Crunch appeal

[IanCooper]

I have always assumed that crunch removes the need for rulings by the GM, as there are sufficient rules to handle any likely situation. The depth of crunch is representative of the range of situations that may come up, and usually a strong indication of what play will be about.

A follow up question might be: why the aversion to rulings? I think there an be multiple answers.

At some point I think one cause of aversion boils down to: I do not trust the GM to interpret how this would work, and provide a ruling (or even as a GM I do not have confidence I would understand how this might work well enough to provide a ruling). Crunch re-assures all parties in this that the rules will adjudicate this not the GM. It is a lack of confidence and trust in ruling. I think there is a concern there that a poor ruling will invalidate ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ in the world.

Related is the concept that I can use tactics to gain advantage, that I can overcome through ‘smarts.’ Crunch both gives me the options that allow me to find tactics that provide advantage (not always crunch that simulates the world, sometimes crunch that provides options) and the confidence that the rules will support my application of that tactic. Without that, I might be concerned that a ruling will eliminate my tactical thinking.

Personally, I found crunch more attractive when younger and less-experienced (both in gaming, and in the ways of the world) and thus having less confidence in ruling fairly, either as GM, or by a GM with whom I was playing.

As I have got older the trade-off between a loss of immersion due to the handling time of crunch vs confidence in my ability to create a ruling (or of those I play with to) has lessened the appeal of crunch.

However, I know many for whom the idea of tactical mastery is still attractive. The idea that you can ‘beat’ the game.

[Airk]

@IanCooper

I have always assumed that crunch removes the need for rulings by the GM, as there are sufficient rules to handle any likely situation.

I agree that this motivates a lot of people, but I think it’s a faulty assumption. If you trust your GM, obviously you don’t need this, but if you don’t trust your GM then at the end of the day, there are very few places where crunch will actually save you. Unless the situation is something that easily converts into ‘pure’ numbers (“The chasm is 3 meters across, so that’s how far you need to jump”) then a GM still has tons of leeway in things like establishing difficulty numbers, and as a result, you’re not as “protected” from their rulings as a lot of people seem to assume.

[Radmad]

I think @IanCooper is pretty darn close to it, I would just take it even further

Crunch is rules that ignore bias from every player (or at least intend to). If I say “you step through the door and see a musty cell, the remains of it’s previous occupants litter the floor” every player will have a different interpretation. If I say “the ogre has 15 hp” everyone has the exact same understanding of what that means.

[DeReel]

I’m very tempted to play the role of Achiles’ turtle with this last sentence, but let’s say I agree with Airk and Radmad’s modulo “(or at least intend to)”.
Thanks to you I can now distinguish between Crunch, a game design object, and “the Crunch argument”, a faith in its power to “objectivize” interpretation.

[Airk]

To add some extra musings to this though.

Is “Crunch” the same thing as “mechanics”? Or is it the “opposite” of “fluff”?

If I say, “Your character has a single number to denote their capabilities, you must roll over your number to succeed at tasks where the outcome is in doubt and both success and failure are interesting” … is that… crunch? I think most people would actually say “No”.

I think for something to be “crunch” it has to exceed someone’s threshold for… I don’t know. The minimum amount of rules you could accomplish something with.

But then you have:
“The ogre is very strong” (Not crunch)
“The ogre has a strength score of 20” (Probably crunch)
“The ogre has the “terrible strength” tag” (???)

I think “crunch” is not only a term that means different things to different people, but that can mean different things to the same person depending on context.

[RDUNeil]

@Airk

Is “Crunch” the same thing as “mechanics”? Or is it the “opposite” of “fluff”?

To me, the issue with “crunch” and “fluff” is they are both descriptives (often pejorative) of mechanics or the perceived lack of them. Like any pejorative, some have taken them as a “badge of honor” in terms of claiming what they DO like.

Example would be Ironsworn and the hack of it “Ironcrunch.” Compared to some PbtA games, the original Ironsworn has a great deal of procedure that some might feel is too crunchy… but clearly the author of “Ironcrunch” wanted something much much more. I don’t find any indication in the Ironcrunch write-up that the author didn’t trust GM rulings or whatever… but that that he LIKED to have lots of rules and charts and percentages… and clearly enjoyed creating them.

If feel that perhaps a great deal of OSR design fell into the trap of “How to constrain the players… how to say “no” in a game of imagination” and we all know the resulting legacy of GM vs. player mindsets. I feel that current design that wants crunch is not so much this trad legacy, but a pure gamer preference for lots of numbers, analysis, process and the player skill that comes from mastering it.

As per…

@dominik

Emulation of advancement is basically about reflecting the reality of competency building. In order to achieve mastery in anything, you have to put thousands of hours into practicing some skill, you need focused, spaced repetition. This is what crunch often provides: you maneuver your advancement in a given direction (focus) and perform certain tasks to get proficient at them (spaced repetition).

I know that for me, bad crunch are the mechanics that feel like busy work and don’t enhance play (in fact may detract from it) and good crunch are the mechanics that reinforce a particular play experience I like.

for example: Ironsworn has a very simple set of rules to represent Travel, and I was dubious as to their worth at first, but I’ve found that this is the first and only game I’ve experienced where a few simple rolls provide some great drama, invoking storms, floods, and other difficulties, wearing down character’s supply and health if really severe… etc.

For the first time in 40 years of gaming, I actually have some game experience that I feel emulates the desperate moments of Frodo and Sam huddled under a cliff as a cold rain pelts them and their food is scarce. It isn’t just “fluff” description… but it also isn’t a “crunchy” in depth course in meteorology and health effects of exposure. The rules give it “teeth” without overly burdening play.

Neither fluff nor crunch… just good mechanics.

[RDUNeil]

@IanCooper

At some point I think one cause of aversion boils down to: I do not trust the GM to interpret how this would work, and provide a ruling (or even as a GM I do not have confidence I would understand how this might work well enough to provide a ruling).

I would also say there is a benefit for the GM, to lighten the burden of decision making in the demand for them to somehow be objective with little or no guidance.

In a simple task resolution system… you pick the lock or you don’t. If not, then everyone looks at the GM for “What happens next?” Now the GM is caught in the “What do I say? Do they just get to try again? Did the failure jam the lock permanently?” etc.

But what i love about the PbtA Success/Success with challenge/ Fail with hard move… and the axiomatic rule of “Fit the fiction”… now the GM has some guidance. Roll a 7, ok, you pick the lock, but it took you a while and you hear a goblin patrol coming up the corridor toward your position, what do you do?"

If it had been a 10+, “You not only pick the lock but bypass the poison trap and easily get party into the wizard’s study without being noticed.”

You get it… the slightly higher “crunch” of 3 possible outcomes and the axiom of making things interesting while feeding the fiction ALLOWS the GM to be harsh when the dice call for harsh and rewarding when the dice call for rewarding. There is still massive room for GM (and play group) judgment… but that outcome guidance is HUGE in both facilitating play, AND reinforcing my verisimilitude.

It also removes a lot of the GM vs. player culture, as what happens is the players and GM cooperate in interpreting the dice… it isn’t just the GM vision.

So mechanics may not be about trust as much as easing the social contract at the table like a talking stick or bennies, or whatever.

[Airk]

Sure; I agree. But would you like to address the content of the post? Imagine, if you would, that I had used “lacking a mechanical representation” for “fluff” and “having a mechanical representation” for “crunch”.

None of this bears on the earlier “Why” because I feel like it’s going to be hard for us to reach an idea of “why” when we don’t even have a clear picture of what we are looking at the why OF. Because if we can define that, I think it’ll be a lot easier to find clear explanation of why people like it.

[RDUNeil]

@Airk

“having a mechanical representation” for “crunch”.

I’d say this is slightly off the mark. Going back to RadMad’s definition…

@Radmad

level of mechanical interaction present in the system

Crunch is about the “interaction” of mechanics rather than simply having more or less of them. I would also like to expand that it is the “friction” caused by the interaction of mechanics. You could have some very basic mechanics… roll 2d6 and check a table… but if it requires multiple rolls and table checks just to pull your sword and run down the hall… then what appears to lack crunch may in fact be very crunchy in play.

So while I think constantly using the word crunch will always have so much social baggage as to detract from coming to a real conclusion… if we rephrase the question, “Crunch does what?” as “The friction created by mechanics banging against them does what?” maybe we can get somewhere.

The simplistic way of answering that is that more friction feels substantive and enhances some people’s play experience, while others play experience is diminished or broken by increased friction.

Now we have a starting point to (if we were inclined) survey and study by asking, “Please describe actual play that is enhanced by increased friction of mechanical interactions?” and “Please describe actual play that is diminished by increased friction of mechanical interactions?”

To me we have to get to the point of how actual play behavior is affected to ever get to “why” some people like more crunch. (And I think we’d find a decent segment who find the reading and study and theory crafting of heavy mechanical interaction a big draw but often never “actually play the game”. Some of these might also ignore how the actual play is NOT what they imagined it to be. Feeling that they just have to go back and study more rules and refine the mechanics even more… when maybe the answer is less friction… but they can’t see that.)

But without a study of actual play, I believe we are all just theorizing about “crunch” at best.

[DeReel]

Theorizing is not a foul word. As for surveying, your post gave me an idea. I intend to find an unit of what counts as mechanical “beat”. And count them for various games like you count clicks from a user to a page. And see what it yields.

[RDUNeil]

I like this idea of counting mechanical beats. To clarify, do you mean purely the moment a mechanic comes into play… or when a mechanic use is relevant to a story beat? (i.e. most fiction first games, EVERY time a mechanic is used it is a story beat, but say something more simulationist, where lots of mechanics are strung together to emulate a combat or something, and the story beat happens upon resolution of the scene, not with every roll?) Either way, I think there is good data to be found here.

And I wasn’t saying theorizing is a foul thing. I love to theorize. I was simply replying to

@Airk

we don’t even have a clear picture of what we are looking at the why OF.

I was agreeing that we aren’t getting closer to an answer by just theorizing.

Theory is great at proposing a possible solution, but you have to experiment and research (gather data) to actually determine if the theory is right (supported). Thus I like your suggestion as one way to “experiment” and gather data.

[DeReel]

OK. To clarify, I mean to find a unit of mechanical interaction. My preconception is this : “when X happens, roll dice, add modifier, look up table, interpret result” is 3 crunches (roll, add, lookup). With various games I think I can tailor a more practical or significant unit.

[RDUNeil]

I like this definition of “mechanical beat” a lot, and I think I’ll try to apply it to my next session of Ironsworn… lots of beats to a single resolution… but far less than some.

It also points out “different kinds of crunch” as I may find repetition of the same beats over and over (which is much of Ironsworn) to be just fine, as you get into a rhythm and flow and stop noticing all the beats… vs. massive number of different kinds of beats that you have to know and reference… so each resolution may only have one beat (look up), but you have to always stop and research “which beat do I need to look up right now?” which to me, feels much more crunchy. (again, just my personal feel on crunch)

[Thomas_Junk]

I don’t know how helpful for the discussion the following is, but from my perspective crunch is about “a system” and the factor of enjoyment relates to the aspect of mastery and contol. Systems with many subsystems which are logically consistent connected are challenging to master and offer once the system is understood (mastered) something that could be controlled, up to the degree of even outsmart - “beat” - the system. It is like a meta puzzle to solve: “I will see if I could crack (crunch) the nut”. And the satisfaction stems from the self confirmation of one’s smartness. Sometimes that is only self referential and sometimes it is about outsmarting the rules to achieve a higher level of optimization than co-players - the GM included: when a good combo of rules is used to shred the BBEG in about two rounds of combat and “humiliate” the GM. But that’s only speculation.

A further hypothesis would be: crunchy systems are mostly those where the play culture is less cooperative, where there is a gradient of power or big gap between GM and players. And crunchy systems are enjoyed mostly by players which enjoy this gradient of power as a challenge to overcome.

Edit: Oh, I accidentally rephrased @Rickard s comment. Sorry Haven’t read enough…

[RDUNeil]

This is where I think the classic GNS still holds a lot of weight, which is the crunch is defined and liked (or disliked) based on the play style of the players. Your first paragraph is hands down Gamist play. Your second paragraph defining the environment where Gamist play thrives and that there are people who love that.

I just argue that crunch can come up in game without a GM! Ironsworn is a perfect example, that it has 35 MOVES! and a rather complex progress track resolution mechanic, and tons of tables and charts… and it is mostly meant to be played solo or non-GM cooperatively. Those rules are meant to be mastered, but for a non-competitive outcome, one of emulating epic story telling of viking adventure. Genre simulation can be very crunchy.

[Airk]

I’m not really sure about the assertion that Ironsworn is meant to be “mastered”. It’s very much a PbtA game still. A complicated one, maybe, but still a PbtA game, which means that system mastery makes it WORK better, but it doesn’t like, help you “win” the way system mastery does in most games where people strive for system mastery. (Aside: I very much think that crunch is about “winning” for a lot of people).

Maybe the Ironcrunch supplement thing that someone made leans in more on that angle, I don’t know, I am the opposite of interested, so I’m not going to check it out.

Maybe I’m being close minded here, but I feel like there isn’t a lot of point to putting in a lot of effort to “master” a game if there is no real “advantage” conveyed thereby. And there’s no real advantage to “mastering” a PbtA game except that play proceeds more smoothly. And at that point, I tend to wonder if it wouldn’t just have been better to design a tighter, less crunchy system so that you can get smooth play without having to “master” it first.

All that said, I don’t actually think Ironsworn is very crunchy. Yes, there are a lot of moves, but a lot of them are kinda copy-pastes for different circumstances. Use these moves to advance at a track of a specific type, and then use this move to ‘complete’ the track. They’re different moves so they can have different sorts of fallout, but they’re not mechanically different in a way that requires “mastery” to utilize.

[Jesseabe]

“A complicated one, maybe, but still a PbtA game, which means that system mastery makes it WORK better, but it doesn’t like, help you “win” the way system mastery does in most games where people strive for system mastery”

That strikes me as an odd read. Cooperative games can have win states. GMless games can have win states. Narrative games can have win states. Ironsworn has a quest based structure where you can fail, and system mastery makes you more likely to succeed.

But I’d also argue that mechanical mastery of PbtA with more subjective win states still leads to player success, not just smoother play. Knowing how to manipulate strings and conditions lets a Monsterhearts player better achieve their goals in play. Understanding the combat moves and how to trigger and leverage them (and when not to) lets a player better achieve their goals in Apocalypse World. It’s not the only way to play these games, and I wouldnyt call them crunchy, as the systems aren’t particularly dense, but to say it doesn’t help you “win,” where “win” means “achieve your goals in play” just isn’t true.

[Airk]

Could be; But I still don’t feel like it’s a system that rewards that much “mastery”. The presence of a lot of moves doesn’t actually make it complex, and the rewards just don’t seem that significant to me.

[DeReel]

Lots of move options : these increase info load on the player to manage their choice, rather than mechanical steps. (it’s still one step, but a complex treatment for chosing the move)
Lots of situational modifiers +/- : these increase info load and add potentially several mechanical steps of the same nature (complexity alright)

[RDUNeil]

Your division of “lots of move options” vs. “lots of situational modifiers” is a good one. I personally think BOTH can be crunch… and the former is one I dislike WAY more than the latter.

I find the former all about studying and memorizing a bunch of rules/spells/feats/whatever that have been written down by they author(s) with the hope of playing a game of “gotcha” with the GM. I hate it.

The latter I find is very useful for evoking the immediacy of a scene or action… modifiers to say that you have the high ground and position while the opponent is more skilled with a masterclass sword… but you have heavier armor, while she has a shield, and there is a cold wind blowing snow everywhere in gusts, and the terrain is uneven and broken by small pines, the sun is just rising at your back, etc.

All of these factors could be fluctuating modifiers each and every round of combat… and some may find that horribly crunchy, where to me it paints a desperately cinematic fight, dodging in and out of the trees, where the less skilled warrior must win quickly or the more skilled and better armed will regain advantage, losing sight of the opponent in swirling snow and glare of sunlight off the white, etc.

To me, those mechanics serve to really bring alive a scene in a visceral/cinematic sense… allow for creativity of players to use various story environment factors in a mechanical way (I wait until I see him flinch from the glare of the rising sun before I leap out! ok, get a +1 whatever), etc. This is what I live for in games, and system mastery is not about winning, but about “working better” and “flowing more smoothly” so that not only do you get this detailed, evocative scene, but you didn’t have to grind too much to get it.