What’s the most complex RPG out there?

[jasper]

the irs tax code. Fill it out correctly or your bank account will die, dice, die?

 

[Ovinomancer]

Not quite an RPG, but Star Fleet Battles is about the most complex game I've ever played. It's difficult to understand, and complex to play.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I would agree on Rolemaster, that’s for sure. If I recall correctly, Megatraveller should get a nod for the starship combat rules alone.

 

[Arilyn]

Does anyone remember Powers and Perils? Avalon Hill was trying to establish a rpg presence by bringing
out a more "realistic" alternative to DnD. It was ridiculously complex and fiddly, and failed quickly. Bushido and Aftermath are another couple of old complex games. Chivalry and Sorcery was a game I wanted to like, but those rules, and that teeny tiny font.

These days rpgs are definitely more streamlined. I can't think of any newer games that are particularly complex.

 

[Aldarc]

I hear there are several editions of Der Schwarze Auge that could qualify, but I don't have any firsthand experience of the system, just heresay from my friends here in Austria.

 

[innerdude]

GURPS' basic resolution system is actually quite simple . . . until combat starts.

At that point, dear merciful heavens . . . .

I'll never forget the one fight when I was a player in a GURPS game that literally took 3 hours---and it was just a basic, run-of-the-mill fight between a party of 4 PCs and seven or eight lower-echelon swordsmen. Every single turn took fifteen minutes---"I'm using my tetsubo then burning two fatigue to activate this maneuver. Oh, and I'm taking the -5 aim penalty to go for the head . . . *rolls* I succeed."

*GM rolls* "He doesn't block you, let me roll to see if he can dodge." *rolls* "Nope, you hit."

"Sweet!" *Makes critical hit chart roll*

**Player and GM spend next 10 minutes hashing out just exactly what happens based on the critical hit chart, whether the enemy needs to make its Health roll to remain conscious, blah blah blah.**

This was the point at which I realized that the trade-off for "realism" in RPGs was overrated.

 

[Arilyn]

GURPS' basic resolution system is actually quite simple . . . until combat starts.

At that point, dear merciful heavens . . . .

I'll never forget the one fight when I was a player in a GURPS game that literally took 3 hours---and it was just a basic, run-of-the-mill fight between a party of 4 PCs and seven or eight lower-echelon swordsmen. Every single turn took fifteen minutes---"I'm using my tetsubo then burning two fatigue to activate this maneuver. Oh, and I'm taking the -5 aim penalty to go for the head . . . *rolls* I succeed."

*GM rolls* "He doesn't block you, let me roll to see if he can dodge." *rolls* "Nope, you hit."

"Sweet!" *Makes critical hit chart roll*

**Player and GM spend next 10 minutes hashing out just exactly what happens based on the critical hit chart, whether the enemy needs to make its Health roll to remain conscious, blah blah blah.**

This was the point at which I realized that the trade-off for "realism" in RPGs was overrated.

This has not been my problem with GURPS, but I can see how some tables might get too caught up in the details. My problem has been the skill system dividing skills into multiple steps of complexity, and then basing costs on how hard they'd be in the "real" world. Makes useful adventuring skills fairly affordable, but high end science skills that you'll probably never use expensive. And there are far too many skills from ride bicycle to astrophysics. And half points? Yuck!

 

[Celebrim]

This was the point at which I realized that the trade-off for "realism" in RPGs was overrated.

GURPS was an eye-opener for me in that respect as well.

In particular, I've never met a system I didn't want to house rule and I immediately noticed a few problems with GURPS I wanted to tweak. 'Fortunately' there was this brilliant guy who had written a brilliant expansion of the GURPS rules he called GULLIVER that 'fixed' pretty much every problem I had with the system.

But then I discovered there was a problem. The system was borderline too complex to run, but it was enormously too complex to prepare.

The problem with something like HERO isn't the burden it puts on the PCs. As people correctly point out, once you finish a character sheet much of that burden is behind you and you can play the game in a fairly straight forward manner. The problem with all that front end loading of the complexity is that it makes prepping for a game vastly too difficult. The same sort of problem can happen in something like 3e D&D if the DM tries to apply adjustments in templates, character levels, and advancement to all or most of the monsters and NPCs he uses. The game might play out in a mostly straight forward way if you have most of the information at hand, but collecting all that information before hand requires far too much time that might otherwise be spent on preparing story and setting elements.

Now, complex systems like that might be worth it if they were fully automated and abstracted out in a video game so that you didn't have to worry about it. But so far no one has come up with a system for playing on a computer that is actually less burdensome in terms of prep than table top play is, or more specifically has as rich of a payoff in play per hour invested in preparation.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My solutions to front-end prep as a long-time HERO GM were:

1) reskin, reskin, reskin. Need a city watch guard with a club for your Fantasy HERO game? Use the rent-a-cop with a truncheon from a Champions sourcebook.

2) spreadsheets are your friends. I made HERO spreadsheets for EXCEL that did all the cascading stat & point math adjustments for me. You still had to type in the point costs for powers, skills & talents, as well as the Disadvantages, but those points were also automatically tallied, so you could instantly & continuously see if your character was point balanced.

 

[Morrus]

I know tastes vary, but my idea game has loads of background complexity with a simple front-end in play.