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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 2933214" data-attributes="member: 9053">Always an interesting discussion. The real problems with using "elegance" as a benchmark for a system is that it's very hard to define what we mean by the term (much as Psion said).Any game with a unified mechanic can be said to be elegant when stripped down to its base forms. FUDGE, for example, is a very elegant system at the core because there's not all that much to it. At its core, FUDGE is a dice rolling mechanic and a way to describe thing. Once you start adding meat to the bones of the system, it can be just as confusing as D20.If you strip D20 down to its most basic parts, it is quite elegant. As a couple of examples, take a look at Core Elements and Perfect20 for what I'm talking about.What I think most people who talk about a game system being elegant are referring to is a way to roll dice and a way to describe people and things. That can indeed look VERY elegant, but it also means that all of the work for running the game is going on with the GM behind the scenes. There's nothing wrong with that, but it also means that the GM is going to do all of the lifting when they run the game. Again, nothing wrong with that, but there's also nothing really right with it either: it's just a thing. The term elegant has a positive connotation in general, but, really, what does it mean when you apply it to a game?--Steve</blockquote>