Jd Smith1
Hero
Alas, my players aren’t that tactically minded, so we don’t play those games anymore.
Again, the fault lies with the players (IMO). Since I game on Roll20, a non-tactical player does not last at my table.
Alas, my players aren’t that tactically minded, so we don’t play those games anymore.
I think this is mostly where I want my crunch. I want weapon choices to make a significant difference, and sometimes to make a huge difference - i.e. X weapon is especially good against Y armor. Similarly, I want armor choices to make a difference. I want a meaty amount detail in that part of a rules set. I think I am heavily influenced by getting my hands on a copy of Palladium's Compendium of Weapons, Armor, and Castles at a tender age.I will say I greatly miss crit threat ranges and damage multipliers of weapons in 3E/PF1. I do get that some of the mechanics made some weapons bad (really all 3E/PF1 problems can be said to be the gulf of effectiveness between things). I'd love to see that moved into secondary items beyond damage, like reach, tripping, vicious, etc..
Why do I like it? Someone mentioned earlier in another thread that just having all damage be D8 for example. Then, you simply reflavor as you like. The result is very homogeneous feel to the game. I like my crunch to push differentiation. The obvious downside is complexity, which can slow down gameplay. I'll take it though over simplifying uniform crunch.
Yeah. We have far fewer problems in other games. It’s just that I’m our usual D&D (or adjacent) referee, so I can’t really avoid those problems. Fortunately, I’ve been able to mitigate them somewhat by picking a system that matches how we operate. There’s some choice, but it’s not too much.
Well, yeah. They’re the ones who don’t do well with tactical games, so it would indeed be on them. We’re a group that’s been gaming together for a while, some of us together for twenty years. We’ll game online if necessary, but we prefer in person. I’m not going to blow up the group because some games aren’t a good fit when there are others that can make everyone happy. With that said, I don’t fault you for wanting a group that plays the way you want to run.Again, the fault lies with the players (IMO). Since I game on Roll20, a non-tactical player does not last at my table.
I prefer investigative games with a strong sandbox aspect. But when there is combat, I want to be a high-risk element, with healing to involve skills and supplies, where players' choices are the key aspect, not just rolling dice and managing a stable of abilities that have no basis in reality.Well, yeah. They’re the ones who don’t do well with tactical games, so it would indeed be on them. We’re a group that’s been gaming together for a while, some of us together for twenty years. We’ll game online if necessary, but we prefer in person. I’m not going to blow up the group because some games aren’t a good fit when there are others that can make everyone happy. With that said, I don’t fault you for wanting a group that plays the way you want to run.
As a GM, I don’t care all that much about the tactical element. We haven’t had any combat in the last three sessions, and I think that’s great. It means the characters are being smart and working with people to achieve their goals instead of just defaulting to violence as a universal solution. I’m also much more inclined towards exploration-driven/sandbox games, which is why my GM preference tends to be for low crunch (bringing this discussion back to the topic at hand).
Sort of. Fewer rules, systems, and subsystems are easier to work with. Focused crunch that's broadly applicable like say the four basic actions of Fate is far easier to handle than the nightmarish tangle of rule after rule after convoluted rule of some of the heavier games. Avoiding naming names to avoid edition warring and pointless arguments. But even something that light leads to issues, like the perennial favorite of sniper rifles and being on fire. The mechanics of the game literally get in the way of emulating the reality of the situation. Gamers have to force themselves to bypass the rules and get to what would reasonably happen in that situation. But instead a lot of people get hung up on the rules themselves and that's the focus of their play.And it got me thinking -- is one area of crunch easier or harder to work with?
The only aspect of gameplay that need mechanics is conflict resolution. And they don't need to be that complicated. A simple opposed roll (of whatever matching kinds of dice you want in the moment) will suffice. If you want to get really fancy, you can include things like dis/advantage to each side of the opposed roll based on the characters' abilities and the external circumstances, environmental factors, etc.And does one provide more or less benefit, to what degree, and in what aspect of gameplay?
Crunch almost never enhances realism, quite the opposite. Crunch tends to get in the way of realism and cause bizarre and wild outcomes that are far from what would realistically happen in a given situation. Absurdly high hit points combined with falling damage in D&D, for an example. Realism would be even max-level characters simply dying from a fall over a certain height. Realism would be a dragon simply biting a character in half (mechanically going from full hit point to dead in one hit). The fewer the rules and the more broadly they're applied the better they help with realism. Pushing framing in the fiction gets you almost all the way there.On a general level, it seems to me that mechanical "crunch" exists for one of two reasons.
- You're trying to enhance "realism" by modeling some component of how a given entity (person or thing) interacts with the game world.
- You're trying to differentiate one entity (person or thing) from another for purposes of uniqueness / situational usefulness (or situational impedance).
- Or a combination of the two.
For me, that's not a distinction that makes a difference. Unless the mechanics of the game force that to be meaningful. Like a dice pool system. You only get one die from each category and innate talent is a distinct category from training. Otherwise it doesn't matter.In terms of character building, there's an additional aspect of representing the mixture of innate talent and training. How does the system address it? Does the system favor one over the other? This is probably just a sub-component of entity differentiation, but different systems handle it differently.
Crunch doesn't provide realism, it prevents realism. Or at least seriously hampers realism. It's almost a reverse correlation. The more crunch, the less realism. If you mean realism here as heavy crunch systems with rules for everything, then I don't agree with that assumption. Fewer rules, systems, and subsystems tends leads to more realism in the sense of the outcome of the mechanics being closer to what would be produced in the real world...or at least if the fantasy world were a real place and the characters were real people living in that real place.In my own experience, I've decided that I enjoy crunch for entity differentiation but only to a point, and am largely indifferent or even mildly hostile to crunch that insists on pushing towards the far end of the "realism" spectrum.
Combat: 6-12 discrete actions. FFG Star wars is a bit high - only 4 "actions", but 9 "maneuvers" and half a dozen "incidentals"... before adding those from Talents. Pendragon has 9 (Moove, attack, defense, berserk attack, double feint, Escape Melee¹, Evasion¹, Dodge, Charge². 1: same mechanics, different narrative. 2: a move by mount combined with an attack by the rider.And it got me thinking -- is one area of crunch easier or harder to work with? And does one provide more or less benefit, to what degree, and in what aspect of gameplay?