Results 31 to 60 of 99
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2018-01-25, 08:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
You could say similar about nearly all applications of XP. You reward for completed encounters? You're rewarding for transitive moments in exchange for permanent mechanical benefit. You reward for completing an adventure? You're rewarding for a transitive moment. That's not nearly the same thing as granting permanent power for nearly never noticed flaws.
I think that the way you award XP should be based on the goals of your game. If you want your game to be about exploration, you give XP when the players explore. If you want your game to be about interactions between characters and between their backstories, you give XP when the players invoke their backgrounds with one another.
As alluded to by another poster, this is taken from the *World games, but I don't see why it couldn't be dropped into other games with few changes. We used it in a Star Wars game and it worked well there, too. You can certainly come up with bonds on the go and you are encouraged to do so. It's usually written as something that happened that now triggers an attitude, for example "Maximus's fireball burned down the tavern and made me spill my drink. I'm going to teach him some manners." or "Diana knows a lot of seedy characters. I'll have to keep my eye on her for mischief." And even if your character is from elsewhere, you can always have encountered one or two of them in the past. The point of the mechanics is to inject some drama and potentially even have some of the characters' goals differ. As long as the group is up for it, it can be fun.
Debt represents favors, loans, oaths of loyalty, familial bonds, or any other sort of connection between a character and a powerful organization. The faction must be prominent within the setting of the game. It works something like this:
- Establish some powerful factions in your setting - scale them appropriately for the campaign. If it takes place in a city, these might be the Police Union, the Mayor's Office, the Berglitoni Family, the Triads, and the City Research Lab. If it's a country you might be looking at the Ministry of Investigations, Amazing Bullseye Mart, National University, and the Vice President.
- Figure out how the factions regard one another and a basic agenda for each - list 3 wants and 2 needs for each one. Try to make some of their wants and needs overlap.
- At character creation, make every character assign 3 points of debt spread out over up to 3 factions. If a character is a member of one of the factions, their debt is 3 with that faction.
- A character can increase their debt with any faction by 1 in exchange for aid in an area that they can help with (use logic for their capabilities - National University probably can't exonerate your character for his crimes; then again, maybe they can).
- The factions will come to the characters to call in debt from time-to-time. It might be in the midst of another scenario that is related to one of their wants or needs or it might be out of the blue. A character who refuses a call in will piss of the organization and increase their debt by 1.
- Once a character has 5 or 6 debt, the faction will start interfering with the character's plans in attempts to persuade the character to make good on debt.
- Once a character has 7 to 10 debt, the faction may become actively hostile to the character and will attempt murder or worse.
It's pretty basic, but it works with just about any system. You can of course add other tweaks to make it work better with a system, but this is the basic approach. Keep in mind, debt is per-character. A faction might not care about the other party members if they're hostile to the character (then again, they might try attacking them as a way to turn the screws).
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2018-01-25, 09:16 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
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2018-01-25, 09:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
- Location
- where the wind blows
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Basically, instead of "allignments" like good or evil, LotW has "virtues' which are things like loyalty, compassion, ruthlessness, obsession, etc. You give them 1-5 scores. How it works is, when your character do something that someone agree showcase a virtue, they give you token, which you can use for extra advancement point or resources. And how much token you get depends on how much score you have.
So for example you have character with 5 compassion and 2 obsession. It showcase what kind of personality you have in your mind for your character. You get a chance to either let your sworn enemy free, or execute them. If you let them free, you get 5 token from compassion, but if you execute them, you get 2 token from obsession.
Basically, my take is, by having 5 compassion score, you signal the DM that you want a scene for you to act your character's compassionate side, or for you to act against it for character conflict (say you have 5 compassion and also 5 loyalty, the GM can give you scene where you either have to showcase compassion or loyalty, things like that)You got Magic Mech in My Police Procedural!
In this forum, Gaming is Serious Business, and Anyone Can Die. Not even your status as the Ensemble Darkhorse can guarantee your survival.
Disciple of GITP Trope-Fu Temple And Captain of GITP Valkyrie Squadron.
Awesome Elizabeth Shelley by HollamerSpoiler
The OTP in the playground.
My Gallery/My Star Wolves 3 LP
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2018-01-26, 08:56 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2007
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2018-01-26, 09:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2011
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2018-01-26, 09:53 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
- Location
- where the wind blows
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Oh yeah, something I remember, eventhough I use that example, it's also supposed to be used organically. Basically I mean, at any point someone note, "yeah, the thing you did with the cabbage merchant? That's pretty compassionate, dude" you can get a token from that. And you don't have to act out all of your high score virtues all the time, obviously. Like, you have 5 compassion and 2 ruthlessness. You get a chance to let your sworn enemy go or execute them. You can execute them if you want, in what basically an out of character moment in universe. You just hate your sworn enemy that much that eventhough you'd let most other enemy go, you won't let them away, and in universe, people who know you as a compassionate character would be surprised by your action.
And the virtues might not work for all genre, since it's specifically a Wuxia game.You got Magic Mech in My Police Procedural!
In this forum, Gaming is Serious Business, and Anyone Can Die. Not even your status as the Ensemble Darkhorse can guarantee your survival.
Disciple of GITP Trope-Fu Temple And Captain of GITP Valkyrie Squadron.
Awesome Elizabeth Shelley by HollamerSpoiler
The OTP in the playground.
My Gallery/My Star Wolves 3 LP
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2018-01-26, 10:36 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Throwing my hat in the metacurrency ring. I love them, and I've gone through several different methods of giving them out, including 'makes the entire group react', but I've settled on the 'when hindrances/disads/complications come into play', because most players like having a stock of tokens on them and so will bring up their disads when they're low while spending them in cases where they really want to succeed, leading to more organic highs and lows.
Another one is the Triggers from Unknown Armies (2e, I don't own 3e so I don't know if they're in there). Significantly better than Inspiration from D&D5e because of two things. The first is that they're player activated roleplaying tools, while the GM can still veto in occasions it doesn't make sense players can use each of their three triggers (Anger, Fear, and Noble) once per session if the situation matches what's written. The second is the benefit for doing so, instead of a one time boost you get the ability to reroll or flip-flop all your rolls until the scene or situation ends, which is a massive boost.
A final one is goal oriented XP. The idea that you write on your sheet a small number of short term and long term goals, and then get XP from completing a short term goal or moving towards a long term goal (once per session per goal). I do port it into most games I run these days, because it makes the players want to move towards what the characters want to move towards, although there does tend to be a bit of goal optimisation (but is there any system that isn't gamed? I refer you towards how after the 'three pillars XP' UA for 5e was released people worked out you could likely reach level 20 by doing pest control for a small town for a few weeks).
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2018-01-26, 11:10 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
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- where the wind blows
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
There's a couple of things that I like and I wish to see it in games I play from my quick read of Low Fantasy Gaming. I might misremember the detail since it's been a while, but it's the thought that count and if you want to use it in other games you obviously need to tinker with them anyway.
One is that anyone can give minor effect to your attacks at any time (with the gm's permission). Something like, you attack an enemy, then you can roll say, dexterity against the enemy's reflex save, to give them minor accuracy penalty for one attack or whatever. It's a small thing, but really does a lot for me. Seriously, this is something that add so much. Even the most mundane class in any game could do *something* different and interesting at any point in combat.You got Magic Mech in My Police Procedural!
In this forum, Gaming is Serious Business, and Anyone Can Die. Not even your status as the Ensemble Darkhorse can guarantee your survival.
Disciple of GITP Trope-Fu Temple And Captain of GITP Valkyrie Squadron.
Awesome Elizabeth Shelley by HollamerSpoiler
The OTP in the playground.
My Gallery/My Star Wolves 3 LP
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2018-01-26, 11:52 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2010
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Contacts. I like the way shadowrun handles them. Representing NPC relations with numbers on PC character sheets, and having some clear defined benefits for them, helps players recognize their importance. It also means that treating someone like crap might reduce a PC's numbers, which can even encourage munchkins to try to care.
Training/improvement time. Ugprades feel a lot more meaningful when characters actually put in work for them (and possibly money or favors too), as opposed to appearing in some immersion-destroying instantaneous level-up event.
Wound penalties. It might be construed as a 'death spiral', but it clarifies that physical harm matters without imposing permanent injury.
Knockdown, knockback, and disorientation. When they're systematized and applied to attacks which meet conditions (i.e. doing enough harm relative to victim's stats, being an appropriate type of harm), as opposed to being applied on an ad-hoc basis, they're great ways to convey the literal impact of blows in-game.
Hit location and modifiers. It helps describe what characters are feeling during battle, and creates more choices for combatants.
Specialized monster weaknesses, defenses against monsters and magic. They give us players ways to prepare, and helps differentiate enemy types. It doesn't need to make monster-fights trivial; as long as there's something a player can do to improve his chances when he knows what he's up against.Last edited by Slipperychicken; 2018-01-26 at 11:53 AM.
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2018-01-26, 05:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2011
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- MN-US
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Speaking of Shadowrun, I really like the Drain concept they have for magic, especially how you can overcast at risk to your own safety.
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2018-01-27, 03:23 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2016
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Savage Worlds GM bennies.
The GM gets one reroll basically per session per player.
I'm the kind of GM that just let's the dice fall, but having an actual rule that lets me reroll an attack from the beginning when the first result would splatter a character into fine paste is great.
I find most Savage Worlds GMs have never talked about or suggest using their rerolls to get a worst result. I love it though. I get to adjust difficulty while following the rules. Win/win
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2018-01-27, 04:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2010
- Location
- a nice pond
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Another problem with giving XP for good RP is that you'll usually wind up giving more XP to some players than others. Players who are better at RP and/or acting will wind up ahead of others.
(Part of my disapproval for the concept of XP for transient things is a bad experience with a WoD storyteller I had once who would make references to stuff she's a fan of and then give XP for recognizing her references. This was bad because one XP is a substantial chunk of progress in WoD and because I didn't watch any of the animes or play any of the games she liked.)
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2018-01-27, 06:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2011
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
At last, a way to break out of the "e6" doldrums that is 5e. Does it have good rules for epic level play?
Ouch.
Allow me to take this opportunity to, once again, promote my idea of giving group XP for good role-playing - or anything else that adds to the enjoyment of the game. So, when the GM makes a movie/anime reference, and one player has his character respond with the appropriate line, everyone gets XP.
Do you think that would have made the experience (pun not intended) better?
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2018-01-27, 07:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2010
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- a nice pond
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
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2018-01-27, 09:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2006
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- Marlinspike
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
I prefer systems that don't even have XP at all.
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2018-01-27, 10:24 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
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- San Francisco Bay area
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Rules for Dragons, from well any system that has them to most any system that doesn't.
Rules for summoning Demons from Stormbringer to... well most games with Magic.
Rules for Jousting and mass combat from Chainmail to... well most FRPG's.
Rules for strongholds and castle building from early D&D to... well most post antiquity setting games.
Rules for religion from RuneQuest to any system with active deities.
Rules from Pendragon for....
Nevermind, let's just play Pendragon instead
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2018-01-27, 10:58 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2010
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Unknown Armies's sanity system for other horror/modern-day games.
Imagine if all real-world conversations were like internet D&D conversations...
Protip: DnD is an incredibly social game played by some of the most socially inept people on the planet - Lev
I read this somewhere and I stick to it: "I would rather play a bad system with my friends than a great system with nobody". - Trevlac
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2018-01-28, 06:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2011
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- Australia
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Agreed. There's a similar system in the roguelike Ancient Domains Of Mystery, and you can get a surprising amount of tactical flexibility out of it... Even though you're probably only ever going to use "normal," "Berserk" and "Coward" in-game.
Brikwars has a few mechanics I like: in particular the overkill rules, the counterattack rules, the rules for large weapons, and particularly the magic system (which is simple yet flexible) and the skill mechanic. Any result above 6+ is a crit with exploding dice, in a system where you could potentially roll a d12 for skill.
It's absurd and that's why I like it.
A mechanic I want to see, but that may not be plausible is a dice system that results int rolling incredibly high and increaldy low more often than an average result.
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2018-01-28, 04:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2005
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
What I would like to see in more systems would be the "take 10" from D&D/Pathfinder on skill checks and such. Basically, if it's something you're good at, and you're not in a stressful situation, I like being able to say that my character does a standard routine for what they're doing.
I wouldn't mind seeing Destiny points from FFG's Star Wars in other games either.
Something that is a little more difficult to translate into all systems is the Advantages/Disadvantages of Legend of the Five Rings, and Virtues/Flaws of Ars Magica. I mean mostly the flavourful ones, especially the ones that create more story and character-development (like the Story Flaws of Ars Magica). Flaws in D&D is something I intensely dislike as I feel they don't add much actual flaw.
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2018-01-28, 06:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
There are four main ones, all of which feature to varying levels of effectiveness in Ars Magica:
1) Player-guided ability design. A toolkit for building the kinds of abilities you want a character (PC or NPC) to have is way better than a prebuilt list.
2) Minimal divide between what kinds of effects PCs and NPCs can have on the world and how they’re performed. If the big bad cult leader can make a ritual to force the intelligent macguffin sword to bond to him with a blood sacrifice of a hundred people or whatever, there should be rules in place for how a PC could develop a similar ritual. For that matter, if the intelligent macguffin sword was made by somebody in the past, a PC of similarly high capability should be able to make something equally impressive and world-changing on their own terms.
3) Multiple valid paths to character advancement with varying efficiencies. Reward players for going through effort to find better in-universe ways to develop their abilities. To use the Ars Magica example (which I love), you get different amounts of XP to add to your individual abilities based on how you went about improving them - from the lowest-yield “spent the season using the ability to make a living” exposure XP, to somewhat higher dedicated practice XP, to potentially much higher XP from being trained or taught in an area by a person or reading a book about it, effectiveness dependent on the teacher’s own skill.
3.5) As a necessary prerequisite of point 3 as well as point 1, stop using class and level advancement systems and tying the unlocking of abilities to arbitrary overall power benchmarks. Learning 4th-level spells when you get your 7th level in the wizard class from clearing lots of dungeons is dumb. Training long and hard at fire magic specifically and then finding a master to teach you the fire spell you’ve been striving for is a lot more awesome.
4) Metacurrency, ho. Really, I like how it works in something like Fate better than how it works in Ars Magica, but I enjoy the sort of comic or anime convention of having characters with appropriate emotional buildup being able to dramatically transcend their limits without replacing those limits in the process (as opposed to the gradual, permanent power up represented by XP). Transformations are even cooler, but the number of games that handle them well is vanishingly small (points to Shonen Final Burst for being the only example I can think of).
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2018-01-28, 09:25 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2006
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- where the wind blows
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Pretty sure that's the supposed to be the standard in all games, or at least newer games, really. All, if not almost all system I read, have a note that basically says "only roll at things that matter" or "only roll when failure or success has interesting outcomes" things like that. And that's what take 10 is basically about.
You got Magic Mech in My Police Procedural!
In this forum, Gaming is Serious Business, and Anyone Can Die. Not even your status as the Ensemble Darkhorse can guarantee your survival.
Disciple of GITP Trope-Fu Temple And Captain of GITP Valkyrie Squadron.
Awesome Elizabeth Shelley by HollamerSpoiler
The OTP in the playground.
My Gallery/My Star Wolves 3 LP
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2018-01-28, 11:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2012
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- toulouse
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
look at dark heresy or whfrp2e. psykers/casters are br00tal (yup, said in metal grunts). that said, they're a time-bomb of a character. you can try to one-hit kill a baneblade, and if lady luck and admiral awesome are with you that night, it'll seem trivial. then you cast against a thug, and your character is so destroyed that the warp rift caused by your brain exploding destroys your character sheet (not making this up, either. there's really a 4th-wall breaking mechanic regarding some psyker deaths). psykers are overpowered at a cost, and it's just the way i like my magic system. magic with no penalties seems too foreign a concept to me, and the main beef i have with dnd and pf. there's no advantage to being a mundane, and no disadvantage to be a caster. in dh, you will crave the relative safety of being a blunt. of course, blunts can't melt tanks with their mind, but that's why we invented meltaguns.
not everyone's favorite system or mechanic, but my second favorite ever. the first would have to be dark heresy's crit tables. it's as silly as it's awesome. i mean, i just shot a dude, he caught on fire, and his grenades explode? then the dude's friend's grenades cook off because of that explosion? then i get killed by the second dude's femur becoming lethal shrapnel?? worth. it. no questions asked. 40k/10, would die again like this.
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2018-01-29, 04:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2006
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- England
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
I concur wholeheartedly with this post.
I do love the grim humour of DHs critical tables; there's nothing quite like going all out to murderize someone in melee, only to turn it into a comedy skit of combatants desperately trying to keep their footing as they slide around in gore, while wiping the blood of their enemies (or allies) from their eyes to try and actually land their next blow. Wading through the blood of the fallen is literally written into the rules and is a genuine concern for melee specialists.
I also like "magic with a price" and my ideal system would definitely include it.I apologise if I come across daft. I'm a bit like that. I also like a good argument, so please don't take offence if I'm somewhat...forthright.
Please be aware; when it comes to 5ed D&D, I own Core (1st printing) and SCAG only. All my opinions and rulings are based solely on those, unless otherwise stated. I reserve the right of ignorance of errata or any other source.
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2018-01-29, 07:30 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
SR's system is different, but it's also lower power. Essentially, a mage gets to ignore such pesky things as ammunition and (most) tools, but in exchange slinging spells runs the risk of causing damage (and too much damage gives penalties or kills you). If a spell isn't too powerful you'll take Stun damage, otherwise it's Lethal damage.
But yeah, the WH40kRP crit tables are amazing, I remember they got better in RT (don't have any 40k books anymore, I had to slim down my collection when I finished uni and I just don't like the system as much as the others I owned). I honestly preferred the original way I ran it, which was when you hit 0HP any damage would make you roll on the suitable table, giving the chance to survive with just an assortment of serious wounds.
As a side note, I've often wanted to move individual systems to individual systems to cover holes (such as Savage Worlds really needing a better spaceship design system for Science Fiction games, I just use the GURPS system and convert the values). There's very little I think should be part of every game, besides metacurrency (on both sides of the screen) and a limited way to mitigate character death.
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2018-01-29, 09:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2012
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- toulouse
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
that's my rogue trader dm's way of playing too. it also explained how our priest lost his right arm twice in one battle. bionic hand gets broken off at the elbow, next roll, it's his bionic at the shoulder. then he took a burst of autogun to his legs and face, lost an eye and became unconscious, so we had to extract him to safety mid-firefight. makes for some really intensely stressful combat.
our seneschal didn't know the game, and the first time he got crit in the torso, he heard me pray "hope it's a kick in the groin!" he looked at me like i was wishing harm on him. the dm showed him the crit table, and he said the exact same thing, understanding exactly why i said that. to the uninitiated, it's the weakest crit roll to torsos, making you fall to your knees and halving your actions. as opposed to, say, catching on fire, losing an organ or three, or death by tarantino.
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2018-01-29, 09:51 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
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- The Lakes
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Sounds like a system that would encourage me to not put much effort into character creation beyond the needed raw mechanical stuff, and to not give a damn about the character at all... but rather to treat characters as third-person disposable playing pieces.
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-29, 09:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2015
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- Berlin
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Huh? Oh, lots and lots. That's also the point when you notice that you're too long in this hobby and have tried out too many systems - time to write your own heartbreaker, I guess?
I like the "risk/save" mechanic of Splittermond. Normally, you roll 2d10+mod and have a "botch" at double ones or twos, but you can voluntarily roll 4d10 or 1d10 instead, trading higher/lower result for higher/lower risk of a botch.
I really prefer bell curve mechanics over raw luck. The "Roll and Keep" system (L5R, 7th Sea) is quite good at modeling both, skill and luck, by using a combination of "exploding dice" (Reroll and add on a 10), "Skill Emphasis" (You don´t botch on one "one" with skills you're actually good at).
I´m actually impressed by the underlying thoughts behind the Gumshoe system, with the whole WH40K line as a runner-up: There's a "(Story) Spine" and you're competent at what you do, so there is no need to check for anything or consult the rules when wanting to proceed from one stage of the "story" to the next. You're a professional at what you do, so solving the basic murder mystery or storming the Dungeon to kill the Dragon is the expected outcome, the question is more what you can do and achieve beyond that, like uncovering the Mafia connection or find the hidden Godlsayer blade.
I like "power at a cost" and risk vs. reward mechanics. Having the option to engage in an insane risk for a crassly brutal reward is fine in my opinion. As Guizonde put it, being able to nuke the premier battle tank, or kill the dragon/demon prince/BBEG in one brilliant stroke while risking sanity or blowing up your brains for it is fine, as long as Meltaguns (the save but slow way) are an feasible option.
Pendragon traits are perhaps one of the most elegant mechanics that cover the meta-game topic I've ever seen and enjoyed playing.
Beyond that? Puh, possible anything that has to do with Luck/Void/Edge. Let's face it, we're mostly not playing AD&D with Gygax anymore, so we're most likely not playing a bunch of throwaway characters that are named Bigby, Cigby, Digby, Egsy and so on, until one of them survives to a certain level.
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2018-01-29, 11:05 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2012
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- toulouse
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Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
funny, i've found the opposite to happen. in dnd, death is cheap, and injuries are basically worthless. in high-lethality games, you get drawn more and more into the survival of your character and teams. i never put much backstory into my characters in the first place, because it's more the personality and relationships my char develops that interests me. so, i've got a character, early 40's, who signed his retirement papers from the war. then, your imperial guard veteran gets shanghai'd into a rogue trader's entourage, he develops a trade contract as a bodyguard for the seneschal, and he and the techpriest become fast friends. all of a sudden, seeing the seneschal take a blunt object to the torso is tragic. extraction, safety become paramount. injuries matter (see the priest example above. he's looking at getting two bionic replacements as soon as we're out of the hot zone). it adds a level of emotional attachment i don't find in dnd, because once your character is corrupted beyond a certain point, insane, or mauled beyond all hope, your character is dead. the trick is to not let it happen due to wits, luck, forward planning, risk assessment, and of course fate points, which act like very hard to replace extra lives.
you ever played those systems? it sounds awfully sadistic, and i'm doing a poor job of converting anyone to this system the way i'm describing it, but if you want a balance of character-driven roleplay and highly tactical combat, it does its job really well.
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2018-01-29, 11:19 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
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- The Lakes
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
I'm not saying I prefer D&D, I haven't had anything to do with D&D-like / d20 systems in 20-some years.
What I'm saying is that the systems you describe just comes across as random wholesale death and maiming that would leave me unable to invest any connection or emotion in a character. "Oh hey, another character died, quelle surprise." See also, Paranoia.
Both do reflect the crapsack worlds of their settings, but those are also settings that don't really interest me.It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2018-01-29, 12:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Oct 2009
- Location
- In my library
Re: What mechanics do you wish were in other games?
Encounters in the 40kRPGs are actually relatively survivable. You can almost always take a hit from a normal rifle, two or three if wearing decent armour (even guard flak counts), and if you really feel squishy most careers let you buy 10+ instances of Sound Constitution (although I've never met anybody who feels like it's worthwhile). Plus if you use firearms get into cover, and remember that you can Dodge once per turn (alternatively you can Block in melee). Once you learn the basic tricks characters should be able to survive an entire game, with the crit tables actually coming up fairly rarely.
What's not survivable is psykers. If a player rolls a psyker either keep a good distance or just shoot them now to be on the safe side.