MetalCraze said:
Exactly! Yet Arcanum had lots of statistics. Not only main stats, but lots of skills, spells, craft system, items getting damaged etc plust a few feats - all of this is governed by stats and math. And ToEE aka DnD system is just as simple to understand even though it has lots of stats around.
There were very few actual abilities, attributes, or stats that were derived from 3 or more other stats tho.
Skills and magical/technical aptitude are really the only two cases of derived multi-input stats I can think. Something like melee was dependent on dex, str, melee level, and attack speed... right? Aptitude on the other hand I never figured out down to a precise math, but saw that it was an over-arching stat that influenced the effectiveness/critical level of tech/magic.
There's not a great deal of anything else I can think of that is terribly over derived, and if it is derived, it was usually a straight equation with little convolution. And often the stats required for something were more of a litmus test/threshold required than an actual varying degree --- cases where you needed X amount of int to build whatever schematic. It wasn't a formulaic derivation like Int times CR of schematic = chance to succeed. It was just "do you have 19 int? yay you get to make the gun!".
Games since then had even less amount of stats, complexity and math - even in recent DnD implementations.
I agree, and I'm not a simplicity-o-phile, I don't mind things complicated, but I understand where Sawyer's coming from in wanting things to be Parsimonious and uncluttered, as despite whatever wording he uses or interpretation you use, ultimately the real goal of the article is to state that parsimony in game systems is good.
Thus I don't understand why Sawyer says what he says. But such design philosopy surely won't help the dying patient aka Fallout New Reno.
Nothing will help fallout 3, the game is flawed from its inception in ways that I'm not okay with to allow any manner of bondo or duct tape to fix -- but the design philosophy isn't flawed. For a game to be deep, complex, and interesting it does not require a game system to be convoluted, and a situation where 3 of your physical stats govern something like "chance to hit" can very easily become convoluted.
