Threshold. They walk to the bar and order a couple of half-beers. The local dock workers stop and stare. Even the music stops.

How do the locals react? GURPS provided me with a Reaction Roll and the result indicated some hostility. I grabbed a name and description off my NPC Skeleton Sheet: Romanovich, eye patch, gesticulates wildly. So begins the shouting and gesticulating!

The PCs decide to try and pacify the crowd of half-a-dozen dockers led by ‘one-eye’. They fluff their skill rolls by a wide margin, the situation worsens. Violence seems ready to erupt and the Paladin begins the Chant of Saint Fignon, summoning ethereal blue Dwarven armour.

My point is that, as GM, I didn’t have to improvise the system decisions: I knew how to make the skill rolls and so did the players. I was free to improvise the NPC dialogue, to imagine the character’s reactions, and to act out the part. We were focused on the interaction.

When you want to roleplay in-character as-character, rules are the tools behind the scene. The last thing you need is to be constantly thinking about how to adjudicate the situations. Instead, you want to be in-role and responding to the feedback the system gives you.

Defined systems get out of the way of the roleplay. Clear simple rules, like the 3d6 roll versus skill that GURPS offers, replace the ‘ruling’ decision point. Dice are rolled but the focus remains firmly with the characters in the scene. I can remain in-role. Everyone can. We know how to adjudicate this.

The more I play with the kind of players who roleplay as if they were their character, the simpler it becomes to run the game. One of the greatest benefits of system is that I don’t even have to improvise the rulings. That’s a massive cognitive burden lifted.

Ironically, less is not always more. Sometimes solid is better than flimsy.

Game on!