The Problem with Crunch (Ep. 320)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 เม.ย. 2023
- Is your RPG slooooow? Professor Dungeon Master's "Rule of RPG Granularity" explains why. Required viewing for all GMs and aspiring game designers!
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"Is the bistro shrimp good? Yeah, it's good!" but then they order a salad anyway, got a good chuckle from that gem.
So you've been there.
Those people are called "ask-holes" its a whole thing.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 I thought it sounded like an impression of one's mother-in-law but I wouldn't advise 'fessing up to that!
@@aaronsomerville2124 MIL or an aunt, yeah that was my take as well. Although I've had the same reaction bringing anyone to a new place with a long-ish menu 😅
Okay, but _is_ it good?
I think another reason crunch is popular is because it's fun to read. If you can't play very often, having a bunch of feats, rules, weapons, etc to read and argue about keeps you engaged. I don't get to play very often, but even with the limited amount of play time, it's pretty easy to see that simpler rules _in general_ allow for a smoother, more fun experience.
It can be. No doubt.
That’s a very interesting point. I’ve read a lot of game material when not playing, and it’s not necessarily the stuff I use during play.
I don't always agree with the Professor about what is too much "crunch" but the overall message that there's a tradeoff is spot on. Also, the underlying message that there is no "right" or "best" way to play an RPG, just different styles. I like a relatively low crunch game where as DM I make a lot of things up on the fly but I have no problem doing lots of quick addition. A friend of mine came to D&D from Warhammer 40k and not surprisingly he loves a heavy crunch, very tactical game with lots of specific rules. It's a challenge for the two of us to agree on a rule system if we want to play together but neither of us is right or wrong. We just like different things.
Most medieval helmets do not render you blind. You can see a surprising amount through them actually. They decrease your peripheral vision somewhat, and can block your vision downwards mostly. The big thing about helmets is that you can get helmet terror (something like claustrophobia, but to a thing strapped onto your head) and they can make breathing more difficult.
I would imagine helmets interfere with hearing more than vision (depending on the helmet shape/coverage)
@@ballisticus1 yeah, that can actually be quite a problem, it's hard to hear through them, making hearing and speaking take a lot more effort.
Helmet terror gives me an idea for an encounter.
The PCs find a beautiful helmet in a treasure hoard next to a headless corpse. The "helmet" is actually a mimic that offers a nice armor class bonus when worn. Just make sure it's well-fed before putting it on your head.
Ive never worn medieval helmets or gear but Ive worn modern helmets and plates. A mechanic Ive never seen camptures is how much more quickly you overheat in this stuff, especially in desert/hot climes but even in artci or near artic. I imagine it would be far worse in historical armor.
There is a reason people wouldnt be just walking around in armor most of the time. Even a leather plate would be hit as hell.
Agreed, I think it's the difference between what a medieval infantry would wear vs. a knight in tournament? The picture shared at that point is jousting armor.
Agreed, great video. I think the older a player and GM gets, the more the crunch loses its luster.
Indeed
IMExp it's more that experienced players/GMs (esp with each other/same table) have mutual trust that they can adapt to any corner-cases or needs/wants that fall outside the core. Older players also are more time-crunched (family, work, life, etc) so they prioritize having as much fun & smooth a time together as possible, with the needs of the game itself being subordinate to that.
That could still mean they're sticklers for crunch and minutiae though - think wargamers, model train enthusiasts, GURPS players LOL. But Rule of Fun over-all.
For me is the contrary, started when was young with rules light rpgs and in t now I'm moving to more tactical games and also war games
As you get older you have a much clearer understanding of what is reasonable and realistic. The negative dungeoncraft comments don’t realise that older adults are not under illusions about how NPC interactions are likely to work - but kids who don’t understand the world yet can make unreasonable rulings. I don’t think you can avoid that with rules. This might be something actually. Age is everything.
@@andreguimaraes4355 Totally cool. And war-games ARE tactics and need specific rules to work. Love Mordheim!
When I worked at a summer camp I GM'd for a regular group of 8 to 12 people for 3 hours a night, six nights a week. Gradually I eliminated initiative. I just seated everyone according to their initiative bonus then went in order even on the next encounter so everyone got a turn. I had assistant GMs who helped less experienced players prep so when they told me what they were going to do, I didn't have to look up any rules. They just announced their moves and rolled.
YES!
I think it does help to distinguish out of game crunch and in game crunch. Out of game crunch meaning things like character creation and learning the general rules before starting the game. And in game crunch meaning doing calculations and looking up specific situational rules during the game. For example in 5E, very few people will memorize every single spell, so spell casters are notorious for having to look up what their spell does every time they cast something during the game. A system that allows you to create your own spells on the other hand will make character creation take a long time while you design your perfect spell. But once you're actually playing, you know exactly what your spell does because you created it.
Fantastic point.
Very good point. I'm one for "out of game crunch" - more in depth character creation and options for advancement in between games, but during play let resolution for actions be as quick as possible.
Definitely thought of this during the video as well. That said, I think it's also worth noting that out-of-game crunch can quickly become in-game crunch if your game has a high level of lethality.
@@theastralwanderer I don't think I quite see how lethality can do that. Would you mind elaborating or give an example?
@@sitnamkrad Maybe, character dies mid-game, and has to create a new character during the game or sit out? So out-of-game crunch becomes in-game crunch?
Some of us like the crunch. Some of us like to play light games and crunchy games! Some of us play GURPS unironically.
I enjoy playing crunchy RPGs solo because it doesn’t matter how long combat takes in them if no one’s waiting for me to do the maths.
@@nodtothestrange1008 it doesn't matter how long combat takes in any game as long as it's not taking that long because people are doing things unrelated to the game. the only people who think combat needs to be some ultra quick thing are morons who don't know what they're talking about. it should be involved. it should be detailed. it should be crunchy. rules lite people should go play shoots and ladders.
@@justinheads5751 Nope, different strokes for different folks. Some people care more for the roleplay and want a rules lite system that encourages that. Other times people want nothing but combat, so it needs to be crunchy. Other times people want a mix. Some want mostly RP but a crunchy system for the rare fights that do occur so each fight matters. It's entirely dependent on the group, and all approaches in that are valid.
@@LordVader1094 ah yes, the fallacy of "all opinions are equally valid" I'm so impressed lol
@@justinheads5751 long combat only works if combat actually requires thinking and strategy. Else it devolves into yahtzee.
Alot of people are under the false assumption that combat complexity is based on number of turns needed.
As someone who never gets bored playing different human fighters, I feel vindicated.
PDM this video outlines exactly why I became a Patreon supporter and have become a devotee of your gaming philosophies. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for your continued support.
He is a wizard, not just a professor.
I don't agree with everything the Professor has to say, but I always feel like I at least learned something or stopped to think about something I hadn't before. For that reason, I find his channel to be a few notches above most other YT D&D channels.
@@RonPower i feel the same way :)
I love crunch, but it does make the game slow down depending on the details, but i also believe that with the right rules, good crunch can enhance a game and make things more interesting with minimal slow down in the processing of those rules. I haven't played many games that achieve that balance though, to be fair.
If you like it, you like it. No one is arguing that.
Just realize that 99.99% of the population cant even fathom a game where it takes 9000 pages of rules and optional rules and a simple 3-4 turn battle takes 4 hours. I know you probably don't even know where you are now, so far down the road after buying a new book every six months over 10 years, but it's huge pill to swallow for newer players.
It is nearly impossible for a prospective new DM. How do you even remember a fraction of all that stuff in 12 books? Hell I can't even name of all the books.
Wizards of the Crooks know that they can you a new book if they also give you +2 this and +2 that in a new skin.
I will tell you, we had GREAT fun back in the day with only 100-200 pages.
@@nemooh So #1, I don't believe you speak for 99.99% of the population. And two, you didn't read my actual post. Nowhere did i mention anything that you are mentioning. I mentioned a "balancing" is needed. So take your strawman elsewhere.
@@zombiehampster1397 why are you arguing with him? He is right. He’s not arguing with you. Most people think Monopoly has a lot of rules. D&D is absurd. But it’s what we do so we relax and are fine with it.
@@nemooh To be fair, all of those books do not really have more rules, just more options, and you do not need to remember them if nobody picks them.
That said, D&D has a problem linked with the fact that each supplements adds options for a class even if you did not build for them. Spellcasters get new spells just by existing.
And the fact that once you choose a class, every level you automatically get stuff.
If instead you had to pick and choose what you got, I believe that the system would be both lighter and more interesting.
TBF though, I also remember playing a Mork Borg session and getting bogged down into finding creative ways to fight a powerful enemy. In the end we just set it on fire with oil lamps (yes, I know, very original on my part) and fought it straight up afterwards.
We still had fun, mind you, but I'm starting to believe at some point the game will always grind to a halt no matter the rules or lack thereoff.
Deeply appreciating the pronunciation of Mork Borg. I had previously looked up to properly pronounce it but found I couldn't do so without sounding like a d-bag. I'll be adopting yours.
The Borg part is accurate. But mörk is best pronounced like the word murk (as in murky). I'm an English and Swedish teacher living in Sweden since 1987 btw.
Nice pronunciation of Mörk Borg! Fun fact: The Swedish word "mörk" is related to the English word "murky".
Thank you! I try hard to pronounce things correctly.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 Thank you for that additional effort!
I noticed that he did do a pretty good job of pronouncing it. (Swedish speaker here.)
My players and myself prefer as much detail to the rules as possible when playing, except for when playing horror games. Call of Cthulhu has in my opinion a perfect "easy to understand, fast to play and enough rules to not feel too basic" for those type of games. I never enjoy the more "rules light" systems for more than a one-shot adventure. But maybe it is because we all come from a math background.
Yeah, shadowrun 3.5 with tons of dice, wounds monitor and armor absorption where my favorite game for party of 3-4 ppl.
Rules light games have never done it for my group either. The GM always feels the need to create a new rule for every odd situation, so we end up with a mess of homebrew in very short order. It ends up being more complicated than a game with crunch included.
Rules/crunch should really suit the game you're going for, incl the players' preferences. That's why multiple systems exist - sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't
My only problem with heavier rule systems is that they serve a desire for accuracy or realism, but there no real support for the idea that they’re more realistic. One hopes they are, but how can they be sure? The idea that a game designer can accurately know the real world chance of jumping X feet while carrying Y lbs of gear with an abstract Strength score of Z is laughable.
@@maxducoudray to me it is not about realism, it's more about options and tactics available to the player. Our group prefers rules that has a lot of details, lot of possible combinations of things and so on. And we normally avoid games with strict level progression since we tend to feel that "all characters who play X class know the same things". A system with tons of options DOES however require the players to also know the system well, making it kind more daunting for new players who enter the group.
Great video! DMs often massage the rules and create new ones- for more realistic gameplay “ - they eventually put all of their ideas in a book and publish a new game - this has been rinse and repeat since the 1980’s
@Sir Guy Great point! Let's make the game more realistic = More complex and record keeping.
Yup
I love the crunch. Most games I run we start at level 10. We used to play with 3.5 Gestalt rules. As a DM, coming up with good stories and interesting challenges for players who wielded that amount of power was so much fun! Give me that CRUNCH!
I started making a system framework to try at my own table and this video brings up some great points. "Don't take down the fence unless you know why it was put there" is great advice. For me I try to think about what I DON'T like in Dnd, as a player and DM, and modify these rules. Leave everything that works alone!
Hero System has a good hit location system. It uses 3d6, withe likelier hit locations tied to a range of numbers rather than a single digit. Places like arms, torso, shoulders and stomach are also in the middle of the range, which makes them more likely due to having more possible combinations.
Hero is about as crunchy a system as I've played. I enjoy it, but we simplified a lot about combat when we played a 4e champions game last year.
The Hero System is one of the best designed game systems I've ever played. Whenever I have a problem with my homebrew system, the very first question I always ask myself is "how does the Hero System solve this problem?".
@@Stonegolem6 No doubt. Certainly not something I'd ever run with a large group. But in high school, when itvwas just me and my three friends, it was a blast.
I like the Death Spiral of Wound Categories. makes for a more immersive story imo.
Same, and it has the surprising side effect of making the game less deadly. People are more prone to surrendering than trying to fight to the end when they know that they can't win.
@@tuomasronnberg5244 why is surrendering and retreating a bad thing?
@@flavorgod They are good things.
I’m running into this in my own design now. In the middle of a fight, adrenaline can carry you through a new injury until a pause in the action. Fighting through an injury can be very cinematic.
The most impressive thing in this video is the right pronunciation of Mörg Borg 👍
@4:58 Rebuttal to PDM's law: When players _demand_ crunch/detail that is absent, it slows the game down for the Game Master to invent it on the fly. When the rules come with desired details baked in, the demand is satisfied ahead of time and the game can proceed.
That goes back to the idea that sometime before the game even starts, everyone should agree on a system that matches their expectations & desired-gameplay style. D&D - any edition - isn't always the best tool for *every* job.
It's a very good idea to prep as much as you can with the group. Session 0 is great for that.
But no plan survives contact with the players. Every GM knows this. By contrast, rulebooks tend to carry a sense of authority that funnel player expectations into pre-determined plans. For some reason.
@@Ishpeck Different "levels" of planning - Session 0 and PHB/splatbooks are good for campaign-level, character-prep, stuff that will broadly affect everyone long-term. DM session prep - the sort of plans that don't survive contact - those can be much looser, and have as much, or as little, reference to the rulebook as you like.
The matter of whether players or GM put their faith & authority into the books over the GM's own judgement is more social/psychological, doesn't have anything to do with the crunchiness of the system.
When we were playing Merp, D&D, Champions Palladium, gurps, their was no such thing as a quick turn. We really thought things through and asked lots of questions just to make sure so that you didn't die. Mechanics don't slow down a game in my opinion, players do.
Couldn’t have said it better! Literally the reason that I went from Pathfinder to 5e, and eventually went trying a handful of “rules lite” systems before finding and falling head-over-heels for Shadowdark!
If the rules go too minimalist or narrative, then there's a loss of tactical consideration; you just describe and roll to succeed. At one end of that spectrum, "Roll d6, 5+ you win the battle!". Excess the other way is Pheonix Command. :) The systems I like best allow meaningful but simple tactical choices.
I also think some of these discussions devolve into those infomercials where they show people who trip over their feet without the amazing new product. :) Most of the rules I've dropped were because they were confusing or poorly written, not for complexity. But as I get older, less is more. I'm very fond of minimalist Tricube Tales these days.
I'd argue that more narrative rules don't necessarily take out tactical consideration, but rather change its shape. Rather than dealing with modifiers and measurements, you're instead dealing with environmental factors and natural-language descriptions.
That said, a more minimalist ruleset does place a greater onus on the GM to supply details (or for players to ask about them), so I guess it depends on what your table tends to do during gameplay.
The question is where is the focus of the play session. Physical altercation need not be a focal point of conflict, but I have for example rarely seen in depth mechanical simulation for social encounters. The issue with crunch is probably that it is overly focused in an area of play and near absent from most others.
That's really interesting: how much crunch as having to do with how many people are involved in the combat. I like the crunch in (to pick an example:) Twilight Imperium. You've got PDS, ranges, anti-fighter barrages, space battle vs. planet-side battle, orbital bombardments, ec.,. It all makes battle take longer and more complex than, say, combat in Talisman -- which is just two die rolls and two additions. But now I see that: The crunch in Twilight Imperium is just crunch between two individual players. And it's also a climactic event in the game. So it's "OK." Whereas in Talisman, combat is *not* the climactic event of the game (in the main,) and you need to be able to transact dozens of combats before the game is over. So that pulls it in the direction of less crunch.
well said. yeah, that TI crunch serves the purpose of the game and the expectation of what players want from the game. if TI was sold as like a social RP romance game then yeah combat stages would be quite tedious. but the conquest tactics is the intended point of the game and the audience. and likewise for talisman: the rules for progressing around the map, getting loot, etc. is arguably crunchy, but the combat itself is sort of a stepping stone on that wider experience, so as long as it can be resolved quick and fairly, that's fine.
MERP (and by extension RoleMaster) for ALL the best Crunch! Crit and Fumble Tables were (and still are) the best. I use these for the game with my kids. It brings excitement to Nat 1's and 20's. But yes, it slows things down - in an exciting way.
Critical hits and misses are awesome! They add dimension to the game.
The reason I think RoleMaster tables are viable for other games are less crunch & more randomness. Much of the crunch from games like 5e/3e are PC manipulation options that are not as reliant on the dice. If I hit, this ability does this, this feat does that, and I have a kobold that can kill anything.
RoleMaster tables, on the other hand, are really determinate on the dice. The actual rules of weapon type (at least what I can remember from MERP... was a while ago) adjusted it but really it was all about the % roll. That I think is the exciting part, like watching 7s roll on a craps table.
5e & 3e options are ways PCs can control more of the outcome of combats.
Usually I keep my player count around 3 or 4 so I’m able to balance fun and detail. I’ve been able to add more crunch to my games due to this and so far it’s been a lot of fun. We usually treat 5e as a empty frame before applying our own rules and what seems interesting.
Right now, we implemented layering armor and armor absorption. Depending on the weather, If someone is wearing full armor they had to roll a Con save to see if they are okay. Our Paladin fought in the desert in full armor and failed his save getting overheated earring him 1 exhaustion point.
Thank you for allowing us to find your Dungeon magazine submissions 1:24 !
At our table we have armor give the wearer more HP instead of increasing AC so it makes you sturdier without making it more complicated
I feel like this concept marries well with Into the Odd's definition of HP as "Hit Protection" and automatic damage from attacks.
As someone who has been developing my own ttrpg for over 2 years I have recently realized that I strayed too far into complexity when my original goal on the design document was to make it a lite system, so ima now have to go back and cut it down a bit which hurts but it's for the best I think.
You can always use the extra bits for something else or even in a future edition! Good luck on your journey!
Yeah, there was a point in designing my own game where I realized I was adding too much resolution to parts that I didn't actually want to emphasize so much. The upside is you have an opportunity to come up with more elegant solutions to stuff you still want to focus on.
Pathfinder 1st ed also turns into a slog after seventh level. Second edition seems to start out as a slog, which is strange for a "simplified" version.
I've found that PF2e maintains a similar level of time spent per combat across all levels. So earlier levels are a bit longer, but later levels are much faster.
Took something like 2 hours to take down a single boss encounter at level 10. Back in 5e it took 4+ hours for a single boss encounter at a similar level.
I've been working on my own system with a lot of influence from your videos and I add rules and granularity only where I think it's important for the feel of the game.
There's one way in which you can add crunch but avoid slowing down the game too much: making the crunch happen in character creation, not in gameplay. For example, GURPS checks are broken down into a huge number of categories and calculations, but the actual check is just a 3d6 roll under a target number, which is pretty easy.
Yeah, deciding where/when/how you want to apply the crunch is a judgement-call. 4e uses the same "roll over/under target" Core Mechanic as the rest of the D20 family, and it simplified character-creation compared to 3/3.5e. But most of your mental energy goes into power/ability choices during character-leveling, and then finding the synergies between the party's abilities (and versus the enemies' & environment's) during combat.
But other systems may focus more of your cognitive load elsewhere, all depends what the design goals & player/DM preferences are.
GURPS is really not a good example. It's slower and clunkier than D&D. Just the fact that it's 1 second rounds with an attack, defense and damage rolls, then an armor damage reduction makes it very slow.
@@taragnor Yeah, I just meant in regard to other checks, not combat, and wasn't saying that GURPS is quick. I just was pointing out that you can put the crunch in character creation, rather than when you're actually playing.
Of course, that out-of-game crunch can easily become in-game crunch with a deadly enough game 😁
I used weapon speeds in place of initiative. If you have a slow weapon you naturally attack later.
It was the same for actions and spells. If you just dashed, you're likely to go first. If you try a ranged attack you'd go first in initiative, hit the middle with light weapons and heavy weapons go last with spells going final.
Much more thematic.
Runequest does it likes that. Makes sense to me.
I think someone mentioned this underneath, but, there's a difference between in-game crunch and out of game crunch. Out of game crunch is great. Granular rules are needed. You can learn the rules out of the session and apply them easily. The problem is that 5e has so, so many inconsistencies and unclarities that needs DM ruling. When everything is clear and something is unclear, you can google it quickly. The rules are the rules.
The added bonus of granularity is that, if you have rules, you can still ignore them if you don't like them. But if you don't have the rules, then when the situation comes, you're screwed.
7:40 I have had a love/ hate relationship with Hit Points in the past. My main complaint was always that you could have a high-level fighter get stabbed 20 times with a dagger, dropping to 1 HP. He'd continue fighting as if he was uninjured until he took a 1HP papercut, at which point he'd fall over dead. I liked the "death spiral" of wound levels in that it struck me as more realistic to have someone with their intestines hanging out fight less effectively. But that was because I viewed HP as actual health.
As I gained more experience I came to understand them as a combination of luck, skill, fatigue, and more. So now I can say that a dozen hits on a character can be glancing blows causing little or no true damage, but having a cumulative effect of wearing him down. Then when that final blow comes, causing perhaps only 2-3 HP, what it *represents* is a blow getting through the character's failing defences for a fatal strike. Of course, this raises the question of why it might take days to recover from fatigue, but systems like ShadowDark let you regain full HP after a good rest.
But I still often borrow the concept of Hard rolls from ICRPG and say that a character who has lost 1/2 their HP rolls against a higher target number for physical actions.
Glad to have another advice/tips and tricks video put on the channel! Hopefully a campaign update is in the nearish future!
Yes please! More of your classic, useful content. We all know WotC is out of touch. I really appreciate this type of content.
Not necessarily a rule, but a little trick i use to track hp is counting up. Idk why, but Adding toward the monster’s total hp instead of subtracting from the max has sped up my “bookkeeping” significantly. (Bonus points if it’s a monster with hp the same as a die, something with 20 or so hp can just be counted on a spare d20)
I use this exact method and it cuts significant seconds out of a round.
Years ago, when White Dwarf was a different sort of magazine, there was a Chivalry and Sorcery article in which there were probability tables for catching different kinds of fish when foraging. I think trout tickling might have been in there.
C&S, at least in its earlier versions, was almost ridiculously crunchy. Wasn't it published by the same people who made Aftermath, which had 30 hit locations for the human body?
@@bjornh4664 Aftermath unknown to me, I'm afraid, b.. That kind of striving for realism deserves applause, but I'd have reservations about the playability of a system like that. Once you start straining after that level of life-mimicking you can't get off the accuracy bus and every damn thing has to be simulated properly (I think). The whole thing duly stalls (I bet).
MÖRG BORK is great for low crunch fast paced craziness, especially with how initiative works where you basically flip a coin to see which side goes first. It really let’s you flow as a GM and doesn’t hold you back
Right!
Very true. I remember that one session our GM had the world of darkness combat supplement with him, and we were really excited. Then we looked at it and after the first combat we decided to go back to the basics again. Not only made it the game sluggish and turned combat into a mini game separate from the rest, all those option gave the impression that choosing one took away all the others.
Coming from someone who played stuff like battletech and car wars in 8h sessions for fun.
Yes, that was about 25 years ago.
I liked your restaurant analogy, and made it clear what I like about newer style games. Maybe there are limited options to chose from, but it could happen when I browse the "menu" I find something good I didn't even thought about. Yeah I could get that same food from an restaurant that takes any order, but I might didn't think about it and fall back some simple like grilled cheese and french fries.
Great video. As I have gotten older and have less time to play, I have started enjoying less crunchy games more. That does not mean I do not appreciate the crunch of games, I just do not have the time I use to, to get into the weeds with players. Because of this most of my games now are more like cinema. Games like Risus, FATE, Quest, Kobolds Ate My Baby, Screenplay and Action 12 Cinema are what I am using lately to play/DM games. The big reason for this is we as a table enjoy the ability to just play and develop characters during the story. I still have love for games with crunch and we use them for Setting and character development. We just let the narrative deal with the actions instead of set mechanics. More of an FKR approach to gaming.
I've heard of Kobolds ate my Baby, think I was almost in a con game of it, but nobody showed up :( And agreed that getting older = less time to play, or deal with nonsense.
I’ve watched and read quite a few articles about how games with more rules are slower, but they miss an important point: player experience. New players will, understandably, ask questions, while experienced players will just roll ‘n go. Much ado has been made of the lack of experienced DMs, but I’ve seen few point out that the players are also new. Additionally, WoTC keeps coming out with new rules, classes etc., which just causes confusion among DMs and players alike.
Now too many rules can be a problem, such as an abundance of carts or other things. D&D has a different problem, which I call the “math problem”. At higher levels, players are throwing fistfulls of dice to hit, damage, save, and so on. They then proceed to add and subtract for a minute or so, all to answer a simple question: “Is it dead yet?”
All the successful long term campaigns I’ve seen do the same thing Prof. DM does, they set a level limit and call it a day.
Anyway, my 2c.
p.s. Deathbringer’s comment about “Reroll your intelligence check” made me laugh! 😄
Professor, you are truly a master of the art. Your deep dive here is something that is constantly on my mind. I like playing Rules Light games, but I don't mind some crunch if it brings some kind of realism or value when necessary. Ultimately, it is as you said - a quid pro quo.
I've been trying EZD6 with my groups lately, and I appreciate what you say here, PDM, but in Scotty's system a roll of 3 will be a success with 'normal' tasks or foes (not a 5, as you said) -- see p. 4 or p. 49. A roll of 4 will succeed for Hard tasks/foes, and 5 for Very Hard, etc. I like the Strikes concept too (3 strikes, you're out!), which speeds up combat and eliminates record keeping.
This is one of those things where it varies from system to system, but too often people look at it purely through the lens of D&D. In Torg Eternity I love that initiative is done by a random card flip saying which side goes first and then the players can chose their own order when it's the Player turn. Easy peasey, keeps the game flowing. But then in Hackmaster each character is rolling for their own initiative and then every action takes a certain amount of seconds to perform and you count up the seconds. On one hand it's a lot more work but it ironically makes the combat so much more fluid and characters move around each other at the same time and are able to instantly react instead of suddenly moving 30' in a second. Not only feeling better, but keeping people paying attention as they can alter their plans any second.
Now I know my group is weird. We loved THAC0 and S-M/L damage rules. We loved making our own magic items.
Sometimes we have a crunchy session, sometimes we have fast and loose rules. It depends on everyone's mood.
Liking for Deathbringer's joke at the end.
I disagree. Deathbringer is no bard.
There is a similar principle (or at least a general correlation) for restaurants. The smaller the menu the better the food.
For similar reasons - a smaller menu requires fewer resources/less inventory for the kitchen, and it's lower cognitive load for the waitstaff and the customers.
Swedish tradition in the 80s was founded on the Basic RP rules that had hitpoints, absorption, dodge, body-part hitpoints and 'hurt points'. While I had played AD&D in computer games I didn't got into using the systems until 3rd edition and the one thing I noticed right away was how fast it was. I felt I could resolve fights in a blinding speed.
The mechanic I love that doesn’t get enough play is the opposed role mechanic. I love the idea that at the moment the two characters lock swords in battle, the two players roll dice against each other, and the bare numbers of the dice show the results of the contest. No sheets, no math, just drama.
I like opposed rolls, playtesting somethi g right now built on that for combat. But a raw opposed dice roll is literally 'math'. May as well flip a coin if nothing modifies either side.
@@Stonegolem6 Understandable-I think modifying the die type is potentially a way to add in complexity, like the way Savage Worlds does it-D4 through d12, gained by leveling up stats. Modiphius does 2d20 with die pools, momentum being extra d20s added to your roll that also generates d20s for the game master as “threat” to add to rolls in high stakes moments. There’s a happy medium for all these mechanics somewhere.
When I first glanced this video I thought the title said, "The Problem with Church" and I thought oh boy the Professor got his whole tweed suit on for this one, lol. Glad it was a misread!
Good vid as always PDM. I grew up playing Basic and Advanced DnD, as well as Rune Quest and Tunnels and Trolls. I'd have to say I lean towards "moderate" crunch, but as you said in the video everyone's mileage may vary. I think what it comes down to is this: As long as you have a little bit of crunch the gives the players and GM roadmap of actions they can kind of extrapolate from, then you're golden. On a side note: That offer for a copy of Worlds Without Number is still on the table PDM, just say the word.
Great breakdown! In my home brew game we are experimenting with armor absorption mechanics. Now I might take it out, ha!
I’ll probably just use it for the next few sessions and see what everyone thinks. Thanks for the great videos as usual!
Thanks for watching the entire thing!
When I was a teenager I made a hit location chart for D&D; only used it once, though I did give each location different chances to be hit. Also used way too many locations. Played with it one time; led to one mad-cap fight, and that's all. I did think WHFRP 2e hit locations were smoothly done, without mattering too much.
The interesting thing about AC in DnD imo is that (while not perfect) it's more accurate than a lot of Armour Absorption mechanics.
If wearing heavy armour such as plate if someone hits you where it might cause injury. It would be going through a spot where the armour is much weaker or non-existent.
A knight is far more likely to be killed by a dagger while restrained than with an arming sword. Special techniques such as Half-Swording were developed for this very reason.
If I were to devise a system it would be closer to the old 40k combat system. A contested combat skill check and then armour would be a saving throw of (Space Marines save on a 3+ on a d6 iirc) If the loser fails the saving throw they take a wounds based on the weapon that hit them. Typically 1 but things like chainswords did more.
If you want to go really granular, you'd have a roll to see if the attack hit an armoured area or a gap, and if the former check armour type against attack and determine if it protected completely, or partially, or not at all from the damage.
I found a custom weapons speed helped balance martials and casters in my game and allowed for more tactical play. Players declare intentions, then roll initiative, I then privately list the order applied to my formula (+5 grapple, +0 melee, -5 range, -10 spell casting) and run as normal.
But I agree, homebrew stuff to your party's needs. Most of the time I am the only one who knows how any of the actual game works, my friends just declare intentions and I inform them if it's possible or suggest something similar if they aren't able to do it without breaking the limitations.
I think armor absorption can be faster depending on the implementation. Into the Odd features armor that absorbs damage...but it also completely removes the to-hit roll, which not only removes a step from damage resolution but since HP is going down every turn no matter what it makes combats much faster than they otherwise would be.
If they had to-hit rolls AND armor absorption that would be another matter....
Yeah...the eliminating the "to hit" roll is innovative, but that's a critical step for me.
I concur, which is why 5e was so impressive to me when it first came out, because it was so streamlined that we ran a game every week for months before any one had to look up a rule beyond a spell description or class mechanic. I’ve played games with less crunch that I’ve enjoyed immensely (Tri-Stat, True 20, interlock, etc) and have tried to play games with extremely high levels of crunch (Rolemaster, Champions, West End Game, Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, etc) and not enjoyed the experience. The immersion for my is when we can narrate our actions and build a scene that isn’t disrupted by needed to look up an obscure rule.
Great video as always. So many good points about how you can do whatever you want but it is still important or at least interesting to understand the tradeoffs you make by adding crunch. It is similar to the way people paint miniatures. Do you want to spend hours painting one miniature and make it insanely perfect and award show winning or do you wanna slap on the basic color locations and get it to the board or even play with unpainted miniatures? Most people prefer somewhere in between and the degree to which they favor one side or the other is all personal taste and what adds the variety to the RPG genre and what makes every table and game a unique experience. There's no right or wrong answer. It's all personal preference
There's a flip-side to the crunch coin though, the less crunch, the more the responsibility of giving players a consistently predictable and 'realistic' gaming experience gets shunted directly to the GM's current whim, which will inevitably vary from game to game and player to player. Many players prefer a little more consistency in their role playing, even at the expense of speed. It also means that the poor overworked GM doesn't need to make constant snap decisions about literally every aspect of combat, he just follows the rules.
It can be a rough transition from crunch. You need players who are willing to accept that sometimes their grand plan to distract and blind the ogre, still only results in 1d6 damage and no mechanical consequences.
@@Stonegolem6 Exactly, Unless the GM is feeling good and awards you a bonus to reflect the brilliance of your plan. And the next time he forgets. With crunchy rules, there's no forgetting and there's no 'is the GM firing on all cylinders tonight?', you just follow the rules the same way every time. Consistency.
@@kerravon4159 yeah, though that can get problematic too. I've seen a few players who aren't really capable of letting a dm make a ruling and have to stop everything to look up the rule.
@@Stonegolem6 Oh absolutely, rules lawyers are the bane of tabletop RPG's everywhere, but at least in a crunchy system the GM has a rule written somewhere in black and white to 100% back up their decisions and eventually even the dimmest of players will learn the rules. It can definitely eat up valuable time though.
But rules-light games can also be problematic too, when a player disagrees with the GM's decision and the GM has no concrete rule to fall back on, it can result in long arguments and accusations of victimization or favoritism that can really erode trust in the GM, I've seen it happen. I honestly think that's even worse.
Great video Professor! I find this topic definitely comes up a lot and it really hits home the reason why I love games like Deathbringer, Shadowdark, and EZD6. Minimalist and rules lite is the way 👍🏼
“and drop onto my opponent’s face” 😂 I’m dying PDM!
It's crazy you posted a video on this subject. I was thinking about this very concept and had an extended conversation about it with my long time gaming buddy. Like minds... Love the channel.
This seems like the players aren't prepared for their turn at higher levels. Know your own stuff and be ready for your turn.
Having too much crunch can definitely be an issue. But so can not having enough. Games without enough crunch can often feel like they boil down to just "DM, May I..." which can be very unsatisfying depending on the DM. More crunch provides a more unified experience, regardless of DM. If the crunch is misplaced or poorly made, it can certainly create a consistent poor play experience, but that is a reflection on the quality of the rules, not just because the rules themselves exist.
The advice to think through the implications to play time to any suggested rules optimizations are totally correct though. Sometimes the gains are worth the time added by the additional crunch though.
I've studied this topic a lot and what I think people miss is that most of the delay in game speed is player decisions and attentiveness. Stuff like adding damage reduction should literally add 0 seconds to the game cause the player calculates while notating it anyway. Even an armor absorption roll could be done in few seconds. 15 seconds of extra mechanics barely dent the several minutes the player's turn is often lasting. Having fewer turns in combat where more gets done helps limit time wasted in between turns, but it also causes players to check out for the 10+ mins it's not their turn, then they take longer to decide on their turn cause they don't know what's going on.
Rules light systems are often nearly as bad as crunchy ones on turn times because players have no guidance and can't figure out what to do. They don't know what difficulty the GM will place on an action or what stats they'll have to use, leading them to basically asking the GM for a risk analysis of all their options. Too much granularity also leads to decision paralysis and/or makes it too hard to remember all the rules and what options are good in a specific scenario.
Ideally you want to maximize the number of impactful actions per turn per player, and minimize the number of turns. In a sucessful encounter, unless it is a bossfight, the enemies probably shouldnt even get to act before they are killed. This is a difficult thing to accompilsh with a single character per player, and adjacency to enemies needed for most actions, and ridiculously short movement ranges seen in most systems. The chance for individual actions to fail to accomplish anything oushld probably also be minimized. Individually tracking hit accuracy, aemour absorbtion and secondary effect resistance directly goes against this. In any event more than two rolls per action is superflous. Is the action accomplished/how succesfully is it accomplished, how potent is the effect. Everything else can be added on as constant modifiers to these rolls. And even if the actions fail to have the intended effect, they should have some effect. Possibly detrimental. Also, turn advantage should be equally availible to all players, and only the players. Unless it is meant to be punishment towards the whole of the party for poor decisions/greedy play, but individually denying turns to players is the epitome of horrible design.
@@egoalter1276 good points. My issue with some of the rules light stuff is if you go too simplistic then you lose some of the granularity that some players find fun. For instance you can have a system where weapons basically don't have stats and you just roll to see how much damage your attack does or some such, and that stuff is just flavor, but as someone who enjoys optimization I find some complexity in the mechanics, so there are things like builds and such, a fun part of these kinds of games. So then it becomes a question of how granular you want to get and how many weapons you have that are actually significantly distinctive from one another. You can do things like weapon unique special abilities that proc on high rolls or with points of some kind so you have fewer stats and rolls and such, but as stated, an extra roll really isn't a huge problem if players are paying attention. They may also take forever deciding whether to spend that stamina point or whatever on an ability vs saving it for later. So ultimately you need to find a balance with these choices and rolls, and as you said, try to focus on things that are impactful amd and try to accomplish more with fewer rolls ideally. But some mechanics that require rolls can be a lot of fun, and it depends a lot on player preferences and tendencies.
@@DavidSmith-mt7tb I agree. I too like granular systems. But they certainly have some unavoidable faults, chief among them, that most people wont bother to optimize themselves, and will just stick to some meta, essentialy nullifying all the complexity.
@@egoalter1276 yeah, I think this is how we got to 5e. It has decent granularity but isn't overly complicated like 3.5e. I like the complexity level of 5e, my issue is more that d20 in general is just a bad platform compared to other more modern systems, especially DnD, which is really married to some outdated concepts. Newer games are changing a lot of those things and ending up more intricate without adding any extra complexity. But as a designer, this is really the goal, to get as much intricacy and flexibility as possible out of the level of complexity you are designing for.
@@DavidSmith-mt7tb I'm partial to D100 roll under target, and D6 pool, and 2d6 bell curve systems. 100 makes all the modyfiers a lot more intuitive because of the percentage chance, dice pool is deliciously simple, and bell curves actually make use of the dice with an intended outcome, much better for sensical storytelling.
Great to see a video about playing the game instead of the industry at large. Always interested to hear your take on mechanics and game theory.
More to come. Of course-there are more of those industry videos coming too. Sorry.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 I get it, those seem to be successful for you. Gotta go where the clicks are.
@@pez5767 Yeah. I am editing a video about Matt Mercer's Dagger heart and I'll be covering WoTC earning quarter this Thursday. But lots of game content is in the can.
Thanks again professor. This is one of the best channels. I wanted some talk about this because I'm almost done with my own system , which I would Love you took a look at.
Great topic! I agree 100% and experienced it first hand while adding to and changing my D&D rules over decades of brainstorming my own RPG. Ultimately, simple, although lacking in realism, is better for dynamic and ultimately exciting game play.
I'm currently running a Shadowdark game with players who like and are experienced with 3.5e, 5e, and Pathfinder, and so far they're all having a lot of fun with such a more simple game.
Meanwhile, I'm a player in a Pathfinder 1e game and I'm sticking to the core rulebook for my character because the sheer amount of options is overwhelming to me. Even though the GM is a Pathfinder fanatic and always encouraging me to take various min-max options from a multitude of sources, I think he ultimately appreciates the "simplicity" of my character compared to the more complex characters at the table.
Eeyyooo I'm that guy from your previous video ❤ didn't expect you to cover EZD6 that fast lol!
You're truly a man of your word professor 👓🙌🏻
I really love the way the FFG warhammer 40k games handles armour. its a very simple way for characters to actually feel tanky. In D&D you are a dude in full plate armour but you can still get one shot by a goblin because he rolled 15+3. In rogue trader though he just damages you and you subtract armour+ toughness and completely tank the blow because you're a knight and 1 shitty goblin cant 1 shot you.
Great video.
Into The Odd type games have been really hitting the sweet spot of low crunch for me lately. I like being able to add on my own crunch as I my table sees fit.
I already use strikes not hp. Id like to finally read deathbringer this winter. I use several of your ideas in my game..huge fan
Cool. Thanks for buying Deathbringer!
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 thank you for awesome content.. really inspired
I've been hacking and homewbrewing my own game for a while now, and your channel is a big point of reference for me. Thanks prof.!
Thank YOU!
The old Boot Hill game had a pretty good hit location table. Boot Hill second edition is also a really great game that I highly recommend. Tons of fun and I encourage everyone to check it out at least once
Really interesting. We are currently seeing Warhammer 40,000 being "simplified, but not simple" for it's 10th edition which is about to come out. I am seeing a lot of people already complaining about removal of granularity, but the biggest issues were complexity and length of the game - many tournaments unable to actually finish games in a suitable amount of time. All of what you are saying applies to that also.
It'll always be hard to balance abstract rules and in-depth granularity in rules. However good abstract rules with a game designed to tell stories should let your imagination fill in the gaps and not matter. I currently prefer something like Index Card RPG for this reason. I look back at my youth and realise I preferred the complexity back then, but I had a lot more time for it. I don't now. I just want to tell stories and move things forward, not do bookeeping.
Loved the Chesterton’s Fence reference, if indeed that’s what it was!
Indeed it was.
Another great video, though I think there is an exception to "adding rules always takes more time." If you're adding rules to a part of the game that had no rules beforehand, it often just takes the same amount of time as the DM trying to make a ruling on the fly, but now you have more consistent results with guidelines that were thought out beforehand.
I have a small group, and when I homebrewed monster attacks to be player facing, I also changed damage into an armor absorb mechanic. Just cause it made more sense to us at the table
The only reason I've ever been tempted to use hit locations is when running a game where I wanted the possibility of losing a limb to be a real threat. Partially this threat was there because the game featured cybernetic prosthetics, so losing an arm means you have an excuse to get a robo-arm. I never quite found a good way to solve that problem, but determining hit location with every attack certainly wasn't a good solution.
There was a session of 5e I ran where it was a prologue where the players took control of guards and I gave them the NPC stat block for them. That session was so fun that I started thinking that maybe a game with pre-generated 'characters' to serve as the classes might actually be more than enough for a good time.
Want to be a martial artist that is has a honed body that is so powerful he doesn't need armor? Use the Martial Stat Block. Have a warrior who trudges around in heavy armor and uses only the largest of weapons? Again, just use the Martial Stat Block. And yes, it loses resolution of what could be more tightly defined. But, if I wanted a simulation, I'd have a computer do that in a video game.
You want a simple quick mechanic for combat use the HeroQuest board game mechanic, much like DM Scotty's EZ6, it uses six sided dice, three sides are skulls, two white shields, and one black shield. To attack you roll a certain number of dice according to your weapon and ability, each skull is a hit, target defends rolling dice according to their armor and ability each white shield blocks one hit, monsters must roll black shields to block hits. Very fast.
Good stuff as always.
I'm currently in a mixed game with a brand new adult player who's never experienced anything like roleplay.
My 12-year-old nephew whose friends all want to play rules as written.
And my older sister who grew up playing basic and advanced with me.
The new player can't be bothered to read the rules and keep track of all the 5e minutiae.
My nephew loves 5e but can't maintain focus long enough to stay on point through a single round of combat.
And my sister keeps trying to play by a D&D rules.
Almost every game I played as a kid had at least six players. But it worked because it was the old simple system.
I can't imagine running a 5e game for 6 people
My experience with kids is I just say, "Yeah, yeah. it's 5e." Then I run my own hacks. Pretty soon, they think it IS 5e!
Youre getting a grad school level education on game mechanics here. Some people dont notice things like 5e basically makes all players +4 on attack.... then adds +4 to most monster's AC.
Or adds damage bonuses to players, abd adds almost the same hit points to monsters.
There are other good youtube pages to teach basic D&D stuff but Professor, Runehammer/Hankerin, DM Scotty are great places to learn how to make the game FUN and maybe even a little dangerous, too.
My late hubby used to run a pickup D&D game when we had a monthly meetup going. His table was often 6-8ppl, with a mix of folks new to non-computer gaming, players from prior D&D editions or other systems, and varying levels of short-attention-span issues. I had some of those people at my tables over the years, so here are my recollections/suggestions:
+ The new-to-roleplayer, see if they have any affinity or experience with theater, improv, or plain storytelling. Get them to think in terms of "describe what you want to do", and then you and/or the party can help them translate that into 5e rules.
+ The "I can't believe it's not AD&D" player, similar deal from the other direction. Try to get them to describe in broader mechanical terms, like class abilities, tactical actions, enemy targets, environment interactions, etc. Wean them off of trying to "make your job easier" by giving numbers/stats/results since those are probably gonna be wrong or "off" anyway.
+ The shiny-object-disease player, I actually lean-in to their tendency, and give them a secondary thing to think about in addition to what they want to do on their turn. In one case, a junior-friend of mine had an artifact weapon with a DM-determined "personality", so I'd usually give him something mental to chew on related to wrangling with his hammer. In another case, an adult-friend who just goes on tangents if left unattended, I told him he could help keep battle-notes to recap for any other players as-needed (or I'd call for one, if he seemed distracted).
@@mandisaw Thank you for sharing. Much respect to your late husband for all the joy he gave his players over the years.You as well, of course. God bless.
I run it for a group of 8 13-year olds. It works. You need to keep them in action and in danger. It is fun.
Way back in the day I ran a superhero game called "Golden Heroes".
It had two types of damage: HTK (hits to kill) and HTC (hits to coma). HTK = physical damage, HTC = pain.
Combat rounds were divided into "frames" (a la comic book) each consisting of 4 actions and, depending on certain stats/skills, a combatant got to do a certain number of actions within a frame before others, then they'd take their remaining actions up to the maximum of 4.
Confused?
Well, don't tell my players but the only reason they were rolling their dice was because they made a nice sound.
I just winged my way through combat. They didn't seem to notice.
In fact they have since told me that they were some of the best role-playing sessions they've had.
Rules? Pah!
My group goes back and forth on crunch
There are times it is nice to have and other times where it seems to get in the way
Synonym Toast Crunch!!!
I had to stop the video for that one. I can’t wait to use it.
Thanks!
I have long said that the fundamental challenge in roleplaying game design is finding the balance between realism and abstraction that satisfies the players at the table. Anytime you add yet another dice roll or yet another lookup table, you are making the game that much more difficult to play, but there is a level of granularity above which many players will lose their sense of immersion and/or believability. When players start finding the game system leads to implausible outcomes, then you know you need to be introduce more realism/simulationism.
I'm a big fan of allowing players to make stuff up, so long as they make the story compelling. I also think that there are ways to make RPGs more believable without necessarily introducing more dice rolls, either by simply substituting a different type of roll, or by adding rolls in some areas while removing them in others. For example, in my Tapestry RPG System, there are nine primary ability scores. I take three of the traditional six and split them into two each, because I find that better describes a PCs capabilities, but in practice, this doesn't actually result in more rolls at the table (other than at character creation time), rather, it results in different kinds of rolls. Also, rather than a d20 test, I use a d30 test. Same number of rolls, but a slightly finer gradation.
Thanks for mentioning the best game ever made - EZD6!!! I am loving it :-) Best TTRPG bar none 🙂
Love your content, just queued up the video after playing EZD6
This give me a lot to think about. Thank you!. I'm working on a skirmish combat set of rules that would have hit location damage. The crunchiest version of that would be like the combat in Battletech. While I love that game, I'd want something faster.
The important thing to consider is player competency. If you have incompetent players it will slow things down a lot but if your players know what they’re doing it’s much less of an issue.
It’s also a fallacy to say faster=more immersive; Monopoly is fast but not at all an immersive simulation of a real estate market. Immersion comes from a game being an effective simulation to increase believability and looking up rules doesn’t hurt this unless you have a very short attention span (which is a separate issue and plays into my previous point about player competency).
Agree with most of that!
However, I do use a "body die" in my D&D or any RPG, but only for critical hit or other special circumstances (sometimes on a max damage roll). I also add a spin to it depending on the situation.
For example, a crit to the leg while fighting on a sailing ship might mean a loose piece of rigging has wrapped around said leg...all good stuff!
I started designing my own game being dissatisfied with 5e. I had a armor reduction system, a block and dodge reaction system, and a whole lot more. I played two play tests with different groups. I have to say, the extra crunch was not worth the hassle of tracking it all. Yes my system is 10x more realistic than 5e, but not worth the bookkeeping everyone had to do.
That was a valuable experience. You really learn games by taking them apart and doing your own.
What a cool use of fudge dice!
My young players love it--and they're the 5e crowd!
I guess I just love detail, or how I refer to it as concrete rules. I like rules that 1. give you believable results. 2. Teach you the basics of how the described actions work and 3. rules that apply generally and not especially based on talents, feats and such.
Love big attack tables and big result tables. I dislike feats, talents and such with a passion. I feel speciality rules are a way bigger problem than detail. Rolemaster/Merp has super detailed tables but plays way faster than DnD.
Crit tables are great, because they simulate the granularity of of high fidelity crunch, but are much faster. Generally whatever can be summed up into a single additive modifier should be a single additive modifier.
In the RPG I'm making, armor does reduce damage. But in that game you roll dice for armor, not for dealing damage. So it's still just one die roll to determine the damage dealt by an attack, since a weapons' damage is just a static number. And the player knows that the GM did not already deduct their armor from the damage they announce, since it's up to the player to roll those armor dice.
I'm sure it will take some getting used to (not rolling for damage will feel odd, even though it mathematically works out the same way in the end)
Agreed. Back in 1st edition we tried things like hit locations that would amplify or ameliorate damage dice, and an individual iniative system that took into account weapon speed and length and player dex. We ended up going back to regular damage and d6 side initiative after a session. of each. In college I played Champions, a superhero game by Hero Games. The hit point mechanic was broken down into nuances - stun, body, endurance points. There was armor that reduced stun point damage, hardened armor that reduced body point damage. 1 combat per session. It would last the whole session. 5e is fun, but it is not fast, and it can slow down and not be fun. I really would like a return to side initiative but it would ruin some of that individualization that the players like.`
One of the games that has the most variety for characters is the Star Wars Saga edition. From the 5 base classes available at lvl 1, you can expand and create any type of character one could find in the Star Wars universe.
And that can create problems for players who want to do it all.