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Message: <blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 8518556" data-attributes="member: 85870">I'm not sure about the confusion . . . there's a 1-to-1 correlation between character material "bits" and rules complexity.The more mechanical bits a character has --- to either differentiate them from other characters or make the character more "realistic" within the assumed game world, or both --- the more complex the rules become to store and aggregate those differences in the game math.Well, this thread was partially a response to try and answer the question --- how do you / can you predict what complexity (read: mechanical "crunch") creates fun and what complexity creates annoyance?Realism and simulationism are generally orthogonal, in my experience. Realism is an attempt to model, through mechanical rules interactions, a specific real-world cause-effect relationship, often based in some kind of physical science. In other words, micro level interactions at the rules level.Simulationism is an attempt to make the cohesive whole of the game fiction feel more like a "living world" (which is a term I generally dislike, but whatever). In other words, macro-level interactions at the fiction level.There may be an overlap in "realism" helping produce some aspects of the "simulationism", but really they're two separate aims. It's entirely possible to have highly "realistic" game rules that wholly fail to create a "simulationist" world if the GM doesn't know what (s)he is doing. You can play GURPS with every supplement that's ever been printed and still not have a "simulationist" world if the GM isn't good at extrapolating macro-level cause/effects within their gameworld.As far as the idea around adding rules complexity to point focus of the game --- again, the question becomes, for what purpose if not for "realism"? It's almost always about differentiation, and the intellectual exercise of making those pieces come together. I'd posit that in most cases, adding rules complexity for entity differentiation is a gamist, not a realist impulse.The reason we want differentiation in combat effects / combat styles / weapon types / weapon damage / combat abilities is because we want our characters to feel differentiated from one another in play. We want that differentiation to matter in the way players approach action and scene resolution with their characters.If it's all about just finding out what happened in the fictional scene, there is far less need for differentiation between combat abilities. Do we want to find out if Character A succeeded at defeating NPC B? Or do we want to know if Character A invoked Barbarian Rage, Multi-Step Power Attack, Swift Riposte, Blood Rage Damage, and Carebear Stare to achieve the victory? All of those combat abilities are just ways to differentiate the in-game actions and for the player to feel a sense of accomplishment (gamism) for successfully using/chaining together the abilities to highest effect.As I recall, wasn't this one of the biggest complaints about 4e back in the day? That the A/E/D/U power structure for every character destroyed something fundamental about this kind of differentiation in play?*Edit: Knowing me from circa 2008-2012, it's entirely possible I made that very argument against 4e . . . though it would have been coming from a place of profound ignorance at the time.</blockquote>

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