Emergent Complexity

As I designed the mechanics of Space Dogs RPG, one of my guiding principles has been trying to shift as much of the game's complexity as possible towards emergent complexity.

The way I see it, there are three general types of complexity that a game can have.

1. Up-front complexity

2. Gated complexity

3. Emergent complexity

Up-front complexity is what a player has to learn before they can play a game at all. You can't play Chess without knowing how all of the pieces move and that the point is to take out the opposing king. You can't play Monopoly without knowing that you do what the square says and that you roll again on doubles.

Gated complexity is the rules which you only need to know a tiny piece of before you start playing. It makes it far easier to start playing if a lot of the game's complexity is shifted to being gated rather than up-front. In Monopoly you don't need to know the price of every property or how much their rents are to play - you find that out as you play.

RPGs are actually great at shifting complexity to being gated. It's one of the main reasons that I like class & level systems. You only need to know what your character can do. You don't need to know exactly how every other class works, and you don't even need to know what your class can do next level. Can such knowledge let you make more strategic decisions? Sure! But they aren't needed to play, letting you jump right into playing Space Dogs RPG or any other class/level game faster instead of having to pour over rules without the fun bits.

Emergent complexity is, in my opinion, the best of all. These are things which aren't actually a part of the rules at all, and sometimes they aren't even things which the designer intended. Chess & Go are amazing at these. They epitomize the sort of game that is easy to learn but difficult to master. Now - I'm not going to claim that Space Dogs RPG is as easy to learn as Chess, but that was still my goal.

Without jumping into the nitty gritty, the thing that I'll brag about is how melee & ranged weapons match up in Space Dogs. Most Table-top RPGs give some sort of penalty to trying to use ranged weapons in melee range - which makes sense as it's difficult to shoot a bow or a rifle accurately when someone is trying to stab you in the liver. But - it's one more rule to remember before you play, adding to the game's up-front complexity.

Despite having the same goal, Space Dogs RPG doesn't have penalties to ranged weapons in melee, because it doesn't need to. Ranged weapons are inherently less accurate than melee weapons, which is fine because they target passive defences while melee is opposed attack rolls. However, that means that using a ranged weapon in melee is at an inherent disadvantage, both likely to miss and be hit because the attack roll is lower. No extra rules were needed to account for this - nothing extra to remember - it just happens.

While I can't promise that everything in Space Dogs RPG has that sort of emergent complexity, one of my main design goals was to minimize up-front complexity and shift as much as possible to emergent complexity.

Not that I couldn't have lowered complexity across the board - but a certain amount of complexity is needed for depth of gameplay... you know what - that's an entirely different sort of discussion...