I certainly have preferences here. I think Deep-Niche rules can be kind of tricky, as you sometimes don’t use them often enough to properly learn their complexities. Overall I definitely lean toward the blunt side, especially in wargames, but I think a game can succeed with all different types of rule if they’re implemented with purpose.
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I wish this post was twice as long and went way deeper into each category with examples and use cases.
I think sometimes there can be a tradeoff of blunt wide that it can make disparate things feel too similar.
Sometimes this is fine. But some players might object. Like in Fate Core, a game I really enjoy, the difference between shooting someone with your rifle and zapping them with your wand is typically mechanically zero.
I’m fine with this, and happy to distinguish them in the narrative or via what kind of aspects you can create (ie: a rifle can create SUPPRESSIVE FIRE but a wand can’t). Some players might not be.
I dimly remember some ultra light RPG that was just roll a d6 and try to get over or under your stat depending on your action, and it just felt disconnected and unsatisfying. Extremely wide and blunt.
Lasers & Feelings and its many hacks is such a really simple system. It is one page including setting.
I only played the hack Blood & Chrome and it worked for us: We had a glorious Mad-Max style chase and fight.
That’s probably the one I was thinking of. Ironically it felt more gamey and less, I don’t know, literary, to me in a way I don’t like. It’s like mad libs. Nothing really meant anything because it was just incoherent and random.
Way down there in the Deep-Niche corner, are the grappling rules from 3e.