Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9848783" data-attributes="member: 4937">I voted an '8' but a lot of people would probably consider my tastes closer to a '9'.  The thing is that I like a very simple and clean core mechanic but an abundance of supplemental rules for handling pretty much anything that could happen in the setting.  So I want mass combat rules, crafting rules, trading and mercantile activity rules, rules for races and contests and well everything.  The result is that while the mechanics for any one thing might be reasonably simple, the system itself tends to bloat up to thousands of pages of content.Systems that I've enjoyed and admired over the years are BRP and its close cousin Pendragon, 3e D&D and D20 generally, Mongoose Traveler, and Star Wars D6.  And in general, where I go with these systems is always to add on subsystems.  Consider what I've written for Star Wars D6:a) New regularized and balanced rules for cybernetics.b) A supplement on narcotics and their effects.c) Rules for the costs of operating and maintaining a spaceship, both per hour and over a long period (how regularly you need maintenance and overhauls, for example) and the effects of wear and tear on space craft.d) Effects of exposure to vacuum.e) New rebalanced rules for combat with capital ships.f) New rules for hyperspace navigation, including extensive rules for what happens when a jump goes wrong.g) Rebalanced weapon lists, and rebalanced customizable armor.f) New rules for power armor that make it less overpowered while explaining why you see it less in the Star Wars universe than you do.Why do I do this?  Because it comes up in play (or will in a future episode) and existing rules are often poorly tested our thought out or are silent entirely on the subject simply because it didn't come up in the movies.I feel like there are actually two dimensions to complexity.  The first one is, "How many steps does it take to produce an answer?"  I'm not a big fan of their being a ton of steps or the steps involving more than addition and subtraction.  The second one though is, "Does a subsystem exist to answer a narrow question?"  And I'm a big big fan of that.  For complexity of the steps I like something like a 6, whereas for how broadly the system covers the space of play I like a 10.</blockquote>

Verification