The Space Between the Rules

People often say they like crunchier RPG systems because of all the choices: classes, subclasses, feats, powers, cards, talent trees, and so on. And I get the appeal. There’s a real pleasure in building a character from a huge catalog of mechanical options and carefully assembling a build from pre-defined parts.

But over the years I've realized that those systems don’t necessarily feel more free to me. In fact, they can sometimes feel ironically limiting. Your meaningful choices are still the ones the designer already anticipated and wrote rules for. The game gives you a thousand possibilities, but they are still its possibilities.

That’s one reason I like games like Into the Odd or Knave. Their lack of exhaustive abilities and defined actions doesn’t feel like a lack of choice. It feels like open space. By not specifying every maneuver, specialty, or team role in advance, those games effectively imply that your options are not limited to what appears on your character sheet.

Of course, most GMs will let a player "try anything," even in a game where special abilities and maneuvers are spelled out. But why have rules for so many things, and then also have a de facto rule that says you can try anything? Why not save a step? Why the bloat, if, at the end of the day, you can try anything anyway? If you're going to hand-wave the rules away, are you sure you needed them in the first place? 

For example, in a lot of systems, if there’s an ability called “Shield Bash,” players can unconsciously get the idea that shield-bashing is a special exception requiring explicit permission. In a lighter system, the absence of a “Shield Bash” ability suggests the opposite: of course you can try to bash someone with a shield. Why wouldn’t you?

I think some players genuinely find this uncomfortable, though. A lot of modern RPG design trains people to look at the character sheet or list of character build options to discover what actions are available. If it isn’t listed, they may feel like they can’t do it. So when a rules-light game says “you can try anything,” some players experience that less as freedom and more as vagueness. A detailed system can be more comfortable, or promote confidence that one isn't doing something stupid, because the boundaries are clear.

And honestly, I think part of that comes down to trust. Rules-heavy systems push authority into the book. The more tightly things are spelled out by rules, the less players have to rely on the GM’s (or their own) judgment. Rules-light games require a different dynamic: trust that the referee will adjudicate fairly, consistently, and imaginatively without needing a specific rule handed down from on high for every possible action.

So to me, the divide isn’t really between “lots of choices” and “few choices.” It’s between a game that defines possibility and a game that leaves possibility open.