What Is "Unnecessary Complexity" to You?

[Snarf Zagyg]

I draw the line at games that require extra water rations for my soldiers to cook pasta.

 

[eyeheartawk]

Like the old definition of obscenity, I know it when I see it.

I remember reading the Shadowrun 5e book and it had, like, 4 pages of rules describing how an explosion spreads from room to room.

I saw it there.

 

[delericho]

Basically, unnecessary complexity is anything that is more complex than it needs to be to model whatever it is that is being modelled - I have no problem with something complex needing complex mechanics.

My "nope" calculation is therefore based on two questions: how much does this mechanic add to the game experience? How much does it cost? If the first is too small, or the second too big, then it's a pretty bad mechanic, regardless of how simple or complex the mechanic.

For example: 5e's rule that arrows that miss can be recovered 50% of the time isn't a complex mechanic, but it really doesn't add enough to be worthwhile (IMO)... not least because after the first adventure mundane ammunition as a whole is barely worth tracking.

 

[Scruffy nerf herder]

Unnecessary complexity is fairly party dependent too. When I experience sections of a session that are a slog for everyone, or they are struggling to understand what's going on with something even if it's happened before and a precedent is set, well that means that something is a candidate for either simplification or being cut.

 

[Haiku Elvis]

By coincidence I went from reading this thread to reading the below. It seemed possibly relevant.

 

[TerraDave]

3e and especially 3.5.

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

Once they know the game they'll buy a copy of the book if we're going to be playing it for a long haul - so my regular table has 13th age books, my kids tables eventually get their own 5e books.

13th Age hits my desired level of complexity as well. At every step you mention.

But: The organisation of the book is a bit weird, and it makes a few assumptions that only make sense if you've played a version of D&D before you get to 13th Age. It could use an improved rulebook, to be honest.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

There's multiple kinds for me, the big obvious one is actually if a system functions off a lot of very 'different' things, like if it uses multiple distinct systems that have to be learned because they aren't necessarily derived from each other, so each thing has to be explained directly rather than hanging off something else. The more 'centralized' a system is, referring back to a basic set of mechanics, the less complex it is, even if its actually really expansive. From what I recall, the 3.5 grapple system is like this, and I felt it when we moved on from 4e and learned about Saving Throws instead of just having multiple defenses. Meanwhile pf2e is a chonky system, but its all permutations of the same handful of ideas, so once you have the basics of it, its rare to find something thats hard to understand.

Then there's density of calculation, my buddy had to make a spreadsheet in excel to track their 4e unity avenger because the math changed based on how many people were standing next to them, but the game had another conditional numbers from feats or conditions that were normally in play. Meanwhile Lancer is a similarly tactical game, but I can see that the calculations remain very simple due to the way its dice rolls work, and how accuracy and difficulty work, as I'm currently learning the game to run it at some point. Just today I found the brutal talent and was admiring how it was stacking "Accuracy" per miss, but ultimately can only ever be as valuable as +6 to the roll, since it was just rolling a d6 per accuracy point and adding the highest d6 result to the roll-- that's never actually going to result in a whole bunch of calculations, just a fistful of dice and a glance to see which comes up highest.

The next is when something is designed in a way that corners me when I try to modify it, I felt like 5e could be this way, in reality, due to things like the anti-granularity of advantage making it hard to add things, or the way classes are designed around rests per day, changing one thing always feels like it breaks something else. My collection of power gamers were always notifying me of how a proposed alteration would likely change our meta, obviously its quite a bit easier if your players don't place your alterations under pressure but that's just part of how we all game, even me.

Sometimes games can be so abstract with their rules, that its hard to wrap your head around when a mechanic should be used and that can be a form of complexity, I think this ties into the recent dialogue on twitter about how some rule sets require 'media literacy' to pull a lot of the weight in how they should be played. Similarly, there are games that leave the pacing and structure of something like a fight scene up to the GM, and those can be kind of painful because I'm right back to freeform roleplaying and deciding how imapctful it makes sense for something to be-- I'm actually looking forward to trying Avatar Legends now that I got my pdf because I feel like Masks needed something along the lines of its exchange system to help GMs structure something as pacing centric as a fight scene.

Finally, things that require GM rulings can be annoying for me, because my table values game balance enough to necessitate me understanding the consequences of how I rule, so a system that spells out how I should rule somewhere is less complex than a system that doesn't, and a system that lets me see the consequences of my actions (or tells me what they'll be for certain courses of action) feel less complex as well.

 

[D1Tremere]

Last night I was having a cozy read of some RPG books and got overwhelmed with the complexity. I'll leave these games anonymous to protect their identities, because the point of this griping isn't too complain about a particular system or to start an edition/system war with its fans. I'm curious - what traits usually get you to "nope" out of a system?

Here are a few from my list, in no particular order:

Erratic number goals. Do you want to roll high on this check, low on another? Are some skills percentile while others on a d20 or a d6?
Charts. I'm not talking about a handy list of what you get each time you level or what spells you can select. I'm talking about each and every combat or skill challenge to get out random charts, roll percentage dice or whatever to see what happens. You can never be rid of the book and have to use it every moment of every session since you don't have all relevant information on your character sheet.
Multiple maths used in each roll. Did you hit? Compare the target number to your die roll. Then divide by another number to see how many ranks of success. Then add to a feature of your weapon. Then subtract the opponent's armor rating compared to the AP rating of the weapon.
Hidden descriptions. "The monster is undead and has all the undead traits." Then you look up undead traits to see immune to cold, negative energy, poison, charm, sleep, etc. Just put all of that in the monster description so I don't have to look it up for every undead creature every fight. Or every plant, or demon, or whatever. How am I supposed to remember this stuff?

I second these and would add spell descriptions. I dont want 30 pages of prewritten spells, all with varying levels of usefulness from garbage to gotta have. Give me a chart of various spell features and let the player decide how to combine them into unique spell effects, or just eldritch blast. Make it easy to use but hard to master.
Now that I think about it, same thing for feats that modify melee or ranged attacks. 1st level you get a 2 point attack or spell. 1 point for die of damage, one point for added element. Or 2 one point attacks maybe? Not sure about the logistics, but 30 pages of scripted attacks is both boring and pointlessly complex to keep track of.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Mostly complexity in play.

Two of my most played games are different examples of that.
HERO - there is a huge amount of detail and complexity in creating a character, but at the table it's roll compare to number, roll damage. Skill are roll under. While there can be situational bonuses or penalties, or things you have to assign that could change that (levels) - combat is pretty simple.
D&D3.PF - Character creation can be simpler than HERO, but not necessarily - but in combat, you have so many modifiers when you attack, situational penalties or bonuses, feats that apply circumstantially, Crit number and modifiers, feats that trigger on certain attack rolls or crit, did the cleric cast bless?. The positioning is much more precise than HERO, to me it makes combat much more complex, and more difficult to do.

To put it simple if the complexity is away from table I don't care how much it is, but keep it simple at the table.