So, I've come full circle. I'm back with my first love - D&D.

This is my "why". It's important for me to share, as my hope is to provide insight into the mind of a habitual system-addict, manic seeker of the "perfect medium complexity depth because #feelings" RPG and perhaps help other manic-addicts like myself find some peace.

Recently I dusted off a game system I had explored almost a year ago, dug in a little deeper and found new inspiration to jump in head long. The system's fiddly-bits abound, and I was dazzled by the fiddly-bits because I'm easily dazzled by them. I believed that fiddly-bits would give player's and myself a needed "depth" of options to make game-play more fun. I wanted "medium complexity" because I thought lighter games didn't cover all the options needed to make a game feel "complete".

Before this new religion, I had dusted off another favorite game and started up a campaign with it. It is a more "gritty" and "realistic" system, with attention to details in both character creation and combat. I hoped this game would add the "feeling" I'm looking for. Of course, trying to identify this "feeling" wasn't so important as seeking it...

In the course of my campaign I've struggled with new players learning the system, running combats with many participants, shoe-horning magic into my vision of how it works, and encouraging players when their characters seemed less heroic than they had initially hoped.

In the course of prepping the new game, making 12 characters for a con I would later not be able to attend, came more revelations. In addition, I found a play test group for a similar game as my new one, and played a more complex game and then spent the better part of 2 hours discussing with that GM the merits of lighter, faster systems and trying to figure out what we NEEDED the damn fiddly-bits for. It was an enlightening evening. It's been an enlightening year really.

In short I came to a conclusion. I wasn't having fun. Worse, I didn't feel like my player's were having fun either. This is generally not good. I have had some personal revelations I share below;

Revelation one: I don't like making characters in games with lots of fiddly bits. Also, I'm pretty sure none of the players I have roped into my games like it either. They put up with me, but they would rather just get on with it. Complexity does not equal "depth" in the ephemeral way I was hoping to find it. It's also REALLY annoying. This revelation was like discovering (and eliminating) that strange buzz you never realized was giving you migraines.

Revelation two: Complexity adds useless time to doing EVERYTHING in the game which detracts from actually playing the game. Looking back at all the complexity my "perfect medium complexity depth because #feelings" games introduce into play has added zero fun to the games. In fact, it detracts from them. Instead of playing in a natural fashion we're stopping to figure out rules that generally come to the same conclusions as the faster games. Also, I personally don't bring a lot of the minutiae of these games into play anyways, so it's really a lot of wasted space and time (both on paper and in my brain).

Revelation three: My most successful games have been with D&D (and the like). I'm sure other light games in the OSR movement would serve some of those same purposes. I like the basic structure of it. I like the stuff I'm reading in the OSR. I feel like I've held on to stubborn "dislikes" of D&D-isms based on habit. Most of my issues are with the way players approached them. I'm smarter and wiser now. Instead of using rules like a bible I can use them like a framework. I've been doing that all along anyways, why use a more complicated framework? Abstract is good. The game just needs to move! Looking back at all the things I think I needed, I am just not seeing how they added any fun. Being able to just "get into it" has had way more impact.

Revelation four: Complex games take longer to prep, which detracts from accomplishing the prep. I run a hybrid sandbox + events style, and I like to have various things ready to pull as I "improvise" through various encounters and reactions to player choices. Not only do complex systems make it harder to prep, they make it harder to improvise. I need to be quick on my feet. This has cost me loads of personal time.

Revelation five: I'm not as digital as I once thought I should be. I'm feeling like the computer is getting in the way of me engaging the game. I'm faster with 3-ring binders, physical books, notes, a GM screen and 3x5 cards. Maybe I'm more old-school than I thought, but I'm seriously going to ditch my digital for an analog table. I thought maybe music would be fun, but it's also just distracting. I just need people and imagination! It's more fun to me. It will also make playing in the retirement home after the apocalypse MUCH easier...

Revelation six: I'm bat shit crazy. It's important to recognize your problems so you can address them, right? Don't worry, I think these revelations are the first steps in me fixing this. :-)

So, I've explored the OSR stuff and have read D&D 5e and decided to stop chasing this strange obsession with "perfect medium complexity depth because #feelings" down the rabbit hole. Instead I'm going to focus on running games and creating for them. At this moment those games are going to be D&D (5e) or like games. No more complex games. I'm going to focus on the fun. Complexity is not fun for me.

I'm actually feeling good about this decision. Not in my usual "let's form a cult in my mind and pursue this idea with manic devotion!!" kind of hyper good, but the calm good of a real epiphany.

Thanks for reading my diatribe. I'm really excited to have my feet under me again.

Yeah, I had that "come to Jesus" moment a few years ago myself. After a while I realized after all the fine tuning was said and done I was just adding noise to the signal. All I really cared about was the signal, the extra speakers and wire set up just delayed the party.

Now I don't sweat a rulebook like I used to. But also, especially going back and re-reading my old pre-2000 books, they were nowhere as overburdened as I made them out to be either. For some weird reason I just fell into the habit of turning all the features on, like what everyone else did, as obviously more is better. Looking back, so much was optional, or far more open to campaign interpretation, that my dream system pursuit was merely rebelling against ghosts.

I guess in one's youth, or on the internet, it is easy to take a hobby too seriously.

That's pretty much why I don't like D&D 3.x.  I came back to D&D for much of the same reasons you did, having been a GURPS guy for 15-20 years, but found that 3.x really just added in all of the complexity I was trying to get away from.

My realization was that my perfect RPG is D&D, just a little less complicated than 3/4.
But only a little.

Unpacking that out, I've tried player-driven, different declaration/action resolution, much simpler, much more complex, point based, effect based design, etc etc.
And while all of those have neat elements, I mainly learn something I bring back to, essentially, D&D.

Why D&D?

Actually its lack of complexity is a big draw to me. At its core even AD&D is very streamlined a system. It flows so damn well. From there you can add in as many options as you want, or never use a single one. So much of what detractors bitch incessantly about is stuff that is very situational and their "better" game system oft turns out to be horrendously more complex.

Also why I like Star Frontiers and now 5e D&D.

Quote from: trechriron;810969The game just needs to move!

I feel similarly, and for the above reason.  We really like our game to move quickly, so we play a game that requires almost no rulebook reference and we roll for as few things as possible (attack and damage, I roll for reactions, ability checks for unique actions). That game, for us, is D&D (Basic/Expert or OD&D).  All the uniqueness comes from a complex story that develops over time, rather than rules complexity.

Welcome to the club. What are your favorite systems right now?

If you want to play something D&D-esque and have a rules-light system, then I want to recommend Hellfrost or Shaintar. Both SW fantasy settings.

My revelation was this:

Revelation one: The pool of players God has seen fit to place in my vicinity are devote non-readers. They will not read. And therefore I can only run games that are no more complex to create characters in than can be explained aurally.

This puts quite a few games out of our grasp, 5E being on of them (unless I really wanted to hold their hands).

I butted heads with them for years about it before I finally had the revelation that I just needed to accept it as fact.

Quote from: trechriron;810969Revelation two: Complexity adds useless time to doing EVERYTHING in the game which detracts from actually playing the game. Looking back at all the complexity my "perfect medium complexity depth because #feelings" games introduce into play has added zero fun to the games. In fact, it detracts from them. Instead of playing in a natural fashion we're stopping to figure out rules that generally come to the same conclusions as the faster games. Also, I personally don't bring a lot of the minutiae of these games into play anyways, so it's really a lot of wasted space and time (both on paper and in my brain).

This is an important concept.

Every rule in a game should contribute to making the game "better". If a rule doesn't make a game "better", it is a waste of ink.

However, if we gave the same rulebook to a bunch of players, and asked them to highlight the rules that made the game worse, every book would come back different. And that's a good thing!

Quote from: trechriron;810969In short I came to a conclusion. I wasn't having fun. Worse, I didn't feel like my player's were having fun either. This is generally not good. I have had some personal revelations I share below

Yey! I'm glad you discovered this with your gaming. Most people never do.

I often like a few complex games like HERO System.

Still, for the most part I'm also leaning towards simpler games. Though for me, AD&D and its successors - including D&D5 - are definitely in the category of at least medium complexity, given that there are hundreds of pages of rules.

My move to lower complexity is towards games where the complete rules fit in a few dozen pages at most.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;811011Welcome to the club. What are your favorite systems right now?

If you want to play something D&D-esque and have a rules-light system, then I want to recommend Hellfrost or Shaintar. Both SW fantasy settings.

D&D 5e is what my group is switching to this weekend.

I have been and continue to really dig what Mr. Crawford is doing with his take on games. Stars Without Number, Other Dust, and the soon to be released Silent Legions (downloading my KS copy tonight!). Every time I crack 'em open I just want to run 'em!

I have played SW before. It's fun. With my new found attempt to "keep things simple" I may have to dust off some of my stuff and take another look. I really dig Deadlands as a setting, some fun stuff in there. Hellfrost looks super well done and I think I bought the Shaintar stuff just haven't read it yet. I was playing in Shaintar back when it was a Fuzion game! :-)

Actually, I recently picked up the Entropic Gaming System. It has a SW feel but uses hit points. I really like some of the choices in the game (including nabbing the Sorcery rules from Legend and tweaking them...). It's also OGL, so that's a bonus from a publishing perspective.

Quote from: jhkim;811037I often like a few complex games like HERO System.

Still, for the most part I'm also leaning towards simpler games. Though for me, AD&D and its successors - including D&D5 - are definitely in the category of at least medium complexity, given that there are hundreds of pages of rules.

My move to lower complexity is towards games where the complete rules fit in a few dozen pages at most.

I just can't into Hero. I want to, but I glaze over (even with Hero designer and all that right to game play). This is a problem because I know a guy who loves it and thinks it is nice and light and quick to play. The go to system of choice for a quick game.

(I'll let you read that again a few times)

Meanwhile, learning other systems is pushing this GM/Player out of the comfort zone (even something I think is simple, Like Marvel Heroic/Cortext). This leads me to question familiarity and ease of use with a system and how that plays into OPs #feelings.

I really want to like Fate, but every version I've read just doesn't quite sit right in various different ways.

I need to look at Fate 2 at some point.

The lack of opportunity to game has limited how much I've worked at kitbashing my own, and 5e is probably my go-to low energy choice if I do get a gaming chance.

Hey Trechiron, was HARP the latest one you're referring to?  I loves me some SWN, but I have to represent by throwing up the horns for RQ6, have you tried that?