Rules, too much or too little? YOU DECIDE!

Salamandyr · Feb 25, 2019

Hmmm...

I will admit to wanting to have my cake and eat it too. I desire a system that allows me to ramp up, or ramp down the system complexity to suit the needs of my game or encounter, at that moment. I want a game that lets me handle a check with a handwave and a die roll when appropriate, and allows me to dive arm deep into the minutia when that is appropriate. If the two systems generate similar success rates, that's a bonus.

And in addition, I want that complexity to be in service to simulation rather than "fun gameplay". So yeah...the sun, moon, stars, and various Oort Cloud objects.

aco175 · Feb 25, 2019

This is a bit on how I feel about not playing with a grid and just play using theater of the mind. I do not like it at all. I like to see the tactical part of where people are and being able to see the encounter over needing to ask the DM about all the tactical things. Other people are going to say just the opposite and we are all right. I would thing more rules or less rules may depend on the type of game you play.

Ganders · Feb 26, 2019

There's such a thing as over-simplification. 5e goes one step too far in a number of places.

For instance, perception used to be divided into spot and listen, for seeing and hearing. These were consolidated into a single number on the grounds that all we really care about is whether we see that person sneaking up on us or not. But in the process of simplifying, we added as much complexity as we removed, there's no net gain.

The distinction between light and sound, between seeing and hearing, still needs to be made anyway. Invisible is not hidden. Does choosing to not move take an action, or is that a lack of action? By the time you get to the monster manual, it breaks down completely. It's just not enough to note proficiency in perception, you have a whole long list of critters that have advantage on 'perception checks that involve sight' and a different list that has advantage on 'perception checks that involve hearing', and a partially-overlapping list that have double proficiency in perception. It actually feels more complex and rules heavy, not less.

It's not just skills. When you look in detail, you find quite a lot of things that used to be two numbers consolidated into one number in 5e. There used to be a 'flat-footed' AC, now there's just advantage to hit, which applies to all the same conditions where 'flat-footed' used to apply. The net gain there is dubious, because it creates plenty of edge cases, rules questions, and absurd contradictions during play... it might have been easier to leave it as it was.

Another time it went too far was making Eldritch Blast a cantrip instead of a class feature. Yes I see the connection, you can take advantage of all the rules we already know about how cantrips work instead of having to explain the ability in detail. It seems like really clever design at first, and since it's only on the warlock spell list nobody else will be affected. But then you have other classes dipping a single level of warlock, or taking the Magic Initiate feat in order to exploit the scaling of cantrips by overall level rather than class level. In the end you out-clevered yourself. It would have been wiser to refrain.

I definitely think 5e has strayed from simplification into over-simplification.

Umbran · Feb 26, 2019

Salamandyr said:
If the two systems generate similar success rates, that's a bonus.

Honest question - if the two systems give similar success rates, why would you (or, more importantly, why would a player) ever want to use the more complicated one?

I can understand going into greater depth and detail if it means I get better results, but if I don't, am I not wasting my time with all that extra detail?

ParanoydStyle · Feb 26, 2019

This is an EXPANSIVE question. I like that DnD Fifth is simplified and streamlined enough that it is clearly bringing SCORES of new folks into the hobby. I don't like that to those people, 3.5, my favorite edition, will seem like calculus in comparison. (Short answer, but if I were to actually start philosophizing about simplicity versus depth I'd lose my whole night. I've designed nearly a dozen RPGs myself, half of them published, and they run the gamut from the "Rules Lite" level of complexity all the way up to the "Shadowrun" level of complexity.)

Li Shenron · Feb 26, 2019

If I had to choose I'd go with SIMPLE.

The main benefits of complexity for me are tactical depth and character/adventure variety (I do not value simulationism much), but these can be added later.

Different people have different levels of appreciation for complicating a specific area of the game: something like facing rules or weapon speeds can be exciting to some and incredibly boring to others. A ruleset which makes something like them mandatory is very risky as in love-it-or-hate-it.

A good game has a simple core and modular complexity, so every group can pick additional rules by choice and at their own pace!

Salamandyr · Feb 26, 2019

Umbran said:
Honest question - if the two systems give similar success rates, why would you (or, more importantly, why would a player) ever want to use the more complicated one?

I can understand going into greater depth and detail if it means I get better results, but if I don't, am I not wasting my time with all that extra detail?

Because the extra detail is fun!

Sometimes you just want to resolve the quick fight with the guards in a few rolls; other times, like in the climactic duel with Dirk the Dastard, one wants to dive deep and hash out every single swing, every parry and riposte. It's whatever is fun at the time. The attritional style of play requires that something with a similar level of effort drain a similar level of resources, even if, narratively, they have different levels of importance.

77IM · Feb 26, 2019

There are no rules; there are only guidelines.

A good RPG only includes details that teach the GM how to make up rulings on the spot, which obviates the need for details in other areas. The Grappling rules are a good example: you make an opposed skill check, and on a success, the opponent is stuck. Likewise, Push/Shove: opposed skill check, minor condition. Oh, hey, Hide action: opposed skill check, now you get advantage on an attack, that's neat. There's three examples and now a pattern is forming. The game is teaching you this rules pattern, which you can now apply to all kinds of things: disarming as an opposed skill check; throwing sand in someone's eyes; tangling them up in the ship's rigging; grabbing a torch and lighting their cloak on fire; shouting and waving your arms as a distraction; etc. All those things could be "opposed skill check -> condition or advantage or minor effect." So now we DON'T need to include rules for all those things.

EDIT: Oh yeah, that, but also tables. Mmmm mmmm, I loves me some good tables! Creativity can be hard, especially in the moment, and tables with interesting options can provide really useful "cues" to get your mind moving. They are essentially another sort of guideline, but more open-ended, and more genre-focused. Most RPG game mechanics operate at the level of "here's how to resolve an action" while most RPG tables operate at the level of "stuff that could happen in the story."

Umbran · Feb 26, 2019

Salamandyr said:
The attritional style of play requires that something with a similar level of effort drain a similar level of resources, even if, narratively, they have different levels of importance.

Yeah, except generally speaking, you don't have "guards" be the same level of effort at "Dirk the Dastard" - the guards are likely mooks, and Dirk, being named, is probably a significant challenge. I submit that if the PCs are as likely to beat the guards as they are to beat Dirk, going through the extra effort for Dirk would be a bit anticlimactic, and that probably doesn't fit the narrative needs (unless you are using themes of villains who are kinda pathetic, when all is said and done).

The extra detail is interesting when the different detailed choices matter to the result. It is busywork when they don't matter.

Don't believe me? For your next gaming session, set up a complicated decision process - make it take a half hour - for choosing dinner for the group. But, all end possibilities for the process are "pepperoni pizza". Make them go through the exercise, and then tell them that no matter what they did, the end result was the same. Ask if they feel the process was valuable, given the inevitable result.

Yes, you may get some people who like the process, but I'll still expect they'd say, "We could have just gotten the pizza, and then done the process in a way that it actually mattered, and I'd like that more."

Salamandyr · Feb 26, 2019

Umbran said:
Yeah, except generally speaking, you don't have "guards" be the same level of effort at "Dirk the Dastard" - the guards are likely mooks, and Dirk, being named, is probably a significant challenge. I submit that if the PCs are as likely to beat the guards as they are to beat Dirk, going through the extra effort for Dirk would be a bit anticlimactic, and that probably doesn't fit the narrative needs (unless you are using themes of villains who are kinda pathetic, when all is said and done).

The extra detail is interesting when the different detailed choices matter to the result. It is busywork when they don't matter.

Don't believe me? For your next gaming session, set up a complicated decision process - make it take a half hour - for choosing dinner for the group. But, all end possibilities for the process are "pepperoni pizza". Make them go through the exercise, and then tell them that no matter what they did, the end result was the same. Ask if they feel the process was valuable, given the inevitable result.

Yes, you may get some people who like the process, but I'll still expect they'd say, "We could have just gotten the pizza, and then done the process in a way that it actually mattered, and I'd like that more."

Couple points: 1) The guards are not necessarily the same effort, individually, as Dirk, but they could be the same effort in a group, or, even if they were less effort--they should be some effort, so need to provide some level of expenditure of resources--which is why you can't just handwave. There's also a matter of time...I may need a quick game, so I use the "quick" way of resolving issues, and the "complex" way when we have the time to indulge in more details. So the quick and the detailed need to create similar results. The complexity should be there when we want it, and not there when we don't. It's like having "Basic" & "Advanced".

Combat is not the only area where this comes up; one needs some kind of quick resolution method for abstracting the search of every chamber in a dungeon, but when the situation warrants it, there needs to be a way to engage the fiction in a more granular fashion; just like in movies where long stretches of time can go by in moments, and then short moments be given great detail.

As to wasted effort, that's really in the eye of the beholder. RPG's are a pastime--any effort expended is, one sense or another, "wasted". So it depends on what one enjoys. I think, like a lot of rpg fans, I enjoy complexity...in moderation, and like to be able to choose the level of abstraction I want in a particular situation.

In the example about the pizza, sometimes I need one fast, and order out or cook up a frozen pizza; other times, I enjoy preparing my own dough, prepping it, slicing up the ingredients, preparing and cooking myself. At the end, in each case, I have "pepperoni pizza", but the amount of effort I have invested greatly differs, based on my desires at the time.