Will the complexity pendulum swing back?

[Maxperson]

I remain pretty relentlessy non-VTT. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either and with a lot of games I think it can take away more than it adds.

I avoid VTT whenever possible. That said, I'm about to start a VTT game in a few weeks. The reason for that is the DM for the game is a guy who I played D&D with back in the 1980s and haven't played with him since(he was career army) lives in Oregon, one of my players just moved to Seattle and also played with us back in the 80's, another guy in the game was our DM back in the 80's, and then the last of us is one of my other players who wanted to join the game.

It takes having 4 of the 5 of us having played in junior high school 40 years ago and are spread across three states to get me to agree to VTT.

 

[Eric V]

Because time spent discussing rules options and tactical complexity is time that you aren't speaking in character.

I was addressing the specific example of "Thespianism vs. Roll Ability check." That's a false dichotomy; it's thespianism resulting in bonus to ability check.

 

[Agamon]

The 1e DMG is literally one of my top five favorite RPG books.

Fun read, not the best reference manual. Then again, most good GM guides are the same...

 

[Neonchameleon]

What other kinds of complexity are there?

Depth. Or Complex Choices. Cases where you have to make a choice in character and there is not necessarily a right answer. PbtA "success with consequences" are often examples here as are risk-reward balances. Things where there is no clear answer so the choice reveals things about the character.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Somewhat, honestly don't find a few different formulas to be all that much, each is coherent in itself. 3E is more of a headache overall, nothing in AD,D equals the pain of grappling in 3E.

I think grappling's easier in GURPS than 3.X. They cleaned up the core of 3.X then weighed it down with as much as they thought it would carry.

Meanwhile almost any system feels easy and intuitive if it's what you are used to. Multiple subsystems make things more complex with minimal payoff.

 

[kermit4karate]

I think grappling's easier in GURPS than 3.X. They cleaned up the core of 3.X then weighed it down with as much as they thought it would carry.

Meanwhile almost any system feels easy and intuitive if it's what you are used to. Multiple subsystems make things more complex with minimal payoff.

"Meanwhile almost any system feels easy and intuitive if it's what you are used to."

Ain't that the truth. That's one reason D&D variants always start out with an unfair advantage.

 

[Reynard]

Depth. Or Complex Choices. Cases where you have to make a choice in character and there is not necessarily a right answer. PbtA "success with consequences" are often examples here as are risk-reward balances. Things where there is no clear answer so the choice reveals things about the character.

Interesting. I don't see that as system complexity.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I wonder if we can classify the different kinds of complexity and assess their relative popularity.

Player Facing Option Complexity seems to be both the most common and most popular form of complexity. lots of classes, feats, talents, powers, skills, spells, etc. Even games that are otherwise pretty light will sometimes layer these things on top (I put 5E in this category).

Then there is Fiddly Rules Complexity, where you have all the modifiers and subsystems, conditions and special circumstances. 3.x and now PF2E definitely have these. Even SWADE to some degree (although SWADE is definitely lighter than 3.x).

There is also Optional Rules and Dials Complexity -- games that let you define how the game works. Most toolkit games have this kind of complexity, some more overtly than others. 5E 2014 had some optional rules, while as I understand it Cortex is essentially entirely optional rules (like FUDGE).

What other kinds of complexity are there?

What category do you put universal tactical options (i.e. ones that don't require a special character component to access) in?

 

[Thomas Shey]

I haven't seen them in a store for many years. I have seen old copies of them on eBay, and I still have the first three in a box somewhere in my garage.

They were somewhat like the Shadowdark core rulebook in that they contained hundreds of tables for crits, random encounters, magic items, other things -- just massive amounts of resource material in very small type, and astonishingly creative stuff too. To this day, I rarely see D&D-ish resource books with anything near the value that was in those Arduin books 35 years ago.

The big problem is that they were often, maybe usually, vastly out of power sync with the OD&D material they were theoretically designed to work with. They weren't even necessarily in sync with the system variations Hargrave used in his home games (there was a rather dry note that went around from people who knew him halfway well that a given spell would end up being one level for his NPCs, one for his PCs, and a third for everyone else's PCs).

 

[LordEntrails]

I accept your premise, it makes sense. Can you draw a conclusion from this? A call to action?

Well, wasn't thinking of more than; the pendulum of as expressed by fanatics is really not more than a tiny portion of the actual market. And the only call to action would be for us all to remember that we are a small part of a small niche community.

You asked for everyone's view and that's what you got. If you just wanted an echo chamber that reflected your own view, you should have indicated as such.

Actually, I didn't, but you are free to express your opinion here. And I'm simple saying that such an opinion seems ... very sad to me.

I think you’re right that 5E’s accessibility expanded the player base in ways that benefit the whole industry. But I’d add that the “casual” audience was always there—it just hadn’t been acknowledged. For decades, D&D defaulted to higher complexity, partly because that’s what the inherited fanbase expected, and partly because no one wanted to risk alienating the players who equated crunch with legitimacy. The result was a self-selecting market: people willing to accept those terms became the visible community, and everyone else stayed outside.

What 5E did differently was finally invite those players in. And once that door was opened, we saw how large that broader audience really was. In turn, that huge base is what makes it possible for more complex games to thrive again—because now there’s enough people looking for different experiences beyond the entry point.

Expressed much more clearly than I could and with insights I hadn't drawn. Thanks!

It takes having 4 of the 5 of us having played in junior high school 40 years ago and are spread across three states to get me to agree to VTT.

Good thing then you have so many VTTs to chose from to facilitate something that you probably would never be able to enjoy otherwise