Did the nerds win?

[TiQuinn]

GURPS is pretty math-heavy, both on-screen and in character creation – particularly in its 4th edition. Right now we're playing involuntary time travelers who wound up in I-can't-believe-it's-not-40K, and the damage procedure for shooting super-high-tech weapons at super armor goes something like this:
Roll 5d6x2 for damage. Since the weapon has an armor divisor of 10, subtract 1/10th of the opponent's DR. If it's not a hit to a limb, increase the remaining damage by 50% because it's a heavy piercing weapon. Subtract damage from HP, and see how many HP the target still has to check if any thresholds are crossed. If the damage dealt is more than HP/2, roll for stun and other major wound effects.

Okay, that sounds painful particularly if you have to do it every single combat.

 

[Belen]

"Kindred: The Embraced" tried to ride that wave, in 1996, but failed miserably. It drew directly from the RPG.

The main actor died, which was a big part of the cancellation.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

yeah absolutely love gurps. It was pretty much my first non dnd game and picking up any book they have done research for feels like 1/3 the way towards a B.A. I have learned so much just by thumbing through the books. Plus it has some of my most favorite settings (Reign of Steel, IST)

but despite the sheer customization, GURPS is designed for relatively realistic game play and point based systems always need more ground rules/session, before you start as they are easier to break.

I doubt I will ever play it again, but if GURPS has a source book on a topic, it's practically required reading for me just for sheer research potential.

 

[Mannahnin]

The main actor died, which was a big part of the cancellation.

That's the legend, but it turns out it was cancelled before Frankel's motorcycle accident.

 

[Willie the Duck]

So what are examples of games that are “math complex”?

Rules complexity, I get. Having to look up a bunch of tables because it’s impossible to remember, but that’s not math complexity IMO. The most complexity I’ve seen in a game was Chaosium’s having to figure out what an extreme success chance was (calculating what 1/5th of your skill roll was) or the self-inflicted pain (I.e. it wasn’t really in the rules) of calculating the hypotenuse of a triangle to determine range of a flying creature in AD&D 2e.

As others have said, rather than actual math complexity it is mostly going to be math fiddliness (remembering if the -2 on the WvsAC table is to AC or the attack roll, multiply damage by 150% before or after applying damage resistance) or trivial-but-constant/massively-multiple (a dozen+ calculations, each individually easy, in the making of a character). Beyond that:

• I think there's a cubed-root in GURPS 3e: Vehicles Expansion (for extending a chart past the largest size vehicle they thought would normally occur).
• Traveller includes a linear-algebra formula for time to reach a distant object if you accelerate halfway then turn around and decelerate (at non-relativistic speeds).
• IIRC, Aftermath includes the derivative calculus formula for grenade explosion damage at a given radius, but also includes a chart.

None of the above really show up in play*, and are more there just to show how other game numbers were derived.
*the Traveller one might, but usually you would be approaching an object within a solar system, so the orbital mechanics of you and your target would come into play

Okay, that sounds painful particularly if you have to do it every single combat.

That's really where things do get painful. And systems where derived stats or formulaic outcomes happen mid-resolution are where actual frustration kicks in. I know D&D 3e got a lot of slack for anti-magic and ability damage/drain requiring derived stat (including multiple differently affected ACs) recalculation in-combat and in Champions/Hero System having Boost and Drain powers which altered the point value of powers (requiring re-calculation) from turn to turn. Obviously neither game is unplayable, but those situations coming up are often met with groans.

More often, there is fiddly math that isn't awful, it just feels cumbersome, and sometimes pointless. A poster child might be, well, encumbrance. Lots of game rules included it, but few actually had the same setup as gp=xp era D&D where there was a tangible reward for the meticulous number tracking. The other is point-buy character creation (particularly large-number, high-granularity systems like GURPS and Champion/Hero). There, the numbers are thankfully only utilized in character creation/advancement*. However, the points are a created economy of character options more than a measure of something like character effectiveness**. So it can, like the encumbrance example, seem like a whole lot of focus on numbers that don't necessarily serve a larger purpose.
*Staffan's sci-fi damage complexity is a separate instance in the same game.
**Perhaps hindered by them generally also showing up in generic/multi-genre systems, where effectiveness or other metrics will be highly variable across play patterns.

And that, I think, is really what happened with complex games more than anything. A bunch were built with a bunch of opportunity to use numbers and not enough emphasis on making them matter to the play loop envisioned.

yeah absolutely love gurps. It was pretty much my first non dnd game and picking up any book they have done research for feels like 1/3 the way towards a B.A. I have learned so much just by thumbing through the books. Plus it has some of my most favorite settings (Reign of Steel, IST)

but despite the sheer customization, GURPS is designed for relatively realistic game play and point based systems always need more ground rules/session, before you start as they are easier to break.

I doubt I will ever play it again, but if GURPS has a source book on a topic, it's practically required reading for me just for sheer research potential.

GURPS (and generally Champions/Hero) are both great for groups that will work hard to make them work. Even then, I know a lot more people who enjoy reading the books, building characters on spec, and generally thinking about gaming than enjoy playing the game in many many settings. Notably the ones like Staffans with in-game recalculation often didn't last, in my experience. But also just ones with a lot of the purported complexity in actual use (say, cyberpunk netrunning). For my groups, it was situations like fantasy that lasted, and I don't feel that GURPS is actually much more complex (outside of Excel sheet character creation) in play than something like D&D.

 

[Bohandas]

In terms of math heavy gaming, if you want to customize or advance a monster in 3.5e you have to reverse engineer it to figure out how many skill points it has in each skill because the published stats don't break down where the numbers come from

 

[Staffan]

Because it almost came up in tonight's game, there are also the rules for how far you can throw something in GURPS.
1. Start with your Basic Lift (Strength x Strength /5 – this value is pre-calculated on your character sheet because it's also used for calculating Encumbrance).
2. Divide the object's weight in pounds by your BL to get a ratio.
3. Look the ratio up on this table (using the higher ratio/lower distance modifier if it's between two numbers):

4. Multiply your Strength by the distance modifier to get your maximum throwing distance in yards.

You also have some embellishments on top of that, such as decent skill in Throwing giving you a bonus, and being able to exert extra effort to first lift a heavier thing and then throw it a longer distance.

And should the thing you're throwing be, say, a grenade things will get more fun. A modern-day fragmentation grenade deals "8d cr ex [3d]" damage. That's 8d6 crushing explosive damage to the target hit. You then roll the same damage again for every nearby target, dividing by (3x distance in yards) from the center, rounding down. So someone 1 yard away would take 8d6/3 damage, someone 2 yards away would take 8d6/6. This goes out to a distance of 2 yards per die (so 16 yards in the example), though at that range damage would be quite limited (you'd need to roll all 6es to inflict one point of damage).
But we're not done yet. That [3d]? That means 3d6 of fragmentation damage, potentially hitting anyone within 5 yards per die of damage. Everyone in that range is subject to a ranged attack with skill 15, modified by range, size, and posture, so a man-size target 10 yards away would be attacked with skill 11. A hit deals the damage in question (3d6 in this case – cutting, so +50% after armor unless you hit a limb) to a random hit location, and for every 3 points of success margin you get an additional hit.

So let's say you throw a grenade at a group of 4 opponents, and you hit the same hex as one of them is standing in (but it wasn't a direct hit). The others are spread out a bit, at 2, 3, and 5 hexes away.
Opponent 1 takes 8d6 damage from the explosion itself, and you roll to hit with skill 15. It's quite likely they'll be hit with 2-3 fragments, each dealing 3d6 damage to a random location.
Opponent 2 takes 8d6/6 damage (probably about 4 points), and the fragments attack with skill 15 (no modifier at up to 2 yards).
Opponent 3 takes 8d6/9 damage (about 3 points) from the explosion, and gets attacked by fragments at skill 14.
Finally, opponent 4 takes 8d6/15 (likely 1, possibly 2) points of damage, and then gets attacked by skill 13 fragments.

 

[trappedslider]

holy thread drift batman!

 

[payn]

holy thread drift batman!

Thats how nerds celebrate after a win.

 

[Umbran]

I feel like this was less true that it, like, should be... especially in the 1980s and early 1990s, and even a little bit in the 2000s, a lot of games weren't really very consciously or thoughtfully designed, but just sort of slapped together, mechanically, without a really clear eye for what they wanted to achieve.

I think you'll find that's true of games, in general. Settlers of Catan is from 1995. Carcassone is from 2000. Ticket to Ride is 2004. Game design (role playing or otherwise) as an art/practice started taking off around the turn of the millennium.