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.