Rules-Light Design

Rules-light is a style of design in TTRPGs centered around the reduction of explicitly stated rules, mechanics, and systems in favor of letting players' creativity and imagination drive the game. In the context of SS1X, rules-light refers to the reduction of server rules and easing of restrictions on player actions within the game.

Rules-light is not:

• A "No Roleplay" environment
• Being permissive of bigotry
• Complete sandbox freedom

In general, rules-light design stands as the opposite of rules-based design, where mechanics are balanced through the enforcement of server rules by administrators. The issues with rules-based design are numerous and severe, but in the interest of brevity I will forgo explaining them here and let the benefit of rules-light design shine through instead.

Rules Should be Comprehensible

Any player joining a server should reasonably be able to read and understand all rules for a server. Additionally, they should be able to internalize these rules to a degree where they are aware of the rules they must abide by while playing the game.

Rules should not be so long that they are impossible to read in the given time before being allowed to join. Additionally, they should not be so long that players feel like they would skip them in their entirety rather than reading them. This feels exceedingly obvious, but it's all-too-common for servers to have an extremely large set of rules (30+) each with their own sections that clarify the full terms of the rule. Some servers also incorporate additional documents (Space Law, Standard Operating Procedure, etc.) as part of the rules, which then requires reading and understanding those things.

Players should not be expected to read a novel before joining a server because they simply won't. If they are in the server already, they're just going to skim what they can and then press "join game" once the timer is up. You might say that it's on them and they're liable to get banned for any rules they broke, but if the rules were not reasonably easy to comprehend, then you've set yourself up for them to be broken.

Rules should also stray away from using incestuous spation specific terminology. For people new to the game, terms like OOC, Free Agent, RR, Metagame, NLR, etc. might as well be written in ancient Greek. Getting splashed with a ton of terminology all at once puts an undue burden on new players, who may already be adjusting to the concept of greater rules in a social multiplayer game.

Using pre-existing common terminology to describe rules also opens up a ton of ambiguity. What defines these actual terms? They are not really standard in their meaning and the use of them can make your rules mean different things to different people. Prefer to explain the literal meaning of your rules over using shorthand.

Rules Should Always Apply

Rules should apply to all players within the game or be plainly obvious in situations where they do not apply. Players may sometimes be exempt from rules but these factors should be plainly-visible and widespread (i.e. a player is a ghost and thus is excluded from in-character speech restrictions). Even if a rule is obvious when it applies, it may still fail this criteria if the conditions for its application are too specific.

SS1X is a game which revolves around social deduction and hidden information. If your rules have variations in enforcement based on aspects of the game which cannot be seen at a glance, the equal enforcement of rules becomes extremely difficult and encourages toxicity.

A common example is the limitation of murdering to only antagonists in traditional spation. Sometimes an antagonist might be obvious, but other times, they could be anyone. Someone who once was a non-antagonist may have been converted and someone who was once an antagonist may have been turned into normal crew. If you are murdered, how do you know if the rule has been violated? The only reasonable response is to report any instance of a rule break, but this will obviously create tons of false positives. Even if the report is successful, it can't be communicated to players due to issues of metaknowledge (i.e. if you report someone and nothing happens, they are probably an antagonist).

This kind of dynamic is something that introduces a lot of toxicity, as people use best estimates to gauge whether a given player is actually breaking rules or is allowed to do the things they are doing. People perceiving others as breaking rules may often act in an insulting or rude way, believing themselves to be in the right based on the limited information they have.

Rules Should be Predictable

Rules should generally be simple and not have internal variation based on game state. This is the sister rule to the previous one, but focuses on the internal complexity of the rule. Any rules which include conditions (if X, when Y) or use tables to outline when a given condition applies violate rules-light design.

A rule that contains a condition is one which has to be continually reevaluated and considered throughout the course of the game. Reference material like tables harms player immersion because it forces them to take attention away from what's in front of them and consider rules.

In general, if you have to devote mental energy to determining if you are about to violate a rule, the rule is probably too complicated. Players should not have to worry constantly that by doing something obvious and trivial they may in fact be in violation of the rules. This is also something that opens up a lot of toxicity, as people in disagreement over the rules are likely to argue about which interpretation is correct (read: which one gets the other banned).

While not strictly related to the rules themselves, enforcement is also an issue when it comes to unpredictable rules. If rules are not enforced consistently, then players are often confused and frustrated when they are bwoinked, especially if they've done the same thing in the past without issue. This is often not an issue with serious things like bigotry or harassment, but when rules are overbearing and more widespread, it's not uncommon for enforcement to be hand-waved due to not wanting to interrupt an otherwise-fine game state.

Rules Should be Realistic

Players should not be expected to intentionally self-sabotage or act against their own logical instincts while following rules. Actions taken based on knowledge acquired in a fair and reasonable way should not be penalized.

This is most obviously relevant in the world of metagaming, metashields, and NLR, which all deal with player information and the reveal of information in various contexts. The issue with these at their core, however, is that you have no real way of limiting what a player has already learned. You cannot revoke knowledge that people already know and forcing someone to intentionally restrict or forgo revealing knowledge that would be helpful to them or others (so long as it is done fairly through the methods of the game) is condescending towards players' intelligence.

The accumulation of game knowledge through repeated gameplay is a valid form of skill expression and should be respected and designed around. Someone who has learned the aspects and tells of the game and is able to use it to their advantage is simply someone who has become very skilled, which is a good thing! The complication of the game's state through randomization and red herrings is trivially easy to do and creates a greater ceiling for learning the game which levels the relative playing fields between players of different experience levels.

Knowledge pertaining to a particular round is even more important. If someone has learned about the motives or nefarious actions of another player within the game, they should be able to act on those actions in a way that is reasonable. This is simply basic player incentives: people respond according to what they think is reasonable. Denying someone a natural response is not only immersion-breaking but also violates their agency as a player.

Rules are not Mechanics

Rules should not try to restrict mechanical actions of players when they could otherwise be prevented or mitigated. Obviously things like offensive language and external cheats are all-but impossible to mechanically stop, but actions that players take in game should always be considered when designing.

An important distinction is that rules cannot prevent an action, only punish it after it has already occured. This means that their ability to mitigate disruptive play is inherently limited, since you must first respond to the person who broke the rule then restore the situation (if able to).

Counter-intuitively, this also means that a game with fewer rules must actually impose more restrictions of player action, since unmitigated player action is disastrous. You cannot rely on rules to prevent someone from bombing the entire map, so you must instead make bombing an entire map impossible or infeasible. You trade a broad restriction with varied enforcement for a more concrete mechanical restriction on the game itself. You can take fewer actions but you have full freedom to explore the actions you can take.