ontoclasm wrote:we could remove 300 monsters, 20 backgrounds, 20 races, 20 gods, a hundred spells, and half the branches and Crawl would still be dozens of times more complex than most games in existence... but in fact, those things are being added constantly. Incidentally, it's ironic that you picked chess to whine about, since it's like the textbook example of simple rules giving rise to variety and complexity.
Excellent posting, I cited the punchline!
Note there's a reason why species and gods get added so freely, while levels get cut all the time: the former increase the complexity of Crawl in a sideways direction (among games, but not within a game), whereas the latter attempt to make the game shorter (duh!), more tactical and, quoting dynast, less unforgivably forgiving.
Offtopic:However, I am also citing this for the chess analogy: while that boardgame is indeed a textbook example for simple rules leading to variety and complexity, from a design point of view, it is massively flawed. (Disclaimers: I used to be a chess player, but turned to go already in my youth, and I have some proficiency with go, so I am biased. Also, what I say now should have no impact on your chess games with human opponents.) First, the remis range is ludicrously large (look up "Capablanca draw death" to see how old this idea is). That leads to the second drawback: the starting player advantage is huge, and there is no good way to deal with it (for comparison, go solves this problem very efficiently with komi, and even a game like renju (five-in-a-row) has an elaborate method to deal with this). Do I need to mention that beginning and endgame are sort of scripted? The chess midgame really is interesting, but the ability to swap pieces and decrease complexity is bad design: this is what the player with some material advantage can always go for.
If you are interested in chess, give two variants a chance: shogi (Japanese chess) has a very interesting mechanic in that captured pieces can be placed again! This means that complexity goes up, not down. And xiangqi (Chinese chess) does not only have the coolest piece ever, the cannon, but reduces draw range by confining kings to a 3x3 palace, and forbidding opposing kings to see each other. I only know the rules and a little bit of the basic theory for these two games, though.
To get back to Crawl: note how the restriction in xiangqi reduces options, for a better game! Sounds familiar?