Crunchy Games

[aramis erak]

What's your favorite crunchy game?

L5R 5E or FFG/Edge Star Wars... the different flavors of the FFG Narrative Dice System

What kind of crunch do you like?

Crunch that enables player contributions, crunch that makes prep less needed.

Is it okay for a game to be crunchy in one area and not in others?

Absolutely. The question for me is not "Is it crunchy?" so much as "Is the Crunch Useful to me?"
YZE has a fairly rules-lite approach overall, but adds some crunch for combat, and more for whatever's thematic to the adaptation. And it works,
Genesys/FFG SW pushes my limits on character crunch... but the useful task crunch works for me.
2d20 STA is right in that spot where the task process really is the majority of the game, and it is just inside my tolerances.

Preferable?

Only to a point. Burning Wheel, great as it is, is a toolkit, and that's part of why it's not listed above for me... In running BWR/BWG, I learned a lot... and came to realize there are places I like crunch and places I don't.
I absolutely need a unified task system for new games... 2d20, YZE(d6), YZE(2dxy), many flavors of Traveller, Genesys/Star Wars, L5R 5E, L5R 1E/3E... Burning Wheel, too.
But I don't really need the BW/BE level of charachter advancement crunch.

 

[Zaroden]

A game with a lot of rules complexity and moving parts.

Ah.

I've played video games like that and I do like 'em but not sure how that would apply to something more physical.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Most games that I like are pretty crunchy. I'd be hard-pressed to pick a favorite.

In general, however, I prefer my crunch to be extensions of a common base rather than a million special cases.

 

[Jd Smith1]

What's your favorite crunchy game?

Zweihander, Coc 7th Ed.

What kind of crunch do you like?

See above, but basically rules based on duplicating real-life issues.

Is it okay for a game to be crunchy in one area and not in others? Preferable?

Crunch is always good. Crunch puts the players and GM on the same page; everyone knows what can and cannot be done. With that clarity comes role-play, investigation, and player investment.

 

[schneeland]

I think, Shadowrun 2e would qualify as my favourite crunchy game, but only out of nostalgia.

In general, I have found that crunchy games are not for me. For the most part, because the rules take up mental capacity during play that I would rather use to think about creative ways to interact with the situation at hand (or adjudicate about such attempts as a GM). I also found that a large body of rules does not add much for me in terms of the play experience, so there's no corresponding gain for the added complexity. Plus, I do not enjoy the process of internalizing the rules.
I will admit that rules can, to a certain extent, inform about the "physics" of the game world, so it's not that they are without use. It's mostly that for me personally, light-to-medium crunch games (Broken Compass, OSR/NSR games, Year Zero games) already do the trick.