Are there many gamers in WP who love complex rules?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm not sure what particular obstacle or habit is causing me to have a less conventional gameplay.

I am drawn to complicated rules. Like Oxygen Not Included, RimWorld, Grand Strategy Genre from Paradox Interactive, Total War, RPG with DND rules, or other similar games.

I didn't spend so much time on any of them that none of them reached a high level.
I read the rules of the game and the guides in the forums, reproduced the tricks, and understood how they worked. Then the game quickly bores me. This usually takes two hundred hours, and then I go to find the next game to go through this process.
Sometimes I try not to read the walkthrough, but the rules make me realize there's a lot of operational potential in it that I can't discover on my own. This frustration also bores me with the game. Reading the walkthrough will extend the usage time of a game.

Sometimes reading all the background information I can find about the game makes me feel just as enjoyable as actually playing the game.

I don't know if I'm really a gamer or just some kind of reading addiction.It cost me way too much money to buy games.

Does anyone have a similar experience?

I tend to appreciate this side of games. Don't ask me how many 3.5E books I have.

In my opinion, simple rulesets are the best, because people unfamiliar with the game can start playing almost immediately without having to study and learn every subtle nuance of any particular game.

• "Classic" Traveller originally had only 3 rulebooks of about 40 pages each ("Characters & Combat", "Starships", "Worlds & Adventures"), while the 5th edition core rulebook is a whopping 500 or so pages.  I play by the original ruleset almost exclusively.

• In the early 1980s, AD&D had only the Players' Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual.  I have lost count of how many rulebooks (and pages in each) have been published since.

Both of these games (and many others) suffer greatly from what I call "Rules Bloat".

Rules bloat seems to be common in most games. Players all have their inner Smokey Yunick which means it's inevitable that holes in the rules will be found and exploited until clarification is provided.

Rules Bloat seems inevitable for any game that keeps updating without overturning its previous gameplay.
Computer games will make it easier to overthrow previous ways of playing. World of Warcraft simplified，and brought a lot of controversy.

My experience is mostly based on computer games. The Chinese internet does not have much translated TRPG material. In my humble opinion of the tabletop rules, a game with an emphasis on illithids would be a little weird without the Psionics Handbook.
Difficult core rules can deter newcomers, and on the other hand I have seen many incidents of benign bugs modifying old rules that shook the player community.
Making the new rules optional will satisfy more people.

An interesting thing is that the name of China's only DND material translation forum is very religious. That forum originally belonged to Christians and was later occupied by gamers.
This made our network connection to that library very unstable.

That indeed is quite interesting.

As for me, computer games just are not my thing.
Closest thing to a computer game that I have is Trainz Railroad Simulator.

Until my health went downhill, I was deep in to board games such as Avalon Hill's Squad Leader, and Task Force Games' Star Fleet Battles.
Both of which have multiple volumes of printed rules.

But as was commented several decades ago somewhere in Squad Leader's rules, unless you are dropping ski-equipped paratrooper cavalry at night in the snow, you don't need to bother with the paratrooper rules, the night rules, the cavalry rules, the ski rules, the snow rules.

The thing is that "Rules Bloat" in TTRPGs occurs because players either cannot or will not do their own imagining.

So they ask the game developers questions.  LOTS of questions, most of which they could answer for themselves.

• "How does magic work?"
• "What are the physics behind Warp Drive?"
• "How do I raise a dragon to be a pet?"
• "How powerful is a suitcase-sized tac-nuke?"
• "Does the Emperor have a cute daughter?"
• "How much of my body can be mechanical and still have psionics?"

Consider a simple TTRPG that presents guidelines for generating characters, engaging in combat, designing sailing ships, adventuring/exploring, and buying/selling things -- all in three little books.  That will never be enough for most people; they will want maps, diagrams, flow charts, dice tables, settings, backstories/histories, and detailed descriptions of every magical/technical item ever mentioned in the game.  Pretty soon, each of those three little books has been revised with additional material, several supplemental books have been published, and dozens of pre-packaged adventures are available.  Eventually, all of that material gets packed into one ginormous tome that looks more like a college textbook than a game manual.

I have some complex games.
"Hearts of Iron" for one.
"Anno 1800" is another.
Both those games need research on the internet to get the best out of them.

I have been playing "Total War: Shogan" on and off for at least 22 years.
I wouldn't call it particularly complex, however.
I found the other Total War games less engaging.
"Rome" isn't too bad, but I find "Empire" rather boring.
"Total War: War Hammer" is so so, but it is "Shogun" I still enjoy more.

Last edited by Pepe on 21 Mar 2022, 10:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

In fact, it was Total War: Warhammer that I was dealing with. This work seems to be special in the series. After having all the DLC, the game has a lot of different types of troops.

Hearts of Iron 4 is blocked in China. Blocking a game is a very rare situation. sad.

I'm looking at a rather complex game that will need help via the internet.
It is new, I believe.
It is called "Elden Ring".
Have you heard about it?

Elden Ring is very famous.

I have browsed a little walkthroughs related to it.
But I wouldn't play it myself.

I'm not good at games that require quick reflexes.

I know I appreciate endurance racing/long distance racing because of the strategic elements compared to sprint racing.

Neither am I.
That is why I will be choosing the "Astronomer" class so I can attack from a distance.
I did this with Skyrim, also.

Considering the relationship between nervous system function and age, this phenomenon fits your biological profile. <joke>

It's hard to find the translation correspondence, I hope I used the correct words:
I used "Sneak - Bow" or "Sneak - Dagger" almost all the way through Skyrim.
After that I was addicted to collecting mods about various animals for Skyrim
And accumulate in-game skeletons and soul stones to stack them together.

It isn't uncommon for autistic individuals to have physical coordination problems.

I found a "nude" mod for Skyrim.
It's great if you are into necrophilia.

Erm, I'm not into that, btw.

I bought Elden Ring and have been playing it for a number of days.
It is BIG!
Lots of placed to explore.

I doubt I will finish the game but I am enjoying the exploration and levelling up.
I will get my money's worth out of it.