BLUF: Title, basically.
Extra Context: A couple years back, I picked up the 4th edition of Twilight: 2000. For those don't know, this is a post-apocalyptic RPG which was first released during the absolute peak of Reagan-era Cold War saber rattling. Unlike other, more fanciful or escapist takes on life "after the end", Twilight skewed much more simulationist, with Tom Clancy levels of hard-on for NATO and Soviet personnel and equipment statistics. Think This War of Mine meets ARMA 3, moreso than Fallout or Wasteland.
I start with this preamble to communicate how different in tone this system is from the games of 5e DnD I've played and run in the past. While the latest version of the Twilight rules is, to my understanding, significantly less packed with grognard crunch than previous iterations, I still find myself overwhelmed with all of the various mechanics and slight rule variations. As an example I hope is illustrative, to fire a weapon classified as a machine gun, your character uses their "heavy weapons" skill, but they follow the "ranged combat" rules, because heavy weapons typically refers to explosive type weapons. You also have to remember whether the MG you're using is classified as Light, Medium, or Heavy, as there are different requirements/penalties based on your character's stance. In and of itself, not too bad, and it pretty much tracks with the considerations I would put in place if I were designing this system, but it becomes a bit much with the everything else of the system. Case in point: the entry for hand grenades states: "grenades use the same rules as heavy weapons, with these exceptions:" and then goes on to list 6 bullet points, which makes me think that it hardly uses the same rules as heavy weapons at all lol.
To be clear, I don't necessarily want to jettison this level of crunch, as I think it's integral to the tone the system is designed around, but fuck me if it isn't a lot to keep track of, especially since I'll have to shepherd potential players through it efficiently if I have any hope of actually playing a game.
With that being said, any advice from the field? Experience with Twilight would be a bonus (any edition), but if anyone has general tips for tackling new systems, I'm all ears.
It gets easier with each new system. After a while it becomes "ok, so it's approach to skills like in the other system and the armor rules from that other one". What I do when assessing a new one is:
abstract vs counting all the bills
things that are there to convey the feel of the setting
is it a hard earned boon or "the spice must flow"?
With crunchy systems I'd then forget about the more intricate half of the system, get the game on and try to have combats of varying size during first few sessions. Most of the time, if there's crunch in the system, it's mostly about combat.
Write on players' sheets shortcuts what to roll on doing what. Like next to the gun name "shooting d6+d8".
During first few games when you remember that there was some more crunch in the system but don't remember exactly, don't stop to look up. Ask a non-spotlighted player to search for it but "for now let's roll this and that against that" and keep going.
Keep an eye out if they are getting into the crunch. If they won't follow you down the rabbit hole in a few (3-5. not less) games, it might be that either you get the rules etched in your brain or that level of crunch is just not for this table
And on closing note, as far as I understand what T2k is, I would guess that getting their hands on an MG is not something common in the setting and the complexity of the rules for that are an outlier. I might be wrong, though
Your points about getting a baseline understanding of the flow and adding crunch in as GM and players get comfortable is well taken. My initial strategy was to focus on only one mechanic (in this case, firing a ranged weapon), but to know that mechanic absolutely front to back. However, in this system, firing a ranged weapon interacts with almost every mechanic in the game, so I was still trying to drink from the firehose. Thank you for taking the time and sharing your input.
Well. In that case, I would do the opposite. Have everything BUT combat in the first few games. So you build a foundation to then put the firing a weapon on top of it