Any crunchy RPG's out there anymore?

[Aldarc]

Yup. Mindjammer is extremely crunchy and complicated for being a FATE-system.

That's pretty typical for most of Sarah Newton's takes on Fate, including the upcoming Chronicles of the Future Earth.

 

[embee]

Shadowrun is still in print, right?

Indeed. It is on Sixth World now (hoping to find time AND players).

Additionally, eBay and FLGSes are actual things that actually exist and prior editions can be readily had at at or below their original cover price (making it effectively cheaper than when originally released because inflation is also an actual thing that actually exists).

 

[ShinHakkaider]

The calculations isn't a problem, but amount of things you need to keep in RAM is.

But more importantly, I don't think that excessive crunch actually adds anything to the game, even from simulationist point of view -- I can't say that GURPS Martial Arts is particularly realistic, at least when it comes to MAs I'm familiar with: BJJ and Muay-Thai.

Okay I hear you and agree with you on that first part. I guess we all have very different thresholds for that.
Personally I've always written things down or done pre calculations on my character sheet or cheat sheets as a GM so that I'm just adding two numbers at most. Even at the height of 3.5 I got good at streamlining calculations. But again, that's just me and not at all typical.

The second thing we might just going to have to respectfully disagree on.
While there are some systems where for what you say is probably true, for me at least, it's not the case for all of them. It also goes to what a person thinks is "excessive" crunch.

I used to use a palladium system mash up of TMNT and Other Strangeness, Ninjas and Superspies and Mystic China for a martial arts based game that I ran for a little while. Mostly based less around the crazy Wuxia martial arts and more around the late 70's early 80's Shaw Brothers and Joseph Kuo movies like THE MYSTERY OF CHESSBOXING, SEVEN GRANDMASTERS and SEVEN COMMANDMENTS OF KUNG FU. My own martial arts training has been a little but of Northern Style Kung Fu, some Capoeira but I'm most proficient in Boxing. I'm by no means an expert in ANY of those. Even boxing which is what Im most practiced in.

But for the purpose of running those games I was trying to emulate a genre. The martial arts themselves didn't need to be completely accurate as long as everyone at the table could visualize what they were doing and wanted to do with those martial arts in question. Personally, I've found almost every depiction of boxing in RPG's to be kind of basic. And for anyone who's trained under a trainer who has actually boxed and knows what they're doing? there's a lot of nuance in boxing that tends to get overlooked. The same with BJJ. The first time I saw ANY BJJ at all (but didn't realize it at the time) was at the climax of the first LETHAL WEAPON. Riggs uses a guillotine choke to subdue Mr. Joshua in the final fight. But later on when watching it in the UFC I couldn't make out what was going on. It took a while to understand that BJJ is pretty complex and theres a lot of setup and payoff in some of those fights. My son started taking grappling / BJJ at 4 and did so off and on up until he was around 11 or 12.

If we had a game that was JUST based around a series of BJJ matches that got into the intricacies of the art I guess that would be great. But using it in a typical RPG? I guess most of us just want to apply that Kimura, armbar or Guillotine to end a fight.

Apologies for being so long winded but your reply actually got me thinking a bit about this...

 

[Argyle King]

The calculations isn't a problem, but amount of things you need to keep in RAM is.

But more importantly, I don't think that excessive crunch actually adds anything to the game, even from simulationist point of view -- I can't say that GURPS Martial Arts is particularly realistic, at least when it comes to MAs I'm familiar with: BJJ and Muay-Thai.


I'd say that reducing mathiness is a sign of understanding the constraints of the medium.

Like, the only case where I would design a system with math heavier than comparing two numbers (and maaybe adding single-digits numbers together) is if I also make a solid automatization tools, like dedicated VTT or a companion app.

From your perspective, does adding the amount of pips rolled on d6 and comparing the total to the amount of skill a character has in a martial arts technique violate your design principles?

 

[Jd Smith1]

The irony? Rolemaster is fairly simple, but massively crunchy. The majority of complexity is the sheer number of tables and the many, many optional rules; the tables are easy to use, and all player rolls are percentiles, so from a player perspective, Rolemaster's dead simple. Full of picayune little details one needs to track (hits taken, hits delivered, crits taken, crits delivered, distance travelled, and about 10 other factors to find your XP gains...).

Do not mock RM; I used their systems (RM and SM) for many years.

The thing about RM is that you can use it in countless ways because of the many optional rules. It has a great deal going for it provided you are a GM who is willing to put some work in setting up a system that suits you.

 

[aramis erak]

Do not mock RM; I used their systems (RM and SM) for many years.

The thing about RM is that you can use it in countless ways because of the many optional rules. It has a great deal going for it provided you are a GM who is willing to put some work in setting up a system that suits you.

I'm not mocking it. It really is a simple core with a bad rep due to having a ton of tables, and more optional rules than tables. SM was, in fact, the third RPG I owned... I even implemented char gen in Appleworks on an Apple //e. (When I last checked, tho', the file was on a bad sector.) (RM was 3 systems later.)
The few times I've gotten people to play it, they were surprised how well it runs. The problem is the fainting when they find out the the number of calculations in Char Gen... and level up.

The real disincentive is that Experience worksheet. (Everything I mentioned is on it in the editions of RM and SM I've run. And I left out a couple rows.)

 

[GreyLord]

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 4th edition can be somewhat crunchy, especially with how you MUST do math every round of combat to figure out who hit who and damage.

I was going to say Rolemaster, but it seems that I cannot find the actual rules on DrivethruRPG currently. They have many of the other books, but not the actual core rules...which is somewhat disappointing.

 

[Manbearcat]

What ever happened to crunchy games like Aftermath!, Bushido, Phoenix Command, Battlelords or Dangerous Journeys?

Everything now is D&D5, PbtA or Blades in the Dark. The closest thing I could find was Fragged Empire which considers itself "medium crunchy". I miss the old days when FGU and GDW put out some really interesting stuff. D&D4 was really crunchy and played well with my group.

Is there any call for crunchy anymore?

If by “crunchy” you mean “rules-heavy”, Blades (and all FitD games) definitely shouldn’t be lumped in with the other games.

In fact, I would say, in practice, Blades is more rules-heavy than 4e. 4e is not remotely a rules-lite system, but it’s unified mechanics, core resolution, and exception-based design make it somewhere between Dungeon World and Blades (a little tilted toward the former actually...running it is basically Dungeon World with Clocks and weighty combat mechanics) in the actual running.

Blades and Torchbearer are absolutely on the rules-heavy spectrum of games. If you’re looking for a ton of meat and structured, player-facing play, those are the two best games on the market by far (with 4e right behind them).

 

[aramis erak]

Blades and Torchbearer are absolutely on the rules-heavy spectrum of games. If you’re looking for a ton of meat and structured, player-facing play, those are the two best games on the market by far (with 4e right behind them).

Torchbearer is less crunchy than Burning Wheel... it is built on simplified mechanics used first in Mouse Guard.
And it is far less complex and crunchy than Phoenix Command or Rhand. Or anything by TriTac.

 

[Manbearcat]

Torchbearer is less crunchy than Burning Wheel... it is built on simplified mechanics used first in Mouse Guard.
And it is far less complex and crunchy than Phoenix Command or Rhand. Or anything by TriTac.

I know BW but I don't know the others. And I'm as familiar with MG and TB as it gets. While, yes its works off the MG chassis rather than BW (therefore its inside of BW on the "weight spectrum"), it still has to qualify on the rules-heavy side of things because of all of the integrated mechanics and feedback loops in delving alone. Decision-points are well more mechanically and cognitively beefy and entangled (by design), for all participants, than MG.