Thread by @MythicMLand

It’s is time to put an end to the question of “rules light” versus “rule heavy” systems polemic around RPGs 🧵

Complexity is as relevant to quality as complexity is relevant to the quality of a machine. Complex machines require complexity, indifferent toward how we feel toward their complexity in how they work. Complex machines accomplish complex tasks.

Pencil and paper systems ought to have complexity and not be relegated to video games because pencil and paper can convey complexity, beyond mere linear mechanical systems. They convey concepts , axioms, there is a connection with literature to tabletop

We ought to allow some games to be **hard** it is a good thing for us. And we become less human when we say “I’ll leave that to what’s on Steam and in DRM to do.”

At the same time, complexity is not a mark of quality in any machine. The more complex the machine, the more likely it is to fail.

A truly genius machine is elegant in its interdependence, acting in patterns rather than only parts. It is complex, and not needlessly so.

That is the case with the superior forms of Dungeons and Dragons. They are better because they are both complex, and elegant. And a video game cannot accomplish what they do, because the human interaction is part of its complex interdependency.

The machine will not work without the arrangement of human beings which create something that can emerge.

The quality of tabletop, culture, art, and even the OSR has taken a nosedive because of fear of pain and complexity.

Many designers have mistaken the problems they had with complexity with a supposed solution that could be as minimal and open as possible.

This made the most important systems in D&D seem vestigial, and now D&D has no art, no meaning and no mythical quality.

The most important rule in original D&D is the rule which is not included in almost any OSR game whatsoever. But new OSR games are mostly not played. When they are, they only last a game or two.

But original D&D can be played nearly forever.

Complexity is also not related to how we actually approach complex systems. A user can be unable to use a perfect complex system, or a perfect simple system. So cognitive load is not related to a systems complexity.

In fact, this is the misunderstanding I face constantly re: simulation. People think that in order to use a complex system or system of systems, you must **use them all at once**, **use all parts in sequence** and **use it perfectly.**

Such a judgment of any system would suggest we should not have the dice quality of the game at all and simply do cops and robbers, since that logic could just as easily be applied to Mork Borg.

Mork Borg teaches something important though. You do not build a stronghold while you are exploring a wilderness, and you do not explore a wilderness while you are in a dungeon.

This is precisely the immersive quality of simulation: that it’s *local reality isomorphically maps sufficient for meaningful verisimilitude*. If it feels real to a discerning mind, that is real enough.

I have played many an RPG, with many a dungeon master that **does not feel real at all.** And the flavor of the RPG, which cannot be provided by a video game, is this human quality of creating a secondary reality, then allowing a meaningful choice to occur in it.

No meaningful choice can occur, if the secondary reality cannot sustain the impact of the choice.

Therefore, “a riding horse which is 40 gp takes a day to travel 30 miles, but on foot this takes 3 and 1/3 days, but in a mire the horse cannot move” creates meaningful choice.

And, “you find a horse and arrive at the mire” offers no choice.

A complex but elegant and interdependent, system of systems then is superior for Dungeons and Dragons, and adventure gaming.