Will the complexity pendulum swing back?

[Micah Sweet]

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?

I hope so (I'd love more games to play with), and very much yes.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I see two problems with that idea:

• Gamers will resist needing a VTT, provided by some third party, to play. When a company changes its offerings, oh, look, our three-year campaign that was about to reach its climax is gone. Forever.
• People who play crunchy games usually modify them, at least a bit. The more automation in a VTT, the harder it will be to tweak the rules. That might be fixable by creating software tools specifically for expressing TTRPG rules, but that's definitely a bigger job than just implementing rules inflexibly.

That's true. I prefer crunchy games, and live modifying them to suit me better or to model different things.

 

[kermit4karate]

This is a false dichotomy. Nothing in "crunch" impacts what TTRPGs do that CRPGs can't. I think the "why don't you just play a CRPG" underscores a lack of understanding of what crunch can bring to play, based on a p[reference for lighter systems.

As to the idea of "why bother if the VTT is going to do the math" folks -- have you never played a complex CRPG or ARPG? The computer handles all the math there, too, but the fun some players have is looking at the granularity of the subsystems and leveraging them toward "builds" or whatever. Imagine being able to have loot drops in D&D that have the same level of detail while still remaining meaningful, because the systems for both generating and implementing the loot are handled by the VTT rather than the GM. The player still decides between the drops.

I find it a little ditressing that even after all this time people bring out the argument that complexity is somehow related to whether the game is a "real roleplaying game" or no. I am afraid someone will soon post ROLLplaying as if it were 1993...

I don't think it's a false dichotomy.... Maybe more of an uncommon dichotomy. It isn't strictly either/or except at the extreme ends of the spectrum. Say, if one were to create the crunchiest RPG in the history of the world, one where each round of combat required dozens of complex calculations to complete, then having a computer perform those calculations in milliseconds versus having a human do it and struggle for minutes...that to me seems like an actually true dichotomy.

Most crunchy games simply aren't that crunchy though, and it is possible for both a computer in a CRPG and a human sitting at a table to run them.

 

[soviet]

It seems to me that we already had at least two decades of the hobby dominated by complex games, and in the D&D sphere this has never stopped. Many such games already exist. What new ground is there to cover (at least in the fantasy genre)?

 

[dbm]

There are always new ideas and new ways of using existing ideas. That applies to crunchy games as well as light weight ones.

 

[soviet]

As someone who occasionally likes rules heavy games (just not for ttrpg play), when I engage with them, it is because I want to do the thought and analysis around my choices. And, I'm sorry, but I am slower than a computer. For me, any rules that are getting resolved faster than I can do it is bypassing my purpose in playing a rules-heavy game.

Agreed. One of the things I like about GMing Rolemaster (and doing the XP calculations afterwards) is seeing how the sausage is made. Following the process and seeing the different factors have an effect. Pressing a button on a black box and having a crit result come out of the slot would be profoundly unsatisfying.

 

[soviet]

There are always new ideas and new ways of using existing ideas. That applies to crunchy games as well as light weight ones.

Why aren't the crunchy games with new ideas being published then?

 

[Micah Sweet]

2024 5E isnt crunchy enough?

Wrong kind of crunchy, perhaps, mixed with playstyle assumptions incompatible with one's preferences?

 

[dbm]

Why aren't the crunchy games with new ideas being published then?

They are, Exhibit A … Draw Steel.

And there are many reasons, already discussed in this thread, which mean creating a new crunchy game is a much bigger task than producing a new light-weight game. These factors will naturally mean there are fewer new crunchy games of any kind (good or bad).

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why aren't the crunchy games with new ideas being published then?

Who says they aren't?