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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Plane Sailing" data-source="post: 5483002" data-attributes="member: 114">I think that layered onto the whole simple/complex/complicated issue there is another issue which is, in its way, even more important.Cohesion vs Coupling. It's an old IT term, probably still in use today. Good programs have high cohesion within modules, low coupling between modules. Bad programs have the reverse.In other words, if there are lots of inter-related side effects, then things are more complex/difficult/prone to failure.AD&D had lots of different possible rules you could use, many have been called out here, but it had low coupling. You could swap them in or out and hardly notice as there were no knock on effects.3e introduced myriad knock on effects. Something boosts strength which affects skills and hit chance and damage  and other stuff. Something else depletes Dex which has knock on effects on saves and AC and missle attacks and initiative. Too many things became inter-related, which made it harder to change one thing without knock on effects elsewhere.4e does this even more so. Sure it is simple to houserule in the sense of giving something a different name, flavouring it differently, but coming up with a new magic system? weapons vs armour modifications? Different way of doing saves? really tricky, as everything is so tightly coupled together.20th Century D&D had low coupling, so it was easy to put things in and change them around. Sure, some of it looks pretty baroque to 21st century eyes, but that is what made it less complicated in many ways then things are today. Much easier to simplify if you want to (and as apparently many people did!)Cheers</blockquote>

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