Will the complexity pendulum swing back?

[Reynard]

Maybe.

But some of that advice solved issues for me that I had been having since the 1980s and just hadn’t thought of dealing with that way.

A lot of folks really love the GM advice in Daggerheart. Many point out that its not new or original. But it was compiled in one place and then very well presented.

Like my community college English teacher who finally got me to relove literature by the choices she made in the reading list and being down to earth with it. She wasn’t teaching anything different from the high school teacher that got me to hate the subject. But she had the right attitude and presentation.

I am separating the rules explanations from the play advice.

 

[Kichwas]

I have never been convinced by the argument that rules complexities impacts "roleplaying" at all.

It can. Maybe not the rules themselves but when they are there and you choose to use them fully.

Consider an influence system like that In pathfinder.

You want to move along a meter of progress towards a social goal and you use specific abilities, dice, rules, and numbers to move the dial up or down.

Some roleplay actions are specifically called out as being able to move the dial, speed it up or slow it down.

You’re now forced to game your way through a roleplay scene.

A GM could ignore it sure. But “rules as written” there it is.

A revolutionary moment for me in a Daggerheart actual play during the beta was when one player started roleplaying a conversation in the middle of a battle and then used an “experience” to get a social outcome.

Here they were engaging a loosely typed ruleset that didn’t limit or define what and where so they could do it.

Pathfinder has specific limits like “cannot be used in combat” or “takes so many minutes to do” that would block that same action.

Here each system’s rules is defining how roleplaying can be done. And because the more complex system has more definition it has defined out certain play options that might make sense in the story.

Again a GM can just make a ruling.

But if we’re talking about rules as they are written then complex games do end up defining or constraining roleplay.

This for me was the exact scenario that got me to lose interest in Pathfinder. Playing what is seen as its best Adventure Path - Season of Ghosts. A portion where we had to convince one of two village elders to take a specific path in the plot. I wanted to do something outside the scope of the defined influence system and its DCs and found I needed to just stop roleplaying, pick a skill, and roll against a DC.
- Now half of that was a GM being a stickler for things. But the written rules also constrained me. The PF2E Influence system works a certain way regardless of roleplay. I felt that with a looser typed system the roleplay would just go where it goes.

In Mist, I'd do a pile of roleplay and use that to determine what 'tags' impacted a roll, and then we'd roleplay around success or success with consequence, or consequence - defined that loosely so that the entire form of it is roleplay driven.

In that PF2E moment, because it happened on a day that I was reading the Daggerheart book’s GMing and player advice, I went from being a gamer that wanted a rule for everything to a gamer that wanted very few rules and just really good advice on how to make ruling that fit the narrative.

If the defense of a system’s ability to do roleplay is that you can always ignore the rules… then the rules are actually in the way.

 

[Reynard]

It can. Maybe not the rules themselves but when they are there and you choose to use them fully.

Consider an influence system like that In pathfinder.

You want to move along a meter of progress towards a social goal and you use specific abilities, dice, rules, and numbers to move the dial up or down.

Some roleplay actions are specifically called out as being able to move the dial, speed it up or slow it down.

You’re now forced to game your way through a roleplay scene.

A GM could ignore it sure. But “rules as written” there it is.

A revolutionary moment for me in a Daggerheart actual play during the beta was when one player started roleplaying a conversation in the middle of a battle and then used an “experience” to get a social outcome.

Here they were engaging a loosely typed ruleset that didn’t limit or define what and where so they could do it.

Pathfinder has specific limits like “cannot be used in combat” or “takes so many minutes to do” that would block that same action.

Here each system’s rules is defining how roleplaying can be done. And because the more complex system has more definition it has defined out certain play options that might make sense in the story.

Again a GM can just make a ruling.

But if we’re talking about rules as they are written then complex games do end up defining or constraining roleplay.

This for me was the exact scenario that got me to lose interest in Pathfinder. Playing what is seen as its best Adventure Path - Season of Ghosts. A portion where we had to convince one if two village elders to take a specific path in the plot. I wanted to do something outside the scope if the defined influence system and its DCs and found I needed to just stop roleplaying, pick a skill, and roll against a DC.
- Now half of that was a GM being a stickler for things. But the written rules also constrained me. I felt that with a looser typed system the roleplay would just go where it goes.

In that moment, because it happened on a day that I was reading the Daggerheart book’s GMing and player advice, I went from being a gamer that wanted a rule for everything to a gamer that wanted very few rules and just really good advice on how to make ruling that fit the narrative.

If the defense of a system’s ability to do roleplay is that you can always ignore the rules… then the rules are actually in the way.

I did not mean that you could not have rules that impacted roleplaying. I meant that I don't buy the notion that rules complexity in general impinges upon roleplaying, which some folks in this thread has strongly suggested.

 

[Umbran]

I meant that I don't buy the notion that rules complexity in general impinges upon roleplaying, which some folks in this thread has strongly suggested.

We aren't selling. We are offering our own thoughts, FOR FREE. Take 'em, or not, no skin off our noses.

 

[Reynard]

We aren't selling. We are offering our own thoughts, FOR FREE. Take 'em, or not, no skin off our noses.

I did not use the word "selling" so im guessing that is more of a you issue?

 

[Neonchameleon]

I have never been convinced by the argument that rules complexities impacts "roleplaying" at all.

I think different people have different tolerances for rules complexity - and different people are drawn to different types of game.

Every minute spent dealing with the mechanics is one spent not roleplaying. And every minute spent looking up rules might as well be an emergency stop.

Also different people look for different things. Tacticians and build fanciers who aren't as interested in RP are more common at high crunch tables where they get their thing.

 

[Reynard]

Every minute spent dealing with the mechanics is one spent not roleplaying. And every minute spent looking up rules might as well be an emergency stop.

To me, this seems to exemplify the (false) assertion that TTRPGs are storytelling tools first, as opposed to game engines first. "Evertly moment spent not roleplaying" is irrelevant if people acknowledge the fact that they are playing a game first and foremost.

 

[GobHag]

It's also what kind of crunch that keeps appearing; I think only ACKS is going for world simulation while Lancer and Draw Steel are combat engines primarily. I've been looking at Seven-Part Pact and that's very much not trying to make a world sim but more attempting a very meta structure on being part of a magical ruling class.

 

[Kichwas]

To me, this seems to exemplify the (false) assertion that TTRPGs are storytelling tools first, as opposed to game engines first. "Evertly moment spent not roleplaying" is irrelevant if people acknowledge the fact that they are playing a game first and foremost.

Are they?

It's equally valid to say we need to acknowledge the fact that we're telling a story first and foremost.

Elsewhere the other day I jokingly made this note:

I'm tending away from 'miniatures based wargames masquerading as RPGs' like Pathfinder / DrawSteel / D&D and over to narrative storytelling games masquerading as RPGs.

Which is to say - each side loves to claim the other isn't really an RPG. And it's kind of silly. We've got both 'roleplay' and 'game' in the description of the hobby. Not one or the other.

 

[pawsplay]

Um, careful there.

First, that's 310 digest pages, instead of the more common 8"x10" RPG rulebook pages.

More importantly, Fate Condensed is mechanically pretty much the same, and comes in at only 60 pages.

Which is to say, a whole lot of that 310 pages isn't core mechanical complexity.

GURPS Lite comes in at 32 pages.