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 Vermis wrote:
Nice topic. I learned it as complexity vs. complication, as per Azreal's distinction. The former deals with interaction of core rules. The latter deals with lots of individual, special rules and exceptions.
I'd also agree with the definition of tactics vs. strategy - the interaction of core rules requiring at least some decision-making, maneuvering etc. in-game; while special rules demand more sifting through before the game, deciding which models you'll take (the stronger ones per point spent, i.e, the mathammered ones), and letting those rules play out without as much in-game input. It's an over-simplistic way to put it, maybe, but at least it's apparent where my preferences lie.

I don't mind the oversimplification for the purposes of argument, but I don't think it is accurate to say "Special rules=complication, core rules=complexity."

What I'm saying is that Honor Harringtom's Saginami Island Tactical Simulator does not have special rules at all, but is agonizingly complicated (to the point of being unplayable for most miniatures geeks). A look at one or two of the charts they use to determine shooting is enough to turn away all but the most simulationist gamers.

Being complicated like that gets in the way of tactical gameplay.



Also- I've played a lot of Battletech- largely using the create a mech rules. While there are nearly no special rules involved, the mathhammeriness is massive (the battle afterwards is really to determine who was the better mech engineer, rather than mech tactician).

While I've found that Warmachine is a lot more about the choice you make in a given turn. The heaviness of special rules makes the tactical gameplay very complex (there are tons of things to account for). But the game really rewards that sort of gameplay- and it doesn't reward someone for making the best list but not knowing when and how to go for the assassination.

You have a point. I remember almost breaking out in a rash when I got a glimpse of Napoleon's Battles. Less either/or, more a graph of synergy vs. grit.

Or a table.

As I get older, I find I am less and less interested in complexity. Dan Mersey's Lion Rampant system and associated games is about as complicated as I want to get any more.

I just don;t have time for complexity and there is too much other crap cluttering my head for that noise.

 Easy E wrote:
As I get older, I find I am less and less interested in complexity. Dan Mersey's Lion Rampant system and associated games is about as complicated as I want to get any more.

I just don;t have time for complexity and there is too much other crap cluttering my head for that noise.

I think this is so true. I tried to get back into Battletech, and OUCH. It doesn't look like it has changed. That is good, but now I am thinking to myself, how come I loved all this stuff when I was younger. Now almost 50, I appreciate Age of Sigmar so much. X-wing I appreciate at as well. I just prefer the simplicity with complexity in my old age now.

Maybe the thing is, it's not the complexity, but the "everything is in your face" or "too much upfront". Like when I went to collage and had to buy my books we had like 2 stacks of books we needed to read. While yes it was over the three years it was pretty daunting at first glance.

With Age of Sigmar and X-wing, it seems we don't need to know a lot "just the basics" and get all the complexity or depth through cards or war scrolls. It just seems less daunting than say 40K is right now, or all those D&D books.

4th edition 40K didn't seem so bad since in the starter set for Battle of Macragge, they had intro rules, beginning rules, or should I say another 16 page book or was it 16 scenarios to ease you into how to play 40K. So you can get into it slowly. For what ever reason GW got rid of that and never introduced it in 5th, 6th or 7th edition. Another reason why I thought 40K wasn't meant for newbies but just veterans.

In my old age, I prefer the gentle or easy method of getting into a game now. Maybe I want my sleep and have less time to read or learn. The less charts the better. The less math the better. Just let me roll my d6 or d8 but with pics on for hits. Nothing complicated. Short and simple.

Here's where I throw in another pet theory: your appetite for complicated games should decrease as you get older, or when you pass a certain age. Young brains - preteens, teens - are still developing and forming masses of neural pathways, and able to soak up a lot of information. But the frontal lobes, involved in decision-making and impulse control, are still undeveloped.
I would say that's a big reason why 40K (and games like Battletech etc.) built up it's popularity with that age group: it's largely sorting out things - strategy - listbuilding - mathhammering - loooads of tiny details - beforehand, with in-game play relying not so much on on-the-spot decisions and interaction of core rules (all but limited to IGOUGO move-shoot-assault) or even army rules, but on remembering which special unit and character rules, or indeed combos, you brought (or bought) with your minis. Not what I'd personally define as tactical.

The frontal lobes don't fully develop until the early to mid-twenties. By that time the huge number of adolescent neural pathways have pared themselves down to a fraction of necessary or well-exercised examples. Then it's more about decision-making, evaluating and weighing things up, less about absorbing lots of details. (That people still play 40K into middle age and beyond, I'd be tempted to put down to familiarity [even GW-mandated familiarity] and nostalgia.)
Sounds a tad pseudoscientific, and I won't say I'm totally right, but look up a few neurology papers or psychology articles on the subject.

YMMV about what would be examples of tactical, decision-making games; but...

While I've found that Warmachine is a lot more about the choice you make in a given turn. The heaviness of special rules makes the tactical gameplay very complex (there are tons of things to account for). But the game really rewards that sort of gameplay- and it doesn't reward someone for making the best list but not knowing when and how to go for the assassination.

I wasn't going to say anything, but aside from your opinion that special rules = tactics (special rules and combos depend on the specific models you decide on beforehand, and IMO a heavy loadout of them isn't especially needed for deep, tactical gameplay), there's an interesting topic in Dakka's Warmahordes board right now, that confirms some of my own opinions of what the game's about, ever since I owned the MkI book and a Cygnar starter set. I also found this little nugget in the middle of it, which I think is interesting. Telling, even.

 Forcast wrote:
I agree with you on 40k for sure, and 30k is my favorite iteration of 40k right now for sure. Its more "balanced" because there are limited factions and everyone has access to the same basic tools other than a few special units.

I don't think a balanced, tactical game has to have limited factions, or that every faction has to look the same, but I think there's something to be said for 'basic tools' and limiting the 'special' stuff.

After all that, Davor, I don't consider AoS to be particularly simple either. I've said before, it's got simple core rules, so simple that it doesn't allow for any tactical considerations, so most of the gameplay has to come from the individual model/unit rules on the warscrolls. Including all the special rules. Streamlining WFB is supposed to be one of it's good points, but as far as I can see it stripped out the unit positioning and maneuvering (the 'basic tools', the relatively simple, tactical bit) among other things, but kept the special rules bloat. Made it the focus, even. When it hit I checked out the free rules for the old armies I'm interested in - I saw that every unit armed with a bog-standard spear had a different special rule for how to use it. That was as far as I was willing to dig into the specifics, I'm afraid. Combined with 'pile whatever models you want onto the table'...

(By the way, I was a bit tickled to see you describe Warmahordes as a 'pile into the middle of the table' game, in that topic.)

Call me overly cynical (and I am) but with Warmahordes, AoS, Malifaux etc. I'm at the point where I think games with - that need - rule cards for specific models and characters, are more about selling the models that come with those cards than about gameplay. And all that says about the simplicity, or elegance, or complication of those games.

 Vermis wrote:
Here's where I throw in another pet theory: your appetite for complicated games should decrease as you get older, or when you pass a certain age.

Counter-example: the market for ridiculously complicated historical games with communities full of rivet-counters arguing over absurdly tiny realism issues is not dominated by younger kids. There are plenty of "adult" games that have really complicated rules for various reasons. The issue with 40k isn't that it's complicated, it's that it's incredibly complicated relative to its depth. You have tons of rules to understand and memorize, but very little of it translates into improved gameplay at any point (including in list building). While I suspect GW may be thinking about this brain theory to some degree in writing the rules 40k's success has more to do with "OMG SPACE MARIENS ARE SOOOOO COOOOOL" than anything to do with the rules. Remember, many, if not most, of GW's customers never play the game.

Second counter-example: kids also suck at strategy, math, and list building. Maybe some of them are smart enough to netlist something that doesn't suck, but most of the ones I've encountered bring lists that are absolute garbage. No efficiency, no synergies, just a bunch of random units from their collection thrown together.

 Peregrine wrote:
...it's that it's incredibly complicated relative to its depth. You have tons of rules to understand and memorize, but very little of it translates into improved gameplay at any point (including in list building).

For example, as brought up in this thread, we have the following in 40k:

Rage (+A on the charge)
Rampage (+A if outnumbered)
Furious Charge (+S on the charge)
Hatred (re-roll hits in first round)
and (tangentially) Zealot (re-roll hits in first round + morale resist)

All of which are different special rules to represent the same concept of "this unit is angry and likes to kill stuff in melee." The differences between them are insignificant in the broad scheme of the game, both for strategic decision-making (including list building) and the average tactical decision you might be called upon to make. That is to say, a unit which has one or more of these rules is a "melee unit" and will likely be included in most lists for the same reasons regardless of which combination it has (e.g. if you want a melee unit, it won't make much difference if it has Rage vs Furious Charge other than the unit's power against certain extremes of target selection), and most decisions made with that unit on the field will be the same as well.

While it is certainly possible to come up with many situations in which one rule might be more or less beneficial than another, it hardly seems worth the effort of having 6 different special rules (plus a plethora of unit/faction specific ones which more or less boil down to "the same as one or two of these, but also better"), compared to having a single special rule with scalability, i.e. "Angry (X)" or some such thing. Then, most units could simply have a value to determine how "Angry" they are, and anything that absolutely needs some extra conditional functionality can have its own special rule on top.

Good points Vermis.

I often wonder if GWplc thinks 'looks complicated' means its worth more money to GW plcs customer base?

it would certainly match their approach to covering many sculpts with a load of unnecessary 'gribbble' to make it more 'appealing'. .

It really depends.

Main factor is available gaming time. If you regularly have the chance for a whole afternoon or day of gaming, you can afford a system with greater complexity in terms of charts, tables and rolls.

If you can only snatch a few hours, a more straight forward 'fixed to hit' affair can help you fit your games into the tighter time frame.

For me, that's the greatest constraint and perhaps failing of tournaments - you've got a weekend to play a set number of games. And that requires a strict time limit. Now with two players not dicking about, that should be ok. But if just one decides they can squeak a victory by slow playing to prevent say, a fifth and sixth turn, then the whole thing becomes frustrating for their opponent, as they miss out on those late game chances to seize objectives - which might've been their plan all along.

Now here, a properly simple system can remove many slow-play opportunities, but sadly not all (micro management of moves, lots of mindless shifting of positions, all in the name of killing time is a sod to remove!).

Me? I like AoS' stripped back rules, and how the war scrolls tell me all I need for that specific unit. Less flipping through books etc. But I also like the sheer variety of 40k. I totally see the drawbacks of both though - they just don't especially bother me, personally.

Lanrak wrote:I often wonder if GWplc thinks 'looks complicated' means its worth more money to GW plcs customer base?

it would certainly match their approach to covering many sculpts with a load of unnecessary 'gribbble' to make it more 'appealing'. .

That is not far off the truth. Just look at a lot of the comments here how a lot of people say not having many pages of rules means there is no complexity in games.

Lanrak wrote:I often wonder if GWplc thinks 'looks complicated' means its worth more money to GW plcs customer base?

it would certainly match their approach to covering many sculpts with a load of unnecessary 'gribbble' to make it more 'appealing'. .

I don't think it's about rules looking complicated but about a cool unit needing to be special. If you want them to be special they need unique rules. So they have universal special rules and sprinkle these over the fancy units but in time that's just not enough and they need to add unique special rules to new units to make them stand out from the rest (i.e.: last year's units) who only have normal special rules. After a few years of this you can have some armies that are completely immune to psychology or leadership tests or that ignore all armour saves or something else that eliminates choices for the player.

Why take A when B is better in all situations. And now you have two problems. You get rules cruft (like explained in a post above where you have half a dozen same/similar rules) that complicates things without adding actual benefits and you get units that get to ignore certain parts of the base game (armour, leadership tests,…) thus reducing complexity in an actually significant way. "A game is a series of interesting choices." – Sid Meier, but if most or all of your army ignores leadership tests then you don't have to consider the problems that could be caused by that, ever.

And yes, the method is similar to their miniature's overall design language that often seems to be about adding greeble to signify eliteness (also big hats and skulls).

As I've gotten older and now have less time, I am appreciating less complex games that require less investment overall than what I traditionally enjoyed - WFB and 40k.

What I am finding is that while more simple rule sets aren't as adaptable as huge bloated systems, they often work better for a specific kind of game.

GW for example wants a single rule set that can do it all, which they CAN, but you run into issues with scaling, balance, and game length among others.

What that means practically for me is that I now play half a dozen different games instead of one or two, that scratch a different nerd itch better and more quickly than in the past. I love x wing, armada, bolt action, BattleLore, frostgrave, and hopefully the new runewars game will be worth my time. I also for the first time have given board games a real shot, and am loving many of them.

Bolt action in particular has really become a great system for me. It's fun, fast, and offers meaningful tactical choices in game while still feeling like a real, full featured miniature game. The rules don't allow for nearly the variation in armies, units, or special load outs that 40k does. But for what it is - a ww2 mini game - I think it's great.

I just have little interest in reading rule tomes and playing 3+ Hour Games anymore. Not because they're objectively a bad thing (I really, really loved WFB back in the day), but My tastes and priorities have changed so that those games just aren't a realistic option anymore.

Tldr - I think it's less about finding a perfect balance that can be applied across the board to different games, and more about putting in the right amount for what kind of game you're trying to make and for whom.

Question now seeing I am not alone in wanting a more "simpler" game because of being older, is how can you make a game for all ages then?

How do you make a game where the veterans or older people still want to game but don't have the time, engery to read all the books or what not, and still make it where the younger crowd 25 and under love the charts, and tomes or what not.

Will be interesting if GW can pull this off with 8th edition. I really hope 8th edition comes out in April. I just can't wait, the suspens is getting to me now. I have put off really making any more 40K armies until I know for sure what is going to happen.

Peregrine wrote:
Counter-example: the market for ridiculously complicated historical games with communities full of rivet-counters arguing over absurdly tiny realism issues is not dominated by younger kids.

Grognards who think they're performing scholarly historical military simulations rather than playing toy soldiers? There are always exceptions, and while I won't claim the 'simulation' lot are in the minority, I'd be interested to see what size their demographic is compared to players of Hail Caesar, Impetus, WRG-based games, etc.

(I'll admit my knowledge of the latter boils down to Field of Glory - somewhat complicated - and HoTT and Dux Bellorum - simple.)

Second counter-example: kids also suck at strategy, math, and list building. Maybe some of them are smart enough to netlist something that doesn't suck, but most of the ones I've encountered bring lists that are absolute garbage. No efficiency, no synergies, just a bunch of random units from their collection thrown together.

And most kids are in the churn 'n' burn category anyway. But I'll bet the ones that stay on (and remember we're not just talking 12-13yos but up to 22-23yos) soon latch on to the best way to win at their favourite game in the GW store, and mathammering taxes calculators more than it does the frontal lobes.

Counter-counter example: when Kings of War showed up it got an immediate shot in the arm from people fed up with the special rules bloat and imbalance of 7th-8th ed WFB. Even more so when GW shook a can of petrol over WFB and lit a match. In both cases, on different forums, I've seen quite a few reactions to it. Some didn't really like it - didn't have the level of grit and chrome they were used to from WFB. They went with The Ninth Age or stuck with 8th or older WFB editions. That's fine. But I felt the majority of responses, after a period of adjustment, were pleasantly surprised by the apparently simplistic rules, the focus on unit blocks and maneuvre over special rules and magic, and how much they turned out to enjoy it. I remember that feeling, and if I can project a bit, I'd say it's because they were shown a mass-battle wargame for the first time, after a long diet of a skirmish game with too many minis. Maybe even that they were at the right age for it.

Xca|iber wrote:
For example, as brought up in this thread, we have the following in 40k:

Rage (+A on the charge)
Rampage (+A if outnumbered)
Furious Charge (+S on the charge)
Hatred (re-roll hits in first round)
and (tangentially) Zealot (re-roll hits in first round + morale resist)

All of which are different special rules to represent the same concept of "this unit is angry and likes to kill stuff in melee."

My own breaking point was a bit simpler - "does it really matter if ogres have a hand weapon or ironfist?" But yeah, your example is a great illustration of the kind of redundant bloat that chased me away. And that's just USRs...
Reminds me of the entry for the 'venomous' rule in Dragon Rampant:

The venom may come from a natural source or an unsaintly weapon... This rule could also be used to represent great strength, or yet another form of magical weapon. Venomous just sounds cooler!

And that's why I have that quote in my sig.

 Vermis wrote:
Counter-counter example: when Kings of War showed up it got an immediate shot in the arm from people fed up with the special rules bloat and imbalance of 7th-8th ed WFB. Even more so when GW shook a can of petrol over WFB and lit a match. In both cases, on different forums, I've seen quite a few reactions to it. Some didn't really like it - didn't have the level of grit and chrome they were used to from WFB. They went with The Ninth Age or stuck with 8th or older WFB editions. That's fine. But I felt the majority of responses, after a period of adjustment, were pleasantly surprised by the apparently simplistic rules, the focus on unit blocks and maneuvre over special rules and magic, and how much they turned out to enjoy it. I remember that feeling, and if I can project a bit, I'd say it's because they were shown a mass-battle wargame for the first time, after a long diet of a skirmish game with too many minis. Maybe even that they were at the right age for it.

A system like KoW works quite well in order to portray true "mass battles", in the sense that the scale of the game is based on the regiment as a unit. Unit blocks, movement of said blocks, interactions between said blocks, etc., with the rest of the game elements being accesory and complementary to that. That's something the WHFB system will never be able to do, because it's not based on regiments, but individual models. You pay for each individual model and its gear options, and then each one of said models attacks, makes armor saves and is removed as a casualty on an individual basis. As such, you have a system that works fairly well towards representing "dark age"-like battles, with around 50 models on each side. Once you double (or triple, or more) that amount of models, and start adding all kind of enormous monsters, plus magic spells that can wipe out entire units in a single turn phase, the sense of scale is lost completely and the game breaks down as a result. Which is IMO the core issue with WHFB 8th edition.

Also, to have a decently sized army becomes insanely expensive.

Now addressing the thread's main issue, I believe something like "acceptable complexity" depends heavily on the scale of the game you're playing. A skirmish game with 10-15 models per side, models which are meant to act independently from each other (even if they can use combined abilities, they do all kinds of stuff on an individual basis) can afford to have complex rules that enable players to explore many options with great depth and detail. If you begin to increase the model count and the scope of the game (big skirmish, small battle, full-sized battle, etc.) you'll need to streamline rules in multiple ways. The main goal should be to be able to play a normal sized game in about two hours (including deployment).

How can you do such a thing with current 40k? By playing a 1000 points game, or less. That speaks volumes about the current state of the rules, IMO.

 Vermis wrote:
Grognards who think they're performing scholarly historical military simulations rather than playing toy soldiers? There are always exceptions, and while I won't claim the 'simulation' lot are in the minority, I'd be interested to see what size their demographic is compared to players of Hail Caesar, Impetus, WRG-based games, etc.

I'm sure they're a minority, but that doesn't change the overall point. You can argue psychology and say that kids prefer complicated rules and mature players prefer simple rules with deep strategy, I can just as easily argue psychology and say that kids prefer simple rules with instant gratification while mature players are willing to invest the time and effort required to enjoy a complex and demanding hobby. The connection you're trying to make just doesn't work.

And most kids are in the churn 'n' burn category anyway. But I'll bet the ones that stay on (and remember we're not just talking 12-13yos but up to 22-23yos) soon latch on to the best way to win at their favourite game in the GW store, and mathammering taxes calculators more than it does the frontal lobes.

Again, this doesn't change the overall point. There are lots of younger players (including 20-somethings) who are terrible at list construction. In fact, the trend I've seen across multiple games is that list-building ability increases with age. Kids are hopeless and show up with random garbage, people in their late teens to early 20s are getting better but still not that great, and it's the older players who understand the strategy of list construction and get the biggest advantages from it. This is the exact opposite of the theory that a complex rules-heavy game gives younger players an advantage.

Also, most people in the "suck at strategy, but good at list building" group don't do the math, they just netlist the latest popular thing.

Counter-counter example: when Kings of War showed up it got an immediate shot in the arm from people fed up with the special rules bloat and imbalance of 7th-8th ed WFB.

This doesn't prove anything. The issue with GW's games is not the general question of "how much complexity is justified", it's that GW's games have incredibly complicated rules with very little strategic depth. Of course people moved to KoW, because (as I understand it) KoW offered at least as much strategic depth as WHFB with much simpler rules. This just demonstrates that good game design requires avoiding the trap of increasing complexity without getting anything in return, not that simple games are inherently better. If WHFB had offered more strategic depth or a more accurate simulation of the fluff or whatever, and its complexity was necessary to accomplish its design goals, those people probably wouldn't have left for KoW.

Speaking of Dragon Rampart, has anyone noticed the hidden spell in the book? That gave me a bit of a chuckle.

I believe I saw a quote from Mr. Priestley that espoused the same ideas as Vermis has put forth. Whether his premise is true or not, one of the main designers of many wargames for our time seems to believe in it.

Monte Cooke has made a similar slide away from crunchy RPG systems to the more free-form, no rules systems. Honestly, I find that my tolerance for non-crunchy RPGs has decreased with age.


As a 14 year old, I was definitely rocking the mathhammer, so if there is a rule that "kids don't mathhammer" then I was an exception.

I think Mathhammeriness adds an element to the game that I hadn't considered in my first examples. It adds a way to 'play' the game when you don't have an opponent. I mean, as a teenager, and before I was married, I had a lot more free time to fill. One of the things I would do is make army lists, or design mechs.


I don't like to spend time list building now- but it was definitely an enjoyable experience when I was younger. I didn't even need to collect or play the lists to enjoy creating forces that really squeeze all of the power out of their points. In some instances, it was more rewarding than actually playing the list and tabling my friend's army in the second turn (only happened once).

Vermis wrote:
I don't think a balanced, tactical game has to have limited factions, or that every faction has to look the same, but I think there's something to be said for 'basic tools' and limiting the 'special' stuff...

Call me overly cynical (and I am) but with Warmahordes, AoS, Malifaux etc. I'm at the point where I think games with - that need - rule cards for specific models and characters, are more about selling the models that come with those cards than about gameplay. And all that says about the simplicity, or elegance, or complication of those games.

You are overly cynical. I probably wouldn't have said that, but you did ask for it.

Cards are a presentation mechanism- one that is helpful for learning and remembering rules, and especially makes it easy to figure out how rules interact (since the exact phrasing of the rules are right in front of you).

This does free up design space to make individual rules that are more complex. But on the money side of things- it makes it so that players often do not buy army books (many card-stat games don't even sell army books). So I don't see how putting stats on cards instead of in a book makes the game more profit centric.

Privateer Press have shown that they are concerned with game balance on so many instances that it just seems silly to suggest that they ignore their rules set in favor of selling more minis. What they do is tend to their rules set carefully in hopes that it sells more minis (the game balance between factions is very strong, so far as tabletop miniatures games are concerned).





The question is not how many rules there are, but whether or not they each become tactical considerations.

Mind- the game can become taxing sometimes, because of all the things you need to consider when you take your turn- the tactical complexity really gets crazy.


Simpler is not the same as better.

 Peregrine wrote:
Second counter-example: kids also suck at strategy, math, and list building. Maybe some of them are smart enough to netlist something that doesn't suck, but most of the ones I've encountered bring lists that are absolute garbage. No efficiency, no synergies, just a bunch of random units from their collection thrown together.

What age do you draw the line at 'kids'? I have a nephew that's been playing Infinity (a system that is notoriously complicated) since he was 11, starting with the semi spanglish second edition. He's now 15, and regularly cleans up the older, more experienced guys in the group. He also recently became the groups Warcor (Press Ganger/Henchman/Outrider/etc equivalent) and has already run a successful slow grow league.