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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 2728001" data-attributes="member: 3087">I see this as being 90% of the reason.Here’s an alternative way to think about it:(I’m stealing some of these ideas from Teflon Billy’s recent review of Game of Thrones).People want complexity in their games. If everyone is a fighter then the game gets boring after a while. The trick with modern games is that no-one wants to have a required “default” system that is too complex.Like Gurps. It’s a fine system but most games don’t really require you to have all those absurdly complex skill choices and the overwhelming number of different feats (sorry advnatages); all of which have point costs that can only be justified in the context of the whole system but which are easy for someone to break and wreck the game for everyone.Yeah, there are things in the world that are complex and important, cryptology, the stock market, child locks on doors; but to make it fun this is all simplified.So Modern, like White Wolf’s new world, has a relatively simple base system. And then they paste on lots of alternative systems to provide the mechanical complexity that Billy was mentioning people wanting.I mean…. F/X stuff is added in because it fulfills a different role; it is made up and precisely as complex as it is and if someone doesn’t like it they say “this is how it should actually work”. Yeah horse riding and handling is stupidly complex in the real world, you could have an exciting and wonderful game with pcs playing cowboys in the old west with just horses and guns and cows to herd.But it would always be an attempt to mimic a real system, people who like horses wouldn’t like it because they disagreed with the author or the level of detail or what have you and the vast majority of players aren’t going to be into checking for “stirrup failure”.So additional rules for non-magical games are fraught with threat and danger for a designer.Magic in d20 plays –very- differently from magic in DnD. Yeah some of the stuff uses the same components but try playing a wizard or casting a fireball…Have you tried GURPS? its not my cup of tea but you can make a modern game about as complex as you could ever possibily want with it.</blockquote>

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