Will the complexity pendulum swing back?

[soviet]

For my high level 5e character I had to create my own 'cheat sheet' character sheet because I had so many fiddly little options from L12+ it was difficult to keep track of otherwise.

Part of the issue is also that the PHB is very badly laid out.

 

[Blue]

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?

Please explain why you think this is a pendulum? I don't. I think that there are more and more systems getting published, and they are all over the spectrum.

Mind you, I'm looking at it by system, not by individual RPG. So yes, if there's another bespoke hyper-focused PbtA it's not moving the needle. Mind you, I love bespoke RPGs, just that they have very narrow focus and coming out with one for a different niche is just an iteration of the mechanics, not an industry trend.

 

[Neonchameleon]

While I largely agree with your overall points, I don't think 5E is anywhere near "high crunch." There's are a lot of PC specific rules and exceptions, to be sure, but they nearly eliminated all the other granularity, complexity and subsystems from 3.x (the primary historical high crunchy D&D).

Which is why I'd put 3.X in very high. I definitely need at least four categories.

 

[Reynard]

The core game is in 3 books totalling over 1000 pages.

There are certainly much crunchier games, and 5E opted for very elegant mathematical formulas across the board, but I think one has to be pretty deep into RPGs to see 5E as anything other than complex. 7 out of 10 on a more gradual scale of crunchiness.

Page counts aren't complexity. Shadowdark is 300 pages.

That said, I am not saying 5E is a "lite" game. I might quibble with your 7, but not by much. Almost all of 5Es complexity is in character ability exceptions. They have flattened or outright deleted most of the rest.

 

[Reynard]

For my high level 5e character I had to create my own 'cheat sheet' character sheet because I had so many fiddly little options from L12+ it was difficult to keep track of otherwise.

Part of the issue is also that the PHB is very badly laid out.

I don't think "crappy explanations and poor organization" are "crunch."

 

[soviet]

I don't think "crappy explanations and poor organization" are "crunch."

Please don't attribute fictional quotes to me.

 

[Parmandur]

Page counts aren't complexity. Shadowdark is 300 pages.

That said, I am not saying 5E is a "lite" game. I might quibble with your 7, but not by much. Almost all of 5Es complexity is in character ability exceptions. They have flattened or outright deleted most of the rest.

Right, because it is an exception based design paradigm. The core is elegant...not what I would cal "simple" or "light", but sleek sure.

But there are a huge number of exceptions and options, even within just the original 3 core books, and WotC and third parties have spent a decade exploring that design space. There is a ton of 5E crunch out there, even if it is not the crunchiness system out there.

I do agree with the original premise that the recent big games are on the higher end of the scale, when a lot of non-D&D systems of the past decade were aiming for less crunchy than 5E.

 

[Deset Gled]

The core game is in 3 books totalling over 1000 pages.

There are certainly much crunchier games, and 5E opted for very elegant mathematical formulas across the board, but I think one has to be pretty deep into RPGs to see 5E as anything other than complex. 7 out of 10 on a more gradual scale of crunchiness.

From 2021:

D&D 5E (2014) Thread 'How crunchy is D&D 5E'

Dec 3, 2021

On a scale which runs from 1 (improv with no mechanics) to 9 (the crunchiest game around) where would you place D&D?

• Morrus
• Replies: 86
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

FWIW, I voted 4. Compared to AD&D's complex purple prose and lack of unifying mechanics, 2e's endless rules additions, 3e (just... 3e), and the extremely tactical 4e, I see 5e as the least crunchy version of D&D I've ever played. 5e 2024 does seem to up the crunch a tad.

 

[MGibster]

Specifically, board games have vastly smaller decisions spaces for their players. Yes, the rules for Monopoly will fit inside the box top, but the number of things the player can choose to do is small.

I'm thinking the same is true of a complicated board game like Star Fleet Battles. The basic SFB game has about 400 pages of rules at this point (I think), filled to the brim with how players handle energy allocation, direct fire weapons, indirect fire weapons, movement, transporters, mines, nuclear space mines, shuttles, fighters, Tholian Webs, boarding parties, etc., etc. As complicated as SFB is, it's actually pretty straight forward in that the decision spaces for players are fairly limited. Can you do X on your movement phase? The answer is no unless the rules explicitly state otherwise. Can you drain batteries to power your shields? I don't know, what does it say under the rules for batteries?

No matter whether we're talking about a crunchy or lite RPG, players have a degree of freedom of choice that simply doesn't exist in any board game I've ever played. The degree of freedom the player has when it comes to determining what their playing piece, their character, does in an RPG is one of the things that differentiate them from a board game. It might be easier to accommodate that freedom of choice in games with lower levels of crunch.

 

[Parmandur]

From 2021:

D&D 5E (2014) Thread 'How crunchy is D&D 5E'

Dec 3, 2021

On a scale which runs from 1 (improv with no mechanics) to 9 (the crunchiest game around) where would you place D&D?

• Morrus
• Replies: 86
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

FWIW, I voted 4. Compared to AD&D's complex purple prose and lack of unifying mechanics, 2e's endless rules additions, 3e (just... 3e), and the extremely tactical 4e, I see 5e as the least crunchy version of D&D I've ever played. 5e 2024 does seem to up the crunch a tad.

Looks like I voted 7 back then, didn't recall that off hand.

5E is certainly lighter crunchwise than 3E and 4E, but I disagree that it is lighter than AD&D or BD&D. It has some more intuitive math and greater clarity of presentation, but I would put the crunch level at about the same.