What systems nicely handle more in depth, "complex" rules?

[jco]

Perhaps a sweet spot would be a complex character creation system with a simple resolution system. I shouldn’t ever have to do division after my die is rolled to determine my result, and ideally I showouldn’t have to do much multiplication either.

There is truth to this. Burning Wheel’s character creation is beloved for a reason.

I think there’s something else though. I’ve been sort of stewing on a response. But I think a fleshed out system makes doing certain types of things satisfying. Power is always relative. If everyone has the same power, then power is meaningless. So systems which give you a broad range of skills, but in a way that feels principled and nuanced and interesting and provide the opportunity to invest in it and grow in it, create a much more material sense of power. In a PbtA you just…roll and do the thing. In many cases, a roll can be used to satisfy some very high level things. Tricking the werewolves and I dunno, pulling off the heist, can be a similar role.

But in ars magica if you grapple with the magic system, you can make a spell that will melt a castle. That will turn an advancing army to dust. And perhaps to your point about “math loving types,” it feels earned. I don’t know if grappling is quite right, because I think us grit lovers also love elegance. But it’s that…if you put in that work and put together that spell, it’s framed by the rules so it isn’t arbitrary, but it feels much more salient and powerful. The key thing I’m thinking through is: why does having a system for something make it feel more salient?

Fireball and lightning bolt are good examples. They feel the same to me. But they feel very different from shooting an arrow. But in DND, you don’t get the sort of…open ended creativity of ars magica, which is sort of a unique strength of the magic system.

I haven’t quite been able to quite crack what I’m thinking/feeling but there’s been a lot of great discussion! It’s helped me think through a lot.

[Radmad]

Perhaps a sweet spot would be a complex character creation system with a simple resolution system.

I don’t think we should needlessly limit complexity to building a character. There are lots of way we can add (good) complexity to a system, and one of those ways is chargen that gives a mechanical weight to the narrative weight we inherently invest in a character.

Based on the anecdotes in this thread, it seems like the point that causes pain in complex games is the narrative being halted by difficulty to resolve actions. A clear way around this is as you stated, frontloading the complexity into the parts not related to conflict resolution. I think we could also offer a solution by creating an elegant resolution mechanic that can take wildly different inputs (from “I want to shoot the cyclop’s eye while on horseback” to “I want to tell my dying comrade his sacrifice will not be in vain and to put in a good word for me in the afterlife”). As much as I dislike the system, I think we can follow the philosophy that Shadowrun uses where each “class” has crazy different minigames of mechanics they rely on (hacking vs shooting vs magic etc.). I think where SR fails in this is the all those different systems do not create an easily readable output, so there is onus on the GM to learn and run 3 different layers of reality in a addition to crafting an actual encounter.

If you had a theoretical game where each different class requires plays some variation of a cup-and-ball game to use its abilities, but the GM only has to process one result (did you get the ball in the cup or not) that allows the GM to focus on doing their job and aid the narrative in moving even when mechanics are being used.

This design philosophy is open to cheating (how do I know player A is following the rules if I don’t really know them?) but I would say that in ttrpgs, where there is rarely a defined “win” condition, we need to design assuming cheating doesn’t exist.

[Radmad]

(so sorry for the double post)

Could it be that you are looking for identity expressed through mechanics? For example, if we had a game with two players, one playing a prince and the other a pauper; in a narrative game, they would have roughly equal “screen time” granted essentially because they are the protagonists of the story. But in a mechanical game, sure the prince has lots of money because they spent their abstract chargen points on it, but that means the pauper who spent those points on sneaking and street smarts can do things the prince can’t, and gets to express that mechanically, which can feel more real than a narrative structure in which they’re both rolling 2d6 be it buying an elephant or pickpocketing a guard?

[jco]

Yes…I do think that this is starting to get much closer to expressing what it is I think is going on!

The mechanics make those tradeoffs more real. They constraints them. The pauper isn’t just a couple 2d6 rolls away from doing whatever it is they want anyway…

[Airk]

I don’t think that’s it.

Otherwise, the Fate Complaint wouldn’t make sense.

The Prince has the Aspects “Prince of the Realm” and “Piles of Money” while the Pauper has “Street Rat” and “Fast on his feet”

The Prince can therefore do things that involve piles of money or his Princely influence, and the Pauper can do things that involve sneaking, outsmarting guards, and street smarts. The two characters are mechanically differentiated. It is expressed mechanically. One of them does some things better than the other. The problem is deeper than “mechanical differentiation” as a binary.

I am slightly annoyed by the “You’re just a 2d6 roll away from X” argument because that’s not simply not true. The prince can MAKE rolls doing money stuff because he has tons of money. The pauper…can’t. No rolling. Fullstop. No lucky 20 crits to make things happen. He just CAN’T say “I want to buy that bolt of silk”. and expect anything to happen (except maybe the NPC shopkeeper having him thrown out)

[Jesseabe]

A clear way around this is as you stated, frontloading the complexity into the parts not related to conflict resolution.

For what it’s worth, this is more or less how GURPS works. There’s a lot of complexity and optimization in charge, but conflict resolution is a single die roll. Depending on what systems within the game you’re using it can get more complex, but at heart that’s all it is

[Jacob_Wood]

The Prince can therefore do things that involve piles of money or his Princely influence, and the Pauper can do things that involve sneaking, outsmarting guards, and street smarts. The two characters are mechanically differentiated. It is expressed mechanically. One of them does some things better than the other. The problem is deeper than “mechanical differentiation” as a binary.

I think part of the disconnect we’re having is the differentiation between character diversity and resolution diversity. You’re talking about what the characters can do, while I’m talking about how the player resolves those actions.

In D&D, the Prince might have skills / proficiencies such as Diplomacy and Knowledge (Nobility), while the Popper would have skills such as Stealth and Sleight of Hand. Both would roll 1d20 + Skill to resolve checks related to their skills. They have a diversity of options, just like they do in Fate, but they resolve the use of those options with a similar die roll, just like they do in Fate. In this regard, D&D and Fate are not so different.

This just helped me realize something about myself. I prefer to start D&D games at 4th level or higher, because at low-levels they do seem very same-y. Everyone at low levels, even spellcasters, pretty much just roll 1d20+ for most their actions. It isn’t until they gain a few levels and build out a few more options that they start to pick up different resolution methods.

If the Prince were a 10th-level fighter, he’d have a whole bunch of options available to him in combat. He’d have different fighting styles, weapon specializations, a greater number of attacks per round, etc. He’d still feel a little bit like his younger, first-level self because he’d still be rolling that old d20. He’d have more choices as to when he used it and what he added or subtracted from it though.

As a 10th-level Rogue, the Popper might have a lot more going on for himself. He might now be able to make Stealth checks without even picking up the dice. He could use evasion to avoid all damage from a fireball, not just half of it. He’s still a character who relies heavily on the d20, but but his range of options does open a little.

Let’s add the Prince’s court jester, though. As a 10th-level Bard, he can do a lot on his turn without ever rolling a die. He can use Inspire Courage to bolster his allies, cast cure wounds to patch someone up, try to trick someone with an illusion, or take some someone out entirely with hideous laughter. He wouldn’t roll a d20 for any of that. Heck, of those four options, he’d actually only roll some d8s for his cure spell and the rest of the die rolling would be up to others. We’re starting to feel more diverse in terms of how his actions are resolved. It’s not just what he can do, but how the player at the table does it.

This doesn’t fully cover everything I wanted to say right now, but apparently security is coming to escort everyone out of the building because someone in / around the parking lot is behaving strangely. Time to go.

[Simon_Hibbs]

Interesting. For me the classic ‘everything works the same way’ system is HeroQuest. Everything is D20 versus D20, pitting ability ratings against each other. It’s fine, but very bland.

The classic mechanics heavy game is RuneQuest. I might post on that later.

To me AW particularly has a lot of mechanical variety, created by the activity specific pick lists you get in many of the moves, particularly playbook moves. Take social manipulation. The basic move for this is Seduce or Manipulate. It’s a fairly simple move, do you get what you want or not? But then look at the Skinner moves, Artful and Gracious, and Hypnotic. Wow! Those are some swanky ass social mechanics right there! Then there’s the Hocus move Frenzy. Also a sort of social move, but it does very different things.

What’s great about these moves, and AW in general, is it puts a huge amount of narrative control directly in the player’s hands. Rather than vaguely handing the consequences of success over to GM fiat, AW gives concrete, reliable, specific effects to the player directly relevant to what they are doing. Mechanically it’s very simple, but it’s fantastically tunable to a myriad of different effects.

Also different PBTA games make very different choices about how crunchy to go. AW itself is pretty crunchy around combat. The Harm economy is a finely tuned mini game. Fights usually consist of various uses of Go Aggro and Seize By Force, which in 2nd edition has four variants. But there’s a single combat move, three tactical moves, a hunter/hunted mini game made from a moves collection, a vehicle combat mini game moves set with a vehicle stats system. Those are all basic moves. So PBTA is very much capable of building embedded mini games.

Compare to DW which really only has 3 combat moves, two for melee (H&S and Defend) and another for ranged. That’s it aside for a few playbook moves.

[Jacob_Wood]

I love hearing that there are people doing some really creative stuff with PBTA games. Even with the above list though, I have to ask: what are you rolling when resolving those actions? 2d6 vs. a chart?

It sounds to me like that’s the concern people are raising. Not that there is a lack of choice in terms of moves, but in terms of the physicality of rolling dice and crunching numbers.

I don’t want to open a debate about role-playing vs. roll-playing, but I think this is adjacent to that discussion. Some people play RPGs because rolling dice is fun. When you reduce the amount and variety of dice you roll at the table, people who are in that camp are overall less satisfied with the system. That’s my current theory, at least.

Now, having those different mini-games and subsystems may be enough for some people. For others it might not. There’s never going to be a perfect system to satisfy everyone though, because we all have different wants and needs from our games.

Even throughout the course of this discussion, I’ve proposed two design concepts that seem, at least at first glance, to contradict one another: complex character creation with simple resolution mechanics, and resolution mechanics that mix things up a lot. I’m convinced there is a point at which those two styles can meet, but I’m not sure just where yet. A few games have been proposed which seem to satisfy both those styles, and I may need to look over them again.

[Jesseabe]

Some people play RPGs because rolling dice is fun. When you reduce the amount and variety of dice you roll at the table, people who are in that camp are overall less satisfied with the system.

It’s certainly true that there is something to the physicality of rolling different kinds of dice, and the tactile difference it makes in a game. But I have a hard time believing that this is the thing that leads to the super strong objections many people have to, for example, PbtA. Do those people also avoid using online for rollers? You lose the feeling of rolling different dice when all you have to do is click a macro or type a number. And while I know people who prefer physical dice, even in online play, not to the extent we are talking about.

[Tuirgin]

I don’t have anything to add to a theoretical discussion, even if I’m following it with interest. But I can attest to the following as a sort of “user profile”:

• I prefer low-complexity character creation:
  • Fully randomized like Freebooters 2e, Into the Odd, etc.
  • Backgrounds like Troika!
  • PbtA style playbooks
  • NOTE: My only experience with character creation more complex than the above is with D&D5e, which I feel forces me to make all kinds of decisions that I’m just not very interested in. I’ve never really enjoyed the fiddly customization bits in any type of game. Build complexity seems orthogonal to whatever it is that brings me pleasure in gaming.
• I prefer low-complexity resolution
  • I’ll admit that rolling a hand full of dice has a nice feeling to it, but I hate the lag it adds to the resolution. I just want to get on with it and not wait for people to perform the necessary math required to proceed. I prefer rolling only for big/hard questions.
  • The variety that’s been mentioned isn’t something I’ve ever thought about, so it’ll be interesting to see if this conversation ends up changing my perspective on rolling for things.
• I vastly prefer the physicality of rolling dice to using any type of online dice-roller:
  • It’s the tactile quality of it. Contrary to my work in technology, dice in hand is physical and “real”. Tangible.
  • Dice rollers are a convenience for online play, but completely loses the tactile magic of dice.
  • It’s absolutely nothing to do with the numbers for me. Not a thing. At all. If the dice could have non-numeric symbols to achieve resolution without further computation, I’d be perfectly happy with it.

To all the above, I’ll add that I’m not a “mathy” sort of person. I’m a thoroughly technical person: Linux user by preference since 2005, Unix sysadmin for a several years, highly technical support of medical middleware infrastructure, and now I write code every day for software testing automation frameworks. I like all of that work, but math has never been more than a necessary evil for me. I went to college for music and had I stayed I would have switched to literature. So as much of a tech geek as I am, at heart I’m really motivated by story, and language, and the beautiful and frustrating ambiguities and layers of meaning which human language is capable of creating.

The beautiful thing, I think, is that our chosen hobby is capable of sustaining all of these models of gaming. There can be some difficulty in finding other players who’s preferences are close enough to be compatible, but that’s manageable.

[Airk]

I too have a hard time accepting the “It’s because people like to roll lots of dice” explanation – did those same people avoid GURPS for that reason? Honestly, I feel like “games that use lots of dice (and aren’t D&D)” are a relative minority? I wouldn’t even really describe D&D as “using lots of dice” – yeah, occasionally you get to roll 10d6 for your fireball or something, but it’s by no means a normal event. It does use “all” the dice, though as often as not, most characters will only use a couple.

That said, @Jacob_Wood – I think I’m getting the idea you’re driving at there – Exception-based design, basically – but I’m still kindof confused. Because both Fate and PbtA games offer a fairly large amount of this. A PbtA character with several advances under their belt will have way more specialized tricks from their playbook than a starting one, and those are absolutely “exception based design” where you are able to do specific things in specific ways that other characters can’t. Sure, you’re rolling 2d6 still, but most of the stuff in D&D doesn’t change the resolution mechanic either – maybe a fighter gets more attacks or a special way to deal extra damage or a higher chance to hit, or a bard gets new funny songs, but all that is completely in line with how the game works normally. They’re just modifiers to how the existing mechanics work. The number of honest-to-goodness “this advance lets you do a thing that works completely mechanically differently from everything you’ve done so far” rules is small, and for good reason. As you point out, the Prince is mostly going to feel like his “younger” self but he’s got more modifiers. (Though in D&D, the expectation is usually that he’ll be facing things that expect those modifiers, so the actual impact of those changes is reduced). And I don’t really feel like citing the bard and his ability to do things without rolling dice supports this either – PbtA games offer advanced playbook moves that allow you to do things without rolling dice.

Similarly, in Fate, characters get Stunts which represent these kinds of “one off specialties” and apply modifiers under specific circumstances and by invoking existing mechanical processes.

So… I don’t know. I have to fall back to my earlier position that this is mostly a question of perception and degree, because if you are looking for cool “exceptions” to make your character feel unique, both Fate and PbtA provide them.

[dsummerfield]

Two existing systems of note.

The first is an AW hack for Ars Magica
Wizard World by Jared Hunt
https://fictioneers.net/games/wizard-world

And the second is a DW hack of Earthdawn
Fourth World by Lester Ward
https://divnull.com/blog/2019/seed-fourth-world-1-5/

In Fourth Word, the magic system particularly is of interest.

[Jacob_Wood]

@Airk Those are all great points. I’ll admit I am limited in my knowledge of PBTA. I do see what you’re saying about Fate characters. They are certainly diverse, but less fiddly than a D&D character.

My point all along though has been that both are diverse, just in a different way. It’s a different way which has been hard to put into words, apparently.

Each method seems to appeal to certain types of gamers. What specifically makes those methods appealing to any given person seems to lack a real common thread though. Perhaps the desire for a complex chargen system is independent of the desire for a complex resolution system. There are systems which couple and de-couple both.

Referring back to a previous point, and just to add one more data point to the set, I’m one of those people who really likes the tactile feeling of rolling dice. Even though I am blind and have trouble reading basically any dice that aren’t Fudge / Fate dice, I prefer rolling physical dice to using dice roller apps.

A few weeks ago I played D&D using a dice roller app on my phone because I didn’t want the others at the table to feel like they had to read out my dice for me. It was slower, and it felt a lot less satisfying. I was able to be independent though, and that was important to me.

I’m a big fan of systems which let me roll lots of dice, and I think that’s why I use a lot of re-roll mechanics in my Fudge games. Re-rolling lets me do more with the dice than just 4dF+ all the time. As I mentioned before though, I’m not a fan of having to do multiplication and division after the dice are rolled.

There have been several suggestions in this thread about games which seem like really interesting prospects. I definitely have some purchasing and reading to do.

[Airk]

It’s hard to have extensive knowledge of “PbtA” because there are so many of them and they are so different from each other, so I’m mostly operating in broad strokes myself.

I definitely think that the desire for a complex chargen scratches a different itch than complex resolution – I enjoyed the HECK out of making level 10ish D&D 4e characters. I would literally do it for fun even if I knew the character was never going to see play, but 4e is a game that a lot of people complained felt “samey” at the table. Though I think it’s a different kind of samey. In fact, I think people who use that term probably need to do a better job of describing what bugs them.

If you like rolling lots of dice, you probably want to play Mythender at least once. It’s a game that seeks to drive home the idea of being a god-killing epic hero by having you roll heaps of dice. The PDF version is free, so give it a look.

And lastly… I don’t know anyone who actually likes much multiplication and division in their games. I think there’s a reason we’ve seen a shift from “crits do double damage” to “Crits let you roll twice the dice.” I made a game that used division once (just tens, twos, and fives) and it was a nightmare at the table, so that idea went out the window.

[jco]

Partly because of this thread, decided to finally take the plunge and get an Ars Magica PBP off the ground. I’m curious how it’ll change my views of crunchier systems. Not gonna lie, I’m excited by wizard math…

[Rickard]

Cool, I just learned that you can select a text, and the click Reply to automatically quote a text.

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And I guess to push it one level further, what do you think are the tools games designers can use to give a system the sort of…investment and reward of a complex system, but while keeping it manageable in play?

What I like, in a complex system, is when there are a lot of choices but none are seemingly better than the other. There a complex system that have a lot of crunch (like D&D) and there are systems that are clunky (Shadowrun) without actually giving anything back. Some of the tabletop roleplaying games have huge ability lists that can be boiled down to “+2 to something”.

What I really like is when the components (mechanics, setting and participants alike) interacts with each other so a, not apparent, result emerges out of that. This kind of emergent complexity is usually what game designers mean when they talk about “depth”. Chess and Go are two pinnacle examples of emergent complexity.

I made a combat system once, that were on two pages, but with tons more depth than D&D, because all the components in the game interacted with each other. You basically had (!8=) roughly 7000 options every turn, but boiled down in a really simple way. I made this game mostly as a proof of concept, where I 1) wanted the players to talk strategic choices 2) I wanted to create a build-up 3) I wanted the players to learn the pattern of the opposition and adapt to it. I haven’t released the game because I want to remove all dice rolls too, but still keep it strategic.

Mark Rosewater, lead designer of Magic, talks a little about this:

The Ten Principles for Good Design, Part 1

The Ten Principles for Good Design, Part 2

Zen and the Art of Cycle Maintenance

The downside with emergent complexity is however that it’s hard to balance. Magic restricts and even ban cards.

Systems what I found had the attributes of emergent complexity:
• While the World Ends: you can powergame but you will end up with a great story.
• Don’t Rest Your Head: the subsystems interact with each other in a way to create loss aversion. The only system (have played Dread too) that gave me a fright.
• Fish tank: a scenario writing model that doesn’t really have an end, but just a result of all actions.

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Wow, this forum even supports UBB codes.

[nonsonogiucas]

Can I click on heart twice on this post?
I really love Extra Credit’s serie on game desing!

Twice!

[Proto]

I think this hits the nail on the head.

If I remember correctly, resolving an attack in exalted(at least the old edition) goes something like:
-Roll to attack
-Your target rolls to defend
-compare those to get a result
-Roll damage
-your target rolls armor
-compare those to get a result

It’s certainly more complex than D&Ds roll a d20 vs a flat number, then roll damage, but in practice it doesn’t feel any more interesting. Theres not really any depth there, it’s just heavy to resolve. So depth, if we want to call it that, while maybe related to complexity, it’s not 1:1 related.

I’ve been hacking away at a game in my spare time, and the core design goal is to add depth without adding complexity, or at least to create maximum depth (because depth is interesting and fun) by adding minimum complexity (because while I think some complexity is needed to add depth, it’s also the thing that adds clunkyness).

At least for me it’s been helpful to zoom in on what decisions the systems are asking of the players and why those decisions are interesting. I really enjoy playing Pathfinder and I love the complexity at character creation, but when I look back at a session and see it took us 3 hours to resolve a combat where the only real decision made was “Which thing do we focus fire first” I wonder if I can’t design something that’s both more deep and less complex.

[Paul_T]

Great post here from @Rickard, and lots of other good thoughts.

I’ll add another variable or consideration:

Back in the days of the Forge, there was this idea that one of the fundamental aspects of roleplaying, like other forms of play, was Exploration.

Exploration means, among other things, that you get to fool around with some toys - fictional characters, made-up places, magical items, traps, and so on, but also papers and dice and rules.

One of the things you could Explore was System, which includes many of the things we’re talking about here. A player who has a high interest in Exploring a particular System is going to really enjoy trying out the various features it has and looking for emergent outcomes.

If you happen to prioritize this, you’re going to enjoy playing when you can “explore” the various nooks and crannies of the game’s rules, trying out new ideas, new abilities, or new ways to resolve things. Think about the first time you use a rule for Seduction, or cast a spell you’ve never cast before (especially in Ars Magica!): there’s an excitement and a sense of discovery there.

Eventually, depending on the depth of a set of rules, you’re going to feel like you’ve “explored” all its secrets. That thrill is going to go away. For some, that means the game is no longer exciting - you’ve “solved” it, or at least sampled all of its options.

It’s not hard to see that a game which allows you to make a Fighter or a Thief as a character will grow less exciting faster - at least in character creation! - as one which gives you five or six options (at a similar level of distinction/difference). For many people, just “trying out” each of the classes is part of the fun of playing the game.

Of course, this applies in play, too. (I, for instance, disagree with the people above who want complex character creation but simple resolutions - it’s far more to my tastes to have simple and quick character creation but then a whole variety of emergent outcomes to explore later in play!)

One of the reasons D&D remains so popular is that you don’t have access to all of its “toys” when you start playing; the level progression, XP, and increasing power levels, and they way all that interacts with different threats and opponents, all contribute to the longevity of the game. You can always look forward to that new ability and fighting a different monster with more dangerous spells.

In practice, of course, we always have to balance familiarity and ease-of-use with the excitement of exploration; things we can remember easily and use fluently add a lot to our game, too, by removing clunkiness and allowing us to “master” those tools and put them to good use in creating the kind of fun we want.

It’s possible to have different forms of fun all over that spectrum.

It depends a lot on how much free time you have and how much attention you have to spare, as well. I enjoyed playing GURPS when I was teenager, with all its attendant quirks and design complexities. Nowadays, I’m hesitant to even spend the time to make a D&D5e character, since it seems like a waste of time unless I’m likely to play long-term.