The two sides of the river: storytelling and wargaming

Well, another topic coming from a discussion in a very popular community: the starting point is (needless to say) the rules framework in a RPG. The debate is more or less between those who need a light set of rules... someone would love to have a 5-page rulebook (!!!), someone else is looking for a single page only... and on the other faction, those who want an as much as possible detailed set of rules... those kind of massive books where the authors have foreseen nearly every event could occur (and not only: every event has been combined among the many other features sorting out a vectorial product of huge size)...

Looking from a mere external point of view, it is clear that a RPG is the outcome of someone's needs: it can be as vary as the number of people playing RPGs... this is not really the point though. What is interesting is trying to sort out the roots of this hobby: it started from a group of wargamers (at the end of the day, the Fantasy supplement in Chainmail is the embryonic idea of the upcoming RPG concept). To this, someone else had the true brilliant idea: trying to move from wargaming which is based on real and concrete items like the board, the mins and so forth towards imagination... this is the real quantic leap for the hobby: use imagination to replace something happening on the board... figure out something that cannot be fully representable on the board... this is what I call storytelling.

Now, just to point out the reason of this post: a RPG set of rules can be based (or biased) by wargame or by storytelling. In the first case the rules will likely be "heavy", in the second case the will likely be "light". For a simple reason: imagination does not need too many rules. 

This consideration drives me to the final (unanswered) question: what is the best choice? Wargame or storytelling?

Looking to the VI·VIII·X core rules, I cannot say it is a "light" set of rules. At the same time it is not that complex: there are really few concepts to keep in mind (i.e. the ARC - Action Resolution Check - is applied to any context, even for the combat... in addition a fight should be resolved in few actions...). The GM can also not use all the rules... but it could be objected even the opposite: once the optional set of rules will be ready, the GM can add complexity to the game... 

One thing is sure though: I am prone to storytelling, therefore I can even have made a mistake with too many rules. The more imagination-driven is the game, the better it is to my eyes!


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