I’ve developed an interest in microlite games of late. Well not technically microlite as in one or two pages, but lite RPGs that take less than 10 pages.

Now in order to make a complete game in as few pages you have to give up on a few things. First is setting. Your game has to imply a setting rather than explain it. That’s OK since the big dog D&D already does that. A lot of details also have to be vague since you don’t have the space to explain all the uses for the electronics skill. That means a freer system when playing, but again this is nothing new to people used to (A)D&D. The real task is to boil a game down to it’s essentials and finding simple solutions where more detailed systems could eat up pages.

My interst in lite games is really from a curiousity design stand point and from a practical playing stand point. Can you make a game so small that is still worth playing and why should a game take 200 pages to explain how to play? I’d guess that most RPG players use only a small core of the rules of their favourite game most of which could be summed up in less than 10 pages.

Now to see if I’m right.