Okay, that's rather click-baity, but specifically as to the superhero genre, I don't get it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but systems like Mutants & Masterminds don't get the genre that it purports to play in.  This isn't really a screed against the system--I've been at it for ten years now.  It's just that what's important to me--as someone who wants to emulate the superhero genre, and not wargaming--is better reflected by a Cortex+ or Fate system that wholly abstracted the powers/effects and puts the emphasis on the game mechanics for player agency.

Yet, some players will hand wave away a system because it doesn't have enough "crunch."  Let's get to the bottom of that.  What's it really mean?

Some people like being able to flex their imagination, and not be limited by a system so much.  While others want that system there, they're comfortable with the mechanics defining what their characters can do.

It's personal preference.

The ability to make choices that feel practically meaningful.

FATE for example, boils down (when you set everything to equal with unlimited creativity) to a few simple things. Either I can accomplish my goal with my aspects and skills or I need to create some number of aspects with my existing resources. Since no one thing is really mechanically better than any other then any aspect works for this.

There is something to be said for invoke for effect but in the midst of a battle those don't really have a chance to shine.

Granted that is all weaknesses in Fudge not really the aspect system of FATE.

If I want to be able to do what ever I think I could do then I suppose one would just free form.

Apocalypse world ends up having a very similar problem, I roll until I get 10+ (or whatever the number is), if I fail another thing spawns that I have to roll 10+ against. All of those rolls and new spawns take the form of something interesting but my choices aren't really affecting what happens to me that much.

As I mentioned this is all in terms of an infinite creativity scenario. I can ALWAYS figure out a way to use my best skill or stat and apply a sufficient number of my abilities to it. In my groups we generally find that to be a fairly normal state.

Some of it's trust.  If you don't trust your GM and fellow players a great deal, then you're going to shy away from systems that leave a lot of things up to the GM.  If you can spell those things out in great detail using a crunchy system, you're reducing your need to trust that the GM will see things your way.

Some of it's historical.  The major of systems for superhero games for many years were super-crunchy.  Comic books used to be a lot more niche than they are now, and a system that lets you quantify and rank superheroes right beside each other had a lot of appeal at the time.  The crowd has changed a bit, but there are certainly still people around that go back to the "versus battles" of old.

Some of it's the way people engage with the rules.  There are at least eight types of fun (google "eight types of fun" for all sorts of information on it), and people enjoy different things.  If you don't enjoy crunchy rules systems, that's fine - but be aware that someone else probably does.  The fun of telling a story is a specific type of fun, and not everyone holds it up as their #1 goal.

And a bunch more factors... but the last one is probably a lot of it.

How on earth--at all--can you play a game with a GM you don't trust?

I get wanting to quantify superheroes/powers--even to the point that the comic books don't¹--but character agency should still be equal.  People make this mistake ALL the time: you have Hawkeye and Hulk on the same team, but if that means one player has 200 points to build with and another only 150, objectively one player has more agency than another.  While this isn't a "Fate is better than other RPGs" thread, all characters have equal agency--and are tested equally--in Fate².

Superhero stories aren't D&D stories.  While D&D has been a thing longer than superhero RPGs, that doesn't mean they should keep following suit.  Character death is not a thing.  Sure, the title hero occasionally buys the farm to shake up the book, but it's a rare thing--certainly not on a campaign level in an RPG.  Hell, even skill failure isn't a thing.  I'd argue that heroes "fail" at the need of the plot.  A d20 objective failure doesn't have any place IMO in a superhero story, e.g. fail a Climbing check by 5 and you fall.  That is not a thing for Batman.  Ever.  At worst, it would be a Fate thing like "Succeed at a cost."  Else your "I'm the best at what I do" or "I'm a world class X" character looks like a chump at the roll of a die.



¹ Supers powers/abilities/etc often change with the writer.

² That's not true, say, for d20.  Say Superboy and Robin want to break out of Cadmus' lair and encounter a vault door.  A Fate GM could assign it as a +3 difficulty and Superboy could bring his +3 Forceful Approach to it while Robin could bring his +3 Clever.  Compare that to M&M: Superboy gets a +5 STR bonus to break the door down, while Robin doesn't get any skill bonus and has a different set of mechanics to use to bypass the door.

In reply to badpenny (msg # 5):



Not all of us live within driving distance of 394567823456 DMs waiting to run games for us? :P

The adversarial GM vs. Player relationship was pretty much the norm for the first 20 years or so of RPGs.

In general, though, I'm not talking about distrust but rather "trust to interpret in the same way" or just "trust to let me use my version of this" in this case.  If you want a player that dose x and works in fashion y, you might find the GM has very different ideas about situation z.  Having a crunchy system removes some of that interpretation ambiguity.

Personally, I don't really care for base FATE or FAE much, especially with regards to superheroes.  Systems like Dresden or Base Raiders that bolt a powers framework on top of the base system are fine, but I just find the base system alone to be too freeform.  I prefer a little more mechanical guidance than it offers.

The mechanics are there.  The focus isn't on the power but on agency.  Which, I'd argue is what the source material focuses on, too.

I actually don't think powers, per se, is even relevant beyond flavor text.  This is true for Cortex+ (MHR).  You can call it Plasma Blast or Super Strength, but you're still comparing dice pool to dice pool.

I've found that the more crunchy you get, the more meta-gamey you get.  And that, to me, is about winning, and not telling stories.

(I know, I know: everyone has there own way of having fun.  The problem for me is that those people who want to "win" don't self-identify and they still join my games.)

In reply to badpenny (msg # 8):



But there is always some winning in roleplaying.  People like to win, whether it's the heart of the maiden/knight in shining armor, or besting the local bad boy at the tavern.  If there's combat, or conflict, people like to win usually.  Some RPGs offer more rigid structure than others when that is concerned.
This message was last edited by the user at 19:20, Wed 29 Mar 2017.

In reply to badpenny (msg # 5):

Actually if you play tabletop that can happen all the time. A game group coalesces out of friends, friends of friends and loose acquaintance at a game store or college dorm. Its the only game in town or your friends invite you along. You do not know everyone at the table well if at all so yes, you might wind up gaming with people you do not necessarily trust.

For me the idea that with sufficient creativity, persuasiveness or bribery, any character can pretty much apply their best numbers to every situation can make FATE boil down to the luck of the dice. If in your example, Robin and Superboy can both use the same modifier to open a door then what, mechanically, is the difference between them? Superhero games with plenty of crunch tend to error on the side of mechanical complexity insanity with the intent to quantify exactly that.

I do agree that having characters fail at things they shouldn't might not serve verisimilitude assuming that in a crunchy system you actually invested the points in it rather than a character declaring that they are the best at something. However it does serve dramatic tension, a long facet of RPGs. There is always a chance of failure, always that odd roll that screws your day and there are players who enjoy the tension and those who do not. However RPG GMs might not always have the luxury of the kind of contrivances that a comic book writer has. Mainly because they do not necessarily actually know what happens next to the plot.

If a writer knows that Batman will get locked in a room with an insane clone of Superman, he might show that Batman is carrying a chunk of Kryptonite on him. It could be for any reason, he might even have confiscated it from Metallo and had to respond to an emergency call before he had a chance to keep it securely in the Batcave. Why does he have a lead-lined pouch to carry radioactive materials in? Because he's Batman. He easily defeats the clone, escapes and warns the League. A GM might station the clones in different rooms and Batman happens to walk into the one with the Superman clone. In a crunchy system, Batman will have a really bad day because neither the player nor the GM are precognitives. In a "soft" system, Batman will somehow evade the alien demigod that can burn him to death by looking at him funny, escape from someone who can fly at sub or superluminal speeds and warn the League somehow before Supes breaks out and tries to murder him. Contrivance is pretty much the only thing saving the player character in this instance and not all gamers will be happy with it.

I do agree though that there is a certain degree of "D&D mindset" within tabletop players even when they play games as superheroes. They tend to specialize in a niche meaning to work as a party rather than the presumption of most superhero books that a hero would usually work alone and join forces when necessary. Even those who belong in teams are understood to have solo adventures every now and then. Crunchy systems are there to figure out if Superman can consistently punch out the Hulk or vice versa, to allow for quantified effects that the player does not have to constantly invent, the mechanics can provide some degree of veracity to encounters and appeals to players who are interested in game mechanics. Crunchy systems come from the same roots as D&D, miniature wargames, with often complex rules to simulate various results. "Soft" systems tend to be like LARP rules, meant mainly for storytelling. They are different tools for different needs.

In reply to Togashi Kenshin (msg # 10):

I think your last paragraph sums it up eloquently.

Your point about party vs solo hero is something I think people tend to miss.

A lot of people do it, just as a lot of GMs will take on players that they don't trust.  It's why we had to make an announcement to the effect that if you game with a GM/player that you don't trust, then the Mods will not sort out the in-game fallout.

Some people just really enjoy testing the limits of what mechanical systems will let them do.  Not necessarily from a min/max standpoint but simply having a finite set of well defined building blocks and seeing what they can make from them that is interesting and mechanically unique.  It can be very satisfying to work with a well engineered system and finally figure out how to make all the pieces you want to include, click together.  I get some satisfaction out of it but others I have played with will create reams of characters to just explore the crunch a system offers and test how good and mechanically balanced it is.

The game might then be wholly separate from this activity.  Or perhaps is then viewed as a further testing ground for the system with a side effect of telling a story and interacting in a social way with people they enjoy the company of.

  A Haiku has rules it is working with in those rules that you find art.

  Some art forms are more strict then others.  Crunch or lack of Crunch doesn't really make a difference in whether a character is Heroic.  First Edition D&D Inherited the concept of the Hero and Super-hero from the "Fantasy Supplement" of Chainmail.  The later versions got rid of it by getting rid of the (Normals/ Zero Levels).

  Why am I what G. Gygax called Rules School, because for me the game systems are the physical and meta-physical laws of the universe or that particular part that they are in.

  My art is to play a Hero in those universes; to create a living breathing person [as long as they aren't a construct, undead, or unquiet dead.] with history friends and life or unlife to live.

Trust issues are a real item; some because of competitiveness, [remember D&D was started by wargamers used to playing against each other with referee.],  but also as has already been stated due to worry about shared vision of the situations in the game.
 And Trust does affect a wish for understood rules.

 But it can go both ways, in some where one would prefer NOT to have your character die a glorious heroic death; You can either Munchkin [compete with the DM] or find a GM who prefers heroic games, what ever the system.
This message was last edited by the user at 10:35, Thu 30 Mar 2017.

A system with good crunch lets you create a character that feels distinctive without constraining you.  It allows you to pick your best tools, and, most of all, to make meaningful decisions that affect more than your flavor text.  A crunchy game played, designed, and run properly, offers real choices with pros and cons.  Do you build a character with super strength or super speed?  Do you try to chase someone down or just blow up their car?

In a more purely narrative system, the distinction between those decisions is almost arbitrary.  Because the variables thrown into the mechanics you use are fairly narrow, the result is that your decisions are rarely more than window dressing.  Like someone said before, with enough wheeling and reaching you can turn FATE into essentially luck of the dice.

A more mechanically complex game gives those decisions shades of meaning.  Super Strength allows you to impact the world in true, concrete ways.  The decision to fight, stalk, or chase an adversary can lead to vastly different experiences, utilizing different and unique skills and interlocking mechanics that, viscerally feel different to play.  And in a system with more mechanical complexity, your choice to focus on a particular suite of mechanics can let you, as a player, shine when it's most appropriate for your character, when your character's prowess can carry the day even over the loudest alpha player.

While I really enjoy rules-lite games from time to time, I tend to find mechanically complex games more rewarding, just for those reasons.  I like my decisions to matter on a level higher than window dressing.

To some extent, this is the reason for my preference toward crunch.  I find it also helps with the non-crunch portion as well.

A system of numbers that make up my character isn't just 'numbers used to win' or something like that.  It's a framework on which I hang the character itself.  It defines my character's capabilities in a solid, comprehensible manner, which gives me insight into the character.  WHY do the numbers fall into place this way?  Why is the character this, or that, with this number or that one?  Chicken-egg - did I choose the numbers based on the concept I had in mind, or did the numbers help me fill out the concept after I chose them?

A little of both.

And I find this can help narration as well, as GreyGriffin points out.

I've seen a lot of these arguments - Freeform or Rules-lite versus Crunch - over the years, and they mostly boil down to people trying to prove their preference is 'better'.  I don't feel either is better - one might suit a specific PLAYER or group better, but that's personal preference and style.

My experience is that a rewarding experience with regards to a memorable 'story' or narrative can be easily created with either crunchy systems or rules-lite-to-freeform games.  It depends more on the group than the system.

I've been trying to beat this mindset into fluffy people for years. It doesn't matter which leads which so long as they match. If I see a cool mechanic in the book and I want to use it, there is nothing wrong with changing my story to match, if that change means some other stats should change to match the new narrative that is even better.

So ya, chicken and egg so long as this chicken lays that egg and comes from a similar egg.

It's not just trust, it's about arguments.

I was once playing in a very light system. (Spells were a bit complicated, everything else was super fluffy.) We spent 20 minutes arguing whether a dire wolf can climb a tree or not, at least well enough to bite someone sitting in the branches. We did calculations, we Google'd images, we yelled at each other a lot. After about 45 minutes, the GM begged us to please stop and we went on with the game. (He didn't make a ruling before that, because he wasn't sure either. He just gave up when he saw we were getting nowhere.)

The point is none of us really knew. A dire wolf does not actually exist, and the real "dire wolf" is extinct. Modern wolves and dogs are close enough, but they are both lighter and less strong. Plus, none of us were sure whether dogs can climb a tree or not either.

But if you're playing, say, D&D 3.5? The DC to climb a tree is 15. A dire wolf has +7 Str and no other relevant stats. There are no rules about quadrupeds climbing. (Assuming humanoids, the rules do say "You need both hands free to climb", so the DM still has to do SOME interpreting...but it can easily be hand-waved.) So, by the rules, the wolf (or the DM controlling the wolf) rolls a d20. If it gets at least an 8, it climbs up.(At a speed of 12.5 feet/move action.) If it gets 1-3, it falls back down. It doesn't matter whether it makes sense or not.

The players don't fight and the GM doesn't have to deal with that crap. Sure, if it fits the story, the GM can make a ruling and say the wolf climbs/doesn't, ignoring the rules. That raises the risk of players complaining, but at some point you have to accept the GM's rulings.

Now, if the GM is confident he can make fair and proper rulings all the time and the players believe that, you don't need any crunch. I've ran plenty of freeform games with absolutely no dice-rolling, and they were all very enjoyable. (They were usually stuff like Pokémon, where none of my players would dispute my call because they considered me the expert.) But if the GM doesn't have all the answers and the players are prone to arguing, crunch=crutch.

I completely agree I never fight about rules in 3.5 all perfectly clear cut and concise.

... whilst I agree that crunch can make things easier in some circumstances than something more rules lite, you never argue about rules in 3.5? Really?

If 3.5 was really totally clear, we wouldn't have had reams of FAQ entries; or a need for sage advice, etc. It's not a bad system; but it's not totally clear at points.

In reply to willvr (msg # 20):

I think they were being slightly sarcastic there.

Yes that was 100% sarcasm, I need to look up the video again that mentions arguing about the rules as a core part of playing D&D. However I think Flint is actually buying what he is selling.

In FATE the wolf would be able to climb the tree unless he got a compel on his being a wolf aspect to not be able to. Pretty straight forward.

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 22):

Which is as nonsensical as the D&D 3.5 method of determining whether the wolf can climb the tree or not, when you think about it.

One method relies on dice, the other method relies on the game master's whim.
This message was last edited by the user at 13:49, Thu 30 Mar 2017.

In reply to pdboddy (msg # 23):

Difference is one is consistent and one relies on if a person you know likes you or not, got enough sleep, really wants to be doing this right now, cares if your character dies.

Since when do wolves have hands by either ruleset, anyway?

No one is dice, and one is if it was story relevant enough to hand out a point for. The wolf's character could always buy off the compel. For that matter the guy decided to play a wolf there is no way he did not see this coming.

Or from the other side it's an invoke for effect so it's a question of if you thought creating the climb a tree aspect would help you get away from the wolf. Since that is a question you are asking then obviously you do.

Hands are not required in FATE

In reply to RosstoFalstaff (msg # 24):

And neither relies on whether or not dire wolves can climb trees.  Does it matter, then, which one you use?

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 26):

Hand are not required?  Depends on the GM, I suppose.

If I have an aspect saying both my hands are cut off then I can do everything perfectly fine unless I get a compel to not do it. Some reason applies, but having such a huge disadvantage should be pumping out fate points pretty regularly.

If both of us forget I don't have hands then I contrived a way to climb that tree or open that safe or perform that surgery and you move on.

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 29):

.... err see, that seems just as silly as any 3.5 rule you have. Whether you use rules-lite or something crunchy, some common sense has to apply. I mean, that's like saying that nowhere in the 3.5 rules does it say you need feet to kick someone...

3.5 isn't my favorite system, but I've long ago decided that whether a game is fun or not has less to do with the system exactly, more on the combination of that system with that GM and player.

This is very similar to the argument that keeps springing up stating that just because 3.5, or DnD in general, has lots of crunch to it, it means that 'real' role-players shouldn't play.

I am willing, with some notable exceptions, to play nearly any game with the right players.

You guys are getting into the weeds here.

Fate's Aspects are about granting permission to do things.  So Iron Man's suit allows him access to air zones, while Hawkeye doesn't have an Aspect that gives him permission to do so.

A wolf is not known for climbing trees.  It's not about hands, per se--since leopards climb trees--it's about which animals do have permission to do so.

I saw mention of "GM's whim" and I find that to be wholly inaccurate.  Maybe that's going to back to playing with a GM you don't trust, I don't know since I'd never do that.  (Still beyond me, as I'd rather not play at all. Whatevs.)

I didn't start the thread to brag about what system I like.  It really is trying to understand the mentality of why people like more crunchy systems.

What I'd love to see are some concrete examples of comparing a crunchier system with a less granular one.

In reply to willvr (msg # 30):

I agree.  It's part system, and part the people playing with it.

Sometimes there are silly things that happens, and you either roll with it, or agree with everyone else that "no, that's too silly, here's what happens...".

In reply to Sir Swindle (msg # 19):

Well if I were the DM, the only one doing the arguing would be the Court assigned Rules lawyer.  Though I would allow reminders to said Lawyer from the bench.  of course that would only be as long during play as the allowed time for summarizing the case.  After play any such Ruling can be appealed unless, ruled due to "constitutional clauses" "identity", "fun", Or "plotline/arc", though these can latter be appealed at the end of arcs, or to the Grand jury [DM, GL, and regular players].

I often mention (both because it's funny and very true) that my home group's most RP intensive sessions happened in D&D 4e.  That's not because D&D 4e is not crunchy (it was, by far, the most "miniatures wargame" version of D&D).  It was because combats in 4e took so long and were just generally so painful to do that we did everything we could to avoid them.

---

Anyway, on the general topic, a metaphor might help.  Let's say you have a few sheets of paper and a pack of crayons and you want to make a picture.

The first sheet of paper is completely blank.  This is your freeform game.  You can color absolutely anything you want within the loose confines of the "page".  This offers you a maximum degree of freedom, and absolutely no guidance.  Some people are going to love the freedom, and others are just going to stare at the page in indecision.

The second sheet of paper has a "connect the dots" style series of points on it.  You have some degree of guidance and some degree of freedom (depending on how many dots, whether they are numbered, etc.).  This is a representation of the various rules-lite systems.  The exact mix of guidance vs. freedom will vary by game, and different people will like different ones.  Still, some people aren't going to like this system because it's too restrictive and others aren't going to like it because it doesn't provide quite enough guidance to make a good picture for them.

The third sheet of paper has a normal coloring book line drawing on it that you can fill in.  You're free to color the picture however you want and maybe draw some stuff in the edges of background to add a little flare to it, but the overall picture is constrained by the line drawing.  This is a rules crunchy system.  Some people are going to absolutely hate it because they can't make the drawing they want with the lines that are there while others are going to love that they already have a framework for their picture.

---

In the end, it's all down to the things individual people find enjoyable.  For instance, I sometimes appreciate the submission type of fun (not that kind, you perv).  That means I enjoy a game where I can turn my brain off a little and just play the game.  D&D-type combat tends to be like that.  I know my abilities, I know my foes, and I play the game to make them  dead.  I don't get any of that type of fun out of a FATE game.  There's no "turn your brain off" in FATE since everything requires creativity and narration.

On the other hand, I sometimes get frustrated with the restrictions in particular games (the expression type of fun, mostly).  I can't build a character that does x in system y because it just doesn't work that way or the system, for whatever reason, values x very highly.  That's when I do find games like FATE appealing for the freedom they offer.

Further reading on the types of fun: http://www.gnomestew.com/gener...-eight-types-of-fun/

In reply to badpenny (msg # 31):

It's about hands insofar as the 3.5 rule quoted mentioned hands - "both hands free" and all that. I don't actually believe climbing requires hands and opposable thumbs specifically. ;)

In reply to swordchucks (msg # 34):

That is, perhaps, the single best metaphor for the Freeform/Lite/Crunchy spectrum I've ever seen.

My tastes have changed over time.

I started out many years ago in wargames (and I still like historical settings). Then I discovered D&D. Then I discovered Traveller. I spent many years deriving a lot of fun from creating houserules for Traveller, and using the rules to create vehicles, starships, weapons, etc. All very crunchy.

However, as time passed, particularly as I got more involved with PbP games, I increasingly found crunch to be tedious. Waiting for players to roll dice after dice after more dice, taking potentially a week or more to resolve a single round of combat, I found I wanted something quicker.

So I started looking at Indie games, cheap and cheerful games with simple and elegant rules, and I have become more involved with storytelling.

One long running game exemplifies this - it started out as a modification of the crunchy game En Garde!, but I gradually ignored more and more of the rules (because I simply couldn’t be bothered to adjudicate them) until it became effectively a free-form game with a few dice rolls to keep wish-fulfillment in check.

Most of my games now are ‘freeform plus dice’ because I don’t want the hassle of looking things up, working things out, waiting for players to roll dice, and making dozens of rolls myself.

These days, I want to shove a ready-meal into the microwave, I’ve had enough of picking eggshells out of a mixing bowl.

Maybe it’s GM burn out, maybe it’s just an age thing. :)

Just to clarify, I'm perfectly aware you get into arguments in D&D. But those are rule arguments, not theoretical ones. They are less prone to fighting, usually take less time, and are completely avoidable if only one person knows the rules well enough (In my experience usually me, even if I'm not the DM.) and the others roll with it.

I've always thought of systems as methods of travelling. Freeform is walking. You can go anywhere (that you can manage) but it's tiring and confusing. D&D is a public bus. You just get on and trust the driver, who takes you through a more or less set route. Light systems are like bikes, because they make me ask why the hell I'm not just walking if I'm going to do all the work anyway.

And some games are so crunchy that all the sections of the outlined picture have a number indicating what color goes where.

That would imply that all of the pictures look pretty much the same.  Which... I actually find is a problem more in the middle-ground games that don't have as many mechanics to pick from.  Crunchy tends to demand characters differentiate.

I suppose you could widen the metaphor to imply that each coloring page is a different class/template within a crunchy game system and imply that every class/template looks about the same, which is fair for several systems.  Within the superhero genre, I'm not sure that's a terrible thing.  How much differentiation do you really see between comic book speedsters, for instance?

And I was going to say the second level of Swordchuck's metaphor would be better described by one of those Doodle books, where they give you some random lines to build off of, than a connect-the-dots that sort of tells you exactly where to go... whereas the coloring-book page (or, really, the connect-the-dot idea, since I'd have replaced it) sounds more like a template-based system like D&D or Talislanta, than high-crunch modular games like Champions or GURPS.  Those are more like a "How to draw..." book combined with Drawing Prompts, or something.  They go back to the blank page, but with detailed instructions for what to put on it.

And then, of course, there are those popular coloring books where you have to roll a d64 to randomly determine which crayon to use...

But, um, I suspect that us crunch-leaning-types are calling ourselves out a little here, wanting to build this up into a proper system.

I was in a Pathfinder game once where we had to stop and argue about the rules for 20 minutes in every single session... There was one player who constantly wanted to do something weird and obscure, and it took that long for them to figure out whether he could do it, how the rules would apply to allow him to do it, which rules needed to be combined with which other rules to make it work, etc. It involved a lot of looking things up in multiple books. He wasn't trying to be intentionally disruptive (...that I know of), and the things he wanted to do did fit the situations we were in. They were just more creative than what the rules accounted for.

And so, on the flip side of what everyone else is saying, I prefer rules-lite, where the GM can just decree things and the story can move on. :p

 Don't forget that a DM can do that in Pathfinder too - some of the more arguments-light games I've been in have used the fairly simple meta-rule that no decision arrived at in game is binding thereafter until hashed out or thought about, and that anything not fairly obvious (to the DM) got a die roll, evens or odds.

 Also, I kind of see the systems breaking down more subtly than just crunch and no crunch - the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...forbidden_is_allowed principle kind of applies. Some systems permit you to do most anything not forbidden by invoking aspects or combining spheres or spending bennies, others restrict you to the actions permitted by your skills, stats and abilities. As a rule I personally (and perversely) find the latter leads to greater creativity because I like the idea of being given a small tool box and challenged to find ways to apply those tools to newer and bigger situations but not everyone does and there's nothing particularly wrong with that.

 I've also played with plenty of GM's I don't trust, but I think that's a bad way of describing them - one GM ran fun games but couldn't be trusted to work out distances (The skeletons are out of range? So... we... wandered along this hall for three hundred feet seeing no doors and not thinking it was strange, despite the fact that that's larger than the house we're in..? And we're not under mind control and there's no magic? But they're definitely further away than the insi... Never mind) or numbers (So we're surrounded? And the floating fortresses are too close together to slip past? The whole country? How many of them are th... Never mind) but we still often had a blast. Another would cheerfully roll dice behind a screen and declare critical hits every second blow while his NPC healer kept everyone on their feet but the group was fun. Another was running the campaign mainly to showcase how clever their city and dungeon design was (it wasn't) but we found our fun in the byplay of the group and the odd NPC we more or less adopted...
 ...and sometimes, yeah... There's just only one game in town. ^_^

In reply to Nerwen (msg # 42):

That's more a DM thing than a Pathfinder specific thing, though.

I mean, in all honesty, a GM really ought to know when to say "Go ahead and roll <something>", and when to say, "You know what?  That's awesome.  I'll allow it."  That goes for rules-light and rules-crunchy games.

Yeah, my favorite GMs (and I've had the good fortune to have played under a lot of really good GMs) were the kind of people that, if you explained what you wanted to do and it sounded logical and plausible, would go ahead and roll with it, regardless of what the specific rules in the game said...they might have you roll once for what should likely have been a combination of five or six rolls, if you got specific about it.  But rolling that many dice at that point in the game would have killed the flow of things...they kind of ran with the 'what would be most interesting right now?' concept.  And it wasn't a system-exclusive thing, it happened over a broad range of different games and different GMs.

I guess that's why I've always been partial to 'lighter' systems...my experience has been, generally, that GMs that run more crunchy systems tend to rely more on the system.  Rather than saying, "Yeah, that sounds reasonable, I'll allow it," they're inclined to say, "Well, there's actually a rule for that, so let's do it that way."  It doesn't always happen that way, and a GM who knows when to set aside the rules for the sake of a good story is a great thing.

Ultimately, the system is secondary or even tertiary, really.  The right GM and group of players can make ANY system fun to play...and the wrong GM can kill the fun of any system.

I think that some folks just let themselves get hemmed in, and they don't realize: Hey, the reason why GMs are 'God' in a roleplaying game is that they can choose to ignore what the rules say, and let the game flow as it may.

It has been my experience that "crunchy" campaigns last much longer than "non-crunchy" games (at least in rl, rpol games die or stay afloat whimsically it seems).

Funny, the mostly-freeform games that I'm in have been running for several years...one is coming up on 59k posts...

Yet I know of a crunchy game closing in on 150k posts.

On RPoL, it's all down to the continued interest of the GM and the players.  In the times I have crashed out, it was external pressures, not the game system.

Crunch is a 'thing' because people are fallible. D&D started out with dice rolls for a lot of things because you had players that would think a GM wasn't being fair about making decisions. "All characters are equal." At least, they are supposed to be. If a GM has Bill's paladin succeed all the time (due to really good role-playing rather than any inherent bias), then Mikey may feel that his hardly-ever-successful rogue is being discriminated against (usually from stupid role-playing). The dice were there to ensure that there was no bias, that the GM was fair, and he wasn't playing favorites.

Heck, even in the original DMG, Gygax states that if you don't like a rule, don't use it! That's essentially the basis for every 'house rule' that ever came afterward.

This evolved into the Golden Rule of Gaming (imho): Never let the rules get in the way of having fun!

Remember, too, that there are Rules Lawyers. Normally, this is just a phase we go through as we learn to game, and learn new systems. The rules help us understand the way the game is SUPPOSED to play. However, some are OCD types; rules make it possible for them to game in the first place.

More often than not, we're all a mix of the above.

In every game you join, you have to find a middle ground that you are comfortable with. If a GM doesn't do things to your liking, then you'll find another game.

Not for me.  It's not a matter at all of not trusting GMs to handle everything perfectly.  I've honestly never seen a game in which common sense didn't still apply, and yes, sometimes people disagree.  That's.. one of the things GMs are for, but it's not something that's ever going to be filled in with some perfect set of rules that actually covers every possibility.

For me, Crunch is just... that's what the game is.  I can make stuff up, sure, but that's not a game.  Games don't just `need structure' - they are structures.  If we take all the crunch out of, let's say, chess... we have a board and a pile of pieces.  Does it matter that the board has alternately colored squares, or that there are two different colors of pieces?  Can the horse-shaped pieces fly?  Can those pointy ones shoot lasers from their eyes?  Do the pointy ones even have eyes?  Why can't the little guys hop off the board and run around on the table?

...Quite frankly, as soon as you decide answers to any of those, even if it's just going to apply for the next half hour -- you're creating crunch, and giving structure to your game.

I can make up stories, yes.  I can even make up a story with somebody else.  And that can be fun sometimes.  But it's a different thing than playing a game.

I don't believe that crunch is essential to a game. Kids play 'games' of cops and robbers or mums and dads, but there is no real crunch there.

Rules of some type are necessary - agreements between participants about what can and cannot take place (you don't take teacups to a cops and robbers game, nor guns to a mums and dads game). Those are what define a game, but such rules don't need to be crunchy, they can be quite vague and can develop and mutate by mutual agreement.

It depends on your definition of 'crunch' I suppose, but I can accept that mutual storytelling based simply on an agreement of what is an acceptable storyline, could be defined as a game (and is, by many Rpol members), but I would hesitate to say it had 'crunch'.

For me, the enjoyment of rolling for stuff in a game is the surprise element...I like not knowing that everything I try to do with my character is going to work the way I expected it to (and sometimes it won't work at all), or trying something that's a ridiculously unlikely thing and having it actually work out remarkably well.  I enjoy that random aspect of the game.

And that's one of the reasons I have to be very selective about the freeform games I play in.  Some games are literally the players saying, "Well, okay, I'm going to do this, and it works, because my character's done it thousands of times in the past so it's no longer even a challenge."  But I'm one of the freeform players that will say, "I line up my sights, take a deep breath...exhale slowly...and pull the trigger..." and wait for the GM to tell me whether or not I hit.  It may not be random to him...but it's an unknown to me and it's part of the lure of gaming.

That's why I like 'lite' systems and guided freeform (or mostly-freeform) games...there's enough unknown out there to be intriguing, but there aren't so many things decided by dice that I feel like the game is revolving around the rolls, or (especially in PbP) the game doesn't bog down because everything's got to be rolled for.

And everyone lands at different points on that spectrum...some people enjoy having all the details come about randomly, and that why there are games that have hit location charts and conversions about what kind of physical damage is appropriate for what number of points of damage taken, etc...some people just want the story aspect of the game and really don't care about the dice, so we have freeform...and, arguably, most of us land somewhere between the two or even bounce back and forth, which is one of the reasons a lot of us play more than a single style of game or enjoy playing more than one system.

I know what works for me...but just because it doesn't work for someone else doesn't make them wrong about what works for them.  My take on it is, if you're having fun, you're doing it right...regardless of how many rules (or lack thereof) have to be involved in your fun.

You know, this reminds me of the Morrowind vs. Oblivion/Skyrim combat.

I don't play Morrowind because of the combat, although I do find it relatively enjoyable (just not as much as Final Fantasy Tactics or Temple of Elemental Evil, say).  Your chance to hit an enemy in Morrowind is a rather complex equation that factors in weapon skill, agility score, personal fatigue, luck, the opponent's ability to dodge, and their fatigue (among other things).  Combat in Morrowind can be frustrating at low levels if the player isn't aware that they need a decent weapons skill and need to be relatively rested since there's no dodge or miss animation in the game.  It looks like the attack should connect, but it missed.

In Skyrim and Oblivion, all attacks hit unless they're blocked, regardless of skill.  The rules crunch has been taken out of the game, and the result is not a role playing game but an action adventure game.  A player can actually become champion of the arena while still being first level (because the game scales to the character's level, you see).

The same is true for casting spells.  In Morrowind, spell success depends on skill level, stats, and fatigue.  In the other games, if the PC is able to cast a spell, they can, leading to results like becoming Archmage of the mages' guild and only being able to cast one spell.

I prefer things like skill level and granularity, whether it's something like GURPS or FATE/Fudge.  The rules shouldn't get in the way of the action, but I like having something that indicates how good someone is with a weapon, or how well they can talk themselves out of a situation even if the player isn't particularly good at smooth talking.

I've played freeform and rules-based games, and some GURPS games that played more like freeform with occasional rolls.  It's probably the games I chose, but the GURPS games have lasted for tens of thousands of posts.  One game I know has been going for a decade and has amazing stories.  I like swordchucks' breakdown of different systems above, but I'm not sure playing with a system is like a coloring page.  No analogy is ever perfect, but I equate playing with a system like GURPS to being given directions in things like perspective and shading, and then the players and GM work together to create masterpieces.  The difference between completely freeform games and crunchy games is the level of instruction.  Some master painters have no formal education and have created unrivaled works.  Others have gone through formal training and produce other masterpieces.  The end results are similarly amazing.  It's the beginning and processes that are so different, and really, infinite.

So.. crunch.

I'm going to approach this from several angles, I find all of them have applied to me at one point or another, so in no particular order:


The GM/group you don't trust: With this, I don't mean "he.they is/are out to get me/us", it can be simply a matter of not knowing the GM or group at all. When you're new to a group or table, or when you got new players, I find it easier to spot problems in groups and GMs on systems with more rules.

On the GM side, I find it easier to be assertive with people I don't know. The less crunchy the system and the more I'm thinking "am I being fair? is this player pushing for too much? am I making this action too difficult? would this monster with this fluff feel like a true challenge for the players or would they feel cheated if I make it hard to beat?". This uncertainty can get too much, turn into anxiety and kill my ability to improvise and do the roleplay thing.

The character creation: Sometimes, I have a great idea for a character and everything fits together, but sometimes, I'm sorta building as I think things, and I have an unfortunate tendency to bloat, and this tendency leads me to be unsure and constantly question myself if piling too much crap or if it's ok.
With a crunchier system, I have limited resources, it allows me to trim down the fat and stick to what background elements I can honestly justify with the crunch, help me figure out what parts are important for me to keep. This leads to a more streamlined, less haphazard background.

One of my favorite characters that I enjoyed the most playing? barely saw combat at all, but the crunchy system I was using allowed me to distill the dozen nebulous background element ideas I had into something that just clicked.

The Random: inserting randomness and uncertainty of results into the story has it's merit, it can make things more exiting... the problem is that the lighter systems can be too random, or perhaps it doesn't make sense that doing X is more likely than Y, and the fridge logic hits you and crashes your immersion to tiny pieces.
Crunchier systems try to provide a better simulation, either of reality or of a genre in particular. By adding rules on top of simply throwing a dice, they try to control how much the random factor influences things. They attempt to make the random factor provide better results.
This message was last edited by the user at 08:17, Wed 05 Apr 2017.

Why is granularity/crunch a thing?

Because crunchy = differentiation.

Can your system bring into clear focus how the Hulk, Thor, Wonder Man, the Thing and Colossus are different, their strength s and weakness'? If not then what good is it?

Crunch does not necessarily equal differentiation. It only relates to physical quantities.

Can your crunchy system bring into clear focus how Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin are different, their varied approaches to life? If not...

@icosahedron152
Crunch doesn't have to mean physical. There are systems that could quantify their individual and varying virtues and vices, mental states, et cetera. I'm thinking Legends Of The Wulin, fwiw.
This message was last edited by the user at 08:54, Thu 06 Apr 2017.

There are a lot of systems that try to focus on "How much can Hulk/Thor/WM/Thing/Colossus lift?" as an important factor, to which many players feel the most sensible answer is "more than Spider-Man, less than Galactus." Several of us prefer game systems that can let us bring into focus the idea that Hulk deals with control of rage, Thor has responsibilities in two worlds, Wonder Man has to determine what it means to be alive in a world where he can't die and there's a robot running around with his brain, Thing has to come to terms with feeling like a monster, and Colossus has issues regarding...something. I don't know much about Colossus outside the old cartoon.

That's why I am not much into Mutants & Masterminds, because the crunch is totally useless to me and violates a lot of what I want out of a supers game, but I do really like Marvel Heroic RPG and Fate Accelerated for Supers. Those give me the things I need and leave out the things I need to not have at all.

It can, in the way it offers players a structure to build all aspects of the physical, temporal and psychological.

It builds shy loyal gardeners, dutiful nephews with a streak of curiosity or a pair of mischievous, endlessly cheerful friends.

Whether you want to attach crunchy mechanics to every bit of narrative written for a character bio in preparation of a game, the exist to apply differentiation.

Given not all players are equal in the skilled use of a crunchy system or are equal in imagination, however given the ability to recognize choices, the crunchiness shows the roadways that lead to building the character a user can envision.


#Novocrane:
You are not, crunch in my system applies to more than the physical, it applies to all the building blocks one needs to build the character and even any Meta rules you want to have, depending on the campaign.

@ Nintaku:
I hear you on that, I do not use M & M either.

Err.. M&M has an entire mechanic dedicated to that? there's certainly several times more words dedicated to complications than to how much you can lift or any other individual ability or power, and just about every single splat book of M&M has a section or more dedicated to it as well.

Yes, it's extremely lightweight compared to the physical crunch and other systems do go to more depth on it, but pretending it's not there is disingenuous.

That a system seeks to better model the physical side and handles the rest in a lightweight matter doesn't mean that those characters can't do all those things, it means the creators saw fit to put more effort in controlling the randomness on one aspect and left the other fuzzier.
This message was last edited by the user at 08:51, Thu 06 Apr 2017.

And that's precisely my point. The more granular/crunchy system models things that my group and I actively want not modeled in my supers games. MnM's mechanic is there just as much as it always has been in D&D since the 70s: if you roleplay your flaws, get 100 XP. Except now it's get 1 HP, which is pretty snazzy as the Hero Point has many valuable uses, but it's still very flat. Instead, the system focuses on the attributes, extremely detailed power descriptions and point costs, conditions (so many conditions), movement speed per turn, etc.

There are groups for whom a system that models those things actively detracts from modeling the genre and instead feels like an attempt at turning supers adventures into miniatures combat simulators. To groups like ours, the answer to "who is stronger, the Hulk or Thor" should be answered with the question "whose name is on the cover?" We like the dramatic feel of systems that are much more vague on things like that, because the source material's answer changes depending on the needs of the story being told. That's the bit we want our games to focus on.