When is highly technical crunch desirable?

[Pauly]

I’ll leave aside the people who think all the crunch all the time and no crunchiness for me breakfast, lunch or dinner for this thread. Generally there has been a movement in TTGs in general, not just TTRPGs, from more crunch to less crunch over the last 30 years or so. So if we accept the proposition that at least a little bit of crunch is good for our gaming diet; when specifically is technical crunch desirable in a TTRPG?

For me the one time I desire technical crunch is when the core conceit of the game is dueling of one form or another. By this all the main characters will be proficient in one form of combat only and the main form of fighting is one on one engagements. If it is 5 -v- 5 the nature of combat is to split into 5 different 1 -v-1 combats.
Some examples of genres that this approach works in are 17th century swordfighting (3 Musketeers/Edo era Samurai), early 20th century fighterplane combat, sci-fi mecha combat.

If I’m a duelist I want small differences in equipment to matter. I want different training schools/techniques to matter. I want a combat to have ebb and flow. I want small details in positioning to matter. I want there to be many different paths to success. In other words if I have to fight a series of duels against Athos, Aramis, Porthis and D’Artagnan I want each fight to be significantly different.

I don’t want to have to deal with wildly disparate weapons/effects. And if they are present I want those to be very simplified. I don’t want characters to be able to master all the techniques. I don’t want for there to be a small number of effective moves that characters just rinse and repeat.

However if this degree of combat complexity is brought into a wider system such as D&D then it will fail because too many classes will have too many options for this approach to work in a TTRPG. A CRPG may handle it because computers can sort and track the data and handle the maths much faster than people can.

[ezekielraiden]

Crunch is valuable when it creates design space that is worth engaging with, and which enhances the intended experience of play.

Unfortunately, I don't think you're going to get an answer any less vague than that, because every instance always has to be evaluated in the context of the game it appears in. It's a bit like asking when it's desirable to have high technical specificity in programming languages. You can't speak about such specificity in a totally absolute generic, because every language is always a particular implementation, and specificity on some particular ground is too context-dependent to rate generically.

You might be able to work through various examples, if people are willing to suggest cases where they feel "highly technical crunch" worked well, and try to get an intuitive sense of what it means for technical crunch to be "worth engaging with"/something that "enhances the intended experience," but I honestly don't believe you'll be able to get an abstract principle out of it. It's just too contextual.

[LibraryOgre]

I don't mind functional crunch on background things. For example, if a character is making a magic item, or special invention, or something that happens primarily off-screen, some crunch can make for a fun and nuanced system. Domain rules work well for things like this, too.

If it has to be done RIGHT NOW, at the table? Give me smooth.

[Pex]

Depends on the individual.

Some are increasing slope - their sense of fun is directly proportional to the amount of crunch.

Some are decreasing slope - their sense of fun is inversely proportional to the amount of crunch.

Some are upside down parabolic - their sense of fun is at its lowest at both ends of very little and a lot of crunch, preferring the sweet spot vertex of the middle.

[Calthropstu]

When destroying motherboards. That's the best time for technical crunch. Hope this helps!

[Telok]

Technical and detailed rule spaces are desirable when they produce better game experiences than simplified rule spaces. If it is given the that both sets are equally well developed for, and applied to the rules space.

The definitions of the discrete area covered by a set of rules, what constitutes a better game experience, and the metrics of the design & application, are the important bits.

My personal preference is to define a rule space as a reasonably discrete area of a game where a set of related rules are used. So "skills", "social", "exploration", "vehicles", "npcs", "character creation", are all valid rule spaces even though some parts of any particular space may overlap with another. The better game experience is one of those things that is hard to define the specifics of for getting it written down, but in play it's fairly obvious. Mostly it's those times when play stops or goes sour because the rules being used didn't work or produced results that pretty much nobody liked. Often those rule spaces are the cause of the most disagreement, house rules, and attempts at homebrew fixes.

I consider the design and application of rules sort of part of the rules themselves. If people can't get what the rules should do and how they are supposed to help, or if they're just frequently misused to the point it degrades the game experience, then you probably aren't talking about crunchy vs. simple. You probably just have an area with bad rules or with such bad presentation that the design and quality of the rules doesn't matter.

[Xervous]

Note that there is broad crunch and deep crunch. Broad being eleven different methods for defending against an attack (but a given character might not have access to them). Deep being a small spreadsheet’s worth of conditional modifiers to the resolution.

Both are acceptable in character creation, but deep crunch is a potential slowdown on actual play. Having broad but not deep crunch in actions presents a burden of knowledge hazard, but once known their resolution methods are all rather simple.

[King of Nowhere]

it highly depends on the individual player. there's no other possible answer.

the reason recent years are favoring less crunch is that more casual players are approaching the hobby, as opposed to the hardcore nerds of the first time. so the game has become more noob-friendly to cater to new players with different tastes. meanwhile, the hardcore nerds did not change their tastes, and they dislike the current situation - many of them are still playing 3.x with all its complexity because they like that.

[Quertus]

Well, it varies by system.

Dealing with highly technical crunch slows the pace. That's appropriate for areas where you want the pace slowed.

In Battletech, the pace slowed during the game with the fiddly "medium range is 6… two woods is 8, I walked in 9, pulse is 7. This makes the players focus on gaining those fiddly numbers. And it's rife with crunch (like hundred of choices for weapons and ammo) when picking / building mechs. Plus resource management, in the form of heat, ammo, and maybe oddball things, like "time" for repairs.

But are cool tables of hundreds of weapons appropriate for every game? Probably not? (I'm biased, and would probably enjoy them in any game, but I'm willing to assume that they wouldn't be *as* valuable in… a super hero game, say.

But I think that this really covers the main points:



Crunch is valuable when it creates design space that is worth engaging with, and which enhances the intended experience of play.

Unfortunately, I don't think you're going to get an answer any less vague than that, because every instance always has to be evaluated in the context of the game it appears in.

[Jay R]

Crunch is useful when it adds specifics that these players want and improves the simulation of aspects that these players want.

The reason for the move towards less and less crunch is pretty straightforward. The first RPG grew out of miniatures gaming. This hobby was populated by experts or would-be experts in the era being simulated, and wanted the most precise simulation possible. Often they would buy a game not to play it, but to study the era being simulated. They relished the increased crunch. It was necessary for their interests.

There is a market of thousands of such people to sell games to.

Decades later, the hobby has grown to include different people. These people want to play a game that flows quickly and easily. Crunch is valuable only for those areas they care about.

There is a market of hundreds of millions of such people to sell games to.

Obviously, any professional games company would rather sell to the second group than the first.

Now, this is obviously an over-simplified explanation. I left out most of the crunch in favor of a quick simple explanation.

If I thought we wanted to discuss all the crunch, I would point out that this is a continuum, not simply two sets of people. I would explore the many reasons to like crunch besides the desire to study an era. I would point out that people playing the same game often like different levels of crunch.

In short, I could easily build a far more complex model of the situation, with far more crunch.

And most of us wouldn't want it.

So let's return to the one aspect I'm currently highlighting -- the hobby started with a very small group that wanted far more crunch than most current gamers want.

[Telwar]

Note that there is broad crunch and deep crunch. Broad being eleven different methods for defending against an attack (but a given character might not have access to them). Deep being a small spreadsheet’s worth of conditional modifiers to the resolution.

Both are acceptable in character creation, but deep crunch is a potential slowdown on actual play. Having broad but not deep crunch in actions presents a burden of knowledge hazard, but once known their resolution methods are all rather simple.

+++

I much prefer fiddly things in character creation/building rather than in actual play; I can spend time reviewing and deciding on options at my leisure, but having to track a floating situational +1 in a fight is often annoying ("so I get a bonus when attacking from above and yodeling Brittney Spears' 'Toxic'? Why?").

[noob]

Some people just like complicated rules for their own sake.
I definitively advise you to not play their games unless you like rules complicated just for the goal of being complicated.

[tyckspoon]

Well, it varies by system.

Dealing with highly technical crunch slows the pace. That's appropriate for areas where you want the pace slowed.

In Battletech, the pace slowed during the game with the fiddly "medium range is 6… two woods is 8, I walked in 9, pulse is 7. This makes the players focus on gaining those fiddly numbers. And it's rife with crunch (like hundred of choices for weapons and ammo) when picking / building mechs. Plus resource management, in the form of heat, ammo, and maybe oddball things, like "time" for repairs.

But are cool tables of hundreds of weapons appropriate for every game? Probably not? (I'm biased, and would probably enjoy them in any game, but I'm willing to assume that they wouldn't be *as* valuable in… a super hero game, say.


.. the Battletech being referred to here being, of course, a tabletop tactics game, in which trying to massage the fiddly rules interactions between movement, weapon ranges, line of sight, and cover to get the best combination of good shot on target/bad shot in return for them shooting back is like 80% of the whole gameplay loop of the game. (The other 20% is trying to remember how the fall direction table works >.>) But that's the kind of game where you basically know what you're in for as soon as you try to learn to play it, and you just.. don't play it unless you're into that.

[Pauly]

.. the Battletech being referred to here being, of course, a tabletop tactics game, in which trying to massage the fiddly rules interactions between movement, weapon ranges, line of sight, and cover to get the best combination of good shot on target/bad shot in return for them shooting back is like 80% of the whole gameplay loop of the game. (The other 20% is trying to remember how the fall direction table works >.>) But that's the kind of game where you basically know what you're in for as soon as you try to learn to play it, and you just.. don't play it unless you're into that.

... Battletech the TTMG was the preferred method of combat resolution for Mechwarrior the TTRPG. The Mech combat rules in Mechwarrior were even more hyperdetailed than the Battletech rules. If you had more than 2 mechs a side it would take forever to resolve a combat.

[Quertus]

Crunch is useful when it adds specifics that these players want and improves the simulation of aspects that these players want.

The reason for the move towards less and less crunch is pretty straightforward. The first RPG grew out of miniatures gaming. This hobby was populated by experts or would-be experts in the era being simulated, and wanted the most precise simulation possible. Often they would buy a game not to play it, but to study the era being simulated. They relished the increased crunch. It was necessary for their interests.

There is a market of thousands of such people to sell games to.

Decades later, the hobby has grown to include different people. These people want to play a game that flows quickly and easily. Crunch is valuable only for those areas they care about.

There is a market of hundreds of millions of such people to sell games to.

Obviously, any professional games company would rather sell to the second group than the first.

Now, this is obviously an over-simplified explanation. I left out most of the crunch in favor of a quick simple explanation.

If I thought we wanted to discuss all the crunch, I would point out that this is a continuum, not simply two sets of people. I would explore the many reasons to like crunch besides the desire to study an era. I would point out that people playing the same game often like different levels of crunch.

In short, I could easily build a far more complex model of the situation, with far more crunch.

And most of us wouldn't want it.

So let's return to the one aspect I'm currently highlighting -- the hobby started with a very small group that wanted far more crunch than most current gamers want.

Lol. Well played.

Although… "Crunch is valuable only for those areas they care about" sounds like it could be used to advocate detailed "complex" combat, with no other systems attached - something that people often deride D&D for (sometimes fairly, sometimes not), but not something I've ever heard people *praise* D&D for.

Thoughts?


.. the Battletech being referred to here being, of course, a tabletop tactics game, in which trying to massage the fiddly rules interactions between movement, weapon ranges, line of sight, and cover to get the best combination of good shot on target/bad shot in return for them shooting back is like 80% of the whole gameplay loop of the game. (The other 20% is trying to remember how the fall direction table works >.>) But that's the kind of game where you basically know what you're in for as soon as you try to learn to play it, and you just.. don't play it unless you're into that.

… Battletech technically has an RPG…and it also has a (mostly terrible) role-playing game.

[King of Nowhere]

Lol. Well played.

Although… "Crunch is valuable only for those areas they care about" sounds like it could be used to advocate detailed "complex" combat, with no other systems attached - something that people often deride D&D for (sometimes fairly, sometimes not), but not something I've ever heard people *praise* D&D for.

Thoughts?



you never heard people praising D&D for its complex combat? well, I do praise D&D for it. Now you heard at least someone.

[Pauly]

you never heard people praising D&D for its complex combat? well, I do praise D&D for it. Now you heard at least someone.

Technically the combat per se isn’t complex. It’s the interactions of vulnerable to X, invulnerable to Y, plus the manipulation of bonuses that is complex.

[Kane0]

When the goal is simulation

[Quertus]

you never heard people praising D&D for its complex combat? well, I do praise D&D for it. Now you heard at least someone.

Ah. No. I mean, I haven't heard anyone praise D&D for its choice of "combat complexity, 'nonexistent' rules elsewhere". It's that… word… dissimilarity of level of detail in the system that I have not heard praised, only derided.


Technically the combat per se isn’t complex. It’s the interactions of vulnerable to X, invulnerable to Y, plus the manipulation of bonuses that is complex.

Combat isn't, "troll: roll 'combat', DC 25".


When the goal is simulation

Can you describe the reasons that a system would want to be *partially* Simulationist?

[Drogorn]

Can you describe the reasons that a system would want to be *partially* Simulationist?

Some people enjoy it, myself included. Knowing that your plan succeeded on its own merits rather than the game effectively making anything work is its own sort of satisfaction. This is the kind of fun that games like Eclipse Phase or Shadowrun can offer. Conversely, a system like 5e enforces pitched battle. No amount of planning will allow you to one-shot the big boss, you're stuck in a room with him for multiple rounds no matter what you do.

[Kane0]

Can you describe the reasons that a system would want to be *partially* Simulationist?

Hmm, that's a bit harder. All systems have to pick something to focus on, even the generic ones. In choosing that focus you choose where the attention and design decisions will be leaning. That focus could be anything but once chosen its very hard to avoid going into greater depth and complexity for it.

[KineticDiplomat]

I think as a whole the hobby is moving away from it, and generally for good reason. Most newer systems if they have crunch only have it in specific areas - OPs crunchy dueling for example - and even then it often has a far more fluid feel. When you consider the sources of crunch, I think that’s generally a good thing.

1. Simulation.

I guess it was a natural extension of wargaming gone individual to try to apply the same concept of more detail is better/more accurate, it just didn’t hold out. For real serious modeling, computers will do it better and effortlessly compared to seventeen steps and forty unique charts. For shy of that…I’m sure there are people here who remember counting every SR bullet of recoil, then compare to STR, endless recoil absorption mods and talents, etc all to see if you could hose down a magic bullet dodging elf with automatic fire and not suffer a penalty next action - and wondering if just maybe given the premise at hand and how the math worked out a simple “-X for full auto” would have saved everyone a bunch of work for the same result and same verisimilitude. You know, given the troll with the machine gun shooting at the magic elf.

Or you just got to something like Twilight 2000 that was nigh unplayable.

So once it became clear the results weren’t any more particularly realistic or fun until you got to a computer level of calculation, I think a lot of systems rightly decided they could deliver the same “simulation” outcome for ten less steps.

2. Variety of Cool.

It was inevitable that as classes became prestige classes, and sub classes, and monsters kept getting statted and splatted, new spells, new powers, new systems, new weapons all in the chase of LETTING YOU BE EVEN COOLER that eventually you were going to end up with umpteen crunchy bits.

But much like increased granularity didn’t actually make for more versimillitude or fun in a simulation, this failed to actually be cooler or fun. Yes, sometime around the age of twelve we probably played a magic-tragic-rebel-ninja-stripper-elf-with-exotic-fighting-and-special-powers, but after you got that out of your system it turns out having to add minutes to every action so that you can differentiate between a trickster assassin duelist bard beholden to the dark gods vs a dark assassin duelist who worships a trickster with song - and it’s in RAW, so some damned munchkin will insist on it - is actually just obnoxious.

In short, we’re willing to give up a pre-teen’s idea of EVEN COOLER if it means you can play the game.

[noob]

Combat isn't, "troll: roll 'combat', DC 25".


Some systems runs it nearly this way and it can be fun.
like "hostile troll: roll whichever check you think will progress your goals, dc 25" and you can pick from combat, talking it out, being very dapper and so on.

[Calthropstu]

Some systems runs it nearly this way and it can be fun.
like "hostile troll: roll whichever check you think will progress your goals, dc 25" and you can pick from combat, talking it out, being very dapper and so on.

I played a few of those. They kinda suck. "I aattempt to argue with the hungry troll" is viable if the gm says so.

And the narratives are all so bland and immutable. I might as well be reading a choose your own adventure book.

[noob]

I played a few of those. They kinda suck. "I aattempt to argue with the hungry troll" is viable if the gm says so.

And the narratives are all so bland and immutable. I might as well be reading a choose your own adventure book.

You could have seen from the list that it is not a fixed skill list and rather a "players make up their own skills" system and those systems can not really have a predefined narrative because it would ruin the point of having a very simple system that lets player make their own skills.(Imagine a player getting the teleport skill in your "stuck on a desert island" plot? or a player with the leader and popular skills on a scenario about corrupt politicians and the player just getting elected then fighting corruption from the top instead of doing forbidden investigations)
Unless you can mention a system with a specific "being very dapper" skill that fits your vision.

[Calthropstu]

You could have seen from the list that it is not a fixed skill list and rather a "players make up their own skills" system and those systems can not really have a predefined narrative because it would ruin the point of having a very simple system that lets player make their own skills.(Imagine a player getting the teleport skill in your "stuck on a desert island" plot? or a player with the leader and popular skills on a scenario about corrupt politicians and the player just getting elected then fighting corruption from the top instead of doing forbidden investigations)
Unless you can mention a system with a specific "being very dapper" skill that fits your vision.

I honestly don't remember their names. One was a pirate fantasy game where you kinda just made up whatever your character tried and you would roll the appropriate skill. The character I played was pregen, had a large number of social skills. I pretty much roflstomped the adventure by convincing all the soldiers after us that their boss hadbetrayed the queen (he had), took over the army and pretty much turned what was supposed to be a "escape the city, build a pirate fleet, come back later" into "All hail Calthropstu the lord of the city."

[Duff]

I'm going to add that crunch is undesirable when the stakes are low.

[Barebarian]

I just like crunch! But it's probably better when it expands options. If weapons work differently enough then the guy with the spear and the one with the halberd can be as distinct as casters and martials! I'm currently working on a fighter character using a homebrew iaido archetype, and I've been thinking that there should be more weapon specific fighter archetypes in 5e.

[Telok]

Well, on one end of the spectrum you can have "riding animal" writted on your character sheet. Move on through "has a saddle", "is a horse, not a cow", and "trained for riding", maybe add stats like a movement speed and carrying capacity. But wait, someone might try to shoot the horse. So you'll need combat stats right? And once someone shoots a horse you'll want to put armor on it. While you're at it you might as well disguinguish between a quarter-horse, a clydesdale, and a camel. In some campaigns you may even care if one horse is a biter who likes to jump, another is a broken down nag, and a third is just faster.

Heck, the difference between an arming sword, a battle axe, and a mace is technical crunch that some games don't care about. And if you want nut-bar levels of detailed technical crunch you can start writing rules that make weapon attacks in melee, melee attacks with a weapon, and attacks with a melee weapon all into different thngs that may or may not apply to the lead pipe you're swinging at someone.

[Barebarian]

Well, on one end of the spectrum you can have "riding animal" writted on your character sheet. Move on through "has a saddle", "is a horse, not a cow", and "trained for riding", maybe add stats like a movement speed and carrying capacity. But wait, someone might try to shoot the horse. So you'll need combat stats right? And once someone shoots a horse you'll want to put armor on it. While you're at it you might as well disguinguish between a quarter-horse, a clydesdale, and a camel. In some campaigns you may even care if one horse is a biter who likes to jump, another is a broken down nag, and a third is just faster.

Heck, the difference between an arming sword, a battle axe, and a mace is technical crunch that some games don't care about. And if you want nut-bar levels of detailed technical crunch you can start writing rules that make weapon attacks in melee, melee attacks with a weapon, and attacks with a melee weapon all into different thngs that may or may not apply to the lead pipe you're swinging at someone.

I know not everyone would want to use all that information but a game that at least HAS it can always trim it down later.

[Telok]

I know not everyone would want to use all that information but a game that at least HAS it can always trim it down later.

Well I think that depends on how tightly inter-woven everything is. If its horses, ships, vehicles, buildings, etc., having/not having combat stats you're right. If you've built something into the core of half the combat system...

I'm revising a system now, it has vehicle rules. There's a fair detailed and technical chunk of those rules for building vehicles, from jetpacks to 200 meter tall titan-mechs. I've managed to work out a method that simplifies 20 pages into one or two pages, but it certainly loses some details (40 weapon systems became "small" "med" and "large"). That's fine if someone's game just has the occasional stolen car chase. But what I can't do is simplify away the size stat (an actual number, not a vague category). It touches a lot of parts of the vehicle rules, including significant parts of the combat rules and it has some indirect effects on even those low detail chase scenes.

So there's a limit, in that system, to how much I can simplify a vehicle before what's left starts producing stupid results. Stuff like sticking a tank cannon plus missile launchers in a motorcycle side-car, or a 100 meter long boat being harder to hit than a jet-ski going ten times as fast.

The big trick, what I want to pay money for, is systems that are simplified for ease of play but in the right places and not so much that you start getting stupid results.

[martixy]

high technical specificity in programming languages

Can someone please explain this?

[Pauly]

I know not everyone would want to use all that information but a game that at least HAS it can always trim it down later.

The problem with this is how do players differentiate the wheat from the chaff? An encyclopedic rulebook is a turn off to many players because it looks too hard, even if the main rules they’ll use for 95% of interactions in the game are in 20 pages or so. Then you have the problem of mission creep. Some players will want to access the weird and wonderful subrules just because they exist.

The better approach is to have supplements for the players that want to deep dive into specific subsets, and not to include them in the core rules.

[Xervous]

Can someone please explain this?

There’s a spectrum of language and programming options that span from assembly which deals with the explicit handling of data by the processor to things like HTML which just displays webpage content.

If I absolutely must ensure an algorithm runs in the most optimal manner I could code it in assembly, but could probably get away with doing it in C. If I wanted to make a simple webpage I could use assembly, C, or HTML, but the former two are going to be an astronomical amount of work compared to using HTML. However let’s say I wanted more than just HTML could give me, so I would include JavaScript along with the HTML.

Games have a similar spectrum for intended use and range of what they can cover. D&D does the dungeon raiding thing great but needs outside help for complex social mechanics. Lean heavily towards those complex social mechanics and you’d be better off using something like Dramasystem. If you find that the options present in both of those don’t give you enough precision and you’re willing to get your hands dirty, you can slide up the crunch level and go for GURPS or other systems that are far more granular.

[FilthyLucre]

I’ll leave aside the people who think all the crunch all the time and no crunchiness for me breakfast, lunch or dinner for this thread. Generally there has been a movement in TTGs in general, not just TTRPGs, from more crunch to less crunch over the last 30 years or so. So if we accept the proposition that at least a little bit of crunch is good for our gaming diet; when specifically is technical crunch desirable in a TTRPG?

When it creates real options for players to expand their capabilities, create (good) design space, and ground the world to prevent arbitrary narrativism.

[martixy]

There’s a spectrum of language and programming options that span from assembly which deals with the explicit handling of data by the processor to things like HTML which just displays webpage content.

If I absolutely must ensure an algorithm runs in the most optimal manner I could code it in assembly, but could probably get away with doing it in C. If I wanted to make a simple webpage I could use assembly, C, or HTML, but the former two are going to be an astronomical amount of work compared to using HTML. However let’s say I wanted more than just HTML could give me, so I would include JavaScript along with the HTML.

Games have a similar spectrum for intended use and range of what they can cover. D&D does the dungeon raiding thing great but needs outside help for complex social mechanics. Lean heavily towards those complex social mechanics and you’d be better off using something like Dramasystem. If you find that the options present in both of those don’t give you enough precision and you’re willing to get your hands dirty, you can slide up the crunch level and go for GURPS or other systems that are far more granular.

The way you explained it, I understood the phrase as code for how high or low-level the language is.
(Failed to mention this is professional curiosity. Am programmer. No dumbing down necessary.)

[Xervous]

The way you explained it, I understood the phrase as code for how high or low-level the language is.
(Failed to mention this is professional curiosity. Am programmer. No dumbing down necessary.)

As I’m reading and understanding it the measure is more concerned with how often the system produces expected results when given expected inputs. You as the user have a desired domain of outputs. In choosing a system you are balancing the burden of its input demand with how consistently it can produce the desired results.

C demands far more input than HTML and has a broader output domain. GURPS ... FATE. Do you compromise on some regions of your desired domain (lack some features or precision) or do you accept the extra input demands that are needed to produce the desired results?

[Nifft]

I’ll leave aside the people who think all the crunch all the time and no crunchiness for me breakfast, lunch or dinner for this thread. Generally there has been a movement in TTGs in general, not just TTRPGs, from more crunch to less crunch over the last 30 years or so. So if we accept the proposition that at least a little bit of crunch is good for our gaming diet; when specifically is technical crunch desirable in a TTRPG?
Crunch is not there for its own sake. It's a pillar upon which to hang shared expectations, and a way to handle conflict between the player and whatever the player can struggle and (sometimes) succeed against.

Crunch is desirable when the outcome of conflict between characters depends on the player's handling of the rules.

If you're running a wilderness survival game (Player vs. Environment), you want crunch about how much food you can carry, what events risk ruining your food, finding and ensuring the safety of water, etc.

If you're running a meat-grinder dungeon crawl (also Player vs. Environment, but some of the environment is monsters), you want crunch about when monsters might detect your PCs and vice-versa, so you can fairly adjudicate surprise. You want crunch about attacks and defenses, so you can fairly adjudicate combat.

If you're running a political intrigue game, or a murder mystery game, or a wilderness exploration game, then you want crunch in service of that theme and the sorts of actions which will sometimes succeed and sometimes fail.


When the goal is simulation
Disagree. Counterexample:

Magic: the Gathering is crunchy as hell, with well-defined order of operations for all sorts of mechanics which cannot be considered a "simulation".

The crunch is justified because success in the conflict between players is determined by the players using that crunch to win against each other.


Can you describe the reasons that a system would want to be *partially* Simulationist?
Sure, here's one example: a car chase scene, like you'd find in a James Bond movie.

I want enough crunch to simulate what I know about cars, but not so much crunch that I can't do the same sort of cinematic stunts as James Bond, nor so much crunch that it would tend to interfere with the narrative elements of a car chase scene.

[Kane0]

Disagree. Counterexample:

Magic: the Gathering is crunchy as hell, with well-defined order of operations for all sorts of mechanics which cannot be considered a "simulation".

The crunch is justified because success in the conflict between players is determined by the players using that crunch to win against each other.

Im not terribly familiar with Magic over other card games sorry, is the crunch there to facilitate strategy or to accomplish something else?

[Duiker]

Crunch is desirable when the outcome of conflict between characters depends on the player's handling of the rules.

Yup. This bit is the closest to what my answer would be.

It'd be easy to design a game where every conflict has an outcome assigned to a face of the die and you roll it to see what happens. Which is useful in solo play; indeed, a subset of Choose Your Own Adventure games started doing this. The entire point of extra rules is that, not only do you want the outcomes to have different probability weights, but you want player decisions to affect it. Or to quote Sid Meier, a "series of interesting decisions".

Crunch lets you provide levers and dials for the GM and players to mess with in order to change how things turn out, in a meta-fiction kind of way. It's not the only way to do that, but it's an approach that lets someone who enjoys optimizing a pathway through a ruleset demonstrate knowledge and skill, which is fun. (Same reason that mazes are fun to solve.)

So my answer is, "Highly technical crunch is desirable when you expect a player to game the system in order to have fun."

[Duff]

When the pitch for the game includes such concepts as "tactical combat", "detailed rules" "crunch" or "Rewards clever decision making"

When it helps to make a character feel like they, and only they, can do the things their description says they are amazing at.
Eg, "I'm the best climber in the world" Has Climb score of [very big]. Uses it to successfully climb where others fail
"I'm an Errol Flyne type swashbuckler" Successfully swings from the chandelier for advantage where other characters can't

[Jay R]

Lol. Well played.

Although… "Crunch is valuable only for those areas they care about" sounds like it could be used to advocate detailed "complex" combat, with no other systems attached - something that people often deride D&D for (sometimes fairly, sometimes not), but not something I've ever heard people *praise* D&D for.

Thoughts?

Absolutely correct, yes, it could be used to advocate detailed "complex" combat. Some people love that. Whether or not people praise D&D for that, the people who love The Campaign for North Africa, War in Europe, and other complicated war games absolutely love the detailed "complex" combat.


Can you describe the reasons that a system would want to be *partially* Simulationist?

All simulations are "partially" simulationist. That's what they're for. As my first Simulations professor once said, "If we wanted to observe reality, we would observe reality."

The goal of a simulation is to examine a system that is simpler than reality, but that allows us to see the effect of the specific details we care about.

We want to observe the difference between a battleaxe and a longsword, so we have a simulation that tries to model the differences between them.

But no two longswords are exactly alike. We do not want to model the difference between a 37" longsword and a 38" longsword, or between a 3 lb 14 oz (1.76 kg) longsword and a 3 lb 15 oz. (1.79 kg) longsword, so we don't model that.

[Pauly]

Im not terribly familiar with Magic over other card games sorry, is the crunch there to facilitate strategy or to accomplish something else?

With card based action resolution, the cards are there to allow the crunch to be accessed faster and easier. In CCGs it also functions as a randomizer.

Rather than looking up a master table which has all the crunch in one big unwieldy unreadable table, or having to access multiple tables on multiple pages the crunch you need right now is printed on the card you are using. Heroclix and other “click” games incorporate similar data into the clicks.

In terms of ease and speed of play card based actions are the one big breakthrough that allows technical crunch to be playable in short times frames, such as a combat encounter in a TTRPG, or 1 hour rounds in a TTMG tournament.

[martixy]

As I’m reading and understanding it the measure is more concerned with how often the system produces expected results when given expected inputs. You as the user have a desired domain of outputs. In choosing a system you are balancing the burden of its input demand with how consistently it can produce the desired results.

C demands far more input than HTML and has a broader output domain. GURPS ... FATE. Do you compromise on some regions of your desired domain (lack some features or precision) or do you accept the extra input demands that are needed to produce the desired results?

I think I understand now. Thanks.

In the game design world "depth" and "complexity" and how they interact are usually used to describe similar, if not these exact concepts. The goal is usually to have as much depth with as little complexity, or when "buying" depth with complexity, to be as efficient as possible.

[Vahnavoi]

Technical rules are desireable in two cases:

1) Pedagogy, AKA teaching. Whatever your rules are or model is the actual thing you want your players to walk way with from your table. For example: non-euclidean geometry for circumnavigating the world in a sailing game.

2) Those rules are what you are basing your game on. For example: you looked at sailing and non-euclidean geometry and thought "this is interesting, you could make a game out of this" and doing away with those would fundamentally change what players actually do in the game.

---

In general, there's a matrix for usability of any software, which game rules essentially are. It saddens me I can't copy or describe that matrix from memory. It has six factors, of which I can remember four: simplicity, memorability, speed and usefulness.

Simplicity follows from Occam's Razor: do not multiply entitities, in this case rules, needlessly. Out of two rules that do the same thing, simpler is better.

Memorability deals with human psychology: how easy it is for a real human to remember? Often, simple rules following from the first factor are also easier to remember. When they are not, it's because they are somehow counter-intuitive. It's easier for people to remember things that fit their expectations, sometimes this favors a more complex or specific rule.

Speed deals with processing speed: how fast can a real human resolve the rule? This is why tables and table lookups were so prominent in wargames and roleplaying games; a lot of the time, the tables could be simplified to a formula, but solving the formula would take longer for a human than just doing a table look-up. Much less of an issue today with ubiquitous calculators, computers and automation.

Usefulness deals with whether the rule does what you want it to do. It typically sets the limit for the other factors: you can't simplify past the point where you start losing cases you want to include in a game. You can't make a thing more memorable if that would interfere with function. There's minimum speed for every resolution method that you can't do away with. So on and so forth. For every function you want to include in a game, you have to be willing to pay the price, so to speak.

Note that there isn't any general requirement for paying all the prices. Even a realist game rarely aims for absolute realism, so there's rarely need to cover everything with same degree of accuracy.

[FabulousFizban]

Only when theory-crafting, never at the table.

[Xervous]

Only when theory-crafting, never at the table.

Am I reading this correctly as “... so long as it plays smoothly and simply at the table”?

[Psyren]

I think as a whole the hobby is moving away from it, and generally for good reason. Most newer systems if they have crunch only have it in specific areas - OPs crunchy dueling for example - and even then it often has a far more fluid feel. When you consider the sources of crunch, I think that’s generally a good thing.

*snip*

You see it as moving away, but I believe these things tend to be cyclical. Yes, current tabletop is swinging back towards rules-light because that's proven easy for newer folks to play and thus commercially successful, but I for one am looking forward to the day when we get things like AI-assisted GMing and machine learning at the table, where keeping track of dozens of possible actions/buffs/penalties per character and multiple very textured monsters without any kind of bounded accuracy for a more immersive world will all be possible.

[Xervous]

without any kind of bounded accuracy

Dice rollers say hi, hasn’t been anywhere near difficult to use robust probability spreads recently.

[Pauly]

You see it as moving away, but I believe these things tend to be cyclical. Yes, current tabletop is swinging back towards rules-light because that's proven easy for newer folks to play and thus commercially successful, but I for one am looking forward to the day when we get things like AI-assisted GMing and machine learning at the table, where keeping track of dozens of possible actions/buffs/penalties per character and multiple very textured monsters without any kind of bounded accuracy for a more immersive world will all be possible.

I’ve played computer moderated TTMGs. The big problem is that you feed the inputs into the system then the black box spits out an answer. As a player you feel you have lost your agency because you are never sure whether the outcome is fair or not. I don’t see any big move to computer moderated TT wargames even though the technical capacity for it has existed for 20+ years.

[Alcore]

When it doesn't impact the fun or even adds to it.


Mongoose Traveller 2e has a rather crunchy ship creator (in comparison to the rest of the system) that is quite fun in its own right. Though there are more crunchy versions 9f Traveller available. Reminds me of Legos at times. Provided the ship sheet isn't a mess when you are done most of it doesn't matter; the far fewer things it does to interact with the system are plainly accessible.

You don't need to know the fine details of the jump drive; if you built the ship right you only need to look at fuel expense, deduct from current fuel and the rating of the drive for how far.

[Psyren]

I’ve played computer moderated TTMGs. The big problem is that you feed the inputs into the system then the black box spits out an answer. As a player you feel you have lost your agency because you are never sure whether the outcome is fair or not. I don’t see any big move to computer moderated TT wargames even though the technical capacity for it has existed for 20+ years.

No offense but this seems kind of silly to me. Yeah bugs happen, but by and large CRPGs have been calculating outcomes out of direct view of the player for decades. Computer-Assisted Tabletop will have a wider possibility space than traditional video games, but the principle is the same; as long as there is a robust bug reporting and patching process you can usually be pretty confident in it, or absent perfection, get to a place where the benefits outweigh the occasional snag.

But I'm not advocating for outcomes being in a black box necessarily; I'm more advocating the ability for technology to lessen the administrative burden that tends to accompany crunchy systems. One of the major hallmarks of crunchy systems is modifiers, because they allow you to simulate the interplay of a wide variety of variables - e.g. what if I'm fighting from horseback a foe who is on-foot, and what if my horse is scared, but what if I'm an expert rider, but what if there's fog, but what if I have a sword and he has a spiked chain, etc etc.


Dice rollers say hi, hasn’t been anywhere near difficult to use robust probability spreads recently.

I brought up bounded accuracy less because of the dice themselves and more because BA tends to favor prioritizing ease of play over verisimilitude of the simulation.

Using the above example, In 5e, such a calculation would be very quick - is there at least one source of advantage and disadvantage on each side, if so, they cancel out. Or if one side feels particularly egregious the GM is encouraged to override that and pick one that prevails. But in a crunchier system like 3.5 or PF1, you would figure out the actual weight/impact of each of those modifiers and weigh them against each other. For many people, the latter makes the world feel less like a game and more like a real place. But tracking all those modifiers by hand is a real headache and so those games tend to struggle with attracting new players who aren't already invested. This I feel is the main area where automation and eventually AI can really shine, giving you the speed of rules-light with the fidelity of crunch.

[JeenLeen]

No offense but this seems kind of silly to me. Yeah bugs happen, but by and large CRPGs have been calculating outcomes out of direct view of the player for decades. Computer-Assisted Tabletop will have a wider possibility space than traditional video games, but the principle is the same; as long as there is a robust bug reporting and patching process you can usually be pretty confident in it, or absent perfection, get to a place where the benefits outweigh the occasional snag.

But I'm not advocating for outcomes being in a black box necessarily; I'm more advocating the ability for technology to lessen the administrative burden that tends to accompany crunchy systems. One of the major hallmarks of crunchy systems is modifiers, because they allow you to simulate the interplay of a wide variety of variables - e.g. what if I'm fighting from horseback a foe who is on-foot, and what if my horse is scared, but what if I'm an expert rider, but what if there's fog, but what if I have a sword and he has a spiked chain, etc etc.


Thinking back to my biggest/longest 3.5 game, I can agree with this.
We were low-epic, with powergaming-levels of buffs. Each round of combat took minutes to calculate (often using a calculator to do it) applicable AC when targeted and damage when attacking, depending on what buffs were active or came into play with the given action. We stopped playing because the game stopped being fun. (A lot of it was our style of play, and us learning what was and wasn't fun to us, not an inherent flaw in the system itself, but this is an example.)

If it had been more automated so that we could just know what our to-hit was, it'd be better.
I can definitely see a combat system done by computer. Take Riddle of Steel. It is incredibly crunchy, so much that I'd never attempt to play it at a live table. (I tried a PbP.)
But I could envision programming -- and almost tried writing -- a "character sheet for combat" program in R. Basically you input your stats, armor, starting health into a text file, and the program reads that, then you tell it what happens, and it calculates if you got hit, where, and what damage/penalties you suffer. The game would be playable-fun to me if the crunch was there but wasn't had to be directly interacted with.

That is, I like the mechanical crunch. (Well, Riddle of Steel is a bit too granular with armor... but I like the general idea.) It's fun to find ideal combinations of things. But it can be a pain (slow, difficult) to track it every round, if it changes every round.
If a computer could "lift" some of that burden, it'd likely go back to fun. I still know why stuff is happening -- I'd definitely want a printout of the RNG results, like how I see the rolled dice now -- and it is based on my choices both before and during combat, but the time goes from minutes of calculation and checking charts to seconds of the computer doing the calculations and using lookup tables.

[Lilapop]

by and large CRPGs have been calculating outcomes out of direct view of the player for decades.
There's also the possibility to keep it in view - see BG, NWN and the like.



But in a crunchier system like 3.5 or PF1, you would figure out the actual weight/impact of each of those modifiers and weigh them against each other.
Uh... you mean simple addition and substraction? With rarely more than five parts per side, most of which don't change from one event to the next, because the duergar chieftain and the ice beast centipede engulfing him don't randomly grow extra points of base attack bonus? With many of these parts adhering to strict (aka "highly technical") enough rules that you can read the base attack bonus simply from the number of hit dice?

Math is only hard if you convince yourself that it is. Remembering your total bonus on the skill you've been using over and over throughout this session is only hard if you convince yourself that it is.

[Psyren]

There's also the possibility to keep it in view - see BG, NWN and the like.

Yes, but you'll note though that all of those greatly simplify the quantity of bonuses (both type and source) from the tabletop version beforehand. NWN for example has a basic "Lore" stat that replaces all the wide variety of knowledge skills with different values that the tabletop version it's based on has.


Uh... you mean simple addition and substraction? With rarely more than five parts per side, most of which don't change from one event to the next, because the duergar chieftain and the ice beast centipede engulfing him don't randomly grow extra points of base attack bonus? With many of these parts adhering to strict (aka "highly technical") enough rules that you can read the base attack bonus simply from the number of hit dice?

Math is only hard if you convince yourself that it is. Remembering your total bonus on the skill you've been using over and over throughout this session is only hard if you convince yourself that it is.

No, I don't mean "simple addition and subtraction." :smallannoyed:

Your snark notwithstanding, the issue isn't the final act of calculation. Obviously once you have all the numbers in front of you, adding and subtracting them to resolve the outcome is easy. Rather, the issue is (1) determining what values to assign to all these modifiers in the first place, and (2) keeping track of all the disparate sources those numbers can come from during an action scene. The latter has been a meme in this hobby (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0034.html) for ages, and while I personally don't mind doing so, it is a point against crunchy systems in the eyes of many - newcomers and casual players especially.

By offloading some of that burden onto a machine, everyone can reap the benefits of a crunchy system without said burden.

[Telwar]

I remember the last 3.5 game we played, it took me a spreadsheet and the entirety of the other players' and NPC turns to calculate my rolls. It was about that point that I wished I had learned to use a slide rule.

[Telok]

The only 3.x character I remember needing anything but pnp for was an unholy gish abomination of warblade, crusader, duskblade, ur-priest, and the two caster PrCs from Bo9S. Two casting lists, two sets of maneuvers, and piles of abilities. I can't imagine that a 4s cleric-bard-wizard-battlemaster multiclass from 5e would be any better.

[Quertus]

Each round of combat took minutes to calculate (often using a calculator to do it) applicable AC when targeted and damage when attacking, depending on what buffs were active or came into play with the given action. We stopped playing because the game stopped being fun. (A lot of it was our style of play, and us learning what was and wasn't fun to us, not an inherent flaw in the system itself, but this is an example.)

If it had been more automated so that we could just know what our to-hit was, it'd be better.


I remember the last 3.5 game we played, it took me a spreadsheet and the entirety of the other players' and NPC turns to calculate my rolls. It was about that point that I wished I had learned to use a slide rule.

This sounds like why my general belief on buffs is "persist or go home".

[Lacco]

I can definitely see a combat system done by computer. Take Riddle of Steel. It is incredibly crunchy, so much that I'd never attempt to play it at a live table. (I tried a PbP.)
But I could envision programming -- and almost tried writing -- a "character sheet for combat" program in R. Basically you input your stats, armor, starting health into a text file, and the program reads that, then you tell it what happens, and it calculates if you got hit, where, and what damage/penalties you suffer. The game would be playable-fun to me if the crunch was there but wasn't had to be directly interacted with.

That is, I like the mechanical crunch. (Well, Riddle of Steel is a bit too granular with armor... but I like the general idea.) It's fun to find ideal combinations of things. But it can be a pain (slow, difficult) to track it every round, if it changes every round.
If a computer could "lift" some of that burden, it'd likely go back to fun. I still know why stuff is happening -- I'd definitely want a printout of the RNG results, like how I see the rolled dice now -- and it is based on my choices both before and during combat, but the time goes from minutes of calculation and checking charts to seconds of the computer doing the calculations and using lookup tables.

Interestingly, live play at a table (including folks new to RPGs) is not as slow or daunting. The issue is the learning curve: if you go all in and use all the maneuvers, advanced armor rules (armor durability/degradation, different damage resistance vs. cut/pierce/bash, piecemetal armor), grappling rules, favouring (using shield to preemptively block parts of your body), stealing of initiative, ... you overload everyone (player and GM alike).

What you should do is start step by step, using basic maneuvers. Add slowly, over time. Suddenly, combat flows from person to person and suddenly you find yourself managing a 7-person group without slowing down.

What we did in the PbP was the equivalent of getting a new player who never played D&D and telling him to build and play gestalt character using all sourcebooks. It worked, because in PbP you have time to check, read up and find the answer, but at a table my process would be completely different (e.g. I'd tell you not to use anything except cut/thrust/parry/block during first two combats).

So, at a table: I'd suggest you try it, but with restrictions (if you ever decide, let me know, I actually have some pointers written down how to progress so that players don't get overloaded).

To the topic: I'm a fan of mechanical crunch, but very much depends on the mechanics. If the crunch is supported by the mechanics and does not slow the play (even if the rounds are quite granular, the situation moves forward), it's something to enjoy.

I'd also differ between crunch that requires active decision, and crunch that requires active application (e.g. "I have this trait which gives me +x or +y, which one should I use?" versus "I have this trait which gives me +x, let's add it to the pile of modifiers"). What I like is if crunch provides more decisions - up to a certain bearable limit of decisions per round of combat/interaction with the GM.

[Zuras]

Have you ever played heavily narrative games like Fate? In my experience, they are amazing when everyone at the table understands the tropes and genre conventions you’re working within, but often break down when you hit points where there are no genre guideposts, or when you hit areas where fine distinctions are important—that’s why books detailing Magic or Psi systems and science fiction gizmos are some of the most popular Fate supplements.

Say you’re running a sci-fi game—if one player is the science officer, all you need to know is he can scan stuff (apply his Technical skill to get the GM to tell him relevant info) till it runs out of batteries. If you have multiple science characters, suddenly you need more crunch—maybe a medical tricorder in addition to a regular one, with a bit of crunch to differentiate them.

You especially want the crunch for those situations where simply waving your hands and saying “great, you solved the problem with magic/science/explosives” would be unsatisfying. Narratively it’s primarily a requirement for *me* in Fate style games where you have a recurring bad guy that starts out too tough for the PCs and they build up to where they are strong enough to stand up to them. I personally need that extra crunch in those situations so when we finally beat the Big Bad I can mechanically see why, rather than just feeling like we won because the GM decided to let us.

[Max_Killjoy]

Depends on the individual.

Some are increasing slope - their sense of fun is directly proportional to the amount of crunch.

Some are decreasing slope - their sense of fun is inversely proportional to the amount of crunch.

Some are upside down parabolic - their sense of fun is at its lowest at both ends of very little and a lot of crunch, preferring the sweet spot vertex of the middle.

That last one would be me.

I want enough crunch that the mechanics "feel" like the thing they're modelling, and that different actions feel different, but not so much crunch that it takes an hour to resolve under a minute of in-character time.

Sadly, industry trend seems to be towards either too little, or too much, crunch. I see too many games now that are either "Roll your Combat stat vs the NPC's danger rating, if you succeed you get to narrate the fight and outcome, if you fail the GM gets to narrate the fight and outcome." or "First, determine the relative advantage from your stance vs the foe's stance, then apply that to your anticipation skill and your perception skill, roll both, and use those results to..."

[NorthernPhoenix]

"When is highly technical crunch desirable?" Personally I'd say it's desirable when that is the premise of the game from the start. A game that sells itself as primarily a tactical wargame or similar should have highly technical crunch.