Quote from: Willie the Duck;1011204That said, that era did have it's fair share of  overly complex games (anyone ever play Aftermath? Whew!), and so on that we do know about.

Likewise, no I don't think the arbitrary complexity is specifically bad about that era. Like I mentioned, Aftermath is from before then and has truly pointless complexity (I remember skills based on character starting age, which is determined with a X+2D3 roll, I believe). But frankly, so are Runequest, Palladium, MERP, and 1e AD&D (which absolutely has arbitrary complexity, we just generally like the complexity it has).  

I remember playing a great deal of Aftermath! and I don't remember the complexity being so much in the actual play as in the set up. Oh, boy was there complexity in the set up. It didn't matter if you were a player or the GM, get out your calculator and prepare to set aside a few hours...  The sad thing is it was not unusal to spend two hours generating a character only to have him walk into a ghoul ambush and die in a firefight five minutes into your first session playing him.

But actual playing, as I remember it, and this may be coloured by experienced GMs or not using all the rules, was no more complex than playing AD&D or RuneQuest.  Both of which games had much faster character generation.

Quote from: S'mon;1011170There were a ton of games that were basically just character generation + combat + task resolution (maybe!), with no answer to "so what do we do?" I rem buying the d20 Fading Suns conversion and it made no attempt at all to advise what the PCs were supposed to be doing.

Of course, shoddy D20 conversions of games were a 2000s problem, not an '80s-'90s problem. The '80s had Stormbringer while the 2000s had Dragon Lords of Melnibone.

It's odd that Itachi is trying to focus in on the late '80s and '90s for complexity, while excluding the early '80s. Space Opera and Aftermath which are the held up as models of extreme complexity are from 1980 and 1981 respectively. The mid to late '80s were when the industry pulled back from that kind of madness.

I also don't see how Ars Magica makes the list either for complexity or opaque goals. From a complexity perspective, Ars Magica's first two edition are no more than moderate crunch today with a unified core mechanic. A good amount of the support material was sandboxy and ready to use in play (although there were a few terrible, railroady adventures too).

I certainly can't see how the game had opaque goals. It was a highly structured game with seasons of research that also depended on occasional adventuring for material to support that research. Not many games have the goals baked that clearly into the system.

Now, Ars Magica 5E, a product of this century, is bristling with complexity and systems piled on systems and a loss of focus on what the game is about.

Quote from: Baulderstone;1011215Of course, shoddy D20 conversions of games were a 2000s problem, not an '80s-'90s problem. The '80s had Stormbringer while the 2000s had Dragon Lords of Melnibone.

The only good thing I can find to say about DLoM is that it brought us some of the nice art from European versions of the game. Otherwise it is the poster child for everything wrong with the d20 fad.

Indeed. I remember a d20 game called "Engel" about a post-judeo-christian-apocalyptic setting or something. It's rules was the d20 SRD as is. It was embarassingly bad.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1011210I remember playing a great deal of Aftermath! and I don't remember the complexity being so much in the actual play as in the set up. Oh, boy was there complexity in the set up. It didn't matter if you were a player or the GM, get out your calculator and prepare to set aside a few hours...  The sad thing is it was not unusal to spend two hours generating a character only to have him walk into a ghoul ambush and die in a firefight five minutes into your first session playing him.

But actual playing, as I remember it, and this may be coloured by experienced GMs or not using all the rules, was no more complex than playing AD&D or RuneQuest.  Both of which games had much faster character generation.

Aftermath wasn't nearly as complex as often portrayed. The funny thing is actually playing the game as written was more complex than just playing it as it made sense. I know a weird statement, and I don't mean ignoring rules we didn't like. We quickly found much of the games supposed complexity was hype that the authors intentionally or unintentionally supported by writing the rules in such a way that they seemed more difficult than they actually were. Things like adding a complicated flow chart. That was one of the first things that went away for us, as there was just no need for it.

Chargen was certainly more involved than the typical roll 3d6 common at the time, but was essentially just an early point buy system and far less complex than that used in HERO or GURPS. The game itself is only marginally more complex than Runequest. My biggest complaint with Aftermath (and many games of the early 80s) was that many of the rules didn't function well outside of a narrow set of  expectations. When you read the designers notes there are numerous examples where they fudged something to make it fit the authors expectations. Rather than go back and fix the issue they just fudged it for that particular example and left it in place. Also a lot of places where it seems the authors started to go somewhere and then just stopped short, I don't know maybe page limitations ofr something.

Aftermath / Daredevils is a really frustrating game system for me as I think with more care the rules could have been very successful, there is a kernel of greatness in there that was unrealized. Far from the only one though The Morrow Project and Tri-Tacs Stalking the Night Fantastic / Fringeworthy / FTL2448 have similar incompleteness to them. These are still some of my favorite games from the period despite their shortcomings.

Quote from: Itachi;1010937... Could we argue this was the period with the biggest amount of poorly designed games? ...

Absolutely! From your persepctive, from a subjective assessment, I wouldn't argue with you.

After a long run with AD&D 2e, I grew weary of level-class-based games. I explored lots of different games after that. I circled back to check out 3e, then took a break, then ran an Eberron 3.5 game, then took a break, then tried 4e and didn't like it, and switched to Pathfinder for a year or so. I've tried various other games inbetween. After a nice long run with GURPS 4e, I took a break to check out some OSR and settled on C&C. I recently jumped in Radiance d20, but in the end I really like the crunchy simulation that GURPS 4e offers.

When I was younger, I tried various Palladium games, MERPS, Rolemaster, GURPS 3e, Kult...  I ran a ton of CP2020. I had a group that adored Alternity. I had a later group convert to HERO 5ER and we played that for years. Dabbled with Shadowrun because I love the setting. I took 2 years out on an indie/narrative exploration that almost caused permanent insanity and loss of hobby skill.

I never had good impressions of Palladium for example. I remember running Kult in any system I could convert it to. I dabbled in Fuzion. I have hated GURPS and loved it. I went on a Savage Worlds kick for a solid run.

It's not about trends or statistics, verifiable design patterns or even scientific data. It's about how you feel about it. I have played a ton of games. Some I liked - some I didn't. I met a bunch of people who felt the opposite and others who joined me in my enthusiasm of the moment.

Having had the pleasure of putting hands on the Alexandria Roleplaying Library, and playing some Palladium Fantasy just for the hell of it, I now see Palladium differently. People like different games for different reasons. You don't even really need to build a consensus on what is "good" or "bad". Just what you like. Hence why there are so many approaches.

Objectively, none of the games you mentioned are "bad". People had fun playing them and running them. In the end, it's really the only useful measuring stick for a recreational hobby. :-D

Quote from: DavetheLost;1011183And yet we did so much more with it than just endless dungeon crawls.  Many of the things we did were not even hinted at in the rules.  Bollocks indeed!

Sure (and the OSR takes D&D all kinds of places) - but with D&D there was ALWAYS SOMETHING TO DO - with D&D you never risk being at a loss, because it has well defined & fun default activities, such as dungeon delving. Unlike a lot of RPGs.

Quote from: Itachi;1011187But D&D3/4 are combat-oriented games, no? At least that's the impression I had from the couple games I played and by reading the corebooks. 4e is even explicit about it. Contrast that with, say, Shadowrun, which in theory is a mission/heist game, but in practice the rules make combat more than 50% of it (my god, I remember the endless combat turns with dread).

And that's the problem of those late 80s/90s games in my view. Whatever the central themes or premises supposedly were, combat made up more than half the rules and intended play experience. And this combat was usually envisioned through a physics simulation lens that most of times had nothing to do with those initial premises. You had some exceptions like Over the Edge and Everway, sure, but those were exceptions.

I agree about the inappropriate dominance of the combat system in many, many games.

4e D&D is definitely a combat centric game. 3e I think can support other play styles, but the XP system, the CR system, & the published adventures all tend to encourage endless combat.

Quote from: S'mon;1011285I agree about the inappropriate dominance of the combat system in many, many games.

4e D&D is definitely a combat centric game. 3e I think can support other play styles, but the XP system, the CR system, & the published adventures all tend to encourage endless combat.

Based on the responses I've seen on gaming forums over the years, I get the feeling combat is one of the few areas the majority of players are comfortable with the dice deciding much of the action. The result being that many games look as though they support combat solutions for everything when in fact they are just designed that way under an assumption that outside of combat the GM will arbitrate results based on the players description of their actions.
Even when skills are included, other than a potentially sizable list of skills most skill systems don't require a great deal of room for explanation, most just being a pass / fail or Save vs kind of thing.

Quote from: S'mon;1011285I agree about the inappropriate dominance of the combat system in many, many games.

I doubt it's a fault of any particular era, but Kult (in whatever edition I have) has waaaaay more gun-porn than I need or want... and, IMO, it doesn't fit with the themes of the game. I'd be fine with something far less detailed.
Some Call of Cthulhu books have gone the same way... getting all wrapped up in details of various weapons, mostly guns.
But I've felt free to ignore this... have much more generalized weapon stats... and most of the folks I've played with haven't complained when I mix up 'clip' for 'magazine'.

I agree about the gun porn in both games. It seems strange.  Our group weren't gun bunnies so we ignored it for the most part.

I think people replicated it in the past simply because it was the tradition or something. These days I think authors have more tools at their disposal, and are more aware of this fact.

Authors added dozens and dozens of guns to Call of Cthulhu via various articles and supplements because some players are interested in the details of historical (or modern) firearms. But those are all supplementary materials. There is no requirement to acquire or use any of it and little expectation that one should do so.

For players who like it I'm all for it. I loved the RQ3 armour system because it let me play mix and match with all sorts of armour types. Bezainted, jazeriant, plate, chain, so much more than usual D&D. And who could forget all the pole arms in AD&D 1e. We spent quite a bit of time looking up what all of them were. I still remember such gems as the "Bohemian Ear-spoon".

Kult and CoC just weren't gun heavy games for us  Top Secret on the other hand...

Quote from: S'mon;10112853e I think can support other play styles, but the XP system, the CR system, & the published adventures all tend to encourage endless combat.

The original CR system of 3e was set up for players to take on challenges, they weren't meant to be solely combat - although those ended up being the easiest to do with 3e.