What makes an RPG good?

[Stonehead]

That was the point of my previous message. Noting that I was not using the same definition of complexity.

Using programming metaphor (which doesn't apply well to social games like RPGs), I was calling "complexity" the difficulty to code a program that allows users to play the game, and "depth" the difficulty to code an AI that play the game cleverly. While other peoples (like you), would use "complexity" to refer to the second one too.

[Which makes Go and Chess very low "complexity" games but with very high "depth"]

In computer science, they usually define the complexity of games to be a function of the number of possible game states, and the connections between them. That doesn't really make sense for role playing games though.

A good example of very low complexity is Monopoly or Life, or better: snakes and ladders.

Snakes and Ladders is an interesting example, because I would argue it's way more complex than it needs to be. The players have literally no input on the game. If we assume the dice rolls are fair, then there are zero choices to be made in a game of chutes and ladders. You could roll a single die to determine who wins, and have basically the same outcome as a full game. All those extra rules make the game more complex, although it's still a very simple game, but they don't add depth at all.