I see a couple of axes of crunchiness.
1. Abstraction or simulation
2. Simple or complex
All story games --
Fate,
Risus,
PDQ#, etc. -- are abstract, and they're all on the simple end of the complexity scale; the complete Risus "book" is about one sheet of printer paper in a normal font size. But they're not necessarily all that simple; the full
Fate rules are comparable to
Savage Worlds, which is a fairly simple conventional rule set.
But where do conventional games fall in comparison with each other? First, the abstraction scale:
- D&D, in the sense that hit points increase with level, which has been rationalized in all sorts of ways, all pretty abstract.
- Shadowrun is abstract all around; the rules seem designed mostly to balance the various ways to do mayhem, rather than to make anything correspond to the real world.
- Savage Worlds uses the abstraction that some characters are important (player characters, NPC leaders), and count hit points, while others are extras, and are out of action with a single solid success against them.
- Ars Magica physical combat is fairly abstract.
- D&D in some editions hints at recognition of real world matters like effectiveness of different weapon types against different armor types.
- Traveller (just Mongoose and classic, for purposes of this message) personal combat is mostly abstract, but reducing combat effectiveness due to wounds is slightly simulated.
- Hero is abstract in many ways, to balance the value of character points, but specific in saying that five strength points doubles the amount of weight one can lift.
- Savage Worlds is fairly abstract in a lot of ways, but it has a lot of real world items in its weapon and equipment tables, and tries to scale the relative hit point damage of weapons to actual damage potential.
- D&D spells are pretty arbitrary in their relative power, but often simulationist in terms of specific effects.
- Hero is very simulationist in terms of sequence of events in combat.
- Traveller ship combat is mostly simulationist, though damage effects are still fairly abstract.
- Ars Magica magical research is very detailed and simulationist.
- GURPS may not be the most simulationist rule set ever published, but it's certainly the most simulationist game that's widely played.
Then the complexity scale (where I'll include a few story games):
- Risus and PDQ# are very simple.
- Fate is simple.
- Savage Worlds is pretty simple.
- Traveller personal combat is fairly simple.
- D&D is fairly simple until things like feats and magic come into play.
- Ars Magica starts to get complicated -- unnecessarily in the case of non-magical combat, but entertainingly in the case of magic.
- GURPS is complicated even without piling on the optional rules.
- Traveller space combat is usually complicated.
- D&D is complicated when feats and magic come into play, which is pretty standard in most games.
- Hero is complicated unless combat is completely avoided, which is atypical in the default superhero setting.
- Shadowrun is always complicated, unless someone has house rules to simplify it, or if they've simplified it in versions I haven't seen.
- GURPS with lots of optional rules in play is very complicated, and nearly unusable if all of the optional rules are in play.
Those two lists could be made into a pretty cool scatter plot, couldn't they?
In my opinion, gaming works best when the level of abstraction or simulationism are roughly in line with the degree of simplicity or complexity. Story games are abstract and simple, which is good. GURPS is simulationist and complicated, which is good, in the sense that the feeling of realism that comes from the simulationist mood makes the complexity worth the effort.
On the other hand, I find
Shadowrun tedious, because all the effort spent fighting with complicated rules doesn't pay off in with a corresponding feeling of realism. If I want complicated rules and a
Shadowrun setting, I might as well run the setting with
GURPS rules, or save all the effort and use
Fate rules.
I can't think of any games that are both simple and simulationist -- unless there's a computer doing the dirty work. Can we say "
Kerbal Space Program"?
All of the above refers to play time. Character generation is another story. Things fall into three main groups on the complexity scale:
- Low: story games and non-magical D&D characters.
- Medium: magical D&D characters and points based systems.
- High: Traveller and Ars Magica (plus GURPS weapon design and most Traveller editions' ship design).
So what do we mean by "crunchy"? I'd say it's mostly a case of being simulationist (which also means complex). One could call games that are abstract and complicated crunchy too, but I tend to call them annoying instead.
