Where Complexity Belongs

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Complexity should exist to faciliate making the outcome interesting and giving the players meaningful choices.
If your skill challenge for a ritual or crafting is just: "Make 6 checks, don't fail too hard", it doesn't really add as much as you'd like.
Combat isn't like that - sure, you might need to make 12 attack rolls and 9 damage rolls to beat that enemy, but you are doing more than htat - you might need to position yourself, consider which weapons, powers or spells to use (depending on your game system), you might need to consider the environment.
In some way, the outcome is still easily predicted: The players win. Because if they don't win 90 % of the time or something like that, you get very short campaigns and lots of TPKs. But how they got there, and what happened along the way, is not so predictable and can be interesting. (Unless you game doesn't consider positioning, weapon choices, powers, spells, environment and so on, but then it's probably not complex. Unless it is is, and then you might have made a mistake? )

So, what makes your crafting or ritual casting complexity actually interesting? Where do the player choices come in?

I am not really familiar with that many crafting systems or ritual systems from RPGs.

But things that come to mind:
Obviously, for crafting and probably rituals, you might want to think about the ingredients. But if ingredients are just a check-list, it's not that interesting. So, make ingredients mean somthing - change the outcome of the crafting or ritual, perhaps? Or at the minimum, some ingredients might allow you to shore up on weak spots in your crafting or ritual casting.

Say, to cast "Consult Mystic Sages", you need to make 6 checks, if you have 3 or more failures, you lose, and the more successes you have, the more detailed and precise your reply will be. Maybe they won't answer in riddles even!
The checks are on Arcana, History and Persuasion. But your mage always slept through history classes, all those dates and boring kings and queens and senseless wars were so boring! You're also not very charming, truth to be told. So what can you do?
Maybe you're a bit into blood magic, and can ritually cut yourself to reroll a check? (or sacrifice a lamb, but it's so cute, you can't do it!). Or maybe you can go a bit riskier, try to focus more power, that makes your Arcana check harder, but you got expertise, so you can risk it. Or maybe you could get some crushed diamonds as power boost?
Or alternatively, you could try for some bargain - reveal a secret to them they don't know (and is sure to land in the hands of your rivals and enemies at some point), or offer a favor?

Keep in mind though that this can also be awkward, to have such complexity if rituals aren't supposed to be major part of the game session, but will need to be used often. If every Teleport ritual or Water Breathing ritual requires collecting live stock or making bargains, it might excessive.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

"Who" would be the people who've created the mechanics for the ritual magic you're describing in RPGs.

Like Pathfinder 1E's Occult Rituals, where all preparation does is increase/remove a decrease from the ritual's difficulty.

So...no one thst matters?
You know we can do things differently from how theyve been done, yes?

A slight aside - I have come across terminology that I find helpful.

If a thing has a lot of moving parts, it is complicated. If it is hard to predict the result of a thing, or hard to describe the results, it is complex.

I think outside of STEM folks, complex means high density of moving parts or components or things to keep track of or consider.

Complicated tends to have a more negative connotation IME, referring more to things having consuderations and well, complications, that arent necessary.

So, a mechanical clock is complicated, but it is not complex.
The three body problem is not complicated, but it is complex.

Legos are typically complicated, but not complex.
The game of Go is not complicated, but it is very complex.

That could be a useful way to use the twrms, but i think most posters are familiar with complex as the opposite of simple.
Or i would have thought, but a lot of folks seem to think complexity is some very very specific type of non-simplicity or something...

Well, that depends.

In a pretty traditional game, the answer to, "Who says it cannot?" Is, "The Rulebook".

As in, look at how much you've written of stuff for conflict scenes. Write as much again for rituals, and they can be equivalent. If, in D&D terms, you have as many abilities, powers, feats and skills that players might choose to apply, then they will be similar.

The level of complexity in traditional play largey comes from the choices the player has to make. With fewer detailed options, there are fewer choices.

II was asking in the context of the poster's assumptions about what specific mechanics would be involved in a complex ritual casting system.

As for comparing density of combat mechanics, in the game in question there isnt that much differentiation, almost all rules are used for combat, social, and enviromental, challenges. And ultimately the question here is, should ritual magic live in the complexity range of "what a character does in 2-4 rounds of a tense challenge scene" to "the central challenge of an entire scene, involving all PCs", or should it be simplified to 1 or 2 actions by one PC, or something else?

With crafting it is harder to imagine many ways to incorporate it into other challenges because it really is more of a downtime thing, and characters who can "macguyver" can have a special trait that lets them craft using just a few actions.

But, Crafting I still always want more to sink my teeth into as a player than the "i am craft sword. It take 20 days and 400 gold." With no moving parts whatsoever. To me that is completely unsatisfying to a degree where i would rather just be told i cannot craft in this game.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

I'd also add that the friction that a set of rules create is different from the complexity. They can be confused. A high friction can make internalizing and understanding rules much more difficult, which might make it seem like they are complicated.

A simple example would be making a random roll to get a result on a table. It's very simple. However, the difference between doing so on a d6 table and a table with 1000 options is only a matter of friction. Neither is more complex. But the friction of rolling more dices, interpreting results, going through pages of results to find the right one definitely has a cost.

As per the threads' initial topic. I've seen many example of games that attempt to make part of their game more interesting by adding some mechanical meat. They'll state that the rules are not complicated, but the friction is very high. True, read on a piece of paper it's quite simple. But the friction makes it unbearable.

Both complexity and friction affect the cognitive load of the material we engage with, and both players and GM are limited in cognitive load.

 

[nevin]

This applies to dnd homebrewing as well.

So i have recently been working hard to simplify my game, Crossroads, and one thing that is very important to that process is deciding where the game should be complex.

For instance, PCs are fairly complex, but the general rules are quite simple.

But there are less general rules that i think might need to be complex, and i am curious what folks think of my reasoning.

Ritual Magic - To me, this is an area where super simple rules completely waste the potential fun of ritual magic. I want to have to combine components and build the ritual mechanically. Something like 3-6 steps, more for BIG MAGIC. I want ritual casting to be a scene or a major component of a scene, not just a quick button you push.

crafting - Similar to ritual magic, but to me crafting should require checks, and be almost like a puzzle to solve, at least when you are creating something of your own invention or modifying something.

Do you agree? If not, why?

Ritual magic I don't necessarily want to be extemely complex but I think I want some more complex rules on complications and consequences on what happens when you cast magic that big. Do the outer planes notice? Does hell suddenly get a warm fuzzy and an note with the names of the casters if it's an evil ritual etc. How do the gods react if it makes a substantial change to reality or a portion of reality. How do individual gods react when you try do big magic that impacts thier domain. I think there is lots of complex stuff the DM should be considering. But For the actual stuff the PC's need to do I agree a limited number of steps is better.

Crafting the puzzle to solve thing my gut reaction is nope. But I will say that past normal mundane magic items the DM and player should probably be collaberating. I'd love to see more detailed rules for newer DM's on how to handle the PC that wants to craft a sword of "RED DRAGON Slaying" or an "Arrow of Slaying" . I think the process for things, or the mats for things should be hard, whether that's a whole bunch of complex things to do or just hard things to get like say the heart of a red dragon of every age category and they can't be over XXX months old when the ritual starts with no magical preservation usable because that magic will jack up the ritual. But having written all that I don't want an MMO style crafting system in my RPG game that takes hours and hours of planning and other stuff in game. I want it all to flow with the story and the game going on.

The big thing is I don't complexity turning into stressful chores to waste time like some World of Warcraft game.

 

[Fenris-77]

So, a caveat, I have not waded through the whole thread.

Generally though, I think complexity belongs in the background, away from actual play. I think complexity does lots of wonderful things in RPGs but I think when it sits up front and center curing play, especially during active play like combat, that the drag on play is suboptimal. Char gen, training, downtime stuff - that can all have nuance galore. But I don't want to have to consult three table to find out if I damage the goblin or not.

 

[Umbran]

That could be a useful way to use the twrms, but i think most posters are familiar with complex as the opposite of simple.

Well, both of my terms (and both of the ones I'm told are used in game design) are the opposite of "simple". The innards of a pocket watch are not simple, nor are the resulting movements of a three body problem.

The point is that the field of complexity is too complex for just one word. Both my, and the game design terms, are talking about where the complexity lies, and having ways to talk about that is good.

Or i would have thought, but a lot of folks seem to think complexity is some very very specific type of non-simplicity or something...

Exactly! You shouldn't have expected that a discussion of complexity would be simple!

 

[Tonguez]

With regards Rituals and Crafting I think mechanics should provide a framework for narrative input from the PC. Focus on pacing, strain and outcome effects but otherwise let story do the heavy lifting and minimise mechanics as much as possible.

 

[nevin]

So...no one thst matters?
You know we can do things differently from how theyve been done, yes?

I think outside of STEM folks, complex means high density of moving parts or components or things to keep track of or consider.

Complicated tends to have a more negative connotation IME, referring more to things having consuderations and well, complications, that arent necessary.

That could be a useful way to use the twrms, but i think most posters are familiar with complex as the opposite of simple.
Or i would have thought, but a lot of folks seem to think complexity is some very very specific type of non-simplicity or something...

II was asking in the context of the poster's assumptions about what specific mechanics would be involved in a complex ritual casting system.

As for comparing density of combat mechanics, in the game in question there isnt that much differentiation, almost all rules are used for combat, social, and enviromental, challenges. And ultimately the question here is, should ritual magic live in the complexity range of "what a character does in 2-4 rounds of a tense challenge scene" to "the central challenge of an entire scene, involving all PCs", or should it be simplified to 1 or 2 actions by one PC, or something else?

With crafting it is harder to imagine many ways to incorporate it into other challenges because it really is more of a downtime thing, and characters who can "macguyver" can have a special trait that lets them craft using just a few actions.

I can see crafting challenges being incorporated into the game. Monster parts that have to be killed in a certain way. Say the monster can't be angry and fighting when it dies or it just wont' work. The parts have to be returned by a certain period of time without any magical preservation corrupting them for use. Maybe only monsters in certain areas that eat certain things work for certain crafting. It's also a great place to set the use of certain classes. We used to do it in 1e. The ranger at high enough levels could make rolls to skin and take parts of the magical beasties for the magic users. Thieves and Assassins could make checks to gather thier poisons and acide etc. In those old game it actually worked pretty well. The rangers and Thieves became important to the crafters (usually clerics and mages). I love having things that make PC's needed. I don't think any good crafting system should let any non mundane Item be able to be done by a single class. This also helps explain the cost of some of those items that seem so expensive.

An example challenge:. Travel to the place 3 days normal travel from here. Kill x monster spend a day perfoming the detailed procedure given to gather what you need from it. Then you have to be back in town within 2 days so the parts can be utilized. Two whole days of no rests just a party rushing back to town to get thier item crafted.....<evil DM Giggle>.

 

[Thomas Shey]

So, a caveat, I have not waded through the whole thread.

Generally though, I think complexity belongs in the background, away from actual play. I think complexity does lots of wonderful things in RPGs but I think when it sits up front and center curing play, especially during active play like combat, that the drag on play is suboptimal. Char gen, training, downtime stuff - that can all have nuance galore. But I don't want to have to consult three table to find out if I damage the goblin or not.

Funny, combat is one of the last places I want a lot of simplicity, as it either reduces meaningful decision-making, or throws it all into the GM's lap, neither of which seems a virtue.

 

[Fenris-77]

Funny, combat is one of the last places I want a lot of simplicity, as it either reduces meaningful decision-making, or throws it all into the GM's lap, neither of which seems a virtue.

So when I say simplicity in terms of combat I probably mean something more like elegance. Some complexity is fine, but too much is not, and multiple tables to consult makes my list.