So I've been working on this new tabletop RPG and it's gotten me thinking about some of the fundamental trade-offs in game design. One is the sliding scale of crunch, with wargames with 500 pages of specialized tables at one end, and unstructured improve session at the other.

For whatever reason we've had an explosion of game systems that are on the improv side of the scale. The one-pagers and one shots, Fiasco, Fate and its descendants, Apocalypse World and its horde of descendants. Even D&D, everyone's 2nd favorite game, has slid in that direction.

Even, maybe especially as a player who likes a decent amount of crunch and enjoys dungeon crawl board games (e.g., Imperial Assault) I've really enjoyed the freedom of PbtA games like Monster of the Week. But it isn't actually because of the light crunch.

One of the problems with low crunch systems is that everything becomes mechanically flattened. No matter how clever of an idea and how well my character uses the situation to their tactical advantage in MotW, it comes down to the exact same die roll. Each time, every time.

Worse, if you're say, a character with high Tough and weak Cool and you get fancy with a good plan instead of Kicking Some Ass, you'll be asked to roll Act Under Pressure which you're worse at, you'll still be rolling 2d6 on the same outcome table but with a worse bonus.

The real advantage isn't the low-crunch itself. It's that the low crunch system lends itself to freedom to build fluff (lore). It builds a play space where when a PC asked what the rules of magic circles are he could just ask me what the rules of magic circles are.

So we're really talking about a different axis, not of crunch, but of fluff, where the poles are "everything is preset by the GM/Setting" and "fuck it, we'll do it live" on the other.

We tend to collapse that into a single crunch-fluff spectrum because in games like D&D, giving players too much control over the fluff feels like it will let them cheat the crunch. E.g., If I can make up rules about how the planes work, it's too easy to beat a high CR monster.

There's also another concern as a GM. GMs traditionally run everything that isn't the players in a game. And it's a huge burden. You have to prep, you have to create, some GMs do voices, props, not to mention mastery of the rules. But most of all, you are responsible for fun.

A good GM is trying to create, at all times, an environment where the players are having fun. That usually means 1. players are exploring a character 2. making fair choices 3. participating in an interesting story. But you also have to keep in mind 4. have fun yourself!

If the GM stops having fun, the rest of the table will not have fun for long. It just doesn't work.

Which is a long way of saying, GMs are strongly incentivized to find ways to reduce the burden on themselves and move it on to the players, either directly, by giving them improv duties, or indirectly, by giving them a setting book and/or easy to follow rules.

So. Back to our axes and what I'm working on. I've created a scifi universe. The system I am using is fairly crunchy - there are lots of skills, success is determined by die roll, difficulty by GM, items have effects, weapons have damage codes, etc.

There's also a lifepath system which I discussed here, which has both crunchy mechanical bits and vague improvy fluff bits. https://twitter.com/tznkai/status/1248998970489274368?s=20

And I've created a premise to the setting in collaboration with players mad-libs style, which is a lot like Mass Effect without [SPOILERS ABOUT NONSENSE] but also some of my other favorite settings (Freespace, Babylon 5, even Star Trek).

To that I added the fundamental tech base, most importantly FTL and its limitations, as well as the metapolitical situation the players find themselves in. There is a multi-speciies/planetary federation. It has different branches. It has an internal great power politics.

I will sketch out how the other two great powers relate. But everything else exists as a detail for players to fill out.

There are 6 other full fledged members of the Interstellar League. If it's relevant, make something up. It's canon now.

There's a 10% chance your character is part alien. I have defined *none* of the alien species. Make something up, it's canon now.

Your character was sponsored by a major power, or a gang, or a megacorp. There's no list. Make something up, it's canon now.

The rules already have bound your character, and we're all adults and friends now, so everyone knows not to make up "I WIN EVERYTHING" as a background story element. And because there's no bounded list, I still can make up whatever canon I need to move my story too.

Now, I'm making this sound like a free lunch, and it isn't. I am giving players some freedoms usually reserved to the GM. I am also giving them work. There's inherent risks.

But there's options between the GM and book Making The Setting and total improv anarchy.

For all of my fellow crunchy sorts who love deep systems but are adults with limited time, disentangle the crunch and fluff axes and learn to give some responsibility to your players.

They'll thank you for it and you'll have a lot more fun.

So that was longer than I intended and I even had an entire sidebar about actual play podcasts/video that I forgot to write up. Thanks for sticking with it.