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Units of game-design complexity?
- Thread starter gribble
- Start date
IamTheTest
First Post
Maybe instead of units we could use a scale, much akin to the Moh's Scale of Hardness. For instance, A goblin with a club = 0 hand waves...A flumph cleric/fighter with 12 feats from 10 books that is somehow gargantuan and is attempting libral use of falling damage rules = 8 hand waves.
Graf
Explorer
Ought to be one word and ideally one syllable.
Bugbears is witty, and thus memorable, but it's actually something that we count...
Economists often use "Joys" (i.e. ten units of happiness = 10 Joys).
It doesn't sound like a normal sentence, it's very obvious what you're talking about, etc.
Complexities would be OK. You probably would want to have something to compare it to.
Ex: For most games this rule adds far more Complexities than it does Joys; it should have been an optional rule.
Bugbears is witty, and thus memorable, but it's actually something that we count...
Economists often use "Joys" (i.e. ten units of happiness = 10 Joys).
It doesn't sound like a normal sentence, it's very obvious what you're talking about, etc.
Complexities would be OK. You probably would want to have something to compare it to.
Ex: For most games this rule adds far more Complexities than it does Joys; it should have been an optional rule.
Frostmarrow
First Post
Easy, you count the number of words that are needed to describe a monster; including the descriptions for all it's spells.
Divide by 100 and call it moles.
A Blink dog is described with 1032 words, including the entries for Blink and Dimension Door. So the blink dog's complexity is 10 moles.
A goblin is described in 443 words giving it a complexity rating of 4 moles.
Someone else can count the words for an ancient red dragon.
Divide by 100 and call it moles.
A Blink dog is described with 1032 words, including the entries for Blink and Dimension Door. So the blink dog's complexity is 10 moles.
A goblin is described in 443 words giving it a complexity rating of 4 moles.
Someone else can count the words for an ancient red dragon.
I don't think you can really assign an objective metric to something that's inherently subjective like complexity (well, game design complexity at least).
If you were to try though, I think you'd have to use a measure of the number of abilities/options/flexibility the rule has, weighed by their length (but not strictly a matter of length) - ie, a colossal skeleton doesn't really have a longer stat block than a small skeleton, but is a bit more complex because of reach.
If you were to try though, I think you'd have to use a measure of the number of abilities/options/flexibility the rule has, weighed by their length (but not strictly a matter of length) - ie, a colossal skeleton doesn't really have a longer stat block than a small skeleton, but is a bit more complex because of reach.
gribble
Explorer
Cor Azer said:
Isn't this essentially agreeing with Frostmarrow's suggestion? I mean, if you fully describe all the rules (including reach, squeezing, etc. that apply to a colossal skeleton but not to a medium one), and include them in the count of words, the colossal skeleton would end up more complex.
I'm still not sure what we'd call this "unit" though...
gribble said:Isn't this essentially agreeing with Frostmarrow's suggestion? I mean, if you fully describe all the rules (including reach, squeezing, etc. that apply to a colossal skeleton but not to a medium one), and include them in the count of words, the colossal skeleton would end up more complex.
I'm still not sure what we'd call this "unit" though...
Well... not really - although it appears as though I misconstrued what Frostmarrow meant. I dind't take Frostmarrow as suggesting we also spell out all the rules for reach, etc., which I think would get far too repetitive.
Another example, the description of Protection From Evil is longer than Lightning Bolt, but the tactical uses of Lightning Bolt are (in my mind) far more complex than Protection From Evil. So, again, length cannot be the sole measure of complexity.
It's not just a case of how many words it takes to describe something, it's also a matter of how easy it is to use that thing.
How about Insanity Ranking [IR]?
Each seporate portion (spell, feat, special attack, additional book, etc) you need to look up adds one IR.
The higher the IR the more likely you are to resemble a CoC character by the time you've looked everything up.
A low level kobald or goblin would have a low IR. I high level non-dragon monster would have a high IR. A high level dragon would have an IR in the stratosphere.
Each seporate portion (spell, feat, special attack, additional book, etc) you need to look up adds one IR.
The higher the IR the more likely you are to resemble a CoC character by the time you've looked everything up.
A low level kobald or goblin would have a low IR. I high level non-dragon monster would have a high IR. A high level dragon would have an IR in the stratosphere.
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