What Is "Unnecessary Complexity" to You?

[Guest 7034872]

This. It doesnt have to be the mechanics just a very poorly organized rulebook that can drive me bonkers. PDFs and online tools have been a godsend.

Brother, stand up and preach it so the people in back will hear it! That stuff has permanently changed RPGs.

 

[James Gasik]

Actually I can tell you exactly where my point of "this game is too complex". European-style board games. I have a friend who is constantly trying to afflict me with new games to try, and I want to tear what is left of my hair out with poorly written rules and examples. We tried to play this game, Chocolate Factory by Alleycat Games last time and it took us 20 minutes to decide how to leave materials on the assembly line to be converted into various other ingredients.

 

[Jer]

A badly-organized rulebook can make a relatively simple game feel massively complicated. This is true.

Yes. Also it doesn't need to be a "badly" organized rule book to get me to pass on a game. It could be a perfectly well-organized reference rulebook for people who already know how to play and be a terribly organized book for trying to teach the game to someone. Making the game look more complex than it actually is when you're reading the book to learn how to play the game.

And that's a tough needle to thread because RPG rulebooks generally need to serve both purposes.

 

[payn]

Actually I can tell you exactly where my point of "this game is too complex". European-style board games. I have a friend who is constantly trying to afflict me with new games to try, and I want to tear what is left of my hair out with poorly written rules and examples. We tried to play this game, Chocolate Factory by Alleycat Games last time and it took us 20 minutes to decide how to leave materials on the assembly line to be converted into various other ingredients.

Question for you. Do you read the rulebook ahead of playing? Or do you just tear the shrink wrap and dive in? I have friends who love terribly complex games and are notorious for trying to learn as they go. Drives me nuts. The worst part, after teaching folks a few times they look to me as the rules explainer by default...

 

[GMMichael]

. . . what traits usually get you to "nope" out of a system?

Rules that are so complex they have to be called "mechanics."

Character sheets with so many numbers they have to be called "statistics."

Statistics so thick they have to be arranged in blocks.

Character creation that takes more than 10 minutes.

Bards...

 

[prabe]

Yes. Also it doesn't need to be a "badly" organized rule book to get me to pass on a game. It could be a perfectly well-organized reference rulebook for people who already know how to play and be a terribly organized book for trying to teach the game to someone. Making the game look more complex than it actually is when you're reading the book to learn how to play the game.

And that's a tough needle to thread because RPG rulebooks generally need to serve both purposes.

This is fair. I would think that "badly-organized" might be situational--that a book could be well-organized as a reference and badly-organized as a game-teaching document--so ... yeah, we're not arguing, really, that I can tell.

 

[aramis erak]

Im finding a lot of the conversations around here lately pinging my complexity meter warnings. Like simulation initiative systems, weapon speeds, healing/resting recharges, etc... When im gaming I just want to move from game mode to game mode effortlessly. Spend more time on exploration and role play less on combat. Many of these systems just slow down the game when I really just want to speed up play.

As I get more into VTT though, I'm realizing automation makes a lot of these things pretty easy to implement. They add the desired variety to the game without slowing it to a crawl. So, im starting to come around again to more complex systems as long as I can picture the added bonus of their inclusion.

My FTF vs VTT experience is that VTT is always slower...

A large portion of that is interfacing with the tech. Another portion is increased distraction susceptibility....

How much slower varies... 2 to 6 times slower.... by game, specific players, and how tired everyone is.

 

[prabe]

My FTF vs VTT experience is that VTT is always slower...

A large portion of that is interfacing with the tech. Another portion is increased distraction susceptibility....

How much slower varies... 2 to 6 times slower.... by game, specific players, and how tired everyone is.

I think one might be able to take advantage of a VTT to make processing math quicker, but I agree that (at least using voice, no cameras) actual play will be slower, because the communication channel/s won't have as much bandwidth as in person.

 

[John Dallman]

Some of this, I'm sure, comes down to matters of personal taste. I know some players and GMs who love really intricate, detailed rules systems that try to make social interactions, combat, and exploration all as life-like as possible...

Well, I mostly play and run GURPS 4e, which is fairly detailed. We do not try to drag in rules that aren't applicable to a setting or genre, but there is quite a lot of material for D&D-style fantasy, and for semi-historical settings. Replying with that in mind:

Erratic number goals. Do you want to roll high on this check, low on another? Are some skills percentile while others on a d20 or a d6?

All rolls to see if you can do something are 3d6 roll low. You want to roll high for damage, and you want the GM to roll high for social reactions (players don't need to roll those). This works fine; the classes of roll are clearly separate.

Charts. I'm not talking about a handy list of what you get each time you level or what spells you can select. I'm talking about each and every combat or skill challenge to get out random charts, roll percentage dice or whatever to see what happens.

Occasionally you need to look up a skill's description, but there aren't any more charts. There are charts for critical hits and misses in combat, but you only need them when you've rolled a critical, and they're one more 3d6 roll.

Multiple maths used in each roll. Did you hit? Compare the target number to your die roll. Then divide by another number to see how many ranks of success. Then add to a feature of your weapon. Then subtract the opponent's armor rating compared to the AP rating of the weapon.

Basically, roll against your skill. If you want to attack specific hit locations, or make the opponent's defence roll harder, there are subtractions to your skill, but those are optional, and controlled by the player. Ranged combat requires asking the GM for for the range penalty, and if you're using a weapon that fires multiple shots, a very small division to find out how many shots hit. Roll your damage, subtract armour, apply it to the opponent.

Hidden descriptions. "The monster is undead and has all the undead traits." Then you look up undead traits to see immune to cold, negative energy, poison, charm, sleep, etc. Just put all of that in the monster description so I don't have to look it up for every undead creature every fight. Or every plant, or demon, or whatever. How am I supposed to remember this stuff?

Reasonable in the era of PDFs. In the print-only times, keeping down the page count was important.

Complexity that obscures the nature of what is going on. Example: Multiple roll successes before failure(s) that hide the true odds of success/failure.

Some game designers seem to have a "cargo cult" view of mechanics. "This worked great for me in (really cool campaign I ran years ago), so all my games should work that way.

Basically my two axes of complexity boil down to "how hard is this game going to be for me to teach at the table" and "how hard is this game going to be for me to run at the table".

Whereas we aren't really into system-hopping. Different players in the group play with different default levels of detail, and nothing breaks. We had a campaign run by our least technically accomplished player in 2019; she just ran it as "human being with skill rolls", much in the style of CoC.

 

[Parmandur]

Multiple maths used in each roll. Did you hit? Compare the target number to your die roll. Then divide by another number to see how many ranks of success. Then add to a feature of your weapon. Then subtract the opponent's armor rating compared to the AP rating of the weapon.

Yeah, that's the major blocker for me. I like a little math...but I need to be able to hold the formula for resolution in my English major brain fir the game to not turn into a quagmire. I remember reading the long strung out multiple factor formula (1d20 + X ÷ y, averaged with z....) for Skill resolution in an unamed game...and Noped right out of that.