Is D&D too complicated?

[Henry]

Brought this down to it's more correct place - Ignore Torm's allegations of time travel; it won't be perfected for another 17.172 years, until after Gary Gygax's Head becomes President. -HL

Seriously, though, I don't believe I know anyone who came to play RPGs or other similarly detailed wargames without being "brought into the fold" by someone else.

*raises hand*

Actually, there's me.

I bought the Erol Otus Cover Red Box (Purple Box? Time faded the thing) of the Tom Moldvay edited version of D&D basic rules. I was DM, I helped the group (my four cousins) create their first characters, and we adventured in White Plume Mountain - at 1st level. Had the rules been as expansive then as they are now, I doubt I would have either (a) bought them or (b) learned to play. There's something to be said about a $20.00 entry product that gives you the basics, eliminates a lot of complexity, and sets you out there with a sample dungeon and a mission. As it was, they riddled past the Sphinx, got killed by a green slime, and we started over again. They got to the ghouls and died again, and so on...

I still plan to buy S.T. Cooley Publishing's OGL-Fantasy Lite Basic Player's Guide some time to see if it's the kind of thing I need to recommend to beginners, but it sounds like it.

There is a PREVALENT need for an attractive, introductory package that doesn't include 5' steps. If WotC's new D&D box set does the trick, then great. If they don't, but Cooley's does, then great. if neither fit the bill, then the search goes on.

 

[mmadsen]

Dancey essentially admits D&D is too complicated by showing the necessity of a boxed set. It pretty much the only product that gets new people into the hobby. Can anyone learn D&D without someone else demonstrating the game?

Certainly, for most potential players, D&D is too difficult to learn -- and requires too much of an expenditure -- to be worth the effort. Many people who might enjoy the game if introduced to it (by a veteran who already owns the books) won't ever enjoy it, because they're not going to drop $90 and read 1000 pages on a lark.

WotC recognizes that 970+ pages of rules are a barrier to entry. Most people (me included) need software to write up a character. There are just too many calculations to get them all right without something to make sure you have all the bonuses and appropriate modifiers.

There's an important distinction between being too complicated (and expensive) to draw in new players and being too complicated for veteran players. While D&D could certainly become more elegant and streamlined -- witness the improvements from 1E to 3E -- many, many gamers revel in the complexity.

 

[Desdichado]

It isn't that they are too complicated, its that they are on a quixotic quest to be perfect and handle everything and it makes the rules verbose and pedantic.

kamosa, we may disagree vitriolically on LM/GNG, but that was hella well said. I like how the rules are consistent enough that I can ignore them and handwave things into a playable whole, because the underlying concepts are consistent.

It also amazes me that WotC has produced no less than 4 d20 games that are complete in one book (CoC, Star Wars, Wheel of Time and d20 Modern -- am I missing any others?) and yet D&D still requires three core rulebooks to essentially give you the same information.

Less information in many ways, as the D&D core books include no setting info, as the other books do. Of course, the encyclopedia-like nature of the magic items sections, monster sections and spell sections help drive turning D&D into a massive set of tomes vs. the other books.

 

[barsoomcore]

One assertion that always seems to go unchallenged in these discussions is the "I used to make up NPCs all the time but it's impossible in 3E."

Poppycock.

Stuff and nonsense.

You want to make up an NPC? What the frilly heck is stopping you?

I don't know about everyone else, but when I make up an NPC on the fly, I do something like this:

DM: He attacks! He rolls a 15. Um, your AC is... 21, so that's (insert very quick estimation of what BAB a character of this likely class at this likely level is going to have) a hit. He does (another estimation of a damage bonus) 8 points of damage.

(quickly jot down "AB +6 ish, dam +2 ish" so that future attacks are more or less consistent)

On we go. Somebody casts a spell, so I make up a Fort save. Characters move around the battlefield so I decide if he has Tumble or maybe Spring Attack.

This is how I did it in OD&D. It's how I do it now. What is so magic about 3E that other people can't do this?

 

[Awakened]

Is D&D too complicated?

No.

 

[Desdichado]

Ah, barsoomcore. How did I not guess that you'd chime in and explain my method better than I do even?

 

[barsoomcore]

How did I not guess that you'd chime in and explain my method better than I do even?

I've been watching you. Secret cameras. Alert agents everywhere. Don't bother trying to escape.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

barsoomcore, that's what I do as well. However, I'm not sure that "No, because I ignore most of the rules" is the same thing as a plain "no"

I feel for a new GM who's trying to start with 3.x -- those of us who've been in the hobby a while understand things well enough to know what to keep and what to leave out, but how does a newbie make those kinds of decisions?

 

[francisca]

One assertion that always seems to go unchallenged in these discussions is the "I used to make up NPCs all the time but it's impossible in 3E."
<snip>
This is how I did it in OD&D. It's how I do it now. What is so magic about 3E that other people can't do this?

I agree with you to a large degree. On the fly, it is no different than under OD&D. I used to try to sit and flip through the book in-game and make "proper" NPCs in 3E. It quickly became discouraging because I felt bogged down in options. At some point, I either said "the hell with it" or just got a better feeling for the rules, and started winging it for alot of NPCs, just like the old days. I also stopped griping about the complexity of creating NPCs under 3E on this board around the same time. But, I sense that a lot of folks on these boards don't like winging NPCs to any degree, decrying it as ad-hocery and too arbitrary.

Now here is the disagreeing part: When I sit down to create an NPC that will be the cornerstone of the campaign, it does, in fact, take much longer to do under 3E than 1E or basic/expert (I have no 2E experience to speak from). This is simply because there are a lot more aspects of an NPC/PC that can (maybe even need to) be accounted for. Under 1E and B/X I spend a lot of time detailing major NPCs anyway, so it's not like I hate the time-consuming aspect. It's just a less number crunching intensive experience with the older editions. In my experience, detailing the fluff takes the same amount of time in any edition, but the crunching and tracking feat chains, etc..under 3E does take longer than 1E, simply because there are so many more options. So on the balance, it's a "pick your poison" kind of proposition.

What really annoys the hell out of me is the idea that you can't do certain things under the old editions, such as slapping some rogue/thief levels on a Kobold. Most of these arguments boil down to: You can't because there aren't any rules to do so. I don't feel limited in that way. To me, there is no reason why you can't thumbnail a "move silently" stat right onto an Orc or an Ogre for that matter.

Now, I'm not trying to convince anyone that 1E is better than 3E. I like 'em both. I play them both. I'm just saying that I never felt shackled the same way others have.

Oh, and I mostly agree with you.

 

[barsoomcore]

Some good points, and I agree that fully statting out an NPC under 3E sure FEELS like more work. I'm not sure that it is, but it feels that way. I think part of it is I used to say, "Ogre Mage, hurray" and basically be done with it.

Now it's "Ogre Mage, hm, what if I give him a few levels of barbarian? Oh, and so then what do his stats become while raging? Let me leaf throug Oriental Adventures and see if there's some cool feats, hey, Ki Shout, that sounds like fun..."

I mean, if you're winging it, you're winging it, right? It doesn't make much sense to say, "Winging it is harder in 3E" if you think when winging it you need to stick to the rules. Or maybe people are using different definitions of "winging it" than I am.

What I like about 3E is how it takes all the stuff I used to do anyway (like francisca says) and provides me with rules for how to do it and keep some idea as to how tough I'm making my challenges, so I can provide appropriate encounters for my party.

That in no way makes me feel shackled or forces me to use those rules. But it's nice to have them. You know. For when I have the time.

The ultimate expression of that is the "Monsters Handbook" from, um FFG, I think. It's one of my favourite books, but essentially it's all about "how do you make sneaky orcs or tougher kobolds?" It discusses the impact of various changes and provides you with an excellent set of guidelines for modifying or creating monsters.

None of which says I can't just make up any old thing I feel like and throw THAT at my party. Because I can, and heck, I do it all the time (yeah, yeah).

I don't have much sympathy for people who claim "There's too many rules, I can't do what I want." Ignore the rules you don't like.

Now, as for the originating post, is D&D's complexity inhibiting market penetration? I wonder.

Part of the ATTRACTION of D&D (and RPG's in general) is that they're hard to learn. People like being challenged, and I know for a fact that if the rules of D&D had been as simple as, say, Go Fish, I wouldn't have given it a second glance. That said, there's probably a sweet spot where challenge-seekers and rules-averse players converge -- and I suspect the Player's Handbook is very near to that spot.

If it weren't there would be some other product there making huge sales. There's certainly no shortage of products out there at varying levels of complexity. I agree with the poster who said that very few people are going to buy the game without encouragement, regardless of its perceived complexity. It's too strange a concept to explain in a single eye-catching display for impulse buying -- you have to be brought to it somehow. I read a magazine article and went out and bought the game when I was like eleven and taught myself to play but I was already an SF&F fan so I was pretty well-prepped for it.

I'm not convinced that a simpler game would bring in more players. I don't think it's the complexity of the rules that keeps people out -- it's the complexity of the concept.