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Message: <blockquote data-quote="amerigoV" data-source="post: 6055383">I never know quite what to think about these threads. Have a "D&D Lite for new players" always sounds good, but D&D has been successful in the past with a myriad of complexity. To me, if anyone is going to actually read the rules and learn the ins and outs its probably someone new to the hobby versus us grumpy old folks that have been through 2 or 5 edition changes.I watch my stepson (18, into sports games) and detail / complexity are not things that put him off a video game. I have seen him sit there for hours customizing his player, his team, roster, and all sorts of other things (sometimes I wonder if he ever plays the actual game <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />) Sure its one data point, but the fact that Madden Football/other sports games have all these things a player can fiddle with tells me many people love to dig into this stuff. I played WoW for a bit and the stuff you needed to know to effective raid was dumbfounding to me (of course, I am an old man so I do not have time to commit to that).To me its not the complexity, its the elegance of the rules that matter. Do the fiddly bits actually add to the game or are they just fiddly? Let me give an example: I recall in 3e the suggested modifier for a DM to use when they were in a gray area was +/-2. Makes perfect sense and it "feels" right. But if that is the case, why have a bunch of +/-1 fiddlies riddeled throughout the system? Cut the number of things and just have a lesser number of +2 things floating around. You still have a fairly complex system but not so mind numb(er)ing. In other words, does the game have a natural flow for the GM and players, or is everyone stuck looking in a book the whole session? Personally, I find Savage Worlds to balance that elegance with tasty crunch darn near perfectly (but that is IMO).</blockquote>

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