#RPGaday topic 24: Most Complicated RPG Owned

[Agemegos]

I'm doing RPG-a-day in August, as promoted by Dave Chapman (Autocratik). This is Day 24 of 31.


Most Complicated RPG Owned

Let's start with a prolepsis or two, because a lot of people on this forum aren't going to like my answer to this.

1) Anyone who has seen my GURPS Handbook of the Planets has got to know that I am neither daunted nor necessarily repulsed by complexity. When in a couple of paragraphs I describe your favourite RPG as being the most complicated that I own, don't take that as a condemnation. It is an assessment of one part of the picture, and I am by no means averse to a bit of complexity if it pays off in breadth of scope or useful depth of detail. Complexity can be like the complications on a good watch, and there's no way that a nice simple belt knife could replace my Leatherman®.

2) We're talking about games that I own, now, currently. Not monsters of narrow-scoped complexity that I looked at in a FLGS and shuddered at. And not games that I struggled with a while and then gave away, sold, or trashed for their intractable complexity. So I'm not about to call your favourite game the most complicated in the World, and there is no point in arguing that another game is more complicated unless you happen to know that I own a copy of that game.


Righto. It's GURPS (4th edition).

GURPS is often criticised for being too complex (which isn't what I'm saying, by the way), and it is often defended with the statements that

1. a great deal of the complexity is in explicitly or implicitly optional modules that add valuable functionality for those that want it in particular genres, and can be ignored by other players; and
2. the GURPS mechanics are very simple at heart and highly consistent: you roll 3d6 and determine where their sum is greater than of less-or-equal to a modifier skill level for nearly all mechanics in the game.

(a) is true enough, which goes back to my saying that "most complicated" is not a condemnation. But I'm not going to say that my watch doesn't have day and date complication on the grounds I mostly use only the sweep second hand, and I'm not going to say that my Leatherman® isn't a complex tool on the grounds that I use its gadgets one at a time.

(b) is disingenuous. In the first place, the heart itself is more complicated than that: there are rules for automatic and critical successes on low rolls and for automatic and critical failures on high rolls, and effective skill caps in some circumstances, and sometimes the margin of success or margin of failure matters. And in the second place, there is a lot of important GURPS anatomy surrounding that heart. For example, a character representation system with advantages and disadvantages that are subject to modifiers (and a lot of disads are unplayable without control rolls), and over two thousand skills not counting techniques and optional specialisations, and quirks and perks. For another example the reaction table and the fright table work in a non-heart fashion. For another example the combat system goes rather wonky if you don't use at least Deceptive Attacks, and those are fiddly. And for a final example, here's what you in GURPS do after you have determined that an attack hit, to resolve the effects of that attack:

Roll a location. Find out what armour the target is wearing on the location, and if it is split armour, which DR value applies to the type of damage the attack does. If the armour is hardened, modified the armour penetration of the attack. Divide the DR by the AP. Roll the damage, subtract the modified DR. If the result is zero or less and the armour is flexible, divide the original roll by five, round off, and treat the damage as crushing. If the hit is in the Skull location, subtract skull DR. Check what effect the relevant damage type has on the relevant location, and multiply the modified damage roll by either the wounding modifier for the damage type or the wounding modifier for the hit location. Note the result (injury) for use as a shock penalty. Compare the injury to the target's HP score: if it's half or over, if it's in an extremity and a third or over, or if it's in an eye and 1/10 or over it's a major wound and may cripple the body part; then, or if it's a hit to the head or vitals and did at least one point of injury, the target must make a HT roll to check for knockdown and stunning. Now subtract the injury from the target's remaining HP total, and compare the remaining HP total to the targets original HP: if it's under one third the target is henceforth Reeling and has halved Move and Dodge scores, if it's zero or less the target must make a HT roll at the end of this turn and the end of each subsequent turn unless it takes the "Do Nothing" combat option: if it fails it falls unconscious or stops working. If the injury takes the target HP total to below a negative integer multiple of the targets original HP that it wasn't below before, the target makes an immediate HT roll; if it fails by 1 or 2 it becomes mortally wounded, and if it fails by three or more it dies. If the injury takes the target to below -5 times original HP the target is dead.

And that's without using the optional rules for injury: Bleeding, Accumulated Wounds, and Last Wounds. And I sometimes hear mention of something called "edge protection".

"Complicated" is not a condemnation. This procedure gives vastly more detailed, interesting, and realistic results than the equivalent procedures in D&D or even HERO System. But it is more complicated than "Roll 3d6 — if the total is less than or equal to modified skill level you hit".

An RPG that gives interesting, detailed, realistic results has to be complicated. An RPG that covers a lot of genres, settings, and types of action without turning them all into uniform pap has to be complicated. I want an RPG that produces detailed, realistic, interesting results in games having a broad range of genres, settings, and types of action. GURPS (4th edition) is complicated.

[johndallman]

I'm going with AD&D1e. It has a large number of different mechanics, which are individually fairly simple, and which can be picked up gradually, but do add up to a lot of complexity. It also has a huge number of spells, very few of which have principles that apply to many others.

I'd agree that GURPS 4e is pretty complicated, just not quite as complicated.

[Anders]

D&D Rules Encyclopedia. There are three ways to handle skills (as GURPS knows them), and there are umpteen special rules for weapons. The basic idea is simple enough, but the add-ons just makes it a complicated system without any real pay-off. It was an early attempt, and it shows.

[RogerBW]

Living Steel. I'd say Phoenix Command, but that's not an RPG, it's a combat system (and it doesn't claim to be anything else). Living Steel also has a component list for every tech item in the game: you too can scavenge the ruins of a high-tech world looking for three medium springs and seventeen extremely small screws so that you can fix the gunsight on your powered armour.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I'd agree that GURPS 4e is pretty complicated, just not quite as complicated.

I agree. I got rid of my AD&D books in 1982, when I got The Fantasy Trip.

[Michael Cule]

The one that's most complicated that I still want to play is ARS MAGICA. It's complicated both by the amount of built up detail in the variant magic of Mythic Europe, both within and without the Order of Hermes, and by the fact that I don't believe the designers have a Unified Theory of Magic to make the whole comprehensible by core principles.

But I still like it and want to run it.

The one whose complexity defeats me right out of the box is EXALTED 2nd edition. Just look at those bloody charm trees! I couldn't even design a character for it!

[Parody]

This one is funny to me because at Gen Con I sold my copies of a couple of one-off games that might have been good choices for this. (Fantasy Imperium, anyone?) There's also RPGs that came to mind that I've never owned, like Rolemaster, which are out of the running.

I'd love to say GURPS but I haven't read or played it for many, many years so I can't honestly compare the systems. I've sold most of the books I had for it, keeping just a very few setting books and the 3e main trio.

I think I'll have to go with Hackmaster 4e. They took AD&D 1st and 2nd and added skill systems, critical charts, and many more of the sorts of rules that you might have seen in the pages of Knights of the Dinner Table. I have thoroughly enjoyed the games of it I've played, but it is complicated on purpose.

[simply Nathan]

GURPS Lite, or possibly the free version of D&D 5th Edition depending on how you view things.

[derendel]

I was tempted to say GURPS (4e or 3e) though not in a bad way but then I realized I do own D&D 4e. After playing that I'd say character creation is way more complicated (at least from an optimization standpoint) since (as seems typical in D&D) you are generally assumed to use every available option.

So D&D 4e. Very complicated, not very satisfying.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Living Steel. I'd say Phoenix Command, but that's not an RPG, it's a combat system (and it doesn't claim to be anything else). Living Steel also has a component list for every tech item in the game: you too can scavenge the ruins of a high-tech world looking for three medium springs and seventeen extremely small screws so that you can fix the gunsight on your powered armour.

Yes, I was going to say Living Steel as well, but I am not sure where my copy is.