What creates complexity in rpg mechanics?

[Balbinus]

Hi guys,

I posted this originally on rpg.net, as it was inspired by a comment in a thread about how many game character sheets tend to look like tax returns, which got me to thinking why that might be (since it is a comment I agree with by and large).

However, in many ways this may be a more fruitful site for this issue, as many people here are grappling practically precisely with these kinds of concerns and have practical experience in doing so.

One simple answer I came up with for the complexity of character sheets in many games is that in a lot of games, maybe most games, there are a hell of a lot of different numbers and formulae to be recorded.

So, I got to thinking, why is that? Why are characters typically so complex mechanically? OtE or Risus can describe a character in fairly evocative terms in three to four sentences, DnD or CoC need a full page with numbers and tick boxes.

First thing that struck me was that complexity derived in part from character differentiation. In settings where characters do very similar things everyone wants to shine, one way to do that is to have finely detailed mechanics which allow fine points of differentiations. OtE struggles with characters in very similar professions working together, four navy Seals get very similar to each other.

More important though I think is the emphasis on rpgs on the DnD model of advancement. If the model is for characters to start weak and grow in power over time, still the rpg default model, then you need mechanics which are sufficiently complex as to allow mechanical development over time. This in turn leads to complex character sheets.

So, it may be that the focus on the hero's journey model of character advancement is what gives rise to complexity. Take that away and games like OtE or the One Page rpgs from Deep7 become practical, characters are sufficiently defined to be told apart by and large and since advancement is minimal you don't need complex rules for developing them. Once you get into the Kitchen Boy to Mighty Prince saga though you need a ton more rules.

Thoughts? What gives rise to sheet complexity? To the tax form phenomenon?  And is it a bad thing in terms of the accessibility of rpgs in particular?  Does complexity hinder or help in terms of new player attraction and acclimatisation?

[GB Steve]

Skill bloat can easily lead to long character sheets but that's not necessarily the same things as complexity.

In GURPS 3rd Ed. there were different skills for just about everything, including such gems as the differentiation between Cryptography, Cryptology, Cryptanalysis, and Cyphering.

d20 games have a relatively stable skill list but it still takes up half a page and Call of Cthulhu also has plenty of needless differentiation between skills (SAN is what the game is really about, not the minutiae of job differences).

All three games also have extensive spell lists whereas HeroWars for example just has a high level descriptors.

However the mechanics of GURPS, CoC and d20 are relatively simple, once you've filled in your character sheet, possibly even more simple than HW.

And although describing Over the Edge character generation is simple, it is possibly harder to come up with a character than in 3e in which you just pick from a list of choices. OtE requires much more thought and player creativity.

As for newbies, I think OtE, with it's reliance on description is probably easier to use than 3e, if only because you define your character rather than having to understand a whole bunch of options that someone else has written. In any case 3e's not much of a beginners game given the woeful introduction in the PHB.

[komradebob]

Could it be as simple as this being the ugly downside of bricolage?

What I mean is, game systems often evolve, with lots of idea "bits" tacked on along the way, rather than the whole thing being either engineered of re-engineered to clean it up. A long existant game like D&D has accumulated a whole lot of "bits" along the way, the way a ship hull picks up barnacles.Those tack ons frequently come from multiple sources, too. We tend to think of D&D being the product of a few people. In fact, D&D is the result of multitudes adding their own little bits along the way. Every Dragon magazine contributor and module author added something to old D&D. 3.x was a scraping of the hull and some re-engineering for efficiency, but the barnacles inherently grow back.

[ewilen]

I think it could be related to the desire to perceive that things happen in the game world, as much as possible, without the active intervention of the players/GM. I.e., if you nail everything down beforehand, then when you need a detail it will be there for you, instead of your having to make it up on the spot. If the Exploration in RPGs only happened at a specific level of abstraction, good design AND play would consist of focusing tightly at this level and throwing out all irrelevant details. However, in roleplaying you can never tell when you're going to want to zoom in.

Historically I do think this interacts with the process described by komradebob--relatively simple systems work most of the time, but gaming groups or playtesters run into situations where their interest causes them to develop subsystems. These then are canonized and voila--a new box on the character sheet.

The need for character differentiation is also an important factor but it is related to the tendency in RPGs to see characters in terms of collections of abilities and skills who inhabit an environment outside of society. Define characters by their relationships to the rest of the world, and situate their activities in a social environment, and I think you will have less need for the tax forms.

I don't think advancement has quite as much to do with it. It's more a matter of advancement being a continuation of the character creation system; when the definition of character and distinction between characters relies on minute mechanical differences, the elaboration of character (advancement) will naturally emphasize the same factors. I do agree that advancement can be a factor in the sense that if you have more little things to improve on, you can "advance" more often without throwing the game out of kilter.

[John Kim]

Hi guys, One simple answer I came up with for the complexity of character sheets in many games is that in a lot of games, maybe most games, there are a hell of a lot of different numbers and formulae to be recorded.

So, I got to thinking, why is that? Why are characters typically so complex mechanically? OtE or Risus can describe a character in fairly evocative terms in three to four sentences, DnD or CoC need a full page with numbers and tick boxes.

Hmm.  Well, I'd first like to question the assumptions.  Your suggestion is that more stats equates to more complexity, but that's not inherently true.  It can often simplify to put additional numbers on the sheet, if that bypasses repeated calculations or judgement calls.  It simplified my Buffy game enormously to put in precalculated maneuvers on the character sheet, for example.  

In a freeform game like Risus, you're relying on frequent judgement calls to determine which traits apply.  This is itself complexity.  For example, suppose that a group of characters in Risus are trying to sneak into a fortress.  The characters try to apply different cliches, like "Cowboy 4", "Latin Lover 3", "Biker 5", "Kid 3", and "Policeman 4".  Now the GM has to judge separately the difficulty for each of those traits to do the same task.  (Note that Risus specifies that the same task might be Difficulty 10 for one cliche and Difficulty 15 for another cliche.)  If there is a lot of sneaking rolls in the game, it may potentially reduce complexity for everyone to write down a single "Sneak" number rather than repeating those judgements call each time it is called for.  

That said, I think there are a number of reasons for having many stats in a game.  As far as narrative goes, it seems to me to be a stylistic choice.  For example, one writer may take a whole page to describe the surroundings and weather in a book -- another may simply say "It was a summer day in the city" and move on to other things.  There is no simple answer for which of the two is appropriate.  A complex description may be harder to read and process, but there are times when that is good.  I think the same thing is true in games.  For example, I used a variant of RuneQuest for my Vinland campaign because I didn't want the PCs to be reducible to a handful of simple, evocative qualities.  I wanted them to at first glance to blend in together, producing a prosaic tone more like the Icelandic historical sagas like the Laxdaela Saga where characters are not evocative.  The system emphasized their sameness more than their distinctiveness, which I think was important for conveying the nature of life and society.  

[ewilen]

That's very interesting, John. Almost sounds like the RQ-type character sheets were a sleight-of-hand, to keep the players from getting into trouble making characters that are too outré. What if instead you'd used a simple system like The Fantasy Trip or the original D&D (but restricting everyone to fighters)?

[John Kim]

That's very interesting, John. Almost sounds like the RQ-type character sheets were a sleight-of-hand, to keep the players from getting into trouble making characters that are too outré. What if instead you'd used a simple system like The Fantasy Trip or the original D&D (but restricting everyone to fighters)?

To my feeling that would have been too restrictive.  The PCs were mechanically distinct from each other, but the differences were subtle -- and importantly it was a matter of degree rather than kind.  So everyone had some level of lawspeaking, but Poul as an older and richer man was more skilled at it.  I strongly wanted to avoid classes and similar type distinctions, to emphasize the relative flatness of the societies. 

This was highlighted in particular for the case of Thorgerd.  So whereas the men could reasonably be classed as all Fighters, that was not true of the women.  Silksif and Lofthaena would not have been Fighters -- they would have been Magic-Users or Clerics (or more likely a new class that I designed for Seidhr).  However, Thorgerd successfully disguised herself as a man and accomplished revenge for her brother -- but then did marry and settle down to a degree.  In a system like D&D, this would be a special process -- whereas in my modified RuneQuest this was shown as a shift of emphasis rather than a change in kind. 

[Josh Roby]

What gives rise to sheet complexity? To the tax form phenomenon?  And is it a bad thing in terms of the accessibility of rpgs in particular?  Does complexity hinder or help in terms of new player attraction and acclimatisation?

Okay, first off, the tax form character sheet may not be as complex as you think it is.  That is, the form itself is complex, but the character encoded onto the form is not.  Take a look at your typical World of Darkness character sheet.  All sorts of checkboxes!  But once you fill it in, most of those checkboxes are left blank -- no information there, no addition to complexity.  If the sheet tries to list off a number of options, not all of which will be used for each character, then you're talking about sheet complexity rather than character complexity.

Is it a bad thing?  No.  Heavens, no.  Because a whole lot of gamers really like complexity.  They like long lists of options, four different skills in GURPS for 'working with codes', they like a dozen different ways to kick people (GURPS again), and different dependencies between attributes and derived attributes.  They are bits and pieces to fiddle with, and gamers like to fiddle.

Buuuuut when you get to new player attraction, the message is the exact opposite.  A GURPS or Rolemaster sheet is incredibly intimidating to an outsider.  It has exactly zero appeal to the people in the world who don't like to 'fiddle'.  Whether or not this is a 'problem' is entirely dependent on your target market.  If you want to expand beyond 'typical gamers' then you will need to think how the character sheet -- the bit of system-made-manifest that the players will interact with with the greatest frequency -- is going to come across to potential players.

For my projects, I have a card-based 'character sheet' in that you build your dynastic family out of cards which is meant to be challenging, a WoD-style tick-box that should be easy-access for FLFS's emphasis on collaborative storytelling, and I want to do a stupidly complex fantasy heartbreaker after I'm done with FLFS.

[ewilen]

John,

I see what you're saying (and the BRP/RQ approach is very near and dear to me). However, I think this has to do with the way that detail and character differentiation interact with your goal of flatness. "Flatness" leads to a lot of overlap in the details which are tracked, and moreover, the details which are important. But the importance is relative, so if anything is important to any character, it has to be tracked for all of them. Thus the extensive list of skills.

In some other "unflat" game, what's important to one character may be completely irrelevant to another, so there's no need to track it on everyone's sheet.

On the other hand, if you didn't need the detail and the mechanical differentiation, you could still have flatness without an extensive list of skills.

So I would conclude that, yes, the desire for characters to be comparable has a tendency to cause sheet-bloat, along with the desire for differentiation and detail.

[LogicaLunatic]

Thoughts? What gives rise to sheet complexity? To the tax form phenomenon?  And is it a bad thing in terms of the accessibility of rpgs in particular?  Does complexity hinder or help in terms of new player attraction and acclimatisation?

In every single game I've ever played or run, it's happened at least once that a player attempts to do something that there was no rule for.  That's fine if the outcome has no effect on the story/plot but if it does, some sort of decision has to be made based on some sort of criteria.  This can make gameplay extremely cumbersome.

In an attempt to make game play less complex, the character sheets must be more complex.

[ragnar]

In every single game I've ever played or run, it's happened at least once that a player attempts to do something that there was no rule for.  That's fine if the outcome has no effect on the story/plot but if it does, some sort of decision has to be made based on some sort of criteria.  This can make gameplay extremely cumbersome.

That would only apply if you're uncomfortable making such calls on the fly. I would even argue that having rules that cover most everything and actually using them is more cumbersom as the GM is not likely to know them all by heart and will need to look up rarely used rules. How many here have used the digging rules in GURPS or know how they work (or ever played a session where digging rules would have come in handy for that matter). If a character needs to dig a hole in a hurry I would prefer to wing it (roll for ST-2), rather than have the GM pick up the rule book and start reading some obscure rules.

Tax return forms are very limiting. There are specified fields that are supposed to be used in a specific manner. You can't use your tax return form to explain what a wonderful year you've had emotinally. The same thing I find to be true with many tax form like character sheets and complex character generation rules. I may have a clear idea what my character should be like, but the system simply doesn't let me make that kind of character. At the same time it also encourages players to simply pick traits and skills from a list, often resulting in rather weird combinations. Rather than thinking of the character as a real and believable person, with goals, problems, depth and a history of his or her own.

[Nogusielkt]

I may have a clear idea what my character should be like, but the system simply doesn't let me make that kind of character. At the same time it also encourages players to simply pick traits and skills from a list, often resulting in rather weird combinations. Rather than thinking of the character as a real and believable person, with goals, problems, depth and a history of his or her own.

The choice of how you make your character is generally up to you.  Whether you invision a character first and pick his stats or pick his stats then invision your character is up to you.  The same process happens with crpg development.  You can make the characters first or the stories first and fit the other to your decision.  Both have benefits and both have flaws.  Neither is wrong.  I prefer to pick my stats first, so I have a frame of mind for my character, instead of basing him upon a cliche.  However, a frequently occuring problem with trait lists is that some choices are very dominating.  I've never seen a warrior skip weapon focus and I've never seen a warrior pick the stealthy feat (although I'm sure someone has).  There really isn't enough variety in what has been offered.

I think what creates complexity is anything you can't easily remember.  It is, however, hard to tag in general.  I couldn't follow the storyline of FFT because of the names and obscure references.  I'd deem it complex.  If the game came with a sheet that had all nations/states with their starting relationships and names of important people in them... I wouldn't have a problem.  That's exactly what a character sheet does (as others have stated).  However, this is amplified by the structure and format of the sheet.  Spacing and placement are almost as important as content.

It seems a lot of you answered the "why" and not "what".