If it's "crunch" that you want, where do you want it and why?

[cavetroll]

This is a great thread

I think this is mostly where I want my crunch. I want weapon choices to make a significant difference, and sometimes to make a huge difference - i.e. X weapon is especially good against Y armor. Similarly, I want armor choices to make a difference. I want a meaty amount detail in that part of a rules set. I think I am heavily influenced by getting my hands on a copy of Palladium's Compendium of Weapons, Armor, and Castles at a tender age.

I also like a lot of skills, a subskills system, or the like, with lots of languages, and reading & writing mostly separate from speaking.

Weapons, armor of course. Skills sure. Languages what? What do you mean? Like you want to be able to pick lots of monsters languages? Specialize in writing medusa? I dont get it, how would you use it much?

 

[aramis erak]

My favored crunch elements...
social conflict
trade rules for any sf game with privately owned ships...
space travel
Ship design for space games with privately owned ships.

I don't mind mildly crunchy combat - 5E isn't quite crunchy enough in most ways, but it is close. Alien, T2K 4E, MegaTraveller are all right in my zone.

I liked Rolemaster, and have run it; it was fun; with rules in PDF, it should be MUCH easier to run, but I've not got players who can handle the Char Gen... I may try with Against the Darkmaster...

 

[Thomas Shey]

The semantic loading isn't going to be the same for others; reliance upon shared semantic loading is a crutch of its own which, if you lean upon it too often, will cause your fall...

Honestly that's a flaw with any word usage; semantic loading just tends to be a particularly sharp-edged case.

 

[kenada]

I don't know, I think people learn their attitude toward things like this when they enter the hobby and learn the rules various games, and its modified over time by other factors in their life or the culture of play they surround themselves with, like I don't think 'complexity essentialism' where players have a preset viewpoint on ease of use or sense of empowerment necessarily holds water. I think tolerance for complexity is largely taught, although its source can be outside the hobby itself (which is why some people bounced off DND editions before 5e and some people didn't.)

This must be why my players really like 3e-style customization so much. We played it (and Pathfinder) for almost two decades, and they played AD&D before that. When we tried WWN, they loved the inclusion of foci. I’m having to include feats in my homebrew system because that’s a thing they just really seem to like.

 

[Thomas Shey]

This must be why my players really like 3e-style customization so much. We played it (and Pathfinder) for almost two decades, and they played AD&D before that. When we tried WWN, they loved the inclusion of foci. I’m having to include feats in my homebrew system because that’s a thing they just really seem to like.

Well, honestly, having more customization was one of the things that haunted D&D for a lot of its early lifespan, and one of the biggest reasons I saw people abandon it (the other was the degree of abstraction getting to them); not everyone cared about that but enough did that the skills-and-feats elements of 3e were what brought people back who'd ignored it for years.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

This must be why my players really like 3e-style customization so much. We played it (and Pathfinder) for almost two decades, and they played AD&D before that. When we tried WWN, they loved the inclusion of foci. I’m having to include feats in my homebrew system because that’s a thing they just really seem to like.

Honestly, a substantial portion of the hobby really likes having mechanical levers for personalization, I think its because the game effects of those elements reinforce the 'texture' of the narrative they allude to, or the texture of the narrative the player creates. It also provides a way for the player to engage with the hobby on their own time, when they would like to be able to enjoy it, rather than just at the table itself.

One of my players and I were literally sitting around in discord last night discussing possible builds and wrapping our brain around how mech skills work in lancer to understand what it means to create a build in that system. We also had a discussion about different ways of succeeding in Pathfinder 2e encounters (specifically comparing the feeling of 'small ball' style getting runs on the board with miss effects on spells vs. the feeling of wanting to land a 'grand slam' with a spell, and how that intersects with the core system math). We talk about builds, or character concepts, a lot, we do have a good time at the table, but it'd be knocking off a lot of fun to not have the ability to talk shop about the system and stuff as well.

 

[payn]

trade rules for any sf game with privately owned ships...

I thought id like this. Though, in one of my earlier Traveller campaigns the players ran from adventure because it was too dangerous. Instead they wanted to just trade goods and make money paying their ship mortgage. It was not a very exciting game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I thought id like this. Though, in one of my earlier Traveller campaigns the players ran from adventure because it was too dangerous. Instead they wanted to just trade goods and make money paying their ship mortgage. It was not a very exciting game.

Its one of those things that can give a good shape to a particular type of SF game, but its also easy for it to turn into one or two players making all the meaningful decisions and everyone else just making some die rolls once in a while. There's a tradition of how to make that still exciting, but it involves forcing situations onto the players they have to deal with just to continue the trade process (there was a whole series Andre Norton did more or less based on that) and some people who expect an SF game of that sort to be a sandbox get soggy about that.

 

[aramis erak]

I thought id like this. Though, in one of my earlier Traveller campaigns the players ran from adventure because it was too dangerous. Instead they wanted to just trade goods and make money paying their ship mortgage. It was not a very exciting game.

That's where things going sideways, in the Firefly manner, is the way to run a Traveller merchant game. None of mine have been boring.
Same is true for a transport ship game in Alien. And in Space Opera. And in Spacemaster. And in any other game with ships and trade. The universeisn't there to make them rich, it's there to challenge them hard while the try to get rich.

 

[payn]

That's where things going sideways, in the Firefly manner, is the way to run a Traveller merchant game. None of mine have been boring.
Same is true for a transport ship game in Alien. And in Space Opera. And in Spacemaster. And in any other game with ships and trade. The universeisn't there to make them rich, it's there to challenge them hard while the try to get rich.

Yeap, as some folks have been posting, GM dropping a jack in the box is something you need to be careful about. I was being way to indirect about adventures. I mean, the PCs knew about every opportunity, it just wasn't rewarding enough and too risky apparently. I learned that for me as a Referee that the standard pay your mortgage campaign doesn't work for my GM style.