Why the hate for complexity?
Celebrim
Legend
Regardless of the game system I use, it always seems to take me 3-5 hours of prep per hour of play time that I want to have. And for me at least, it seems to require nearly that much even if I'm running a prepared published module.
To only spend four hours prepping a session is astonishing to me. Normally I'd spend 10-20, and I'd only get below that if I had a sandbox which I'd invested in that was returning on the investment. And most of that would not be working out mechanics. Most of that would be working out the fiction and the setting, figuring out how to animate the NPC, making maps, or doing research. It took me just as long to prep for 1e AD&D with its super simple stat blocks as it does for 3e D&D, because what I lose in lost time churning out 5 line stat blocks compared to 1 line stat blocks, I make up for knowing that I have a tool set that can handle interaction with the environment instead of needing to smith out location by location rules. Read a 1e AD&D module some time and take note how much of the text is spent creating on the spot rules for the specific environment of the room.
That and word processors are a God send.
My advice to you regardless of the edition would be don't roll up an NPC rogue or stick a template on them. Give the character the attributes you want. If you are 1 or 2 'plusses' off of what a rigorous check of the math would yield you, so what? There is only a small chance such a small difference will matter to the die roll anyway, and most the work you're putting into getting the skill points to come out right is wasted anyway because you won't make all or most of those skill checks in game anyway.
Reuse stat blocks. Once you've created one buccaneer stat block, you don't need to create another one. Flesh out important NPCs only as you need to. By the time the campaign has gone 50 weeks, you'll rarely need a stat block for an NPC that isn't just cut and paste from another one and can't be tweaked on the fly if you need to.
In my experience most DMs don't prep enough (including me). But also in my experience most DMs are prepping the wrong stuff.
Over the winter break I ran a game of Mouse Guard - six hours of prep per hour of play and I don't think I've ever been as frustrated with the inflexibility and bad math of a system since I played RIFTS that one time in college.
Um, you said "the universe was made of nothing but hydrogen atoms". You didn't say "all the normal subatomic particles, but the only atoms we get are hydrogen".
See above. I was excluding them, based on how exclusively you spoke, and the fact that in particle and atomic physics, we don't generally use "hydrogen" to be "hydrogen and all its isotopes". We we usually speak of hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium separately.
And, in general, if you can get deuterium and tritium to form in a mostly-stable way, it becomes harder to exclude atoms with higher numbers of protons. If the electroweak force is such that the two protons can't sit that closely together, then likely the electron can't be kept from falling in to make a neutron, and you have no hydrogen atoms.
But that's pretty far aside the point. How about we go back to rules, not atomic physics?
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
I get that. But I think I also prefer playing games with simple character creation. When there are too many character options, and in particular too many options which depend on each other, I find:
a) My focus shifts from the character's story to his/her mechanical power.
b) I keep wanting to start over with a new character.
Zardnaar
Legend
Try doing that with a 12 hour work day. My prep time will be 30 mins. Running SWSE Sunday I'll think up a svemario it's pilot based through in some ships and wing it.
I ran a clone once, 20 min pre time published adventure no rulebook on my side of the table.
At face value, in casual conversation, I believe people see "complexity" in a negative light for the very real-world reasons you (the OP) pointed out. People are busy. Systems with more "things" to stat out, or interact with, or calculate can add more time to making adventures, or creating a new recently lost character, etc. It takes more time to wrap your head around an RPG with distinct sub-systems that handle various activities differently. Where it suggests how much time it takes a person to dig a ditch based on their characteristics; or the different procedures a character must embark to gather energy, control it, shape it, successfully cast a spell and THEN make successful targeting roll. For a busy group with a busy GM, this is all going to sound less fun than just playing.
From the Troll with a Bone to Pick files; it's obviously a curse word. Like go Complexity Yourself you horrible simpleton. In either case I would take the term with a grain of salt. With a tequila chaser. Just to be sure.
Digging deep into the weeds of RPG theory regarding complexity;
I was a regular lurker on The Forge and studied the essays like a hungry young scholar freshly ordained in a monastery might devour "the sacred works". I jumped into the punch bowl and drank deeply whilst swimming in it. The conversations were intriguing. It was easy to get sucked in. It was all so academic, making you feel like "finally, this hobby my peers are so quick to dismiss has come into its own! soon we will have degrees and orders!".
It was glorious! It was also mentally damaging.
We could probably dig through the internet archives, create a beautiful glossary of Forge terms, and then try to hash out a real RPG definition of complexity. We would also likely have to save vs. The Forge or lose 1d20 sanity. DC50.
As the several pages of this thread have aptly proven, complexity is a weighted term. We are prone in Western culture to pick sides and play a spiritual game of Hungry Hungry Hippos where everyone at the edges reaches out with arms widely-stretched trying to pull anything from the middle to the chosen side. Greedily. We don't like scale, or granularity or subtlety. It forces us to ponder too many possibilities and worse, those possibilities are often far too reasonable. It is after all difficult to prosecute a war against people who are trying to see things from your perspective. This is no fun.
The reality of complexity is no fun either. To one GM having to even THINK about the AC of an enemy is too much work while another finds brainstorming 12 different stats with associated derived calculations a simple 5 minute math exercise necessary to get on with the greater fun. One player may shriek with excitement at choosing just the right weapon with just that right stats from a list of 1000 possibilities to defeat the lovingly detailed ogre's armor while another picks up their phone to get lost in twitter because #boringThisTakesTooLong. Some games have 17 (apparently...) points of handling in every combat interaction while others have just one. Like just one roll for the whole thing.
It's a scale. It has hundreds of granular points on it from no-complexity to "OMG is this really a game?" and everything in between. What's worse - we don't use "complexity" as a description of any reliable consistent term about what a game is. Instead, we use it as a pejorative. Like, WOW that was the worse restaurant I've ever been too, the food was so COMPLEX!
The REAL answer to the OP's question came up several times on the thread, from "what do you mean by complexity?" to "why do you even care?" which (unfortunately) are more apropos than debating complexity as a curse word.
Here's my suggestion - don't judge a game by complexity or simplicity. Don't buy into labels like light and medium. Just judge the game by how it makes you feel. Do all those dials and switches turn you on? Does the thought of making a character excite you? Do you smile when you imagine GM/Playing it? Do you WANT it?
These criteria will always be more meaningful than the terrible new pejoratives we invent to piss on other people's fun.
Love,
Trentin C Bergeron. He/Him. Gamer.
From the Troll with a Bone to Pick files; it's obviously a curse word. Like go Complexity Yourself you horrible simpleton. In either case I would take the term with a grain of salt. With a tequila chaser. Just to be sure.
Digging deep into the weeds of RPG theory regarding complexity;
I was a regular lurker on The Forge and studied the essays like a hungry young scholar freshly ordained in a monastery might devour "the sacred works". I jumped into the punch bowl and drank deeply whilst swimming in it. The conversations were intriguing. It was easy to get sucked in. It was all so academic, making you feel like "finally, this hobby my peers are so quick to dismiss has come into its own! soon we will have degrees and orders!".
It was glorious! It was also mentally damaging.
We could probably dig through the internet archives, create a beautiful glossary of Forge terms, and then try to hash out a real RPG definition of complexity. We would also likely have to save vs. The Forge or lose 1d20 sanity. DC50.
As the several pages of this thread have aptly proven, complexity is a weighted term. We are prone in Western culture to pick sides and play a spiritual game of Hungry Hungry Hippos where everyone at the edges reaches out with arms widely-stretched trying to pull anything from the middle to the chosen side. Greedily. We don't like scale, or granularity or subtlety. It forces us to ponder too many possibilities and worse, those possibilities are often far too reasonable. It is after all difficult to prosecute a war against people who are trying to see things from your perspective. This is no fun.
The reality of complexity is no fun either. To one GM having to even THINK about the AC of an enemy is too much work while another finds brainstorming 12 different stats with associated derived calculations a simple 5 minute math exercise necessary to get on with the greater fun. One player may shriek with excitement at choosing just the right weapon with just that right stats from a list of 1000 possibilities to defeat the lovingly detailed ogre's armor while another picks up their phone to get lost in twitter because #boringThisTakesTooLong. Some games have 17 (apparently...) points of handling in every combat interaction while others have just one. Like just one roll for the whole thing.
It's a scale. It has hundreds of granular points on it from no-complexity to "OMG is this really a game?" and everything in between. What's worse - we don't use "complexity" as a description of any reliable consistent term about what a game is. Instead, we use it as a pejorative. Like, WOW that was the worse restaurant I've ever been too, the food was so COMPLEX!
The REAL answer to the OP's question came up several times on the thread, from "what do you mean by complexity?" to "why do you even care?" which (unfortunately) are more apropos than debating complexity as a curse word.
Here's my suggestion - don't judge a game by complexity or simplicity. Don't buy into labels like light and medium. Just judge the game by how it makes you feel. Do all those dials and switches turn you on? Does the thought of making a character excite you? Do you smile when you imagine GM/Playing it? Do you WANT it?
These criteria will always be more meaningful than the terrible new pejoratives we invent to piss on other people's fun.
Love,
Trentin C Bergeron. He/Him. Gamer.
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But then simplicity is often boring, and if it gets it wrong, then it has a cascade effect or being wrong plus boring.
dragoner
KosmicRPG.com
True, nevertheless the investment in time and energy is less to discover that. There are complexity ratings that can be helpful.
Eh, gaming is my hobby. I do it for fun. I’m not looking for ways to spend less time doing it. I’m happy to take time to find out which games I like. And I consider the tinkering and backend building part of that fun, just like a wargamer might enjoy painting minis.
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