Designing a game system and curious about what there is appetite for among this crowd.  Comments would be helpful.  Thanks!

I like simple to-hit & damage, with options for combat maneuvers like tripping, disarming, barging, etc. They should be very simple rules.

Roll to Hit, and Roll Damage.  Use Advantage and Disadvantage, somehow.

Well moderately crunchy. I don't want build options as much as what feels realistic to make one character stand out from another.

In my own playtesting, the general consensus was what you term "moderate crunch" with a caveat; calculations should be limited to addition, subtraction, doubling and halving at most and ideally no more than three operations (ex. hit roll compared to defense, damage roll halved by resistance, damage roll subtracted from hit points) per action.

That said, where you put those operations is something you can change up. Ex. Counted Successes vs. counted Successes with the margin subtracted from hit points of the loser is three operations too.

I like a variety, in general. I think ideally I'd like some games each of low, moderate, and high crunch. My big problem with high crunch has been with the learning curve and consequently the social aspect.

It's hard to find players who engage with the level of crunch for that, and even if it's successful, it can be awkward being on a team with different levels of skill and engagement. The learning curve takes up a lot of time and turns a number of players off.

So I tend to go with either low or moderate crunch in practice, depending on the group.

I like as much crunch as possible compatible with something that can move fast enough to not be boring. I freely admit this is a rather demanding standard.

In practice, this usually comes out as something with a core as simple as possible and lots of smoothly integrated options.

ETA: To give you some idea, I am an absolute slavish fanboy of The Riddle of Steel's combat system.

Quote from: jhkim on July 18, 2021, 04:53:56 PM
I like a variety, in general. I think ideally I'd like some games each of low, moderate, and high crunch. My big problem with high crunch has been with the learning curve and consequently the social aspect.

It's hard to find players who engage with the level of crunch for that, and even if it's successful, it can be awkward being on a team with different levels of skill and engagement. The learning curve takes up a lot of time and turns a number of players off.

So I tend to go with either low or moderate crunch in practice, depending on the group.

Rules buy in is very important for what system a GM can run at a table.

Certain game systems simply require all the players to know the system almost as well as the GM.

Especially the crunchier ones; "What do I roll again.." is frustrating to hear after weeks of play. And it gets more frustrating in direct proportion to system crunch.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on July 19, 2021, 11:03:36 AM
I like as much crunch as possible compatible with something that can move fast enough to not be boring. I freely admit this is a rather demanding standard.

In practice, this usually comes out as something with a core as simple as possible and lots of smoothly integrated options.

ETA: To give you some idea, I am an absolute slavish fanboy of The Riddle of Steel's combat system.

Ahh the game that got me back into RPG's in college!!

This is one that really deserved a chance to clean things up for a second edition. The combat did require player buy-in, everyone at the table needed to be familiar with how combat worked. But if everyone was on point that combat system was very fast at the table.

The best combat system among those I tried were Call of Cthulhu with hit location (7E is a bit more crunchy but not by much) and Cyberpunk 2020.

As much as I love GURPS, combats in 3E were the worst. I don't know who thought that 1 sec/round was realistic, but A) It wasn't (*) and B) Killed the momentum. GURPS was the first system that taught me to house-rule. I never tried 4E toh.

IMHO it should be remembered that a RPG is not a wargame (and even wargames use a lot of abstraction). Once a combat system conveys the idea of what's happening, with realistic differences between combat abilities, weapons and weapon's effects, to me it's fine. In CoC what matters is that a investigator must have clear that a single gunshot can kill him, or that a machete can cut his arm off (not to mentions weeks for healing serious wounds). Everything above this goes against the very spirit of portraying a fight as a confused melee actually lasting a bunch of minutes.

(*) The "decision cycle" as defined in warfare is 1) Analyse the situation 2) Develop a plan 3) Act 4) Analyse the results and how/if the situation changed. In a dogfight between modern fighter jets the length of this cycle is considered to be 10-12 seconds. GURPS only considered 3) - 1) 2) and 4) happened in a "non time" between players' turns. The result was that a Sorcerer chanting a quick 5-seconds spell during a firefight was actually out of the game for 5 rounds - with the average round length in real life being, with four players and some enemies to manage, about 15 minutes if you were fast. I never understood who thought that such a combat method could work. 

Quote from: Jaeger on July 19, 2021, 05:03:22 PM

Quote from: jhkim on July 18, 2021, 04:53:56 PM
I like a variety, in general. I think ideally I'd like some games each of low, moderate, and high crunch. My big problem with high crunch has been with the learning curve and consequently the social aspect.

It's hard to find players who engage with the level of crunch for that, and even if it's successful, it can be awkward being on a team with different levels of skill and engagement. The learning curve takes up a lot of time and turns a number of players off.

So I tend to go with either low or moderate crunch in practice, depending on the group.

Rules buy in is very important for what system a GM can run at a table.

Certain game systems simply require all the players to know the system almost as well as the GM.

Especially the crunchier ones; "What do I roll again.." is frustrating to hear after weeks of play. And it gets more frustrating in direct proportion to system crunch.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on July 19, 2021, 11:03:36 AM
I like as much crunch as possible compatible with something that can move fast enough to not be boring. I freely admit this is a rather demanding standard.

In practice, this usually comes out as something with a core as simple as possible and lots of smoothly integrated options.

ETA: To give you some idea, I am an absolute slavish fanboy of The Riddle of Steel's combat system.

Ahh the game that got me back into RPG's in college!!

This is one that really deserved a chance to clean things up for a second edition. The combat did require player buy-in, everyone at the table needed to be familiar with how combat worked. But if everyone was on point that combat system was very fast at the table.

   I can not tell you how much I agree with this sentiment about frustration.   But...it seems after 7 years of playing GURPS my player who seemed to always ask me this has finally got it down a bit. 

We're in a time where very simple systems like D&D 5E and Dungeon World are the prevailing trend. I'm a contrarian jerk, so I voted for crunchy systems. I haven't played a good crunchy game in years, and I really miss it. I do have time on my hands to learn a new system, dammit!

It's true that past a certain point too much crunch will alienate some of the audience.  However, to me a bigger factor is how well the complexity is selected and how it fits into the other complexity of the game.  Crunch that "fits" is easier for people to retain. 

Also, don't confuse rules complexity with complexity derived from sheer amount of details.  They are different things, and some people will accept one but not the other.

I am working on a system that tries to strike the right balance between realism and ease of play.  I know that is a tall order, but I'm giving it a shot.

I was at a work seminar where a risk professional made what seemed to me an interesting point: there is a difference between complexity and complication.

Chess and jet engines are complicated. For any given layout of the chess pieces, the fixed structure of the game rules gives a mathematically optimal move. It's complicated to work out, but it's there. Likewise, jet engines are deterministic systems. In principle you can work out exactly how they will behave in response to changes in their environment.

Poker is complex. Your optimal move depends in part on your read of the playing style and emotional state of your opponent, which are themselves partly dependent on your plays. It is non-deterministic.

Complication and complexity might even be mutually incompatible in an RPG context at least to some extent. If the rules are very complicated, everyone might be too busy trying to keep track of them to come up with complex, creative tactical plays. Or such plays might even get discouraged as too difficult to handle in the game rules. In a low-complication system, either the rules treatment is obvious or the GM can wing it without breaking or ignoring established rules.

The terms of the trade-off will be determined in part by the level of system mastery around the table. My sense is appetite to acquire system mastery is fairly limited for many players.

Personally these days I would like low to medium complicatedness, and plenty of scope for complexity.

Marchand,  I agree with the bulk of your statements.  Having played for almost 40 years now, I want simpler systems.  Thirty years ago, I wrote a very crunchy system based on d12 dice pools.  d12 is the ultimate die in my view - and you could give more subtle bonuses with a more fine number spread.  It's all we played for 4-5 years.  We loved it.

I don't know if it is a function of age or time to spend learning rules balance by family time, but I find that I don't have the patience for crunchy systems anymore.  I have a great appreciation for all the effort that goes into crafting a workable system, considering possibilities, play testing, more tweaking, etc.  As I build my rules light system, I am curious what people on this forum think.  Sometimes these ideas spark a creativity thread that might otherwise not have gotten started.