by skipsizemore
DaviddesJ wrote:
Which game do you think people would prefer? Go with 1 page of rules, or Go with 100 pages of rules?
I think it depends on the person. Are you talking about a more complex game, or just writing the rules in a more confusing way?
It isn't hard to pointlessly complexify a game like Go.
Imagine a version of Go which takes place parallel to a game of Chess. The chess game is played until a player takes a piece. The taking player may place a stone on the Go board. If a player gets a checkmate on the chess side, he may place two stones in a row, and the chess game is restarted. If a player captures stones on the Go board, he can regain captured chess pieces at a 1:1 exchange rate. We keep playing until one player wins on the Go board.
If that's not complex enough, then add battle cards to the chess game, I can't move my rook without a rook card; a decent combination will require that I save up to a good hand that supports it. You could add a card draft to the battle card system. Then add a worker placement mechanism to the card draft. Add tile-laying, so that the boards for both games can evolve as they progress. We could go on and on.
So we've added complexity. Is the game better, for anyone? If so, then why doesn't anyone play that game? The answer is that complexifying Go in this way doesn't improve it.
That's not to say that there aren't possible ways to improve Go with added complexity -- maybe we have orc stones and dwarf stones, troll stones and elf stones, each with a different special power. Just adding complexity, though, without bringing something with it that people want (like one of the elements in Tim's list) takes away from the game.