Will the complexity pendulum swing back?

[kermit4karate]

If you are specifically talking about "social combat" I suppose so. But having a wide range of combat maneuvers available (just by way of example) wouldn't impact your ability to roleplay negotiations with the Duke, would they?

It depends. Do I have the rules for how to handle it memorized, or would I need to look them up?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

With a couple of notable exceptions, such as Pathfinder 2E, it seems like the TTRPG industry has been trending toward simplicity for years now. But with the recent releases of Daggerheart and Draw Steel -- medium and heavy crunch system respectively -- maybe the pendulum is swing back toward at least some degree of system complexity and crunch.

What do you think? Is crunch coming back? And is that desirable, in your opinion?

For me no. I burned out on games like 3/3.5e over games dragging to a halt as players scoured their character sheets trying to make sure they weren't forgetting one of the many feats that gave them a special modifier, etc. The game at my table became a slog as players spent so much time looking in books and the focus was the character sheet and making sure they were not forgetting a feat combo. "crap I forgot I get to roll 19 extra dice when that specific situation arises, can roll them now?" I think a heavy game can work fine for a table that is very into that level of detail and management. But for my beer pretzels and dead orcs type table it was just a mess. Now not all more complex games are exactly like that, some just have a lot of looking at charts and more involved mechanics. I just want something simple that leaves the books at the side and players engaging more with the game rather than trying to remember to maximize the mechanics. And this is just based off the group I was playing with, many have different experiences.

 

[kermit4karate]

This seems to be one of those "crunch" assessments that only takes into account PC capabilities, not the mass of the rules. From a character ability perspective, AD&D was lighter than modern versions, but AD&D had a ton of other rules and subsystems.

That sounds fair. I did truly ignore huge swaths of the older D&D version rules, but that kind of thing didn't elicit the same intense response that admitting to do that nowadays does. Now when someone says, "Oh, I just ignore that rule" in 5e or 2024 it feels like those scenes in movies when someone enters a jungle cave in the Congo and a cloud of bats streams out, blotting out the sun. Like, whoa -- what did I just step into??

 

[Campbell]

Compared to what? What are some RPGs that you think are less crunchy than 1e was?

Granted, I preferred B/E and AD&E 2e to 1e. I just don't particularly think of 1e as crunchy by the standards of the past 30 years.

• Almost all Powered by the Apocalypse games
• Almost all Forged in the Dark games
• The 5th Edition World of Darkness games
• Almost all 2d20 games from Modiphius (Conan and Infiniti being the exception)
• Cortex games like Tales of Xadia, Marvel Heroic Roleplay and Smallville
• The Cinematic Unisystem used for Buffy and Angel RPGs
• Into The Odd and Black Hack are profoundly less complex.

After getting rid of my Pathfinder Second Edition books I don't think anything on my shelf is more complex than AD&D, certainly not to run. Maybe Draw Steel, although I find it much easier to run than AD&D or 5e.

AD&D is no Champions or Pathfinder, sure. But in the grand scheme of RPG design I consider it pretty much smack dab in the middle complexity wise

 

[Morrus]

That said...I don't like crunch. I like fast, easy-to-learn games, and I tend to think that to the degree there is a pendulum, it's just slightly swinging away from crunch.

Slightly? I’d dispute that. There are thousands of rules light games released every year… and maybe a handful of heavy games. Just look at marketplaces like itch.io. The market is very, very heavily in favour of rules light games, for many of the reasons—both from the publishing and the customer angles—discussed at length in this thread.

 

[kermit4karate]

Slightly? I’d dispute that. There are thousands of rules light games released every year… and maybe a handful of heavy games. Just look at marketplaces like itch.io. The market is very, very heavily in favour of rules light games, for many of the reasons—both from the publishing and the customer angles—discussed at length in this thread.

I actually agree. I was mostly trying to be diplomatic and avoid yet another battle.

 

[Reynard]

It depends. Do I have the rules for how to handle it memorized, or would I need to look them up?

I guess I was not clear: how would combat complexity interfere with roleplaying a conversation?

 

[kermit4karate]

I guess I was not clear: how would combat complexity interfere with roleplaying a conversation?

As soon as a rule check is required, or a roll, that would constitute an interruption in the flow of gameplay, wouldn't it? For a system that says, "GM uses best judgment to ask for an ability score roll with whatever CR or DC seems appropriate (easy, medium, hard, etc.)," that's quite easy to implement without stopping the flow for long.

If you're just referring to those moments of pure dialogue where there aren't any challenges for the player to overcome, then I agree, there wouldn't be any impact on the speed of play.

 

[LordEntrails]

Well, admittedly I only got through page 7 but didn't see responses to these so...

Gamers will resist needing a VTT, provided by some third party, to play.

This, to me, is an extremely narrow view of "Gamers". By what I think is a much more common definition of "gamer", most of them are playing computer games. This definition seems to only only accept a very small group of folks that view things the way you do. Not sure how such a narrow definition is useful in this context.

I suspect that as more younger people join the hobby, and older people leave (one way or another), games will get simpler just because there are more distractions, and demand for such games will eventually dominate.

No one finds that insulting to the next generation? I think their is a better explanation, and I think Jacob is hitting on it here...

The industry didn’t collectively move toward simplicity; instead, the market broadened. For about a decade, we saw an explosion of light-to-medium games because they were easier to design, publish, and playtest in indie spaces. These spread fast through digital platforms and actual plays, so the perception grew that “simpler is the trend.” Meanwhile, crunchier games like Pathfinder 2E, Shadowrun, GURPS, and the heavier end of OSR design never left—they just weren’t in the cultural spotlight.

Not only this, but I see the "simplicity" of D&D 5E has grown the market/base of RPGers tremendously. Most RPGers and gamers are not like us, they don't spend their time on ENWorld or other gaming sites (like BGG). They do other things. Maybe these are "casual" gamers, but they are gamers all the less AND they spend money on games. And that's good. We are not better because we are "serious" gamers.

People in the Ye Old Days liked complex games. Today, people like simple games......and they get more simple with each generation.

No, it's not generation, imo. It's that instead of RPGs being played by 0.00001% of the population, they are now played by 1% of the population (numbers made up). They have become more accessible and acceptable, and a lot of those people are different than the die-hard grognards who had to be committed in order to push through all the resistance to playing.

Board Game Geek refutes that premise. All the highly rated games are pretty complex.

The top 10 games on BGG have an average ‘weight’ of 3.7 on a 1 to 5 point scale which puts them as medium to heavy weight.

And BGG is pretty much ruled by fanatics. Those "serious" gamers I mentioned before. BGG, like ENWorld, do not represent the majority of the market. We represent a small, but important, part of the market. But not so important we should think our views are the majority or the most important.

 

[dbm]

BGG is pretty much ruled by fanatics. Those "serious" gamers I mentioned before. BGG, like ENWorld, do not represent the majority of the market. We represent a small, but important, part of the market. But not so important we should think our views are the majority or the most imp

The post I was replying to stated:

People in the Ye Old Days liked complex games. Today, people like simple games......and they get more simple with each generation.

I merely pointed out data that showed this to be not true.