What are your favourite single game mechanics?

Morrus · Jul 15, 2019

Occasionally a game mechanic jumps out at me, and makes me think "wow!" -- it's not always brand new, and sometimes it builds on something else, or sometimes it's just new to me, but I like it when a simple mechanic catches my eye. Here's a couple of my favourites:

D&D's advantage/disadvantage is a really elegant way to replace all those fiddly bonuses. It's one of my favourite things about 5E.
13th Age is full of things; I love the way backgrounds replace all those skills and stuff. (Escalation die comes in a close second).
I'd like to nominate my own countdown dice mechanic from WOIN - roll a dice pool and remove any 6s until there are none left. Great for tension!

What are yours?

monsmord · Jul 15, 2019

The Fate Chips as presented in original Deadlands. It was my first encounter with a mechanic allowing players to modify a situation (or potentially countermand a GM's call) beyond the regular roll of dice, and felt nicely balanced, fair, and limited.

The Crimson Binome · Jul 15, 2019

I really like Hit Points as a simple, abstract measurement of health. I like how it avoids the death spiral of accumulating penalties, giving the underdog a real chance to fight back in a losing situation; while simultaneously providing an extremely visible and understandable metric for how badly you're hurt. The efficiency of that game mechanic - the amount of work it does, relative to the amount of work required to use it - is off-the-charts.

I'm sure I'll think of something more unique later on, but that one deserves mention above all.

Arilyn · Jul 16, 2019

I like many things from 13th Age as well, including backgrounds, one unique thing and the escalation die.

From Fate, definitely aspects.

The investigative system in Gumshoe games.

The character system in Robin D. Laws HeroQuest.

And the passions in Pendragon

GMMichael · Jul 16, 2019

D&D has a rule that prevents dungeon masters from killing Vin Diesel's character, which is pretty badass.

And +1 for WOIN's countdowns. I've been wanting to use it for bow ammunition, but haven't got around to it yet.

Jer · Jul 16, 2019

A lot of my favorite 13th age mechanics are already mentioned, so here's another one: you get two ability bonuses during character creation, but only one comes from your race. The other comes from your class (and it can't be the same as the one you picked from your race - you choose between two). This little change actually open up a lot of room for players and I love it.

I also think Fate compels are a great mechanic (once I figured them out - I don't know why something fairly simple was hard to wrap my head around - it took Steve Kenson's explanation in Icons before it clicked for me as a GM how to make it work.

5ekyu · Jul 16, 2019

WoD d10 threshold dice pools.

2d20 threshold dice pools plus roll under plus difficulty as successes.

Mutants and Masterminds damage/effect saves snd tiers of effect.

5e advantage/disadvantage and default fail to "some progress with setback" in the definition of fail.

FASERIP stunts

Michael Silverbane · Jul 16, 2019

Helping each other as a Reaction / Immediate action.

I think I originally saw this in the Bad Axe Games supplement for D&D 3.5, Trailblazer. Taking the Aid Another action and changing it from a Standard action to an action that you can do on someone else's turn. This allows one player to help out another player without giving up their own ability to act, and makes combats seem much more cooperative.

I have since ported the thing over to my own home-brew game and slotted it into a Tactics skill (as well as into a couple of other places) that allows the players to help each other out on all sorts of things both in combat and out of it.