Post originally by Jer at 2003-07-20 08:24:20
Converted from Phorums BB System

> d20/D&D is a pretty solid system, but I
> wouldn't touch it for a rules lite style
> campaign. There are better choices.

d20 can be made to be fairly rules light. The combat system needs a lot of tweaking to remove the wargaming aspects and make it more abstract, but since the system basically boils down to "roll-a-die, add-a-modifier, check the DC", it really is fairly rules light. I've run CoC d20 games where the rules are hardly a factor at all (just like BRP CoC). There is only a single class, combat is very abstract and does not require minis, players generally don't get many "rules specific" spells (and of course, they never really want to cast them anyway), etc.

OTOH, I agree that D&D is rules heavy and that it is very hard to get around it. All of the classes, the special abilities, the various spells that work in very specific ways. While D&D 3e isn't the heaviest rule system I've used, it certainly isn't rules light by any means.

And of course you are correct, there are better choices for rules light gaming if you have a group that is flexible enough to want to use them. Unfortunately, all of my groups have always wanted to stick with either d20, GURPS, or Storyteller, and all three are at about the same level of "heft" in their rulesets...