Will the complexity pendulum swing back?

[dbm]

For sure, it’s a more realistic game in many ways - charging that machine gun nest is truly heroic! Though when highly skilled characters are up against more mundane opposition heroics can be back on the table.

I think a good route to enjoyable outcomes in GURPS is to play with a smaller group (4 PCs max), players who all know the rules fairly well, and to keep combat to a subset of what you game out rather than being 80% of the challenges the GM presents which can fly in games which run easier / faster.

GURPS can cover a lot of interesting ground beyond combat, with character nuance in social skills, scientific, engineering and more.

 

[Argyle King]

I think systematic versus exception-based design is another big factor in complexity.

In play, GURPS isn’t actually very complex as it is very systematic - the rules work the same way consistently pretty much all the time. What varies are modifiers and procedures. This might seem like sophistry but for me it means once I have internalised the system I can do pretty much anything with it.

Compare that to systems like AD&D which has multiple examples of exception-based rules (spells and monster abilities in general) that are often very different for no real benefit. You have to memorise these things or look them up.

Modern D&D has shifted to more consistency from 3e onwards, with defined statuses reducing the need for spells to define their effects from first principles every time.

Additionally, the number of procedural steps to resolve common actions adds to the feeling of complexity. Here GURPS can be legitimately criticised if people want to: roll to hit, roll defence, roll hit location, roll damage, possibly roll versus stun. If you use all the detail available it is quite a few steps for every 1-second round. So a ‘complex’ game may actually be more of a ‘slow to operate game’.

For me, what makes GURPS easier/quicker than D&D sometimes is that (to me) GURPS produces more intuitive results when trying to imagine a situation.

•If I bury an axe in the skull of my target, they're likely mortally wounded (if not dead). If not, I can ascertain that there must be some exceptional reason (supernatural, magic, incredible luck, etc) why that is not the case.

•In contrast, D&D often presents me with a lot of information that doesn't tell me much of anything about a situation or how I should approach it. °What did it mean when a 4E ooze had a high charisma score? Was it an especially sexy ooze? Is it undulating in an especially convincing manner?
°In 5E, if I stand a giant beside a halfling, I don't necessarily know anything about what their actual physical capabilities might be. My natural intuition is to suspect that the giant be physically stronger, but can I be sure of that?

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy D&D. My point is that -while GURPS may have more steps on paper- there are less mental steps (in GURPs) involved in reconciling what my mind says makes sense versus what the game says makes sense.

 

[Neonchameleon]

How about Shadowdark? Because I see it referred to as rules-lite, and I kinda think it isn't too crunchy. It's also basically a hybrid of a few different D&D versions with a handful of additional rules.

Whether Shadowdark is rules light depends whether you consider 5e rules medium or rules heavy. Because it is clearly lighter than 5e but there are clearly games in a heavier category than 5e (trivially 3.5 with all splats) and clearly games in a lighter category than Shadowdark (trivially games with a single mechanic and no or trivial NPC stat blocks such as Lasers and Feelings and Grant Howitt one pagers with Leverage being at the extreme end here)

Personally I find whatever category Shadowdark and other games such as Daggerheart, Dragonbane, Call of Cthulhu, Apocalypse World, and Blades in the Dark are in to be in the complexity sweet spot. Enough to give something to bite into but not enough to get in the way. I'd say rules medium but YMMV

 

[Thomas Shey]

For me, what makes GURPS easier/quicker than D&D sometimes is that (to me) GURPS produces more intuitive results when trying to imagine a situation.

This was, when drilling down, what most caused me to shift to RuneQuest many decades ago; even though it didn't have much more meaningful decision making (otherwise a non-trivial factor in my preferences), it seemed to relate to what was actually going on in a way the semi-heroic abstraction of D&D never did.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Whether Shadowdark is rules light depends whether you consider 5e rules medium or rules heavy. Because it is clearly lighter than 5e but there are clearly games in a heavier category than 5e (trivially 3.5 with all splats) and clearly games in a lighter category than Shadowdark (trivially games with a single mechanic and no or trivial NPC stat blocks such as Lasers and Feelings and Grant Howitt one pagers with Leverage being at the extreme end here)

Personally I find whatever category Shadowdark and other games such as Daggerheart, Dragonbane, Call of Cthulhu, Apocalypse World, and Blades in the Dark are in to be in the complexity sweet spot. Enough to give something to bite into but not enough to get in the way. I'd say rules medium but YMMV

I can see calling the ones on that list I'm familiar with rules-medium.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think systematic versus exception-based design is another big factor in complexity.

In play, GURPS isn’t actually very complex as it is very systematic - the rules work the same way consistently pretty much all the time. What varies are modifiers and procedures. This might seem like sophistry but for me it means once I have internalised the system I can do pretty much anything with it.

GURPS isn't actually a game, it's a toolkit and most of the complexity is in the options and was worse in 3e.

To take an extreme example I own GURPS robots 3e and GURPS vehicles 3e; to find the weight of the structure of a vehicle start with the square of the cube root of the volume measured in cubic feet - and to work out the vehicle's acceleration start with the engine's power in horsepower. I'm not joking - and with a spaceship you start with cubic yards instead.

But seriously the two crunchy parts of GURPS fantasy combat are the speed/range attack modifiers which, ugh, and the one second round/active defence (parry/block) rules that result in a lot of dice rolling for no result. Hit locations are fiddly - but the shock penalties can take you into a death spiral fast.

 

[Willie the Duck]

To take an extreme example I own GURPS robots 3e and GURPS vehicles 3e; to find the weight of the structure of a vehicle start with the square of the cube root of the volume measured in cubic feet - and to work out the vehicle's acceleration start with the engine's power in horsepower.

I believe the power plant was actually in kilowatts, because why be consistent on SI or Imperial units?

I'm not joking - and with a spaceship you start with cubic yards instead.

Spaceships, IIRC, had a couple of different implementations. Some of them basically the vehicle/robot rules, others more abstract (IIRC the version in the first 3e GURPS:Space book you pretty much ran combat abstractly by comparing tech level and power output of weaponry vs. your opponent and rolling on charts to see which vehicle system was downgraded or taken offline).

 

[Neonchameleon]

°In 5E, if I stand a giant beside a halfling, I don't necessarily know anything about what their actual physical capabilities might be. My natural intuition is to suspect that the giant be physically stronger, but can I be sure of that?

This one is a yes. The giant is Huge and therefore has their lifting and carrying capacity multiplied by four for being two size categories above medium. Even a Str 6 giant can lift more and is thus meaningfully physically stronger than a Str 20 medium character.

But Str is not just about raw strength; it also covers applying it. Taking an example from 3.5 a monkey is a superb climber. It has a +8 racial ability to climb checks for a total score of +10. Meanwhile an (African) elephant is Str 30. It has no special skill at climbing so its climb skill is ... +10. An elephant is as good at climbing a cliff or a tree as a monkey. (Ok, nitpicking myself there's a case you should give the elephant the one handed penalty for only having one trunk)

Raw physical strength differences that are a function of size are covered by the creature's size.

 

[kermit4karate]

This one is a yes. The giant is Huge and therefore has their lifting and carrying capacity multiplied by four for being two size categories above medium. Even a Str 6 giant can lift more and is thus meaningfully physically stronger than a Str 20 medium character.

But Str is not just about raw strength; it also covers applying it. Taking an example from 3.5 a monkey is a superb climber. It has a +8 racial ability to climb checks for a total score of +10. Meanwhile an (African) elephant is Str 30. It has no special skill at climbing so its climb skill is ... +10. An elephant is as good at climbing a cliff or a tree as a monkey. (Ok, nitpicking myself there's a case you should give the elephant the one handed penalty for only having one trunk)

Raw physical strength differences that are a function of size are covered by the creature's size.

Prime example of why there needs to be a DM, and the DM needs to be all-powerful. As Shadowdark puts it, "The only Rule is that you make the rules."

 

[Neonchameleon]

I believe the power plant was actually in kilowatts, because why be consistent on SI or Imperial units?

Just to put this into context for those not used to GURPS the power plant is a different system to the engine. But the power plant rules were written for consistency with the battery rules which were always in kilowatt-hours