I don’t really know of a specific game I can attribute this to. But I used to be (in my way back gaming days) under the assumption that more complex systems aka simulation or heavy – take your pick, created a more grounded or realistic approach to what was happening in the game world. Like, if the rules were the physics of the game world so more rules = more realism. I then countered that with thinking a more heavily story/narrative game would be less realistic because it doesn’t have enough rules to model realism.

Fuck that. I’ve gone almost a complete 180 on that belief now. I find that fewer rules can create a more realistic feeling game because the narrative drives the realism far more then rules do. If you are running a grounded story game, then the narrative will keep things grounded. You don’t need a rule splitting out 100 different weapon damage types or hard rules on what strength 18 will let you carry. The story will come through when it is realistically important. Adding more rules may try and simulate realism for those rules specifically. But they just introduce more gaps then they fill in the long run.