When I was still very new to RPGs, I found AD&D (2nd edition) extremely difficult to figure out. I only had previous experiences with TDE and Runequest (and maybe GURPS, it was a long time ago, and I can't really remember that well), and I found the AD&D rules completely counter-intuitive. I understood what I had to roll and how the system worked (most of the time), but back then, I never understood why the rules worked that way. On a subjective level, that was one of the least accessible games I've played.

On a more objective level, 4th edition TDE is probably the most cluttered (the authors seem to think that "complicated" means " detailed simulation" and added wanted to make the game appear way more elaborate than it actually is).

Lets see.

Universe: by SPI. It has one of the most convoluted chargen systems I ever played. But it was fun to play and I still like the games star system generation system. I never had Delta-Vee till recent and still have not had a chance to look it over yet. The combat system wasnt bad really.

Other Suns: by FGU. overly complex chargen was a low point, otherwise wasnt too horrible. But never had any urge to run it. Dealing with the designer though was horrible.

Ironclaw: Alot of moving parts that just dont feel right in the end. It feels like it is more complicated than it should be. Part of that is the wording of the book.

Board Game Honourable mention:
Magic Realm: yeesh this thing is complex! But, it has a very robust system that thrives on that complexity.

Back around 2000, my brother really got into this system called Imagine. It was demoed at a local shop (the designers were from Atlanta, we lived an hour or two outside the perimeter) and he just loved it.

It was basically what happens when a designer takes 2e AD&D and adds a billion new systems because it wasn't "cool" enough for him.

A huge list of percentage roll skills, some racial, some social, some class, and hey, lets have these lists overlap but determine their percentages in slightly different ways! Also, you could have the same skill from multiple sources with different percentages.

Hit locations and individual HP, Bullseye targetting so that when you missed you could determine if you hit a different location than you were aiming for (because EVERY shot was a called shot. basically just aim for the neck every time, if you miss high or low you will get the head or upper torso, which wasn't that much worse) Oh and the on a miss hit thing worked differently for if you were slashing or piercing.

I still to this day don't understand the magic system. It had by the minute recharging mana stuff. I played a wizard once and still don't know how it worked.

Also, you had two different sets of "levels". You attained levels, then every three "levels" you earned a rank. I can't remember the actual names for them. It also had a silly number of races, including I think 6 versions of Human, and so many classes. So many. And they would sometimes be like, "Knight, Grey Knight, Dark Knight" as three different classes.

Oh and I forgot about the fact that parrying was a skill roll after the roll to hit. But the roll to hit was a standard d20 attack roll (well, with the hit location chart), and the parry was with  a percent skill check. Actually, almost everything was a skill roll. Sweep was a skill roll (basically cleave from D&D), dual wielding was a skill roll, weapon skills were a percentile skill, but you never actually used it as a percentile skill because attacks were made using a d20, and it was all too confusing.

Oh, and armor. Armor was not bought in suits. You bought individual pieces and layered them. And there were complex rules on layering and stuff. And it was DR type Armor and there was rules on how different damage types caused the DR to be of varying effectiveness (which mean reworking your dr every time you got hit by a different type), and it suffered damage on each hit and needed repairing over time. On the subject of the effectiveness vs different types, remember that you could layer three types of armor on each boy spot, so that leather, chain, and plate on your neck might all have to be multiplied by different percents based on what it was hit with.

I do remember having body parry, which was really for if you had like, really strong armor on one part of your body, but the best thing was always that the strongest armor you had was generally on your head because it was the easiest to layer the most DR, to the point that 99% of attacks couldn't pierce it. I remember declaring in mid game "I body parry with my face". It was a surprisingly effective tactic until our rogue tried it and had a longsword shoved into his eye socket (no really, when you already target a hit location on each attack, you could still do called shots, but they were ridiculous called shots).

I will say that some of the parry rules led to fun things. I had a berserker character who did so much damage that someone shield parried only to have the sword go through his shield and arm.

Also in combat, it didn't really use initiative. or it did, but it only decided on what second in the 10 second round you could START acting. Basically it was a tick second based system, and it included rules on how fast you could accelerate/decelerate per second, and what actions you could overlap on seconds, like you could be swinging a weapon while moving.

It also had 15 alignments, with an added 4 tendencies that you could mix and match. This was mostly useless because if you think D&D alignments start arguments, wait until you see these monstrosities. And encumbrance was based on a percentage of your body weight, which made being a 7 foot tall 300 lb behemoth useful.

Oddly enough, the game we played with this was one of the longest campaigns I've ever played in, lasted several years. I played a Barbaric Human Berserker (one of those 6 types of humans) named Rage (not his real name, I told everyone his real name in the first session, but no one but me remembers it. We actually used this later because all scrying and divination in the system required knowing someone's true name and since no one knew mine (the other PCs were the first person to meet me after my entire village was slaughtered, so no one else who knew it was alive), it was impossible to do to me). He lost a hand to a mimic early on, and was possessed by a god of rage occasionally (this was used every time I missed a session, which was rarely, but it also helped get rid of a couple of PCs who stopped showing up altogether).

It was a great campaign, but I think we had fun in SPITE of the game, not because of it.

On a side note, I think this system had a lot to do with my belief that "hey, 3.x isn't so bad" for a long time.

@Emperor Norton-  sweet Jesus.

Quote from: RunningLaser;807088@Emperor Norton-  sweet Jesus.

I'm now 90% certain that we know what killed off the dinosaurs.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;807093I'm now 90% certain that we know what killed off the dinosaurs.

I've read a few super complex rpgs, but have not played them.  For play, the most complex was probably D&D 3e- it wasn't bad, just combats too long.  Most involved rpg would be D&D 4e.  Any game where I have to use a computer to create a character is too involved.  That was the first time I stopped caring what my character could do, and just started clicking whatever power came up just because I no longer wanted to make the damn guy.

Ha! Imagine! I remember that game. Paul Mason wrote a hilariously scathing review. I also recall back in the day the author showed up on tbp to promote the game and got lambasted for it. Kinda felt sorry for the guy in that "fantasy heartbreaker" kinda-way. He used to own "role-play.com" or something like that as a domain name.

Always wanted to look through the game jjust to see if it lived up to the infamy.

Haven't played it but the most complex game I've read through was Chaosium's Nephilim. The characters are just bizarre and you need to swallow the whole mythology to get a grip on them and have a chance of playing or GMing it correctly.

(For those who don't know: the Nephilim are immortal spirit beings who've been around forever. Their goal is to achieve some sort of Buddha or god-like transcendence by living multiple lives across the eons and acquiring power. They are tied to the different elements, water, earth, etc. and there are multiple factions in competition with each other. They are what is behind all the supernatural stuff on Earth, from ghost sitings to vampires, werewolves, sea dragons, djinn, efreet, and so on. Oh, and there was once a second moon in orbit, a "dark moon" which got blown up back in the days of the dinosaurs, if I recall correctly.

I think the game was Chaosium's attempt to have a White Wolf - Vampire style world.

When designing a character you had to take into account stuff like which element you are tied to, which faction you ally with, how many past lives you had and what you did in them. You take over the body of a human and have to figure out what his background and skill sets are. So you are building at least two characters, more if you count the past lives, and melding them into one. Then you figure out what to do with yourself and where to go from there.

Sheesh.)

For board games: I tried to play Magic Realm but got fed up half way through the rules. Tried Freedom in the Galaxy and was bogged down. Read maybe a half of the rules to Third Reich before I gave up. Played a couple games of Advanced Squad Leader but didn't enjoy it. Starfleet Battles was okay but there is a lot to it and I was playing against an uber-expert and had no chance.

I actually really love Nephilim, but it helps that I have a huge interest in real world magick practices.

The most complicated rpg I ever played was probably the Aliens rpg which used the system from Phoenix Command.


Otherwise, Rolemaster was a pretty painful experience.

Quote from: TristramEvans;807118Ha! Imagine! I remember that game. Paul Mason wrote a hilariously scathing review. I also recall back in the day the author showed up on tbp to promote the game and got lambasted for it. Kinda felt sorry for the guy in that "fantasy heartbreaker" kinda-way. He used to own "role-play.com" or something like that as a domain name.

Always wanted to look through the game jjust to see if it lived up to the infamy.

To be honest, its got some strong points. The hit location thing was badly thought out, but the core of hit locations and the bullseye aiming map was kind of cool, and combined with the way parry worked, where you could break weapons and shields and stuff was fun, but its like, so many bad decisions.

It was like, a cacophony of ideas thrown at a board, some cool, some horrible, and they all somehow stuck.

Its really become the running joke in my playgroup as the "hey we could always play Imagine". I think I finally got rid of all my books for it recently though. (my brother had bought them for me for a Christmas present while the campaign was ongoing, definitely not something I would have bought myself).

It still has some of my most memorable roleplaying moments though just because of how long the campaign was. Rage was a fun character to play, though he was admittedly a bit minmaxed (he had max barbaric human stats in strength, agility, and vitality). We also had an Archer that actually managed to never miss a shot the entire campaign through a combination of luck and skill. And then the wizard who started off useless (his only spell was sleep, we started off fighting 4 sessions worth of undead, and spell casting times were so long by the time he did get other spells, the Archer and Rage had killed almost everything anyway), but grew into a conniving behind closed doors evil mastermind with some legit power.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;807086Back around 2000, my brother really got into this system called Imagine. It was demoed at a local shop (the designers were from Atlanta, we lived an hour or two outside the perimeter) and he just loved it.

SNIP

On a side note, I think this system had a lot to do with my belief that "hey, 3.x isn't so bad" for a long time.

hmmm...I think....I might be in love...URL?

Not sure if it counts as complex... or just plain bizarre. But Synnabar rates up there on the list somewhere if only for the labyrinthine chargen.

Quote from: TristramEvans;807118Ha! Imagine! I remember that game. Paul Mason wrote a hilariously scathing review. I also recall back in the day the author showed up on tbp to promote the game and got lambasted for it. Kinda felt sorry for the guy in that "fantasy heartbreaker" kinda-way. He used to own "role-play.com" or something like that as a domain name.

Always wanted to look through the game jjust to see if it lived up to the infamy.

Shamefully, I actually bought it back in 2000.

It was terrible, no real redeeming features except a goofy enthusiasm. I just remember that hit points for various races (such as the cat-people, or lizard people, etc.) were calculated with arrays like 2d4+1d6+1d10+3 for no discernible reason.

There are a bunch that were so convoluted or complicated that I never even managed to get thru the rulesbook, much less actually played them.

Complicated games I tried and gave up because they were just a pain in the ass to continue: DC Adventures, Marvel Heroic Roleplay, 5th Ed. Hero (Champions), Aces & Eights,Middle-Earth Roleplaying. My bar for "complicated" may not be as high as yours but I found all these games required too much work. A real shame in the case of Hero because the Lucha Libre Hero book is awesome and I want to play luchadores.

Quote from: Clamps;807068I submit that D&D (3.5 and Pathfinder) are to me more complicated than Continuum.

Having run both (3.5, anyways; and Continuum), I'd have to disagree. Continuum almost broke me.