I am a big fan of role playing games, However I have noticed that a lot of the more well known games tend to suffer from a lot of rules bloat. More and more rules are added over time. This often results in a lot of exceptions and special cases which add to the overhead of playing the game. Resolution of conflicts can slow down as people search for specific rules in unwieldy sets of rulebooks. The actual role playing ends up taking a back seat to rules and mechanics. Fortunately a large number of games have cropped up which aim to tackle this issue in various ways. I have even written one called Cloak and Dagger for simple swashbuckling adventures, available on itch.io and DriveThruRPG.
Generic Systems
One attempt to solve the issue of having to learn lots of rules for each new game, was likely the rise of generic rules systems like GURPS and FATE. The issue these tend to have are two fold. Firstly in trying to be generic and cover all backgrounds, such games risk ending up with more rules than the games they are trying to replace. Secondly, in being generic, they may lack flavour and background. GURPS attempted to counteract this by creating source books for particular styles. However this approach leads to a proliferation of rules and special cases. Once again you end up with endless poring over multiple rule books.
Light Systems
The next major category of games which attempt to reduce the rules overhead is rules light systems. Sometimes these are rules light versions of another system. Some games like Shadowrun might have a stripped down version of their rules in a starter box. In this case the intention is generally to give you a taste of the system. The expectation that you might use the full rules later if you like the game. Therefore these do not generally satisfy a desire for simpler rules in the long run.
Other games like FATE Accelerated and GURPS Lite take an existing game system and strip it back to its essentials. Others like Risus are designed from the start to be extremely minimal systems. Being more minimal, these rules often require more judgement from players and game masters to decide how situations not precisely covered by the rules should be handled. They can also suffer even more from lack of flavour than their generic counterparts. Another issue which can arise is that if rules are stripped back too much, any obstacle the party faces can be solved in some sort of generic manner by any character. This can remove the distinctiveness and interdependence of characters since every character is equally capable of dealing with an issue.
Micro Role Playing Games
Now we come to the kind of game which I think are in many ways the most interesting, micro role playing games. Let me take a moment to define what I mean by this genre. It is not just about the size of the game system (Risus is only two A4 pages but is more a rules light system since it lacks a background). Mostly what a successful micro role playing game attempts to do is to enable one game genre very well with a minimal set of rules. They tailor rules and setting closely together to achieve a distinctive feel that depends on a few easily remembered rules.
An early example of this style was In a Wicked Age, This game is set in a swords and sorcery setting at the dawn of civilisation. It uses a number of innovative mechanics, both in how you create your characters and in how they interact with the world. Your abilities are not based on your skills as in most role playing games, but on your motivations which leads to a very dramatic feel. The game is less than 40 pages long and yet it packs a huge number of innovative ideas and a lot of flavour.
Lasers and Feelings
However perhaps one of the purest example of the micro role playing game concept is Lasers and Feelings. This game is set in a planet of the week science fiction background, but its real innovation is that a character has just one statistic. This represents both how good they are in situations covered by logic and reason (lasers) and how much by emotion and communication (feelings). No character can be great at both lasers and feelings. This tradeoff means that along with getting a crew position on the ship, characters can be nicely distinct. Lasers and Feelings fits on a single page but has easily enough information to run a great one off or even a short campaign.
The best part is that the idea behind Lasers and Feelings is open source and has led to a range of other games including the absurdly amusing Honey Heist where you all play bears trying to steal honey from a convention and your dichotomy is between Bear and Criminal. The comedic setup is only really good for one shots, but it is definitely a fun time.
Cloak and Dagger
I have created my own adaption of Lasers and Feelings called Cloak and Dagger. This uses the dichotomy idea to cover swashbuckling adventures. In this version Cloak is for subterfuge while Dagger covers direct action. It is available on itch.io and DriveThruRPG.
Interestingly after writing my game I discovered I am not the first to apply the idea of a Cloak and Dagger reskin to the Lasers and Feelings concept. It has also been used to create a cold war spy game and a medieval fantasy game as well. If you want to seek out some more micro games, then itch.io is a good place to start.
