I have increasingly liked rule lite systems. I used to like not so much complexity, but a more simulationist approach to combat and equipment and the like — an artifact of playing the excellent James Bond:007 game for too long. But as early as Star Wars by West End Games, I liked seeing simple mechanics that could aid in character development and roleplaying over roll-playing.

The endpoint of the “easy to play and run” search was Broken Compass by the game company called (at the time) Two Little Mice. The characters have six attributes like Action or Wild or Knowledge with three skills under them. Depending on the number of pips in the two, that’s the number of six-sided dice you roll. It doesn’t matter if they’re typically or have funny symbols — the BC dice had N, W, E, S, a compass, and another symbol — so long as they all match. The goal, like Yahtzee, get as many matches as you can. Difficulty steps required you to get more matches: a pair for a basic success, three of a kind for a critical, and so on. Aid from others, environmental effects, equipment provided a die of advantage or took away a die for disadvantage. Simple. It’s the engine, I believe for their Household game and a modified version looks to power Outgunned! which just finished its Kickstarter at the time of this writing. You can find it here.

On the complex side — that’s easy. Anything 2d20 by Mödiphiüs. We’ve been playing Fallout, with another of the game group running, and I’m planning on running Star Trek Adventures, now that I’ve got a handle on the mechanics. The basic mechanic is simple, but still more complicated that it needs to be: roll 2d20, get under the number that your attribute and skill combined gives you, and get an extra success when under your skill. However, there are disadvantages and advantages to gain and lose dice, there’s two different game currencies — momentum (also called threat when the GM has it…ust to be confusing) and determination. Spend these game currencies to get extra dice on one hand, or extra damage dice on the other, among things you can do with them. I find the two game currencies — the equivalent of “luck/story/plot/whatever points” in other games, to be overly fiddly and confusing, but for the most part it’s a serviceable system. They do manage to do space combat without needing a completely different set of mechanics like some space games, and its set up in such a way that it emulates the “we need more power” schtick of the show, while giving everybody on the bridge something to do.

Honorable mention for complex mechanics goes to Lex Arcana, an excellent game that feels very old school. The character creation gets a bit fiddly, and the die mechanic is a simple roll dice and get over a target number…except you take the number of whatever you’re using — say, de Bello [war] to fight. If you have a de Bello of 15, you can break that number into up to three dice — say 3d5, or a d10 and d5, or a single die if the number were appropriate. It has a steeper learning curve for that reason, although some of the gaming group figured their best spreads and just jotted those down on their character sheets. It’s weird, but once you’re used to it, it works alright. Mathematically, using three dice is more likely to ensure a success, but it’s an exploding die system; get the maximum on all the dice and you roll again and add — that allows a player to roll one die, if they can, and that raises the chance of an exploding die.