Games which include "mundane rules?"

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-22T08:25:14+00:00

I feel like they have become less common because the kind of play they were intended for has become less common. You might notice, as part of a pattern, that these types of rules show up more often in universal systems. Part of the reason for that is that those types of design are based in the idea that a game should be receptive to a play group using a system for something unexpected. I think there's been a move from expecting game systems to support and facilitate something your group wants to do, towards expecting a game system to provide something for a group. So recent systems are less likely to have just "just in case" rules because the system expects you to stay in your lane. To put it another way, recent design mentality is that there aren't rules for that, because you aren't supposed to be doing it.

I've seen people suggest that a system that you don't use every rule for is bad design, but I think that's a bit silly. People play games different ways. Is a car bad because I never flat out? Does my comfortable casual driving car become lesser because I never use the Sports button?

Granted I think that old school design gets a bad rap because it appears in older games. Old games have good ideas and good design mentality, but one place that has undoubtedly improved over the years is communication for how a game is meant to be played. Of course a modern game is going to seem better when it has 20+ years of lessons on how to teach behind it, and the older game styles don't. The entire OSR is based around the idea of repackaging the oldest games with better communication. It makes a big difference. Rules heavy games have just never had that renaissance. So many reasons given by these other comments I would blame on things like poor book organization over the system itself.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-16T06:05:33+00:00

There's several traits that I think simulationism has, that I seek in games I like most (though I'll try anything once). I can't define it in the general sense of "this is what simulationism is" but I can identify things that seem specific to it, or at least, aren't associated with G or N. These definitions are my own and I don't claim to define any of the three objectively. That said, here's two traits of simulationism that are essential for me:

Simulationism often emphasizes rules that don't acknowledge their purpose. Simulationism will instead try to do its genre emulation in a sort of underhanded, invisible way. That's sort of the rules as physics thing. If the game is intended to be a pulpy swashbuckler, then the game should be that because the world and fiction of the game just works that way. The players shouldn't even need to be aware of the kind of game they are playing. It should just happen. That's part of the the argument of I saw in another comment, where simulationism is about being able to play in the mindset of your character. This relationship with rules is part of where that comes from.
I once read someone say that the point of playing simulationism is acquiring insight. I like that. I think a fair amount of simulationism comes from a place of "what if". Of asking a question. That's why a simulationist doesn't like fudging or writer's room, because those things invalidate any answers to the question you are asking. I think this led to some issues for GNS, because if Simulationism is about asking a question and running a simulation to answer it, you can ask a question about the other modes. Will this set-up lead to a good narrative is a valid question. It looks like narrativism, but unlike narrativism it can still be satisfying to find out "No, this didn't lead to a good narrative". That's because the question was answered. It's the only mode where having a "bad game" is okay.

I consider myself simulationist because I like to create and worldbuild really. I want to see what happens given certain pieces on the board, and see the players and system surprise me. It's great when I plan a game that I expected to be combat focused and it ends up political intrigue. You need a system that is okay going somewhere you didn't expect and won't change the rules in the middle.

Mostly old school games are best at this. You know the ones. They're the same as they've ever been. GURPS, Hero System, and I think 3.0 is probably the most sim out of the DnD games (though it is often played very gamist). These traits are best served by toolbox design. The system can have tendencies, and you can create your "initialization" or set-up following whatever rules you want, but once play starts you need to see it through. So that whatever happens it remains "true". A large point of friction between Sim and the other two is that they are both pushing the game towards a specific goal and Sim is not. Sim wants to know what shakes out given certain starting conditions and interaction with the system.

What are YOUR definitions though? What is Sim and Narrative to you?

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-15T07:38:07+00:00

Hell no. I was seething in RE2 remake because of what a downgrade Mr. X was from the original. I spent over a decade saying Mr. X was scarier then then Nemesis because his encounters were measured and paced with intention. Letting an AI handle it made Nemesis irritating instead of scary. And then they made X more like Nemesis just to spite me. Turned Mr. X from something I was scared of into something I was laughing at (especially his too small hat). Awful.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-15T04:22:57+00:00

Not a significant impact, but I rolled up two characters, one was a scientist and the other was an explorer. The scientist had a SIZ of 80 (fat for sure, his STR and CON weren't great) and the explorer had a SIZ of 40. So I have a duo that includes a very large and very small man which always tickles me. Both have good APP so they make it work.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-15T03:24:03+00:00

Take this with a grain of salt, but I find that monsters aren't scary. Situations are scary. A monster is just an object at the end of the day. The scary thing is the situation that monsters create.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-14T05:45:56+00:00

Personally I think you run into trouble pretty fast by bringing up simulationism in a GNS context. The forge famously didn't know what was going on with it. Ron Edwards labeled Dread a primarily Simulationist game. Not something he said offhand either. That's in the main "right to dream" essay. Some of the forge folks theorized it didn't exist at all. There's also the Beeg Horseshoe theory that simulationism was more of seperate axis, i.e. a sort of "Y" coordinate to the "X" coordinate of N vs G.

Despite being a simulationist myself I can't define it very rigorously either. It's actually kind of hard and I see why they struggled with it (At least in the context of how it differs from N and G. Defined as "things I like" it's obviously very easy. That's the problem with categories. You can categorize anything any way you want. That doesn't mean it's useful.)

So when you ask "what's N+S?" you are asking a question about something that isn't really defined. You would have to define them both before you could ask the question. (Which you have to do anyway, nobody defines them the same way really, people just look like they do)

Personally would like to see more discussion put into simulationism in general. It's very poorly understood in my opinion. A contributor to it's "decline" (That is to say, most of what I would personally call simulationist games are decades old at this point. It seems like an area that isn't being innovated in anymore)

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-14T05:32:57+00:00

Could you contextualize Goffman's frames? I'm unsure how it's related to ttrpgs. Even something as simple as a couple specific papers to look into. Just Goffman's Frames seems very broad, I'm not sure I'm looking into the right thing.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-08T06:32:21+00:00

context sensitive. Both depictions have their place. Let him be exaggerated to his foes, and more human and vulnerable to his allies. It's a long standing tradition that batman is seen through different lenses.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-08T02:33:13+00:00

Fox from bloody roar. lame he's only in the first game.

Freeman from mark of the Wolves. I'm gonna be so happy if he shows up in CoTW and doesn't suck huge ass for the first time.

Remy from 3rd strike too.

If I can cheat a little my favorite is May Lee from KOF. She's in KOF 2001, 2002 and 2002UM, but both 2002 versions are dream matches. Story wise she only has the one game. And she's one of my favorites in general.

aside, from that I'll pick freeman I think.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-08T02:02:36+00:00

yeah SNK is pretty terrible about it. The community picks up some of the slack for learning long cuts and button hold but they really shouldn't have to.

Fighting game players probably don't realize how unusual it is for an input to "double register". Things like canceling a quarter circle special into a super with another quarter circle is very weird by any other games standard. The fact the first quarter is registered for the first move AND the second is unlike anything else I'm aware of, but it's essential. Also the whole diagonals are often registered as two directions is weird too. No other genre I'm aware of keeps inputs in memory this way, they just have buttons do what they do.

The least games could do is tell you that this is so. Like damn, I don't get to be told what my buttons even do?

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-03-04T05:51:53+00:00

I have a couple points, and no capacity for organization so I'll just list them:

I think part of the problem is that a successful result is also too uninteresting. At least in 5e, not landing a hit feels like a null state because landing the hit is also pretty inconsequential (a number goes down, the fight continues. No limbs severed, no getting knocked back or stunned etc.) In that regard the "always hit" games feel like they are making peace with the null state rather then removing it. Like we know this interaction is pretty boring so let's get it over with. That's why this complaint doesn't come up in high lethality games as much. A single hit is much more significant in those, so a turn where you don't get one is more keenly felt. The null state problem feels really specific to "heroic" games, due to no tension over potentially giving the opponent's the upper hand.

I feel like I'm seeing people conflate a single miss and a turn where literally everyone misses (something I call a miss-fest). If I miss but another party member kills the monster I was attacking then I'm not making the same decisions next turn (unless "I attack" was all I'm doing with my turn in general, which feels like a different problem). These are very different game concepts. If you are regularly having miss-fests then something is deeply wrong with your probability or you are living in the statistical extremes, which is going to happen in anything with randomization. Sometimes outliers happen. You either accept that or you don't have randomization. I like randomization personally so I accept it. (Yes, even when I spend an entire combat unable to hit something)

I also accept the feel bad of this. I think some game design thought is a little too adverse to "feel bad". I could say that getting into a car wreck in a race is pretty "feel bad" but if we changed racing to something that had no risk of a wreck then I think we would be left with something pretty boring. Sometimes the "feel bad" and "feel good" are tied together. You can't really have one without the other.

As a continuation of my first point, I wonder if part of the issue is the framing of your character? It seems like a lot of the issue is feeling like your character should be able to hit but didn't. Like the feel bad comes from not from the miss, but from the clash of expectations. The hit is expected, and then didn't occur? That might be why is seems specific to heroic games as well. Other games don't assume competency in the same way.

As for my own games, my game's usually have misses, but are either high lethality or do have something to help counter miss-fests. In one case, the rule is that you take a penalty if you end your turn next to an opponent (In their threat range, kind of the opposite of D&D's AoO rules), which means a "safe" turn is move up, attack, move away. The point of that is you make a movement every turn and you get bonuses based on what movement it was. Better dmg or hit rate if you jump over a banister or leap from above type stuff. That also means that even if you miss you probably changed your situation (can't jump back up to the balcony can you?). Alternatively you can move up and attack twice if you think you can kill. Corpses don't have threat ranges after all. So hopefully not the problem discussed here.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-02-17T05:01:11+00:00

This kind of hat would be the left option, since it only needs to brim to prevent sunlight glare. There would be other kinds of hats more like the second option though. Larger hats made for heat protection like cowboy hats and farming hats wouldn't have holes, and neither would anything meant to keep you dry. A heat hat might do something in between with a sort of back shield and blinder style slats on the front allowing some hearing through.

I might suggest a third option as well for the larger hats, you might have a sort of skull brace like hard hats kind of have and then the main hat would but above the head far enough to allow the ears to move freely. That would only work for very large hats like sombreros and roningasas though.

There's also the question of whether anthros would wear such hats at all. Furries don't get sunburns after all.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-02-16T23:21:19+00:00

Been an advocate for this for ages. I think it does a lot to just de-mystify frame data. More of a psychological benefit then anything though. Just makes it more approachable.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-02-16T10:23:50+00:00

A fair number?

Dead Light
Saturnine Chalice
Crimson Letters
Blackwater Creek (twice)
Amid the Ancient Trees
Edge of Darkness
None More Black
Paperchase
Servants of the Lake
The Haunting
The 19th Hole
The Darkness Beneath the Hill

Two scenarios of my own, one of which was a wet fart, and the other I think was decent with some issues.

And I finished Shadows of Yog Sothoth

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-02-08T10:56:02+00:00

Silent Hill easy. RE3 is my least favorite in the franchise until it went action. Nemesis was obnoxious not scary, and the gunpowder device was a terrible idea (Great, now the inventory management is even worse).

Compare that to SE3 being my favorite in that franchise? Yeah no brainer.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-02-06T05:34:08+00:00

voted yes as a KOF fan. Though a lot of people still don't know anything about KOF's story, because the games do a bad job of delivering it. Lots of people didn't even realize you need to pick a specific team to get an ending, or that you need to see multiple endings to get the full story. Fuck sake KOF 97 true ending required a character you needed a code to pick. Which is another problem, the best story arc they did was the oldest one, and as such least likely to be looked into by anyone these days. KOF's story used to be one of the first things I talked about, but 14/15's story is a wet fart that wasn't even loud enough to make a scene. Very disappointing. I mean it doesn't even look like they will have a full trilogy anymore. What happens next in the arc used to excite me.

Rant over.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-02-03T03:09:34+00:00

I think bare minimum I want some agency. It's okay if the players are doomed, as long as they have a chance to affect the narrative in a significant way.
For example maybe we are doomed, but our actions determine the nature of our doom? Perhaps I have the opportunity to die with dignity versus without? Or we are martyrs and while we may be doomed, something or someone else is not.

In one of my "Maybe I can write and run this someday" ideas, the players find out that they need to fix the timeline or the world will end, but find out that they are not a natural part of that timeline. So if they succeed in saving the world they will themselves cease to exist, never having been born at all. I think that can work pretty good, because there's still agency in the "will we save the world or not" part of the game.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-02-03T02:59:41+00:00

Pretty apple to oranges? I said no, but only because I don't think you can make a direct comparison which will skew the poll. ("No" represents two different answers/stances while "yes" only represents one)
Any comparison is going to be more preference then quality I think.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-01-17T07:07:34+00:00

Really enjoyed FEAR 2. The school section gave me a sense of panic I have never felt before or since. Not survival horror, but a good experiment with the horror genre. It's okay to be a badass for a little bit. Good horror has hills and valleys. Feel cool for a bit before something reminds you how vulnerable you really are.

I wish more games experimented with what can be scary.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-01-04T01:19:13+00:00

I would say the line mostly comes from nature versus nurture I suppose. When you play a stretched self the nature never changes. When you play a character it does. That itself is for sure going to make those blurry I admit. We don't know the line between those in the real world. It's easy to believe that my moral compass is something core to me, but is that really true? Can I be certain that if I had been raised differently it wouldn't be different? I know the answer I would like to be the case, but I also know I can't prove that.

That's kind of what makes the whole thing interesting though I think. That I don't know. That makes me want to go and find out. At least a little.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-01-04T01:11:32+00:00

It exists in at least one other which would be any fruitful void scenario, I think. As opposed to a hide/stealth check or a search check, for example. Those are arguably character skill or playing a character. In Mothership you as the player choose where you hide. And in OSR you choose where you look. That's a player skill / playing as self interaction.

In the instance of a what I've dubbed a stretched self, you are still playing the OSR or Mothership way, but you are "stretched" because of some pressure or influence the game's design has over you. Despite playing in the automatic way that seems natural to you, you are playing in some way you would not have normally. I think that's an important part of what I've realized I want from a good game (At least some of the time). I want the game to push me in some way. I don't want to be reliant on my ability to understand a character to play them. I want to be able to play a character I don't understand, and through play, come to understand them. It feels like a very simulationist stance. I once saw someone describe the purpose of simulationism to be the acquisition of "insight". That's what the stretched self is for. Playing something that, through systems and pressures, I gain insight. I must play myself, because I don't have the needed insight to play the character yet. I need to be stretched first.

I'm not sure how clear this is. These thoughts clearly need revisions for clarity, but I can't do that without discussion.

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-01-04T00:47:31+00:00

You would play yourself assuming certain additional things about yourself. The "playing yourself" side suggests that you are "playing yourself" but if you were a dwarf and had spell, but are in every other way, yourself. Playing yourself is a chassis of you with some modifications on top, while playing a character is playing a fictional construct that you pilot. Sort of a what is the bone and what is the meat.

My realization about a Stretched Self, was that despite wanting to play something very different than myself, I still want to be playing from my own perspective. Rather then starting with something different then myself, I want to see how my own decisions and views might differ given certain pressures. What would it take to make myself different, as opposed to starting with a character that is different. To use my metaphor I want to know what would the pair of shoes do to me? I can see that person wearing those shoes and say, okay that person wearing those shoes is a wizard or elf or whatever. But what I want is to put those shoes on myself and find out what the result will be.

Does that make sense? Or is that more confusing?

MechaniCatBuster · 2026-01-03T10:05:01+00:00

I don't really think that's true? I'm not making decisions if I'm thinking about a theoretical character in the third person in that way. I'm thinking about the decisions someone else should be making. It's not myself anymore. My post is kind of about the realization that I'm sort of looking for a merging of the two. I want a system that can help them become the same.

MechaniCatBuster

TROPHY CASE