Although I have played and enjoyed some of the crunchier games out there, sometimes they just start to feel more exhausting than fun. I’ve also found it hard to get players to buy into games where you have 20+ different questions/choices during character creation.
Ontop of those, sometimes a systems release schedule has made me stop wanting to run the game, I am personally not a huge fan of games that put out 3+ books a year,
How much is too much for you/your table?
This will vary from person to person very much and it stems from what are they looking for in a game. Some love the crunch (comparing values and looking up tables) or rules-heavy systems (having rules defined for everything they could do in a game) and expect the system to be build in a way that system mastery is required. Some don’t and will never read the CRB and I don’t think it should be frowned upon.
My players liked the level of customization Shadowrun offers, with all the grip modifications and types of bullets. But then the only ones that didn’t keep asking “how my main thing works, again?” were the ones who focused on ranged combat.
I probably could be a player in SR or D&D but I’ve discovered that for being GM, Savage Worlds (two dice defined by your character sheet to throw, against TN 4 in most cases) is the most crunch I can work with.
And max two books with rules; lore books - the more the merrier.The only ones that didn’t keep asking “how my main thing works, again?”
This issue is probably the most draining for me. When I ran Shadowrun I warned my players that it was crunchy, and they promised me that they would learn how to play their classes. The streetsam did –the decker, rigger, adept, and technomancer did not.
Yeah. And once they’ve tricked out their ponies, they go on a run and the decker asks “what programs does the enemy spider run?” or “what chrome do they have?”. And the real answer is “I don’t know, they roll 16 for their main and 12 for everything else because they are low/mid-tier corp security”.
Or I would have to sit and build a bunch of mooks. And even if I had a roster of these (there are some nice generators for mooks with all the similar gear choices etc), then a simple shootout on a street transforms into math-fest and keeping track of which hand that mook uses for this attack.Which for me moves the game from “you are taking part in the dispute between this corp and that one” into something more like a wargame. And that is too much for me
I love crunchy/complex systems! I GMed a lot of D&D 3.5; PF 1E; Cyberpunk; and some more. Especially having a big amount of choice in character creation is essential to me. I want my character to feel and play mechanically distinct from the other players. It’s one of the many reasons I despise 5E. Every Fighter I try to build plays exactly the same.
I can never get enough of new books, so that’s also more of a plus to me than anything else.
I am definitely pro-choice, but I often feel like games hit a point where it’s just bloat. I read a lot of RPG books and feel that it was released because they are following a schedule or hit a certain number of pages/new things, and not because they actually had something thought out to add to the game.
Valid opinion, I just never had the feeling with any of the system I enjoy. What would be an example in your view?
I think that several Starfinder books can be an example of “we are putting this out because we have to put something out.”
I can agree with that, mostly 'cause I feel like Starfinder itself was a bit “not needed”
I’m relatively new to the hobby since I began playing in late 2019, but I discovered that the narrative and rules-loose games are not for me, so my question would be ”How little is too little?".
I’ve played some narrative campaigns using the Stalker RPG (diceless narrative), Ironsworn, FATE and I ended up loathing purely narrative systems. Now it’s been 6 months since I started to play solo and I keep buying new systems whenever I can, but as of now, I’m completely enamored with 5e adaptations like CARBON 2185, and other systems like Lancer, Twilight 2K, Shadowrun, Mutant Year Zero, and Savage Worlds’ Settings.
Maybe my perspective would change if I went back to play with more people and had to wait 25 minutes to play the next 6 seconds of my actions, on a fight that would take 2 IRL hours to resolve, but as a solo player, what I want is plenty of improv and creativity for the lore/narrative parts (which is why I appreciate lore books and supplements) but complex, high-stakes board/wargame mechanics for the build/combat segments without a GM fudging rolls or events to maintain me alive or to add drama or keep the story going, which was my resumed experience with narrative systems.
I assume the game that puts out 3+ books a year is D&D?
I assume the game that puts out 3+ books a year is D&D?
I haven’t touched that game in a while. I was personally referring to Starfinder and Pathfinder, but D&D might also have that problem now that I think about it.
Things I’ve said or heard during character creation for these games:
“I know there are just shy of 4000 feats, but…”, or “Okay, so your role in social encounters in the group is the face, debuffing-support in combat, in ship combat you’re the pilot, so what’s your idea for mech combat?”
