Sometimes, the complexity isn’t in the mechanic. It’s in the style or method of play when it moves away from your comfort zone. For example, the narrative engine used in *Hero Wars* was very different to many traditional RPGs when it was first released and it was only after playing it that I really got my head around it. It wasn’t really difficult, rather it was a mindset change.
The *Maelstrom* RPG (again, not the Elizabethan game from Arion) performed a similar mental jump. It moved to a scene based resolution system, presaging the conflict/contest resolution engines which have become more popular with the indie games.
Games like *Durance*, *Kingdom* and *Fiasco* added a discover-through-play approach which can also be very complicated and disconcerting for people used to more traditional RPGs.
Games like *Dungeon World* shift the whole mechanic of rolling dice to the GM who essentially reacts to the players actions with sets of guided moves in a different approach to more traditional games.
All these are complicated until you get to know them.
If you look for traditionally complicated, then I could mention *Traveller* or *AD&D 2nd Edition*. AD&D for the fact that the system does not truly mesh and flow easily (although it works), and Traveller for the fact that although the core mechanic is simple, if you move into ship design, star system or alien design it becomes more and more complicated.
In fact, I think I will plump for *Traveller 5* as my most complicated game, as it weighs six pounds, and it contains every supplement and expansion that you’d ever need for the game system in its 654 pages. In truth, it is really simply laid out and very easy to follow, but Marc 's masterpiece is intimidating to look at, and a casual flick would make you think it was scarily complicated. At its essence, it is really simple to play, but the wheels that underly and build the universe are impressive in their scale.
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