How Crunchy is Too Crunchy, For You Personally

[jdrakeh]

HarnMaster is pretty much the limit for me in terms of crunch. And it has a lot of it, especially with regard to combat and magic. BUT both of those systems really reinforce the reality of the game world, rather than just being crunch for the sake of crunch, which is a big selling point for me.

 

[payn]

I like everything under the sun. Though, I am picky about crunch level depending on others in my group. Some folks do much better with a lower crunch game. When is it too much? I know it when I see it.

 

[overgeeked]

I'd rather have argumentative players than players without backbones, which is the alternative.

There’s a vast excluded middle between those two options.

Without rules (and even with them, sometimes) DMs can and inevitably will at some point get it wrong.

Yes, of course. Being perfect is not possible. Being right is nowhere near as important as people assume. Are you wrong about a rule but the players had fun, then you did a good job. Are you right about a rule but the players did not have fun, then you did a bad job.

For a player to be able to point this out, however, there needs to be something - almost always, a rule - to back that player up.

Point to the players at the table having a good time. Point to the real world if you want an objective reference point. Point to some awesome fantasy movie, TV show, or book. Point to the setting. Point to the fiction. Point to your capacity to reason. Point to the collective imagination of the table. You can point to a lot of things. It doesn’t have to be a rulebook. In my experience it’s almost always better when it’s not.

 

[Ogre Mage]

For me TORG Eternity is probably the upper limit of complexity I can tolerate. The basics of the system are actually quite simple -- a single d20 roll. But the system is undergirded by a lot of math. It took about five months of play for it to sink in. I worked through the complexity as I appreciated the huge variety of characters you can create in TORG Eternity.

5E fits comfortably within my complexity comfort zone. It didn't stretch me at all whereas TORG Eternity did.

Three games which went over the complexity line for me were: Shadowrun, GURPS and FFG's Star Wars RPG. I particularly resented having to buy special Star Wars dice with nonsensical symbols. I remember having to look up the symbols every time I rolled to see what they meant and thinking this is bull$h*t.

 

[Peter BOSCO'S]

It's not a question of total crunch, it is a question of average crunch.

I am currently running Mongoose Traveller which has lots of crunchy rules and lots of crunchy background but most of the time it is just "Roll 2d6, add the bonus for your skill and for your stat, and tell me." to my players. Similarly, as the Referee I don't need to worry about gas giant refueling until it comes up, then I just flip to that section of the rules and use them. I also don't need to worry too much about what is going on on the other tens of thousands (not an exaggeration) of other planets in Charted Space, as long as I know what is going on on the planet the party is on.

 

[ThrorII]

Nowadays, I draw the line at anything more complex than B/X. If you can't get your complete game across in 100 or so pages, I don't want to play. We tend towards rules-liter games: B/X (or OSE Advanced Fantasy), Wild West Cinema, Far Trek, etc. I think Castle's & Crusades is about as crunch as I'll tolerate nowadays.

I played AD&D (well, actually we played Holmes or B/X with the AD&D 1e PHB, MM, and DMG, but that's another story, I've played v3.5, and 5e.

For me, v3.5 jumped the shark with its complexities and rules. 5e isn't nearly as bad, but I am strongly not a fan of the 'character build' approach since 3e.

 

[mamba]

It's a paradox, I know. I want players to have all kinds of cool things they can do, but I want the game to be easy to run, lol.

it's only a paradox when you expect rules for every cool thing the players can do

 

[mamba]

5e is probably a little crunchier than I would like. It's not so much so many rules, but I would not mind fewer feats / skills / spells, and like better theatre of the mind support (13th Age style)

 

[GothmogIV]

I can't get past how buffed the characters are in 5e. I like the action economy very much, and I think skill checks are good, but overall, the game as written produces superheroes by level 5, and that's just not my jam. The last campaign I ran, we used some rules variants (gritty realism, low availability of durable magic items, slow level advancement, took out some spells) and it was better, but...still no. I like DCC and BRP!

 

[MNblockhead]

Depends. If the system has great VTT support, I like the extra crunch. I'm not sure I would be running Warhammer Fantasy RPG 4e (WFRP4e) if it were not for the excellent Foundry system and modules Cubicle 7 sells.

Also, it depends on how streamlines and well presented the rules are. If I have to do a lot of page flipping, study the rules like a preparing a research paper, and creating my own in-game cheat sheets to run it--blech! WFRP4e is pretty bad in this regard. I feel the rules are spread throughout the core book in a way that makes it difficult to easily learn and reference. The rules are well designed, and easy to pick up in play as a player if the GM is very familiar with the rules. But I feel like I'm having to jump around the rules and having to reread thing multiple times to "get it." Also their additional books improve and fix some of the rough edges of certain areas, such as how Magic works, but then I have to reference multiple books.

Luckily having all the content in a VTT, with everything cross referenced and searchable, and having a lot of the crunch automated by the character sheet, chat commands, etc. makes it much more manageable.

Similarly, I'm loving how the crunchy combat in Crucible is developing. But it is developed specifically for Foundry by the Foundry developers, so tracking all the various advantages, disadvantages, conditions, etc. are done by the VTT making it very easy to run. But I would never want to run that system in a pen and paper game.

On the other hand, DCC is a game that is not particularly "crunchy" but the need to constantly reference and roll on tables (which includes for every spell) led me to decide not to run it. The core system has good VTT support, which automates most of the table rolls, but I backed the Kickstarter for, and was hoping to run, Dying Earth, and the new classes are not yet supported in Foundry or Fantasy Grounds. Running it as a pen and paper game, especially for magic user players seems like it would require torturously long turns of not just spell selection but flipping pages to look up and roll on tables.

For pen and paper, DnD 5e is about as crunchy as I would want to get.