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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 8172188" data-attributes="member: 20564">I've had some fun with the 13th Age Escalation die to shake it up as well.I had a number of ritual effects going on that the characters could try to stop in addition to the battle.  Each of them was also a penalty to the Escalation die - which started at a -3.  So the players were under a massive handicap and needed to figure out if they wanted to try to focus fire to try to eliminate some incoming attacks, to try to deal with the ritual effects that would be lessening every round anyhow.Ia a Derro city in the Underworld there were under constant mental attack.  In order for the Escalation Die to advance each turn one character had to come up with a personal moment of joy and jubilation from the campaign, with no repeats.  And quickly.  Else it didn't advance.One thing people who didn't play 13th Age may nto realize is that the math started off stacked against the characters, so the first few ticks of the die were overcomign aversity.  Great for building tension rapidly, but also very tactical - do you use a big nova power early when it can get a lot of foes, or wait until it's more likely to hit.A few other mechanics like the Escalation Die - Marvel Heroic Roleplay (and all Cortex+ and now Cortex Prime) had a Doom Pool that got fed based on your rolls.  It was the opposite of the 13th Age one, in that it was Escalating Tension.  And it lasted, it wasn't per battle.  It was what you rolled against as "the environment", so it got harder to do things, foes could take dice from it to use against you, and if it ever got to 2d12 the scene was over in some big way bad for the heroes that the GM would narrate.Along the same view of increasing tension, Dread is a horror RPG that uses Jenga for resolution - you either succeed or you die.Interesting how the ongoing ones are toward increased tension as you get closer to the end of the scenario, while the combat one is loads of initial tension that if you can withstand leads to a heroic breakthough and resolution.  I wonder if you could combine those two concepts.</blockquote>

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