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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7570457" data-attributes="member: 996">Gee... what started about 10 years ago...?  Oh, yeah, the edition war.  When everyone was looking for language they could twist to make eachother's favorite games sound bad, and their own sound good."Complexity," "Rules Heavy" and, conversely, for your favored system, "Simplicity" and "Rules Lite" fit the bill.  They were far from alone.There's no question, though, that complexity can be very un-fun - mainly, though, when it's /needless/ complexity.  When complexity accomplishes something desirable, it's worth it, and can even be part of the fun.Now, if you don't enjoy a game to begin with, all the complexity embodied in it is needless (for you), so every time you're dragooned into playing it, you're overwhelmed with how onerous all that complexity is - and you go on line and let the world know! Conversely, if you love a game a priori, it's complexity vanishes from your perceptions, you can praise it to the moon for it's simplicity.   5e has fewer books published than those other editions (or PF, even short-lived 4e - or a lot of even more obscure/less-successful games, for that matter). The system, itself, if you compare PH to PH across editions?  D&D hasn't varied all that much in complexity.  AD&D was wildly, needlessly complex, because it had this odd design foible of dreaming up completely different mechanical systems for each task:   Attacking someone with a weapon? Roll a d20!  Attacking them with a spell? /They/ roll a d20.  Attacking them with psionics?  Look up your attack vs their defense mode on a matrix.  Wrestling with them?  Roll d%!  Then there were the classes, each class had it's own sub-systems, it's own exp chart, etc.  Being 8th level in one class was barely even roughly equivalent to being 8th level in another.  There was tremendous inconsistency, I suppose you could say.Yet, when criticizing 3.x/PF & 4e/E, grognards would harp on how much less complex AD&D was!  Really?  They used /one/ system, roll a d20 + modifiers vs a DC, to resolve everything AD&D used entirely different systems for, above.  Heck, 4e didn't even screw around with /who/ rolled that d20.Now, 5e is doing the exact same thing (almost - sometimes you'll roll TWO d20s - gah! the complexities!), but does get credit for being simpler?It's a bunch of nonsense. RPGs are complex, because they model - one way or another - really complex stuff, like human (and imaginary non-human-sentient) behavior, and physics, and the imaginary physics of magic.  Some RPGs model more of that stuff with rules, some even take the bizarre step of making those rules clear & consistent to reduce needless complexity, and some just punt it to the GM.  And even though 3E was once widely played it is now decried as a complex monster no one could have had fun with (hyperbole).So I wonder where this hate for complexity comes from? Was it always there? Have people grown up, gotten jobs and dont have time/interest to learn rules anymore? Do they feel rules are constricting or that the granularity complex rules add like characters being differently competent in different skills instead of having one modifier for everything doesn't add anything to the game?</blockquote>[/QUOTE]

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