Systems are nice. In the beginning, they’re just about as complex as two sticks strung together and stuck in the mud. Then you add logic (the code or story kind, it doesn’t matter) until eventually the logic becomes functional, i.e. it depends on input, and there are your subsystems/subplots. Next up are flags to track your variables (your characters) as they move across the subsystems and making sure all the subsystems can survive independently and do something that isn’t nonsense but are also talking to each other. What was the purpose of the system again?
Here’s the thing: systems are greedy, and don’t much care for purpose. They’ll keep on growing till they’re fat and useless and meowing for dinner at 3 in the morning. As much as you long to see them full-fledged and robust and aerodynamic, sometimes you gotta let the fancy go, scale back, and plug in an ugly constant that will pass the test and do the job and you can get on with your life.
the Budafoki amended 