What are your favourite single game mechanics?

Hand of Evil · Jul 17, 2019

MNblockhead · Jul 17, 2019

I'll echo "stunt points" mentioned above from the AGE system. I was introduced to the mechanic with The Expanse.

I also like "fortune" in The Expanse. I think this also comes from the AGE system. Basically, you have an amount of fortune points that refresh after an "interlude" (kinda a mix of an extended long rest and downtime) and you get more as you level up. You can spend fortune points to make a d6 have the number you want by spending the number of fortune points to make it that higher number (e.g., spend 2 FPs to change a 4 into a 6.

I also like the "Churn" concept in The Expanse. Basically you have a "churn pool" that starts a "0" at the beginning of an adventure. It goes up when someone rolls a 6 on their drama die, a character spends 4 or more stunt points to perform a stunt, the characters successfully overcome an encounter or hazard-or complete a section of the adventure, or a character spends a Fortune Point to alter die roll. It goes up to 30 with a minor complication/setback occurring when the churn pool reaches "10", a major setback when it reaches "20" and an epic when it reaches "30" (after which it resets to 0).

Churn is a helpful mechanic to increase the stakes and narrative tension and to create plot climaxes.

DEFCON 1 · Jul 17, 2019

Getting 6 identical clones in Paranoia.

Blue · Jul 18, 2019

5ekyu said:
2d20 threshold dice pools plus roll under plus difficulty as successes.

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

Sorry, I'm not familiar with those two. Can you expand a bit?

Thanks.

Beleriphon · Jul 18, 2019

Blue said:
Sorry, I'm not familiar with those two. Can you expand a bit?

Thanks.

Not sure on 2d20 mechanic.

Mutants and Masterminds. Basically if you roll a save and get a fail by between 1 and 4 less ( less than the DC DC 19 you get say 17 total) you get the minimum possible bad effect. If its between 5 and 9 below the target, you get a slightly worse effect, so and so on. Damage starts with a -1 to your next roll to resist damage (and this penalty accumulates with every failed save, regardless if its as by 1 or 20), and tops out at dead/KO'd if I'm remembering correctly by failing a save by 15 or more.

For example Captain Heropants is attacked by the Evilshirt. Captain Heropants rolls his damage save against a DC of lets say 23. He gets a total of 19, that's 4 less than 23 so his next roll against damage has a -1 penalty.

Next round Captain Heropants has to save again, but Evilshirt got a critical so that a +5 to the DC, so now its DC 28. Captain Heropaints rolls his bonuses, get a 19 total, but wait its -1 from last time. So he failed by 10, which results in three degrees of failure (1-4, 5-9, 10-14, 15+) and is now Stunned and get another -1 penalty. Things are looking grim for Captain Heropants.

This applies other things as well. For example the multiattack effect works on high levels of attack bonus resulting in increased damage. So if Magnum Machinegun (he's the bad guy) shoots at Captain Heropants he rolls an attack vs Captain Heropants' relevant defense score. If the attack roll beats Captain Heropants' defense by degrees of success MM gets to increase the DC of the save Captain Heropants has to succeed on to avoid the damage. One degree is no bonus, two degrees is +2, and three degrees is +5 in M&M 3E. Previous editions had the same idea, but different values.

Other effects like tripping, the Affliction condition (which is really a whole bunch of stuff) works on degrees of success/failure to determine what happens and by how much.

Guest 6801328 · Jul 18, 2019

lowkey13 said:
Based on something pemerton wrote, I decided to check out Dying Earth. And I really like the Overarching Rule of Efficacious Blandishment.

"The overarching rule of efficacious blandishment states that a character who tries to do something outside the letter of the game’s other rules may do so, provided that the player convinces the GM that this action falls within the spirit of the story. Thus the only true circumscriptions on your actions are maintained by the twin poles of your persuasiveness and your GM’s gullibility."

That works for me. It's sort of the anti-Rules Lawyer provision; don't try and convince me what you think the rule is, convince me that the rule should be broken.

Sounds to me like just a high-fallutin' way of saying "Rule of Cool".

lowkey13 · Jul 18, 2019

*Deleted by user*

The Crimson Binome · Jul 18, 2019

If we're talking about dice mechanics, I remember hearing about one game that used a (1d6 x stat) method of resolving actions. Your stats would go between 1 and 6, and you multiply the value of the relevant stat by the outcome of 1d6, and try to score higher than your opponent who's doing the same. This method has a lot of interesting properties:

The outcome is always uncertain. No matter how low your stat is, or how strong your opponent is, you have at least a 1/36 chance of matching them.
Stats are small, so each increment is meaningful. A stat can only go up to 6, so going from 3 to 4 seems like a big deal.
At the same time, high stats offer diminishing returns. Going from a 5 to a 6 will only increase your check result by 20%, while going from 1 to 2 is a 100% increase.

It's really just a very efficient bit of game design. It does a lot, with very little effort.

As a runner-up for dice mechanics, I would go with the version of Advantage/Disadvantage from more than one percentile game: Roll 2d10, and determine which is the tens digit based on whether you have Advantage or Disadvantage. If it's a roll-low system, then Advantage means that the lower die result becomes the tens digit, and Disadvantage means that the higher die becomes the tens digit. (Reverse those if it's a roll-high system.)

FrogReaver · Jul 18, 2019

DM determining when a check is called for. Likely in a ton of game but it's opened up a whole new world for me.

Wightbred · Jul 18, 2019

lowkey13 said:
Based on something pemerton wrote, I decided to check out Dying Earth. And I really like the Overarching Rule of Efficacious Blandishment.

Another genius Robin D Laws idea: insightful, practical and written in a way appropriately for the game.

I also love the dice mechanic for Dying Earth for the same reason. If you want to do something, just roll 1d6 read the result of the roll to see what happens, but spend resources (based on stats) to roll again if you are not happy. It keeps you in the fiction more readily than any other random mechanic I’ve seen, as you don’t need to do any addition, compare any numbers or check your skills or stats on your character sheet unless you aren’t happy. Planning to use it for a PbtA / FbL hack I’m doing.

I also love the Wrath Die mechanic from Wrath and Glory (1 is complication, 6 is critical) as the simplest way to get complications into a dice pool system. In particular I like that the GM can just take a point of Ruin (a resource to power enemies) if no immediate complication comes to mind.