Crunch is an inevitable part of any RPG, you need to have some mechanics to give structure to the game world and the actions of the player characters, something to make dice rolls meaningful.

Generally speaking too much crunch is seen as a bad thing, and for good reason - it slows the game experience down and drags people out of immersion, engaging parts of the brain that have no place at a gaming table. But have we really examined where and how crunch has negative effects?

I would divide it into two parts: overhead and accounting. Overhead is a once off or rare use of complex rules, such as during character generation. Accounting often might not be terribly complex, but involves an ongoing effort to track minor calculations, such as a death spiral.

Overhead is acceptable when used judiciously, if it takes a GM an extra half an hour to set up an adventure but that saves an hour of fiddling at the table, that's alright. Accounting on the other hand should be minimised wherever possible as it leads to a cascade of time consuming complexity. While each individual calculation is simple, the aggregation of them is almost as heavy as chargen.

For example, a normal death spiral mechanic is relatively straightforward. Lose 20%/40%/60%/80% of your hits, all actions take a -2/-4/-6/-8 penalty. Really easy to understand, right? Well let's take a look at what happens in gameplay:

A character has 13 hit points, so we've drawn up a table 2.6/5.2/7.8/10.4. We'll round that off to 3/5/8/10, not exactly smooth but whatever. The player and/or the GM now has to keep in mind what level of damage they are on, and apply that penalty on the fly to all actions. That's annoying enough, but the real problem rears up when you look at the GM's side of the table.

Opposing the group are 14 goblins, 3 kobolds, 3 warhounds, a couple of trolls, an ogre mage, and 7 orc reavers. The GM has to keep in mind the position on the damage penalty table and apply this penalty for each of the 30 opponents that get injured, along with every other modifier for actions the monsters take. I think it's pretty clear that this turns into heavy lifting rather quickly.

Of course one could always just say that death spirals only apply to the PCs, but what happens then is you've applied a penalty to the PCs just because they are PCs. When they become injured, they lose combat efficiency, when anything else in the world is damaged it can still keep fighting at full capacity until it drops.

I'd like to use a death spiral, it's one of those mechanics that really add to the flavour of a game, but the accounting cost is just too high. And it doesn't matter if you're using hit points or body ranks or whatever, unless a system is one hit=one kill, the accounting cost remains.

This is only one example, there are many others, but to designers I would say, use overhead carefully but avoid accounting where possible, even if it seems to make the game more realistic. Learn to identify accounting problems, especially cascading problems like a death spiral, and figure out a way not to use them, to create a better gaming experience.

Quote from: The Traveller;646955Crunch is an inevitable part of any RPG, you need to have some mechanics to give structure to the game world and the actions of the player characters, something to make dice rolls meaningful.

Generally speaking too much crunch is seen as a bad thing, and for good reason - it slows the game experience down and drags people out of immersion, engaging parts of the brain that have no place at a gaming table. But have we really examined where and how crunch has negative effects?

I would divide it into two parts: overhead and accounting. Overhead is a once off or rare use of complex rules, such as during character generation. Accounting often might not be terribly complex, but involves an ongoing effort to track minor calculations, such as a death spiral.

Overhead is acceptable when used judiciously, if it takes a GM an extra half an hour to set up an adventure but that saves an hour of fiddling at the table, that's alright. Accounting on the other hand should be minimised wherever possible as it leads to a cascade of time consuming complexity. While each individual calculation is simple, the aggregation of them is almost as heavy as chargen.

For example, a normal death spiral mechanic is relatively straightforward. Lose 20%/40%/60%/80% of your hits, all actions take a -2/-4/-6/-8 penalty. Really easy to understand, right? Well let's take a look at what happens in gameplay:

A character has 13 hit points, so we've drawn up a table 2.6/5.2/7.8/10.4. We'll round that off to 3/5/8/10, not exactly smooth but whatever. The player and/or the GM now has to keep in mind what level of damage they are on, and apply that penalty on the fly to all actions. That's annoying enough, but the real problem rears up when you look at the GM's side of the table.

Opposing the group are 14 goblins, 3 kobolds, 3 warhounds, a couple of trolls, an ogre mage, and 7 orc reavers. The GM has to keep in mind the position on the damage penalty table and apply this penalty for each of the 30 opponents that get injured, along with every other modifier for actions the monsters take. I think it's pretty clear that this turns into heavy lifting rather quickly.

Of course one could always just say that death spirals only apply to the PCs, but what happens then is you've applied a penalty to the PCs just because they are PCs. When they become injured, they lose combat efficiency, when anything else in the world is damaged it can still keep fighting at full capacity until it drops.

I'd like to use a death spiral, it's one of those mechanics that really add to the flavour of a game, but the accounting cost is just too high. And it doesn't matter if you're using hit points or body ranks or whatever, unless a system is one hit=one kill, the accounting cost remains.

This is only one example, there are many others, but to designers I would say, use overhead carefully but avoid accounting where possible, even if it seems to make the game more realistic. Learn to identify accounting problems, especially cascading problems like a death spiral, and figure out a way not to use them, to create a better gaming experience.

I agree accounting can be painful and tedious.

My heartbreaker uses a death spiral. But only on PCs and major NPCs
(N)PCs have HP and wounds. (N)PCs can loose HP before they take wounds. everyone else just has HP then they are dead. So I only need to track death spiral effects for major NPCs and the players and its on the players sheets so its automatic.

I agree with your premise though. Its one of those things. Should a spell last 5 rounds or for the combat. If its 5 rounds and a combat lasts 8 rounds and you cast a spell a round then the accounting gets tedious, but some people feel that the 'lasts for the combat' is too gamist.

My heartbreaker currently has too much accounting and I am tryng to fix it.

Accounting vs. Overhead is a good breakdown.

I flip flop on death spirals. In my 4e games, we implemented a rule that if you are bloodied, you take 1W extra damage (an extra die of that weapon). While it did not take into account weakening of the bloodied person, it certainly added to the hastening of their death.

Dice pool games have had some decent death spiral rules with wound levels corresponding to -X dice for actions. This made it easier to track and use for NPCs and monsters because since you were already tracking Wounds, the dice mod for their wounds was right there as well.

For me, the worst accounting is ammo. I have not found a good solution.

Terrible labels.

Overhead means an ongoing expense, not a one time cost. It would be better used in place of the other term 'accounting' but really there's nothing wrong with the old phrase 'handling cost'.

What the OP is talking about is with the term 'Overhead' also has an accepted term online- Front Loading.

Neither are good or bad in and of themselves. As with all things that require effort, the question is what is gained, and if that gain is worth the cost. That's a decision for each individual group- not one for the ivory tower the OP lives in.

EDIT: btw, 'for length of combat' isn't gamist. It's a model for a number of possible factors that exist in the real and/or fantasy world.

On death spirals - for NPCs, there might also be some abstraction that covers them, rather than just handwaving it away - say, some way of calculating an aggregate penalty and then applying it to all the dice rolls, if the combat passes a certain size?

Or you can consider a simpler death spiral. Tunnels and Trolls just has a Monster Rating which is the critter's hit points, and also gives the dice it rolls (MR/10+1) and combat adds (1/2 MR), so an MR 30 orc that takes 10 hits goes from 4 dice + 15, to 3 dice + 10. Tracking the penalties is just part of tracking the hit points, in other words. Its a very dramatic death spiral system which actually is the reverse of normal - only the NPCs suffer death spiral.
(A question in my mind would be if this is too simple - is a very severe wound penalty more realistic than no death spiral at all? Dice pool systems in general tend to have very harsh penalties - with T&T in particular once you start losing you definitely keep losing).

Quote from: jibbajibba;646957Should a spell last 5 rounds or for the combat. If its 5 rounds and a combat lasts 8 rounds and you cast a spell a round then the accounting gets tedious, but some people feel that the 'lasts for the combat' is too gamist.

My heartbreaker currently has too much accounting and I am trying to fix it.

As well as the AD&D method a few games have tried replacing 'lasts X rounds' with the 'roll each round to see if spell expires'. Basically 4th Ed. D&Ds 'save ends' mechanic, though Dragon Warriors did it in the 80s in a less annoying way - a spell expiry roll of 2d6, spell fails on a 12 each round, or 25% per minute.
I think the OP would call both of these 'accounting' though they're different sorts of accounting - tracking rounds vs. an extra roll each round?

Front loading can be a good way to reduce later handling cost, if players have the temperament for it.

My current group has players who cover the spectrum in various tolerances, from one who loathed our 3E D&D experiment (and apparently also a previous go at Hero System) to who one who got thereby turned on to Pathfinder.

There's also the matter of when accounting is fun for players while handling their characters, but a headache when applied by the GM to NPCs.

Maybe players will prefer to keep track of specific wounds to PCs, but for the most part be contented with rolls to see whether this blow happens to fell a monster. Then again, maybe they will feel they have not accomplished anything without accounting at least of monsters' Hits To Kill or such -- and will be in sense correct.

Quote from: jibbajibba;646957Should a spell last 5 rounds or for the combat. If its 5 rounds and a combat lasts 8 rounds and you cast a spell a round then the accounting gets tedious, but some people feel that the 'lasts for the combat' is too gamist.

Using the battle wheel, if a spell lasts 5 ticks the GM just notes down the current location of the 'clock hand' and adds 5 to it. When anyone passes that, the spell ends. It helps if the ticks are numbered on the wheel of course.

This is unavoidable accounting since without it the spell just wouldn't exist, so it's best to keep it as simple as possible.

Quote from: Spinachcat;646965For me, the worst accounting is ammo. I have not found a good solution.

I just deal with it the same way as encumbrance, unless it's a resource-focused post apoc game or something. Ignore it until it's obviously excessive, or handwave the amount of ammo used; basically if it's detracting from the fun you don't need the accounting hassle. If you wanted something more detailed I suppose you could rate ammo as low, medium, or high, and have the PC roll something semi regularly to see if it slips down a notch. I take pride in representing reality as closely as possible, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, no pun intended.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;646978On death spirals - for NPCs, there might also be some abstraction that covers them, rather than just handwaving it away - say, some way of calculating an aggregate penalty and then applying it to all the dice rolls, if the combat passes a certain size?

I'm not sure what you mean here..?

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;646978Or you can consider a simpler death spiral. Tunnels and Trolls just has a Monster Rating which is the critter's hit points, and also gives the dice it rolls (MR/10+1) and combat adds (1/2 MR), so an MR 30 orc that takes 10 hits goes from 4 dice + 15, to 3 dice + 10. Tracking the penalties is just part of tracking the hit points, in other words. Its a very dramatic death spiral system which actually is the reverse of normal - only the NPCs suffer death spiral.

If hits are linked to combat ability directly you run into a situation where creatures with more hits are more combat capable, so there's no room for the mini ninja dude. It could be shuffled under the carpet as 'toughness' or something but for me that's not a good compromise.

There is an option to use a very simple death spiral if the group are feeling up to it in my games, once hits are halved there's a -5 penalty to everything. Generally we don't bother though. Again, it's important that if you're using a death spiral it applies to everything equally, otherwise you are applying a penalty to the PCs just because they are PCs, which is not only metagaming but quite unfair as well.

Quote from: Phillip;646995Front loading can be a good way to reduce later handling cost, if players have the temperament for it.

Yes, accounting can be broken down further into slow and fast accounting. Slow accounting would be things like endurance checks over a wilderness hike as the group gets more and more worn down due to exposure and hunger. This is probably a lot more acceptable, even desireable since it adds to the tension or feel of the game, but most importantly it's not interfering with the game's pace and flow.

Fast accounting is the blizzard of penalties that appear in combat, these need to be minimised or removed entirely since they represent a real threat to game immersion and smooth flow.

Quote from: The Traveller;647068I'm not sure what you mean here..?

This one's a thought experiment in progress.

Basically something like totalling up the damage taken by the NPC side, and a -1 for every 10% of the total hits taken. Possibly, treat each group of identical creatures (all goblins, all orcs) that way separately.

In most cases, as long as the guys sharing the penalty are identical, there's no difference in the final outcome statistically between one guy rolling at -2 and another at -0, and two rolling at -1*. The particular obvious problem with it is that figures who were completely killed would still be adding to the penalty, though, without doing further accounting.

*assuming use of a linear die roll like d10 or d20, as opposed to say 3d6 where that wouldn't be true.

Quote from: Spinachcat;646965For me, the worst accounting is ammo. I have not found a good solution.

#1: Is This Trip Necessary?

In other words, is the accounting really going to make a notable difference? Is anyone seriously likely to run out of ammo and need to resort to something other than shooting?

My bet is that most of the time you'll find that this is not the case, unless the supply is so short that this in itself makes accounting simple.

In between the extremes, you may have situations in which it's potentially interesting just when someone needs to swap magazines, get a load from a truck, send for a caisson, or whatever.

How about a probability of that occurring after a reasonable interval? That's especially suitable if fire discipline is low, and people in real life might find themselves in a "Feel lucky, punk?" situation.

Otherwise, you can just take an average rate. If musketeers are carrying 50 rounds and (including pauses between periods of firing) average 1 a minute while on the front line, then all you might need to do is look at the clock. Even if they're not out of ammo or good flints, they're probably tired and sore and thirsty and their barrels fouled.

Quote from: gleichman;646973Terrible labels.

Overhead means an ongoing expense, not a one time cost. It would be better used in place of the other term 'accounting' but really there's nothing wrong with the old phrase 'handling cost'.

What the OP is talking about is with the term 'Overhead' also has an accepted term online- Front Loading.

I actually agree with Gleichman on this one. What a weird day.

Quotebtw, 'for length of combat' isn't gamist. It's a model for a number of possible factors that exist in the real and/or fantasy world.

...but could you English that statement up a bit?