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Hang On Loosely

by Mike on 2 June 2025

No single set of unified rules work perfectly for the open-ended nature of RPGs. Use the rules and tools which help you improvise as the game evolves during play.

RPGs aren't like other games with fixed rules and boundaries around the entirety of the game. RPGs often have a loose framework of rules to handle conflict resolution, a core mechanic like rolling a d20, adding a modifier, and comparing the result against a difficulty class.

RPGs are often wide open in lots of ways. Sure, combat is well refined in 5e games but how the characters get into combat, what the environment is like, what the situation is like, what monsters are there and how many – that's all variable. D&D isn't a board game, no matter how much we'd sometimes like it to be.

Often, when seeking hard specific rules for our more flexible RPGs, those rules betray us in the circumstances of the game. Encounter building rules result in encounters that may be too easy or too hard. Resource-focused travel rules break down when characters can summon food and water at will. Chase-focused skill challenges get circumvented when one character casts dimension door and punches the runner in the face. Fancy naval ship combat rules break down when a character creates a 40 foot deep rift in the water right in front of the enemy ship.

Three words can help us deal with circumstances like the examples above:

Hang on loosely.

Encounter building rules aren't perfect. Use them as a guideline and then use your experience to adjust.

Where else can we let go of our desire for concrete rules and instead hang on loosely?

Judging how many encounters per day you need to run to match some ideal challenge.
Worrying about exactly how many magic items you should award.
Determining a DC for a situation and approach.
Figuring out morale for combatants.
Determining how an NPC reacts to the characters.
Figuring out the characters' reputation with the locals.
Understanding all the mechanics required to pilot a ship.
Having a perfectly clear system for buying and selling magic items.
Draining just the right amount of resources from the characters before a final battle.
Deciding exactly how many hit points every monster has.
Determining a single system for building a home base.

Often the best system for handling these circumstances are our own brains thinking about our worlds from the inside and a flexible core mechanic like rolling a D20, adding an applicable character modifier, and matching against a DC from 10 to 20.

There are some rules you definitely want to hang on to tightly – the rules facing the players. Players want to know that the world plays consistently when they interact with it. The world isn't exactly fair, but it should behave the same way when reasonably expected to. Such "hard rules" might include

character mechanics
spell mechanics
the general DC curve (10 is easy, 15 is medium, 20 is hard)
basic in-world economics
monster armor classes
the physics of terrain

and others.

You're not going to find perfect systems for all circumstances in your RPG. RPGs are often wide open with too many variables in the mechanics of the game and the approaches and experiences of your players for any single system to work perfectly.

Hang on loosely. Be flexible. Go with the flow. Select and use tools that help you improvise during the game. Worry less about getting it "right" and have fun in the moment with your friends.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Improv and the Eight Steps and The Third Heaven – Dragon Empire Prep Session 24.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Drop one interesting terrain feature into each big combat encounter.
Assign the role of “caller” to arbitrate group choices. Ensure they listen to other players and remain even-handed.
Let players engage in crazy ideas. Don’t punish them for it.
Avoid running too many hard battles. Give the characters a break.
End on cliffhangers.
Strip your tools and prep down to the essentials.
Your prep notes serve you, no one else.

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This work includes material taken from SlyFlourish.com by Michael E. Shea available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

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