Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6667458" data-attributes="member: 996">Probably not a useful differentiation, since it's a very subjective distinction.&nbsp; Many - perhaps most - people would find the complexity of an RPG tedious, because they don't find the payoff of an imaginary character doing imaginary things in an imaginary would at all exciting.&nbsp; The tremendously complex, high-system-mastery chargen/level-up meta-game of 3.x is also something that could be seen as overwhelmingly tedious - or extremely engaging.You'd end up just applying 'tedious' to complex games you had something against, and 'complex but not tedious' to game you happened to like.&nbsp;The other useful measure, I think, would be complication.&nbsp; You can have a complex game that is clear, orderly, even elegant.&nbsp; It's still complex, but it's complexity is easier to master, because it's easier to see and more consistent.&nbsp; You can have a game that's less complex in absolute terms, but because it's unclear, arbitrary, and/or inconsistent, it's more complicated, and harder to work with.&nbsp; Another question about the complexity of a game is whether the meat of the game is complex, or the complexity is chaff.&nbsp; Mastering the former means mastering and leveraging all that complexity, mastering the latter is just a matter of identifying the few 'real' game elements that are worthwhile, and ignoring most of it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6667458, member: 996"] Probably not a useful differentiation, since it's a very subjective distinction. Many - perhaps most - people would find the complexity of an RPG tedious, because they don't find the payoff of an imaginary character doing imaginary things in an imaginary would at all exciting. The tremendously complex, high-system-mastery chargen/level-up meta-game of 3.x is also something that could be seen as overwhelmingly tedious - or extremely engaging. You'd end up just applying 'tedious' to complex games you had something against, and 'complex but not tedious' to game you happened to like. The other useful measure, I think, would be complication. You can have a complex game that is clear, orderly, even elegant. It's still complex, but it's complexity is easier to master, because it's easier to see and more consistent. You can have a game that's less complex in absolute terms, but because it's unclear, arbitrary, and/or inconsistent, it's more complicated, and harder to work with. Another question about the complexity of a game is whether the meat of the game is complex, or the complexity is chaff. Mastering the former means mastering and leveraging all that complexity, mastering the latter is just a matter of identifying the few 'real' game elements that are worthwhile, and ignoring most of it. [/QUOTE]

Verification