Meta-Mechanics Worth Stealing

[Plane Sailing]

For instance, Ars Magica introduced the notion of troupe play, where each player has multiple characters of different power levels and plays one of them each session.

Funny, because for years and years this was the only way that we'd play D&D. We never had ongoing campaigns, we each had a 'stable' of characters, and each week one person would DM and say 'its a 6th level adventure' and we'd thumb through and bring out our appropriate level characters!

 

[eyebeams]

Funny, because for years and years this was the only way that we'd play D&D. We never had ongoing campaigns, we each had a 'stable' of characters, and each week one person would DM and say 'its a 6th level adventure' and we'd thumb through and bring out our appropriate level characters!

That's not really how Ars' troupe play works, though. In ArsM, you have three character types: Magi, Companions and Grogs. Everybody has a Companion and Magus and there are a pool of grogs, and they all live in the same Covenant (wizards' settlement).

An adventure will be 1-2 magi, some companions and a few grogs to round things out. Grogs are disposable fighter types fleshed out on the fly. The idea is that the magi are "main characters" with more power and centrality, but they can't do everything alone.

Furthermore, in Ars, magi who aren't on the adventure are still acting in the background because of the rules for research.

Unfortunately, later editions have downplayed the troupe concept a bit.

 

[Land Outcast]

Thanks for that, Master

 

[DarkKestral]

* The Wealth Bonus from d20 Modern: you don't need to track your individual assets, instead you get a bonus that increases with level. Saves on a lot of bookkeeping.

Definitely a fan of the concept behind the wealth bonus, though I don't like d20 Modern's default implementation. I think the designers overextended the concept farther than was useful in d20 Modern itself, which caused the mechanical wonkiness which is my sticking point with that specific implementation, but I like the meta-mechanic of providing an abstract way of representing long-term resources that is relatively low-overhead. One of the biggest ways to abuse the rules in d20 Modern is through the wealth system, which is a shame. I think that it could be patched up, and significantly improved.

If I were to redesign Wealth in d20 Modern, I'd make the Wealth score a sort of "access to long term resources that matter over time" while running individual adventures essentially on "cash on hand." So a car paid for via mortgage acts to lower your wealth score because you took a hit to your long-term Wealth in order to pay for the huge upfront cost. Alternatively, once adventures are over or during in-game downtime between adventures, you would be able to pay back cash on hand to get long-term resources down the line. That way, you could run things like day-to-day operating expenses which don't matter much in terms of any single moment on your Wealth though they have in-game dramatic consequences over a longer period, while expenses that have dramatic consequences right at that moment in-game come out of a similar statistic/attribute/score/whatever, which I'll refer to as Cash that represents what the character has access to without taking time to get more, with little book-keeping between sessions or adventures, which is where I think the real problem lies. (If your players are buying and selling so much within adventures that even that is becoming an issue, then I think you just have economy obsessed players or simply need to make the loot descriptions a whole lot shorter and just approach them as being X amount in cash + Y number of appropriate items) They would be separate, but related, as Wealth would probably define how much Cash you get at the beginning of adventures and what you might get in terms of Cash if you decide to borrow against Wealth at some point within the story.

* The Gates of Planescape: Basically, you stepped through a doorway and were teleported to basically where you need to be. You didn't need to take a long, wearying journey to jump into adventure into some far away land -- it removed the dull "walk for days, random encounter, walk for some more days, now we can get back to the fun part" element from a lot of the game.

As far as the gates go, I'd say they were a great setting mechanic that reinforces a general "fun first" principle. That said, the fact that the setting had a multitude of ways to get around the Planes also let the gates and portals be one choice among many which had different strengths and weaknesses for those times when the journey really was at the heart of the adventure.

 

[Wolf1066]

Excuse the Thread Necromancy but this is a cool thread.

Some of my favourite ideas have already been mentioned (such as Nature/Demeanor (or in-mode/out-mode if you prefer)).

Advantages and Disadvantages spice things up and make for more "interesting" characters - easily modified for the world/time you're in (some are timeless like "Tough" or "Lame", others are genre/era-specific like "Vehicle Zen"/"Flying Ace"etc.)

Saw weapon cards for the first time in the Serenity RPG and adopted them for my Cyberpunk game - the checkboxes to tick off expended ammo seemed like a fantastic way to ensure players kept track of how many times they'd fired and when they'd need to reload (or run like Hell because they were out of ammo...)

Quite liked the Insanity options in Palladium (despite my Wolfen becoming a Transvestite because of them...) and the Stress/Fatigue system from Ianus Games.

 

[TarionzCousin]

(despite my Wolfen becoming a Transvestite because of them...)

Feature, not a bug.

Personally, I like the fact that when I roll a natural 20 on a Save in Star Wars Saga Edition, I get a Force Power recharged (or something like that--it's been too long). I think a natural 20 should always be rewarded.

 

[Wolf1066]

Feature, not a bug.

True, but I did use up most my loot from the adventure getting my breastplate not merely repaired but reshaped as well...

 

[Pbartender]

I've recently been thinking that Spirit of the Century's Aspects would be easy and fun to merge with D&D 4E's action point rules.

 

[Votan]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer took the idea of drama points and added a twist: weaker, "supporting cast" characters get more drama points than powerful characters like the Slayer.

This basic idea, which I wish I had encountered earlier, is really interesting. It creates a nifty way to try and balance the high/low power dichotomy that is often seen in literature. After all, Frodo and Batman both seem to drive the plot more than Superman and Gandalf. I think that this could be a really cool way to make these types of parties work.

 

[Krensky]

Fantasy Craft's cheating death rules. Basically, if a PC (or very, very few NPCs) die, they can try and cheat death by coming up with a plausible, entertaining story about how it happens. The key here is plausible, since the GM has to allow it, and entertaining. An entertaining story is crucial, because after it's done, the other players get to score it based on how cool an idea it is. Then you roll, using the score as a modifier. The better the final result, the smaller a price (nightmares, permanent injuries, hauntings, etc) you pay to have cheated the man on the pale horse.