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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 5636411" data-attributes="member: 3192">I think if we are going to continue in a discussion about variable complexity, we should also include elegance.  Without noting where the simplicity is, the ease of player access for each rule set, we just get bigger and bigger morasses of text in books. If each sentence in all the d20 books were a rule, I think I'd have gone mad.I like [MENTION=81381]catastrophic[/MENTION]'s idea about the core game including a central point exchange. Ideally, this would be the hub where all the integration between subsystems would occur. I see this as entirely a resource trading game. Gold Pieces and Experience Points are a common division, but with a common exchange rate. Make one core, like Life Points - I'd suggest XP, and trade everything out of that for more area specific resources. Some systems would use Gold Pieces as they are monetary, others time-based (AEDU?) for action economies, perhaps something different for Mearls' social combat, etc.By making the integration point exclusively the core game, designing mini-games with the conceit of all resources reducible to a natural number total (the core resource) still allows vast flexibility in design. Pretty much every game is a math game at some level, so it's hardly a hindrance. This enables almost limitless flexibility in supplemental design without balance and integration worries. That's what I mean by elegance. 50 men-at-arms using d6 halberds hacking 1/round against a 30 Build Points log palisade finish in 50/30 rounds, or roughly 2 Turns. I also like what [MENTION=114]Plane Sailing[/MENTION] said about horizontal growth, not simply vertical modularity. It doesn't need to be 10 minute combats, 1 hour combats, 3 hours... etc. Alternate focuses can be improved upon. But there should be a core game that will cover every option, if no detailed add-on is used. I'm guessing some kind of skill system will be opted for, but then those skills would be understood to become referents to mini-game abilities. That's not easily put together, but it could work if no skill was given too much influence. For instance, if perception were used in nearly every module.I also like his point about different PC levels being about different types of adventuring. That's an old school way of doing things though and I'm not sure it will fly for everyone.Definitive die resolution hard wired into every game from the core game sounds good, but I actually warn against it. More than anything else I see that as limiting imaginative game design. Simple and elegant? Sure, but it would also limit the options of every die roll in every supplement thereafter.  This one's a tough call for me given I know how important a single unified mechanic is now in RPG design. I can only state my opposition as to how limiting it would be to designing games. If each and every board game I've ever played required a 1d20 roll and nothing else, I probably wouldn't care for games at all.</blockquote>

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