Game Design Sins

[Acmegamer]

The overton window of game crunchiness has shifted dramatially in recent years towards the light.

I think it's a rubberband effect due to DnD 3e and Pathfinder 1e. I expect it start to pull back the other way a bit more.

 

[Baulderstone]

I think it's a rubberband effect due to DnD 3e and Pathfinder 1e. I expect it start to pull back the other way a bit more.

I'd say we are at a good balance. WFRP 4E, crunchy as it is, is killing it on the bestseller charts and EZ D6 is doing fine right next to it.

 

[Mankcam]

The overton window of game crunchiness has shifted dramatially in recent years towards the light.

Yes certainly, and my tastes have gone that way as well, especially if wanting to play a rollicking pulpy adventure game, or something with a lighter tone.

Sometimes rules-lite just allows me to focus on the narrative much more, whereas other times it actually adds to the light flavour of the game I’m running or playing.

However I feel some genres and atmospheres don’t portray well with rules-lite systems, especially if aiming for a serious or visceral tone - that’s where I see medium-crunch systems like BRP/Mythras or WFRP shining.

I don’t like a system that is overly crunchy and complicated, but BRP/Mythras and WFRP hit the spot for my gritty games.

 

[thebigh]

It's funny; my tastes have gone in almost the opposite direction.

For me, it's generally easier to start with a crunchy system and then scale the crunch down if it's too much for peoples' tastes. But if you start with a rules-light system and the players and GM find there's just not enough meat on the bones, then you're stuck- there's no real way to add extra crunch later.

I also find some of the very rules-light systems (RISUS for example) to be way too twee and syrupy for me.

 

[Sharrow]

Yes certainly, and my tastes have gone there as well, especially if wanting to play a rollicking pulpy adventure game, or something with a IIg

However I feel some genres and tones don’t portray well with rules-lite systems, especially if aiming for a serious or visceral tone - that’s where I see medium-crunch systems like BRP/Mythras or WFRP shining.

I don’t like a system that is overly crunchy and complicated, but BRP/Mythras and WFRP hit the spot for my gritty games.

I see Mythras mentioned as 'medium' crunch, and I'm like "WTF???" It's quite a crunchy game, and expects a reasonable amount of system mastery from its players, in my opinion. I will grant that the massive exception-based tomes like D&D3.x and Pathfinder have pushed the 'high crunch' end the spectrum out a fair bit, but I don't think that makes crunchy games less crunchy, it just extends the range.

 

[Agemegos]

However I feel some genres and tones don’t portray well with rules-lite systems, especially if aiming for a serious or visceral tone - that’s where I see medium-crunch systems like BRP/Mythras or WFRP shining.

I don’t like a system that is overly crunchy and complicated, but BRP/Mythras and WFRP hit the spot for my gritty games.

Right! As Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said it “just because I say I like sea-bathing doesn’t mean I want to be pickled in brine”.

For me, it's generally easier to start with a crunchy system and then scale the crunch down if it's too much for peoples' tastes. But if you start with a rules-light system and the players and GM find there's just not enough meat on the bones, then you're stuck- there's no real way to add extra crunch later.

As my friend Tonio Loewald put it “Anyone can read rules as guidelines, but it takes skill and sustained effort to turn guidelines into rules that work”.

 

[ffilz]

I find it hard to define a scale of crunchiness. I like games with a decent number of widgets to play with, i.e. some crunch. But how crunchy is this game or that game? I have a hard time saying that's more or less crunch. Add to that crunch that's optional, either totally left out for a given game group, or optional as to when you do or don't use it. For example, I just ran a RuneQuest encounter without using Strike Ranks. Nothing was critical on exactly when things happened, so I winged it.

And how do things like spells contribute to crunch? A system with a huge number of spells with lots of detail and idiosyncrasies of how they work might appear more crunchy to some, while others who don't engage with the spells, or engage with only a handful might see it as less crunchy. I would say Cold Iron is crunchier that AD&D, yet I think it's spell list is actually simpler, so maybe it's actually less crunchy.

 

[Acmegamer]

 

[Mankcam]

My adolescent and young adult years were the 1980s/1990s, and in rpgs I saw the hobby move from flimsy-lite systems all the way through to heavy-crunch systems

During that time I remember WFRP and BRP games being perceived as mid-crunch, as there were a lot more rules-intensive games on the market

These days I guess the categories may be slightly different- instead of ‘lite, medium, and heavy crunch’, probably more ‘Rules-Lite, Straightforward, and Crunchy’ - similar idea but not mapping directly across

But yeah, all this is hard to categorically pin down, we just hand-wave these terms as we see fit.

 

[TristramEvans]

That might be a fun game for the Pub - come up with a scale of Crunch, then populate it with RPGs, from The Window to Phoenix Command

 

[Sharrow]

My adolescent and young adult years were the 1980s/1990s, and in rpgs I saw the hobby move from flimsy-lite systems all the way through to heavy-crunch systems

During that time I remember WFRP and BRP games being perceived as mid-crunch, as there were a lot more rules-intensive games on the market

BRP games like RQ (even RQ3, probably the heaviest of the BRP games) or CoC, etc. were far less heavy and crunchy than Mythras, which is over 300 pages of fairly dense rules and other crunch. You didn't have to know a whole lot about how the system worked to be reasonably effective in a fight in CoC, but in Mythras you really want to know how all those options you can apply when you get a good result work, so there's an expectation of system mastery there that while it's not in and of itself crunchy, does make the game feel more crunchy because it strongly encourages the players to engage with the system. Hence why I reckon that Mythras and similar BRP games are crunchy (just as GURPS is crunchy).

I don't rate these games as being near as crunchy as the d20 games with their exception-based rules. You could pretend the older (pre-D&D3) D&D games weren't that crunchy if you weren't the GM and didn't play a spell caster, but even that's gone since D&D3, because feats and skills work like spells in that they add rules or change base rules for the character that has them - hence 'exception based'. The core game might be simple (though even that has fairly involved combat rules in most games), but it rapidly becomes anything but because of all the special rules, each fairly minor by itself, but adding up rapidly as they interacted with each other and as the number in play increases.

 

[Brock Savage]

I've always felt that Paranoia worked best when it was played 'straight'. Let the insanity of the situation, and the struggles of the players to avoid their characters' doom (often at the hands of other players) bring the comedy (and horror).

Terry Gilliam's Brazil sets the perfect tone for a straight game of Paranoia.

 

[Simlasa]

BRP games like RQ (even RQ3, probably the heaviest of the BRP games) or CoC, etc. were far less heavy and crunchy than Mythras, which is over 300 pages of fairly dense rules and other crunch.

Mythras is a toolkit though... lots of options to make it work the way you want it to... so yeah, it will have more pages.
Meanwhile, Exalted got a 3rd edition relatively recently...

 

[Mankcam]

BRP games like RQ (even RQ3, probably the heaviest of the BRP games) or CoC, etc. were far less heavy and crunchy than Mythras, which is over 300 pages of fairly dense rules and other crunch. You didn't have to know a whole lot about how the system worked to be reasonably effective in a fight in CoC, but in Mythras you really want to know how all those options you can apply when you get a good result work, so there's an expectation of system mastery there that while it's not in and of itself crunchy, does make the game feel more crunchy because it strongly encourages the players to engage with the system. Hence why I reckon that Mythras and similar BRP games are crunchy (just as GURPS is crunchy).

I don't rate these games as being near as crunchy as the d20 games with their exception-based rules. You could pretend the older (pre-D&D3) D&D games weren't that crunchy if you weren't the GM and didn't play a spell caster, but even that's gone since D&D3, because feats and skills work like spells in that they add rules or change base rules for the character that has them - hence 'exception based'. The core game might be simple (though even that has fairly involved combat rules in most games), but it rapidly becomes anything but because of all the special rules, each fairly minor by itself, but adding up rapidly as they interacted with each other and as the number in play increases.

Yep I gotcha. you clarified this well - I'm on the same page now

 

[zanshin]

That might be a fun game for the Pub - come up with a scale of Crunch, then populate it with RPGs, from The Window to Phoenix Command

So, why are we waiting for this to happen ? ;)

 

[TristramEvans]

So, why are we waiting for this to happen ? ;)

I have pneumonia, so my engagement level is minimum at the moment

 

[BedrockBrendan]

I have pneumonia, so my engagement level is minimum at the moment

Take care. My wife seems to get that every few years and definitely something you want to treat quickly

 

[sharps54]

You would also have to define crunch, is it the number of individual steps taken to do something? Is it like porn and just subjective so the people get to shit on games? Either can be valid but it would help to decide when setting the scale up.

 

[Acmegamer]

That might be a fun game for the Pub - come up with a scale of Crunch, then populate it with RPGs, from The Window to Phoenix Command

I just sort of went into a mental state of fugue when I saw the words "Phoenix Command" above. My brain just basically went into neutral. lol. Thanks for that.

 

[TJS]

I find it hard to define a scale of crunchiness. I like games with a decent number of widgets to play with, i.e. some crunch. But how crunchy is this game or that game? I have a hard time saying that's more or less crunch. Add to that crunch that's optional, either totally left out for a given game group, or optional as to when you do or don't use it. For example, I just ran a RuneQuest encounter without using Strike Ranks. Nothing was critical on exactly when things happened, so I winged it.

And how do things like spells contribute to crunch? A system with a huge number of spells with lots of detail and idiosyncrasies of how they work might appear more crunchy to some, while others who don't engage with the spells, or engage with only a handful might see it as less crunchy. I would say Cold Iron is crunchier that AD&D, yet I think it's spell list is actually simpler, so maybe it's actually less crunchy.

If it’s a D&D edition, I think it's usually one more step to the crunchy side then people admit it is - the general assumption being that people already know D&D but that other games are a chore to learn.

So a game that doesn't want to be perceived as more difficult to learn than the current edition of D&D actually needs to somewhat less crunchy.

 

[Brock Savage]

To keep things simple it's probably best to consider crunchiness from the GM side as the cognitive workload for players can vary.

 

[TJS]

My personal feeling is that I wouldn't call any game light if the players need to reference the book during play to look up powers/abilities/spells etc.

 

[Baulderstone]

One factor in perceived crunchiness is the amount of rules that players must learn for the game to work. As an example, I ran both GURPS and Ars Magica 2E back in the early '90s. Looking purely at the rules, GURPS was the crunchier of the two. However, for a campaign of Ars Magica needs all the players to fully understand the spell, laboratory and covenant rules. As a GURPS GM, I could get by with just telling casual players what they needed to roll. That just wasn't possible with Ars Magica.

 

[Baragei]

One factor in perceived crunchiness is the amount of rules that players must learn for the game to work. As an example, I ran both GURPS and Ars Magica 2E back in the early '90s. Looking purely at the rules, GURPS was the crunchier of the two. However, for a campaign of Ars Magica needs all the players to fully understand the spell, laboratory and covenant rules. As a GURPS GM, I could get by with just telling casual players what they needed to roll. That just wasn't possible with Ars Magica.

Ars Magica is ..flunchy? Cruffy?

 

[TristramEvans]

I feel like "crunch" has a few different dimensions beyond just "amount of rules", for example:

• As Adam pointed out, the players "buy-in" - as in how much of the system they need to learn in order to (effectively) play the game as intended
• How much of the rules-set is exception-based (eg a system with a base mechanic where most rues are variations of this base is going to be percieved as less crunchy in play than a game where many of the rules are exceptions to the base mechanic, or there is no base mechaic but multple systems to deal with different circumstances
• Whether the rules are prescriptive or proscriptive (ie how much the rules determine what happens in play vs how much the rules are a reaction to what happens in play, in other words are the rules the chicken or the egg)

 

[PolarBlues]

You can evaluate crunch in all sorts of ways including:

• Initial learning for GM and for players / number of session before you get the "hang of it".
• Number of subsystems and exceptions - even with a modular system you still need to understand what to include and not
• Effort required to create a character / NPC / critter
• Required record keeping during play, especially for the GM
• Number of steps to resolve an action
• Complexity of (abstract) concepts or calculations
• Degree to which player need deep understanding of the setting to make sensible choices during play

I am quite sure there are other factors to include.

 

[Baulderstone]

• How much of the rules-set is exception-based (eg a system with a base mechanic where most rues are variations of this base is going to be percieved as less crunchy in play than a game where many of the rules are exceptions to the base mechanic, or there is no base mechaic but multple systems to deal with different circumstances
• Whether the rules are prescriptive or proscriptive (ie how much the rules determine what happens in play vs how much the rules are a reaction to what happens in play, in other words are the rules the chicken or the egg)

Exception-based design is interesting from a perceived-crunch perspective. Because so many of the rules are hidden away in feat, spell, and skill descriptions, and group can get started on a game easily enough but soon get buried as character abilities pile up.

And yes, I am talking about my experience running D&D 3E.

 

[ffilz]

Partially because of all of these factors, crunchiness ends up being subjective because it depends first on how much a given person needs to engage any of the factors, and second, how they personally perceive each factor. Cold Iron might come off as extremely crunchy if someone sees some of the mathematical formulas, however, my automated spreadsheet character sheet calculates these formulas for the most common cases (and I can add some of the less common cases if they become relevant). Even back in college, if someone really needed to make one of the calculations, I was happy to do it. Most of the time they could be hand waved away, or use the a short cut (for example, the time for mana points to double is constant, with that, we can make a good enough estimate).

 

[thebigh]

Ars Magica is statistics overload. I like the game but it sure does demand a lot of the players. Although the list of numbers you have to write down on your character sheet (attributes, ability scores, Parma, skill in the various magical forms and techniques) is similar to what you have in GURPS, they always seem to interact with each other in complicated ways that continually send the GM and players frantically flipping through the rule book.

In GURPS, though the list of stuff you have is just as long, it's conceptually simpler: just roll 3d6 and compare it with your skill, with maybe a bonus or penalty if the situation is easy or difficult.

 

[Baulderstone]

Ars Magica is statistics overload. I like the game but it sure does demand a lot of the players. Although the list of numbers you have to write down on your character sheet (attributes, ability scores, Parma, skill in the various magical forms and techniques) is similar to what you have in GURPS, they always seem to interact with each other in complicated ways that continually send the GM and players frantically flipping through the rule book.

I had a good time with when I had he right group, but it requires complete player buy-in.

 

[TristramEvans]

Partially because of all of these factors, crunchiness ends up being subjective because it depends first on how much a given person needs to engage any of the factors, and second, how they personally perceive each factor. Cold Iron might come off as extremely crunchy if someone sees some of the mathematical formulas, however, my automated spreadsheet character sheet calculates these formulas for the most common cases (and I can add some of the less common cases if they become relevant). Even back in college, if someone really needed to make one of the calculations, I was happy to do it. Most of the time they could be hand waved away, or use the a short cut (for example, the time for mana points to double is constant, with that, we can make a good enough estimate).

I'm going to have to disagree. Whether a game "runs smoothly" or not is irrelevant to how crunchy the system is. Rolemaster runs exceptionally swiftly with a knowlegeable GM, with a great degree of the rules calculations front-loaded in character creation & advancement. That isn't an argumet againt the game being crunchy, as "crunchy" is not a description of how the game plays It's a description of the structure surrounding/underpinnig the game, and this can be objectivelly , if not measured (because the scale is certainly subjective, or at least informal) than evaluated and percieved.

Ghostbusters is objectivelly less crunchy than Star Wars just as Star Wars is objectivelly less crunchy than WoTC D&D. Anyone attmpting to debate that could only do so by redefining "crunch", and thus they are not participating in the same conversation.

The issue is not that the scale is objective, it's only that people need to reach a consensus on the factors inorming the scale. Once those are identified, it's nothing besides a straightforward exercize in categorization.

 

[Agemegos]

In GURPS, though the list of stuff you have is just as long, it's conceptually simpler: just roll 3d6 and compare it with your skill, with maybe a bonus or penalty if the situation is easy or difficult.

GURPS is simple until you have to generate a character.

Or choose an option in combat. Or determine the effect of a successful attack.

 

[TristramEvans]

GURPS is simple until you have to generate a character.

Or choose an option in combat. Or determine the effect of a successful attack.

or build a vehicle. OMFG

 

[Agemegos]

or build a vehicle. OMFG

True, but that’s easier to postpone than character generation.

 

[thebigh]

None of that stuff is mandatory the way it is in other high-crunch systems. You can quite easily get by without half the combat maneuvers, remove hit locations altogether, etc. I played in a zombie apocalypse game a few years ago where we ignored hit locations except for head shots on zoms, which necessarily was the only reliable way to kill them, and even that selectiveness worked fine. This is the sort of thing I was talking about earlier about starting with something that's crunchier than what you want and then paring it down to what your players like and your GM can handle.

 

[Mankcam]

I wonder where WFRP 4E fits on the 'crunch scale'?
I think it varies dramatically whether you are a GM or a player-character.

WFRP 4E is clearly a crunchy little beast, although alot of this comes from an lengthy character generation process, and a few in-game dials the GM needs to keep an eye on during game play, such as Advantage, Conditions, etc. The crunch-factor for the GM is definately mid to heavy, more on the side of heavy.

However the gameplay from a player-character point of view can be pretty light, not much different from D&D 5E:

• To perform an action, the players just roll a percentile dice and check it against their core Characteristics (just like D&D's core mechanic of rolling D20 for actions).
• If they have a relevant skill, then that Skill value supercedes their Characteristic value (just like Profficiency Bonus in D&D 5E).
• If successful, they count what success levels the action is achieved at, and let the GM know their rolled result and their success levels.

The GM really does the rest, so I tend to find that at the gaming table the players don't feel much of the crunch, they don't even roll damage dice, everything is more top-loaded in the GM chair.

I am actually toying with making separate 'gameplay character sheets' for WFRP 4E which present the character sheet infrmation parsed down to something similar to the NPC stat blocks, not much more than index-card sized. I would have this be the character sheet that players use during the in-game session (with their full standard character sheets in a folder underneath this). This would really make it easier for many players during a session, and reduce the perceived 'crunch-threat' of playing WFRP for players who are used to D&D 5E.

I think WFRP 4E's biggest flaws for me is that the official character sheets just look a bit too crunchy for their own good, and the game-point economy of Fate/Fortune and Resilience/Resolve Points is really clumsy - they should be parsed back to the single Fate Points of WFRP 2E.
Also, as Baulderstone suggested, some Condition Cards and whatnot would not go astray, in order to lessen the burden at the GM Hub.

Similar to Mythras in many ways, I really don't get the concern about the level of crunch that is sometimes perceived with WFRP.
WFRP 4E is definately a long way from being a rules-lite rpg, but it isn't a long way from our current rpg industry standard (D&D 5E)

 

[Agemegos]

None of that stuff is mandatory the way it is in other high-crunch systems.

Character generation is.

As for cutting down the crunch in GURPS, that is a daunting task for a GM without pretty fair knowledge of what crunch there is and what it does. And it seems to me that you have to do a lot of it before young players can generate characters.

 

[Sharrow]

or build a vehicle. OMFG

If you decide to 'build' it, which most games don't give you the option of doing. If you do what you'd do in most games (and it's actually what GURPS generally thinks you should do in 4e) and just describe the thing, it's pretty simple as most of the description will be real-world stats in real-world (well, US customary) measures.

As these things go Spaceships' design system is about average, but has really good scaling up and down, so making little one-man fighters and huge battlestations are equally involved. I think the design part of it is genius. Then you run into the combat part, if you're into spaceship battles, and that's... well, it's GURPS, and combat isn't the 'light' part of the game (though at least the damage rules are reasonable simple, so using them to aid in making stuff up is easy).

None of that stuff is mandatory the way it is in other high-crunch systems. You can quite easily get by without half the combat maneuvers, remove hit locations altogether, etc. I played in a zombie apocalypse game a few years ago where we ignored hit locations except for head shots on zoms, which necessarily was the only reliable way to kill them, and even that selectiveness worked fine. This is the sort of thing I was talking about earlier about starting with something that's crunchier than what you want and then paring it down to what your players like and your GM can handle.

The problem is that somebody has to gain enough system mastery to be able to do this. These days a lot of people seem averse to putting in that much time and effort. I suspect this has always been the case, but these days there are an absolutely bewildering range of alternatives readily available, both old and new, so there's far less need to take one of the game you have that's not too far off what you want and start reading and hacking.

Now if only one of those games hit exactly what I want in a game...

 

[TristramEvans]

If you decide to 'build' it, which most games don't give you the option of doing. If you do what you'd do in most games (and it's actually what GURPS generally thinks you should do in 4e) and just describe the thing, it's pretty simple as most of the description will be real-world stats in real-world (well, US customary) measures.

I'm referring to this...

 

[Sharrow]

Oh, I knew what you were most likely referring to. However, that's for an edition that hasn't been current for almost twenty years now.

Here's what High-Tech for GURPS 4e has for a couple of flying boats:


Note how little is game mechanics and stats.

EDIT: I'm not disagreeing about the complexity of the VE2 rules, BTW. I'm just arguing that they aren't expected these days.