Game ideas worth stealing…

[overgeeked]

That reads better than “in-fiction game elements worth using in other games” doesn’t it?

The premise is simple. What bits of fictional contrivance to you take from one game to another?

Two examples I regularly use are Cyphers from Numenera and Green Boxes from Delta Green.

Cyphers are powerful single-use magic items. In Numenera they are high-tech gadgets that work like magic, but the idea’s the same. You can use it once and that’s it. This lets the referee drop wildly unbalanced items on the PCs and not having to worry about it destroying the game.

Green Boxes are drops or storage for random gear and stuff a team or agent doesn’t want to be found on them or keep around. Too valuable or useful to destroy but would raise far too many red flags if found. So you stuff it in a Green Box. Other agents can and do access these drops so there’s a rotating assortment of random stuff. Green Boxes are goldmines for plot hooks, clues, artifacts, and randomly equipping PCs on the move. And the best part is anything can be a Green Box. Storage unit, car, house, warehouse, tunnel, car trunk, septic tank, foot locker, locker at the train station, anything.

What about you? What little fictional bits and ideas have you lifted from one game and dropped into another?

 

[Committed Hero]

I stole a code name from a friend's Dracula Dossier game to use for my own. HEARTBREAKER (the unknown woman from the novel whom Dracula turned) was too good a name not to steal.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm taking a lot of Traveller about how small independent freighters work and porting it into my Star Wars game. Star Wars has much more powerful and less realistic(?) jump technology (one of the major differences between science fiction and science fantasy is sci-fi pays attention to where the energy comes from), but the general idea of what all these tramp freighters are doing to earn money is much the same.

In fact, I'm seriously considering merging lot of Traveller into the D6 system, such as using a Traveller style character burner to generate Star Wars D6 characters.

 

[Staffan]

Two examples I regularly use are Cyphers from Numenera and Green Boxes from Delta Green.

Cyphers are powerful single-use magic items. In Numenera they are high-tech gadgets that work like magic, but the idea’s the same. You can use it once and that’s it. This lets the referee drop wildly unbalanced items on the PCs and not having to worry about it destroying the game.

There's one more bit about Cyphers that's kind of vital to their intended function: for technobabble reasons, you can only carry a small number on your person at a time. This, combined with the GM being generous in handing them out, means there's little need to hang on to them, thereby avoiding the traditional CRPG consumable hoarder problem.

 

[aco175]

It seems tat when my group gets cool, 1-use items they tend to hold onto it. In the Elemental Evil storyline, the PCs received a waxed jar with the power to create a regionwide earthquake and never used it. Now in the After Icespire modules they get a Holy Gnomengarge Grenade and likely not use it on the giant dragon or the horde of undead attacking the city.