If you heard the term "crunch renaissance"...

[Ulrick]

New term: "crunch dark age."

 

[Morrus]

It's interesting that I started a thread a while back asking whether rules heavy was bad and rules light was good. This thread is saying the diametric opposite to what that thread said!

I still maintain that - PF aside - there's a current "fewer rules is better" opinion. I disagree with it, but I think it's there.

 

[fireinthedust]

The problem with starting a Crunch Renaissance (Crunchneissance?) is that you need to look at why it failed in the first place.


New players: I get people into the room, down to the table, and they look at the pre-made character sheets. Then the crying starts. It's too much for new players, so they don't keep coming back. At PFS, I like to help new players with the system... but they see the Core book (that's all) and they feel overwhelmed.

GM Time Suck: I hate making stats, and I design my own systems. Doing that for all NPCs is a pain, adding templates to monsters is a pain.


Awfulness: Palladium. Great settings, awful rules. Fiddly details that I have to flip through books for, then at the table I get players pointing out sub-systems that I didn't note; and THEN the night is gone looking at mechanics when we should have been saving princesses from dragons OR (for rifts) saving the DeeBees from ChiTown...
Not only that, but have you looked at the Palladium combat rules? I had a re-look at them the other day, and I could not see what the round-by-round looked like. How does it start? Who goes first? How do you decide these things? Why do so many characters get so many attacks? And why is there a hobo class?

So many of the old systems bog down.


IF you wanted to start a Crunchneissance (crunch-pocalypse?), you'd have to find a working definition for Crunch that also made for a game that was easy to pick up, easy to set up, and played smoothly.

PF kind of fits that as there's just the d20+mods vs DC. After that it's exceptions, plus equipment, plus class abilities. However, you can kind of fake your way through it with a basic character concept (fighter) and add magic with equipment.

 

[Morrus]

The problem with starting a Crunch Renaissance (Crunchneissance?) is that you need to look at why it failed in the first place.

That's a helluva proclamation! I don't think Pathfinder or WFRP have failed. To my knowledge they're both extremely successful games. One is even the most popular RPG is the world!

IF you wanted to start a Crunchneissance

I don't want to start anything. I was just testing a phrase. The fact that you thought I wanted to start something simply tells me it's a crappy phrase I should avoid in future!

 

[Umbran]

It's interesting that I started a thread a while back asking whether rules heavy was bad and rules light was good. This thread is saying the diametric opposite to what that thread said!

How you ask the question selects for the type of answer you're going to get.

For a given thread, there's going to be a tendency for more initial answers to be opposed to the OP's posit (or implied posit) than agree with it.

 

[Morrus]

Is that a thing? That's incredibly useful info if it is, and actually rather important. It's not something I've ever been conscious of (but, hey, I miss a lot!)

It is certainly true that two threads gave opposite results following your rule exactly. Each strenuously presented an opposite opinion about rules-heavy games.

 

[Guest 85555]

... what would that say to you, if anything? Would you see it as a positive or negative?

I think it wouldn't be a bad thing. I like rules light games, prefer them, and have been playing rules light for a VERY long time now...but eventually you do start to crave other flavors and I find myself taking an interest in rules heavy games again. I could see a resurgence of crunch in the future.

 

[MerricB]

My initial reaction to that term was quite negative. It was entirely along the lines of its originator needing a much better grasp of the English language and not using short-hand terms, especially when those terms are quite associated (for me at least) with edition wars.

Cheers!

 

[Bluenose]

That's a helluva proclamation! I don't think Pathfinder or WFRP have failed. To my knowledge they're both extremely successful games. One is even the most popular RPG is the world!

Which rather suggests to me that the idea that high-crunch games are currently less popular isn't necessarily correct. I would suggest that one reason they do well in sales charts is because of the large amounts of crunch. Not because people like that, but because "lighter" games don't give as much reason for people to look for it, with rules-light systems being easier to develop your own material for. Though the multiple Fate projects that are being published/developed also suggest a significant market for some types of rules-light supplements.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

First reaction: negative. And as it was meant to test the phrase, I'll leave it at that.