Greetings, folks.

I recently saw a video by The Rules Lawyer where he attempts to demonstrate how Pathfinder 2e's crunchy rules enable roleplaying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNS1N4dohp0&t=699s&ab_channel=TheRulesLawyer

I, however, find myself on the opposite end of the spectrum, as I detail in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OttIdVb9Ays&ab_channel=Quick%26DirtyRoleplaying

What are your thoughts on the subject matter?

My personal belief is that rules-heavy systems hinder creativity. I'm not sure what they do for or against role playing.

In my 5E games anytime my players want to do something they look at their skill list to see if they are good at it, and if not they often don't bother to try. Or only the one with the best number will try. When I ran OD&D there were no skill lists so nothing to consult, and the players spent more time dreaming up creative solutions.

I'm not sure how this translates into "good role playing" or not. In both cases the players are playing a role based on the information supplied, but in one case the players seem to be more creative doing it.

It depends on the system and how the crunch is executed.

Most of the time, "crunchy" is just a euphemism for poorly optimized. If this is the case, then the sheer weight of operating the game reduces the mental space players have for creativity or roleplay. However, this is not a universal truth and you can have crunchy games which don't use so much of the player's brainpower that they displace these things.

Quote from: finarvyn on April 18, 2023, 08:09:34 AM
My personal belief is that rules-heavy systems hinder creativity. I'm not sure what they do for or against role playing.

In my 5E games anytime my players want to do something they look at their skill list to see if they are good at it, and if not they often don't bother to try. Or only the one with the best number will try. When I ran OD&D there were no skill lists so nothing to consult, and the players spent more time dreaming up creative solutions.

I'm not sure how this translates into "good role playing" or not. In both cases the players are playing a role based on the information supplied, but in one case the players seem to be more creative doing it.

Yes.  Too many limits hinder imagination.   Too few limits also hinder imagination.  That's why there are some rules, and we aren't just sitting around the table playing "Let's Pretend".  The exact optimum line moves group to group, player to player, and by others limits as well.  If it's a subject the group knows a fair amount about (even if only an agreed trope-fed version), then less limits are needed.  Sometimes you want to limit imagination, because that's a way to get everyone imaging similar things, and thus able to have a shared mental space.

It's not how much crunch you have.  It's which crunch you have, how that pertains to the genre, setting, and most of all the players.  And how well you use the crunch you do use. 

For 5E in particular, it's misleading to call it crunchy.  Yes, in one way it is.  But it's mostly the same crunch over and over, flavored differently.  "A lot of stuff" and "A lot of crunch" can be aligned, but they aren't always.  Both have different effects on the use of imagination. 

In case in all of that it wasn't clear, agree entirely that all of this has nothing to do with role-playing one way or the other--except insomuch as it's easier for role-playing to happen in a shared imaginative space, once you establish it, however you do it.

Quote from: ronwisegamgee on April 18, 2023, 07:59:04 AM
What are your thoughts on the subject matter?

It boils down to how well you and your group internalize the rules. If the system is not a good fit, after the learning period, then you will find yourself continually going to the rulebooks to look up basic mechanics rather than referencing the various lists like spells, magic items, and monsters. In this case the system is probably be getting in the way.

Or it could mean that you and the group needs organize your references differently. For example create a binder reference like this.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 18, 2023, 08:35:00 AM
It's not how much crunch you have.  It's which crunch you have, how that pertains to the genre, setting, and most of all the players.  And how well you use the crunch you do use. 

This is a good point, Steve.

In this regard, I can appreciate simulationist-related crunch more than "board game" crunch, as one provides guidance in navigating the game world while the other is just there to punish play styles that are not the meta.

Quote from: Fheredin on April 18, 2023, 08:29:49 AM
It depends on the system and how the crunch is executed.

Most of the time, "crunchy" is just a euphemism for poorly optimized. If this is the case, then the sheer weight of operating the game reduces the mental space players have for creativity or roleplay. However, this is not a universal truth and you can have crunchy games which don't use so much of the player's brainpower that they displace these things.

Well said. Not all crunch is the same. Some is elegant and intuitive, some is unwieldily and distracting.

I need a system to be precisely as cruchy mechanically as is needed to mechanically support my character concept.

Sometimes that means something like BECMI could do it, other times nothing less than Mutants & Masterminds (or similar point buy systems) could express it.

Having played most of the generic concepts in my youth, I generally prefer something at least mid-crunch these days as "Derik the Daring Fighter" (my first Redbook PC back when I was 10) hasn't been something I'm interested in repeating for a while now.

After a string of bad GMs I have a very low tolerance for "GM May I?" as the core mechanics of a class and like to have my non-"I hit it with my sword" options to have at least some mechanical support, even if it's just a bare-bones skill system.

Ideally I want the system to provide me with a mechanically supported toolkit for interacting with the setting with GM rulings only needed for which mechanic applies to a situation (ex. is covering your tracks through a forest a stealth or nature check?) and for rare outliers that the normal tools just can't cover.

My current PCs are an Ex-Sith crashed on a D&D world (because the SW5e fan supplement has done as much to reinforce the spine of core of 5e as is reasonably possible), a dhampir vampire hunter (in an urban fantasy setting), a "warlord" in a 3.5e campaign (built off the 3.5e Bard with a generous helping of official splats for skill tricks and very subtle spells that could just be luck or inspiration), a paladin-type with a divinely granted exoskeleton and flame whip, and an alien superhero whose battles against his dark counterpart in prehistory were the inspiration for the myths of Horus and Set.

I don't think many of those lend themselves to a rules light expression.

Quote from: estar on April 18, 2023, 08:37:04 AM
Or it could mean that you and the group needs organize your references differently. For example create a binder reference like this.

Your computer desktop is gonna give me nightmares...looks like a 90 year old grandma's.

RE: the Pathfinder video...how anyone can watch that stuff is beyond me. It's the equivalent to listening to yourself on a recording. That stated, I agree with Steven Mitchell and that "it depends." It's the reason I do NOT actually like playing Tunnels and Trolls, even though I like the game, simply because there isn't enough there to be engaging. The opposite reason I gave up on D&D 3.X...it's a great tactical boardgame, but interferes when you're trying to play an RPG. What's funny is how much bloat Pathfinder has to the point where I do not see how you'd even play that game and call it an RPG. Everything revolves around mechanics to such a degree that "roleplaying" boils down to rolling dice. For the dude in the video to claim the contrary just proves what was said and that "it depends." If those players really feel like they're roleplaying, good for them. I tried that style before and got burnt out after a few years.

There is a sweet spot. Too much crunch makes it hard to get into the system, and a certain level of crunch is only viable in a system that is a subsequent edition to a more beginner friendly game, so the additional crunch is manageable. This is of course the beginning of the end, unless you have a kind of two-pronged system. Like MERP as 'RoleMaster Lite' to RoleMaster proper (and RoleMaster of course started out as add-ons to AD&D, again having a prior more beginner friendly system to be based on).

With Pathfinder 2e it's likely the same situation. Those who played Pathfinder 1e probably don't find 2e too crunchy, while those who never played before do.

On the other end, if the system doesn't have enough crunch, it can be quite bland and doesn't have much staying power. I do find AD&D has the right level of crunch to give inspiration that doesn't come with a lot of other systems, while still being manageable (although when I started playing it was the only game around, so there wasn't the additional barrier I face now of wondering why I should learn a certain level of crunch when I already have a system I can play).

Realistic/detailed systems improve immersion by making things believable.

Crunchy systems hinder immersion by making you focus on the mechanics instead of the fiction.

It is very hard to create a system that is both simple and realistic, so a balance must be sough.

PF 2, however, is not exactly realistic nor simple, as far as I can tell. I don't see how it could improve RP, will try to watch the videos later.

For a given definition of roleplay, rolling dice, calculating modifiers, checking the character sheet, and digging through the rule book is not roleplaying. What heavy crunch does do is slow down action resolution and that ruins pacing. Bad pacing makes it harder to roleplay. Conversely, it is difficult to make decisions without enough constraints, and rules help to inform the player how the imaginary world works and what the character is generally capable off. A player cannot answer "what does your character do?" without a good idea of what the character can do and how it would effect the world. Ultimately, time spent crunching is time not spent roleplaying, so crunch becomes a hinderance once it has exceeded its utility to roleplaying.

It depends on the crunch, I find GURPS and BRP to flow well, Rolemaster doesn't.  One of the reasons I like Rolemaster is that it's easier to teach to people who've played D&D and have D&D based assumptions that would get you killed right fast in GURPS or BRP but flowing isn't exactly what it does.

On the other hand rpgs often lack any information or rules for things wind up doing when they get off the tracks.

There's a certain amount of system mastery involved.  But I find GURPS, Rolemaster, and BRP to be far less crunchy than Pathfinder or D&D 3 - 5e.  Shocking I know, consistant methodical systems are so much harder for people than arbitrary ones where you have to look up player abilities for every action, every round of combat because there is no consistancy or structure.

There are two other consideration. Firstly, is the DM's familiarity with the system. A system that you are familiar with will run smoother regardless of complexity. The second is the presence or lack of a universal die roll mechanic.

For example, I ran a campaign of Fantasy Hero for a group mostly of newbs and it was a huge success. This is mostly because I knew the Hero System very well so there were never slow downs to check the rules. But also because in that game, every action is resolved with a 3d6 roll. So the players only had to specify their action and roll 3d6. This meant that they never even had to look at their character sheets or fumble with dice to do anything (except damage resolution).

Quote from: David Johansen on April 18, 2023, 10:30:27 AM
But I find GURPS, Rolemaster, and BRP to be far less crunchy than Pathfinder or D&D 3 - 5e.  Shocking I know, consistant methodical systems are so much harder for people than arbitrary ones where you have to look up player abilities for every action, every round of combat because there is no consistancy or structure.

Not shocking to me, I feel the same. In GURPS, Rolemaster, and BRP you usually check a skill number in the character sheet, while in Pathfinder or D&D 3 - 5e you need to check or memorize multiple features.