Tell Me About Your Favorite Mechanics

[pemerton]

A favorite mechanic of mine is the opposite of mechanics where you have a finite/rare resource to spend, but you lack any information to help you spend it wisely.

Personally I'd generalise this: if the players have access to interesting resources, I prefer a system that encourages them to use them rather than hoard them.

 

[Faolyn]

Personally I'd generalise this: if the players have access to interesting resources, I prefer a system that encourages them to use them rather than hoard them.

That's one of the things I like about SWADE. Everyone starts with three bennies and the GM is encouraged to give out additional bennies like candy.

 

[Reynard]

That's one of the things I like about SWADE. Everyone starts with three bennies and the GM is encouraged to give out additional bennies like candy.

When I run SWADE con games -- which is fairly often -- I have adapted the 2d20 Threat and Momentum pools for Bennies. In con games it is more difficult to rely on roleplaying to get bennies refreshed and the Jokers are (obviously) uncertain, so my GM bennies all come from a special pool of bennies the players get to use but once they do they go into my GM pool -- and when I use them, they go back to the player side. It keeps them moving and lets players hoard their personal bennies to soak damage.

 

[dumdragon]

The countdown dice pool. Lets say you have the PCs in a situation where something dire is about to happen, but you don't want to decided a specific time, so you put a pool of D6s into the pool. At the end of reach round you roll them, and remove any that have a specific number (I think six is the default). So each round there is a chance of 0-lots of dice being removed. When all the dice are removed the event happens. It helps build tension, and isn't some arbitrary amount of time. The players can see the pool get smaller and smaller and adjust their actions accordingly.

Yoink! I'm gonna try this in a scenario I have cooking up.

I have a dragon that will try and steal a key to unlock some bad MOJO that is protected by some powerful wards.
I think this will add some beautiful tension and drama.

 

[Fenris-77]

There's a variant of the countdown pool where you add dice. Anytime the group does something time consuming, or loud, or whatever, you drop d6 into the pool. Unless something else trigger the pool, when it hits 6 dice you pick it up and roll it (with a standard encounter on a 1 being the standard). I like it because it makes the use of time a visible resource with predictable consequences. Tip of the cap here to the Angry GM, from whom this is shamelessly stolen.

 

[Bagpuss]

I remember TSR doing that with 2e psionics checks too. One benefit was it allowed you to also have contests where the winner was whomever rolled high while still succeeding at the check, something easier to do than subtracting the results from their target numbers and comparing the size of the differences.

Pendragon does the same thing, rolling your skill is a critical. If you skill is over 20, you can't fail and your critical range increases by how much your skill is above 20. So say you have 22 in a skill, a roll of 18-20 is a critical success.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Black Hack - Usage Die: Certain resources use a Usage die, which can start at d20. Instead of tracking each piece of food, ammo, torch, etc., players roll the Usage die only after the scene or combat is done. If the Usage die produces a 1, then the Usage die steps down to a smaller die type. That becomes the new Usage die. The Resource dries up once the Usage die produces a 1 on a d4.

I loathe this sort of mechanic. While it does simplify book keeping and introduce a random factor in a game, I hate it because PC prep between missions/scenarios gives me time to reflect, and also makes inserting seemingly random NPC interactions easy. nIT also forces player to take a greater interest in planning.

Plus I enjoy players watching their supplies and resources diminish faster than anticipated.

 

[Aldarc]

FYI, the purpose of this thread is not to slag on my favorite mechanics but for people to talk about their favorite mechanics.

 

[Bagpuss]

I loathe this sort of mechanic. While it does simplify book keeping and introduce a random factor in a game, I hate it because PC prep between missions/scenarios gives me time to reflect, and also makes inserting seemingly random NPC interactions easy. nIT also forces player to take a greater interest in planning.

Can't you still have that with prep between sessions increasing the dice type?

Plus I enjoy players watching their supplies and resources diminish faster than anticipated.

That still happens if they roll a lot of 1's. I guess the difference is you can't force it to happen. Although I suppose you could just have it automatically drop a dice type for particular events.

 

[Bagpuss]

Fate - Aspects / Cortex Prime - Distinctions: Aspects and Distinctions were heavily inspired by Over the Edge, but these are the games that have really run with fictional tags for characters and other things in the fiction that have some mechanical heft.

Yeah I do like that aspect of just a few lines can mean a whole lot of things true. For example in Fate you can do most of Superman's powers just with the Aspect - Kryptonian under a yellow sun.