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I mean sure but I was just tossing examples out there! Easy solution is make it 1/encounter when you… Even more interesting might be to tie it to things that might happen off-turn, via coordination. Like if the barbarian has stuff that gives them an edge in knocking people prone or something...

It absolutely can work, it just needs heavy testing & balancing within interlocking systems. See: the DS! Talent and their choices around going into strained. But it’s not across the board - just a single class that uses it to add to their psionic flavor.

Neat ideas! I think that some sort of in-Initiative mode trigger to regen a resource that ties into the class fantasy would be cool too. Like maybe a Barbarian has “Bloodlust, gain 1 exertion when you land a killing blow” or Occultists can tap their HD or something to replenish, Nature is like...

This is, in fact, how Daggerheart also describes it (if you weren't doing that consciously that's the literal example the game uses). You make a Death Move in all cases where like, you didn't do something stupid where the stakes were communicated to you that "You Die Right Now" was a probable or...

So DS! exists as a game which tries to extract the core ideas of 4e and get rid of a bunch of the D&D sacred cows that were left over. It does a bunch of I think interesting things to get there, the core of which is giving each class a build/spend mechanic for your powerful abilities. None of...

The turn when the guy playing a Conduit in my group realized that their baseline restoration ability was a Maneuver that can, with spending a couple Heroic Resources, drop healing (and/or remove Conditions, and/or pick them up off the ground, and/or give them an additional recovery for burst...

Session 0 / Start of the NCS game! Renegade Red Wizard (Fire Elementalist) Neverwinter Noble (Talent) Faithful of Oghma (Conduit) Scion of Shadow (...Fury?) Got our characters built, everybody agreed that we should start in a tavern to be Proper D&D, and wanted to go to the Moonstone Mask...

It does appear in B/X and OSE at least, and most NSR games I've seen? Core dungeon procedure: Turn starts, decide Actions Check for Random Encounters / Wandering Monsters Describe what happens End turn. In HMTW, it's "Roll on the Meatgrinder Table each time you enter a new room" which is time...

I guess that's pretty true to the genre as well? JRPGs are full of setbacks, the hero(es) failing at something and being lost / diverted / losing a character (Aeris!), and quite often have a Hero's Journey-esque plot structure. You may not start out as heroes, and you're definitely not strong...

But I think rife with NSR ones (which is what, all the core OSR principles but distancing themselves from the reactionaries + changing mechanics away from pure retroclones?), in the way that you expressed this as a generalized tag. Shadowdark, Cairn, HMTW backgrounds/motifs/etc are all intended...

I think this is where we probably once again need to note that the set of gameplay principles and mechanics that have grown up over the ~15ish years of OSR blogging and resultant games designed to facilitate them are their own things and just not "old school games." EG: Cairn and Mythic...

I'm not sure it "fixes this issue" but it does have a split between powers always available, those that are x/rest, x/long rest, x/session, and xcharges/trigger to replenish (eg: the Arcana domain magic missiles style spell that you put tokens on at the start of a session and then replenish...

Can you share some examples? Genuinely curious here, I'm not super familiar with the games in the survival horror etc side of the hobby.

You’re asserting an opinion here, mine is different. I’ve never had a player in a game with clear and separate designs for players and NPCs that fronts it in the rules be surprised when something happens in the fiction that is different. I have had it come up in 5e D&D. Given that, my going in...

Yeah sorry I've been jumping ahead too.

I thought I'd take a look at a NSR side game through these lenses: His Majesty the Worm - which is a bottom up design intended to take all the best ideas of the OSR blogosphere and "make dungeon crawling fun." - Fiction First Gaming: "His Majesty the Worm aims to make dungeon exploration fun...

I mean more how DH like 5e etc has a "you can just ignore any of this guidance or rules if you want to play differently" and FU especially in the GM side stuff is vastly more directive. DH also says "play to find out/don't prep a plot" up front and then has an entire section about planning story...

TBF I think DH is far easier to play as a F20 game by default, FU has more opinionated system level implementation and guidance (it never says "you can ignore this stuff if it doesn't work for you" for instance IIRC). Like, honestly, in play at my tables there's very little that actively...

Yup. World simulationism is not a core facet of modern design, it’s probably as classic as you can get. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of games doing gentle refinement on the idea or still being published, but I don’t think anybody would consider them modern in a mechanical sense. In fact...

It does so explicitly because with the exception of things like “rivals” that use trimmed down powers and are presented in the fiction as “just like you” the games I’ve played that have embraced the separation as a design pillar are explicit that NPC and players are different right in the...