Will the complexity pendulum swing back?

[soviet]

Who says they aren't?

The premise of the thread?

 

[bloodtide]

No. Complexity was a thing of it's time.

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

 

[dbm]

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.

 

[zarionofarabel]

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.

Yeah, the newest "Pandemic" version, a LotR themed title, is FAR more complex than original Pandemic. In fact, almost all later versions of Pandemic are "crunchier" than the original. Same goes for the Ticket To Ride series of games.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The premise of the thread?

As has been said, there are reasons you're likely to see more individual rules-light games than rules-heavy ones.

 

[Endie]

I just escaped from two years of DMing 5e and I'm currently running Traveller and Night's Black Agents and as a result I don't see any lack of complexity. 5e in particular has, even by 5th level, such a huge state machine of conditions and effects and damage types, on top of which every character and monster has different powers (even the fighters are in effect spell-casters, now) that the cognitive load on the DM, and the time taken to prepare, are grinding and by the end of each session I was drained, despite the advantage of 38 years of DMing in my campaign world, which at least eases one aspect of preparation.

 

[payn]

There was a trend for a while, I wouldnt say was just rules lite, but experience specific. Instead of generic do anything systems, folks were developing a lot of bespoke games that delivered a particular experience. Bladerunner for example, was such a system. There were a few complaints that the RPG was "incomplete" because it didnt have detailed rules for vehicle and spaceship combat. I think those complaints came from a misunderstanding of what the RPG was aiming to deliver. Id call the mindset the "system" mindset which is an expectation that the rule set will cover any situation a genre could deliver.

At any rate, I think generic genre delivery RPGs will remain the granular crunchy systems as they need to deliver a myriad of experiences with a mix of some old school lite systems and then the bespoke thats become popular.

 

[Reynard]

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)?

5E is not a complex or especially crunchy game and has been dominant for a decade.

 

[Reynard]

There was a trend for a while, I wouldnt say was just rules lite, but experience specific. Instead of generic do anything systems, folks were developing a lot of bespoke games that delivered a particular experience. Bladerunner for example, was such a system. There were a few complaints that the RPG was "incomplete" because it didnt have detailed rules for vehicle and spaceship combat. I think those complaints came from a misunderstanding of what the RPG was aiming to deliver. Id call the mindset the "system" mindset which is an expectation that the rule set will cover any situation a genre could deliver.

At any rate, I think generic genre delivery RPGs will remain the granular crunchy systems as they need to deliver a myriad of experiences with a mix of some old school lite systems and then the bespoke thats become popular.

Bladerunner was not a bespoke system, though, right? It is based on Year Zero Engine, which is not especially crunchy or complex.

 

[pawsplay]

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 think sometime in the 2010s, complexity stopping being a pendulum. We are in a state of permanent diversity.