Why the hate for complexity?

[Celebrim]

Necessary Complexity is good, I suppose, Needless Complexity, bad.

Yes, but that is just a truism. You might as well say good complexity is good and bad complexity is bad. You've just used fancy words to connotate 'good' and 'bad' in this context.

The question you should be asking is, "How much complexity do I want, and why?"

Back to the World's Simplest RPG. It's a complete system. However, some problems with the system are immediately forth coming, such as that the propositions, "I jump over a puddle.", "I jump over the Atlantic Ocean.", and I get up from my chair are equally likely to succeed. The results that we achieve using this system might be funny in their incongruity, but unless that is what we are going for we are likely to become dissatisfied with this system over time, and the longer we play it the more dissatisfied we might become. So, while the World's Simplest RPG is complete and universal and as rules light as it comes, there are still things missing from it that make it a good game.

 

[dragoner]

Like many old RPG players, I also played war games, some could get terribly complex like Squad Leader, Anvil of Victory. That was cool, except around 10-15 years ago I noticed that a lot of the older war game crowd were signing off, and newer people just didn't care for the war game-y style of play. Rules light comes to rule if I have to be fairly encyclopedic about rules as GM, then the less the better, to reduce my burden as I devote time to prep.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Ok, I'll take a different tack. Rules Light inherently supports less granularity in the resolution. The proponents of Rules Light tended to mock the idea that you needed to have fine grained resolutions, and as a result tended to create games that do not as an element of the resolution process give you any degree of granularity or specificity. They are not merely looking for a simpler or more elegant way to achieve what used to be called realism, they are eschewing the need for complexity at all.

Is that what this thread is about? Is it not about those who criticize old games for their inelegant designs, but about those who criticize the need for granular results at all?

I guess I missed that.

 

[Celebrim]

Fine, then. What is your word that refers to the number of rule interactions and the amount of effort required to resolve something under a particular game system?

- emphasis added

Garbage in.

Is it just 'work'?

- emphasis added

Garbage out.

You continue to define things circularly.

The number of system interactions is not the same as the amount of effort required to resolve something. Cryptography is for example dependent on the speed of resolution of encoding and decoding a message once you know the rule is vastly smaller than the effort required to find the rule by analyzing the message. There is not a one to one relationship between complexity and work. Finding a large prime number is difficult. Proving it is a prime number once you find it is easy. Life is filled with asymmetries like that because reality is... complex.

Do you want me to say that complex systems aren't bad, but work is bad, and people don't like complex games because they're too much work?

No. What I want you to see is that complexity is not work, and that people can have reasons for not liking complex games that don't have anything to do with work.

What's wrong with saying 'complexity' then?

Because words have definitions and definitions are important.

The amount of effort required to resolve something is an incredibly important factor in discussing game design.

Agreed.

I mean, if you're discussing a machine that has a lot of moving parts which don't necessarily interact in obvious ways, then I wouldn't hesitate to call it a complex machine. How is an RPG any different?

Yes, it is a complex machine! But the work required to operate that machine doesn't necessarily correspond to complexity of it. For example, a Slot Machine.

 

[MGibster]

And there are people who like fine-tuning the engines of their cars, and who like arguing the minutiae of TV continuity, and who memorise stats of sports players, and who painstakingly build model railways, and who like the arduous process of computer coding. I can't imagine doing any of those things.

Or those strange people who like to discuss the minutia of details as they relate to games where they pretend to be elves with magical powers. ::looks nervously left and right::

GURPS is an example of a complex game that some people absolutely love precisely because of its complexity. The rules allow someone to create almost any type of game world they want and some people love being able to tinker with things at the macro and micro levels.

I used to love GURPS and I'd still use it but most of my players refuse to play it. To be fair they did give it a shot at least. For the most part I don't enjoy a lot of complexity in my games. I loved Battletech and Car Wars when I was younger but I'd never play them today. Of course I don't want something too simple because it won't work for me.

 

[Celebrim]

Is that what this thread is about? Is it not about those who criticize old games for their inelegant designs, but about those who criticize the need for granular results at all?

I guess I missed that.

Eureka! I mean, that's not all that this thread is about, but it is a necessary insight to fully understand the conversation.

So, suppose you had an RPG that came with a little box something like Alexa, and during combat if you declared an attack, the box would magically spit back a detailed summary of the results of your attack that paid attention to all the factors involved in the attack and produced a granular and cinematic result like:

"You slash the orc's sword hand, severing it at the wrist. The wrist lands in an adjacent square and the orcs scimitar clatters to the ground beside him. The orc howls in pain as blood splatters out of the wound.", and meanwhile during this narration, the orcs stats on the GM's worksheet were magically updated.

There was a time when this would have been considered unquestionably the greatest thing ever.

But some people started asking, "Why do you need to know whether the orc's sword hand got severed? Don't you really just want to know whether you one the fight with the orc or not? Why not just generate that as a result, and then leave it up to the game's participants to narrate that result in the way that they thought would make the best story? Having it specified what happened during the fight is actually getting in the way of the goal of RPing."

 

[Immortal Sun]

Complexity leads to characters builds.
Character builds leads to powergaming.
Powergaming is the path to the dark side.

At least that's usually the vibe I get from people.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You continue to define things circularly.

You're the one who brought 'work' into this conversation. I was perfectly happy with 'complexity'.

The number of system interactions is not the same as the amount of effort required to resolve something.

Not exactly, but they do both tend to scale with the number of steps involved with the resolution process. If swinging a sword means that I roll a die to hit, and then you roll a die to parry, and then the GM rolls a die for happenstance, and then you roll a die for divine intervention, and then I roll for damage, and then you roll for damage resistance; then that's a lot of system interactions, which require a lot of effort to resolve. Even if you don't want to call it complex, I would still call it complicated and convoluted.

What I want you to see is that complexity is not work, and that people can have reasons for not liking complex games that don't have anything to do with work.

Sure, anyone can dislike anything for any reason. There are plenty of reasons why someone might not like a game that takes twelve steps to resolve an attack. However, the amount of time and effort required is a big and obvious reason, and it's worth consideration.

Because words have definitions and definitions are important.

Agreed, but in the context of RPGs, I still don't see how the word in question fails to meet the definition being used. If it takes twelve steps to resolve an attack, then there are a lot of moving parts and interactions between the relevant variables, which should qualify it as complex under the agreed-upon definition.

I'm really getting tired of the semantics here, so let's just say that we agree on the basic points of this thread, even if we can't agree on the words to describe those points. I'm pretty sure that's accurate.

 

[Morrus]

You're the one who brought 'work' into this conversation. I was perfectly happy with 'complexity'.

Not exactly, but they do both tend to scale with the number of steps involved with the resolution process. If swinging a sword means that I roll a die to hit, and then you roll a die to parry, and then the GM rolls a die for happenstance, and then you roll a die for divine intervention, and then I roll for damage, and then you roll for damage resistance; then that's a lot of system interactions, which require a lot of effort to resolve. Even if you don't want to call it complex, I would still call it complicated and convoluted.

Sure, anyone can dislike anything for any reason. There are plenty of reasons why someone might not like a game that takes twelve steps to resolve an attack. However, the amount of time and effort required is a big and obvious reason, and it's worth consideration.

Agreed, but in the context of RPGs, I still don't see how the word in question fails to meet the definition being used. If it takes twelve steps to resolve an attack, then there are a lot of moving parts and interactions between the relevant variables, which should qualify it as complex under the agreed-upon definition.

I'm really getting tired of the semantics here, so let's just say that we agree on the basic points of this thread, even if we can't agree on the words to describe those points. I'm pretty sure that's accurate.

There’s no game that takes twelve steps to resolve an attack. That’s as much an extremism as describing light games as just improv theatre. Sure, both ends at their absurd extremes cease to be useable roleplaying games. Pathfinder, the go-to example of a medium complex game, has two steps - roll to hit, roll for damage. For this conversation to even work, we have to use realistic examples of both.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Complexity leads to characters builds.
Character builds leads to powergaming.
Powergaming is the path to the dark side.

At least that's usually the vibe I get from people.

Particularly in the wake of 3E, and the reveal that they'd always known Toughness was a garbage feat which only existed so experienced players would feel smart by avoiding it, there's been a certain backlash against games that require significant degrees of system mastery in order to create an effective character. I don't know that anybody is really on-board with rule sets designed to trick new players into accidentally making ineffective characters, or which allow some players to completely dominate every aspect of gameplay just because they're good at math.