Favorite Mechanics?

This x100. Sure it's not as involved as autismally stacking bonuses from 2 dozen different source, but it makes the game run soooo much smoother and more quickly.

physic phenomena and perils of the warp as a way to limit casters

not that it is a really balanced thing, but it is indeed fucking hilarious

I feel like Wild Magic sorcerer tried to do this in DnD 5e. It seems cool on paper, but in practice it always results in a bunch of WTF RANDUMB being injected into the game and only serves as a source of distraction rather than contributing anything useful to the game.

>liking that
My disgust can't be expressed with words and pictures alone

I love the charactercreation from classic traveller

Sorry man.

I really like the gunplay of Dark Heresy, it factors in hit location, hit chance and number of hits all with a single roll, after playing it I can't stand games now where you roll to hit and then roll to see where you hit (or worse, systems with called shots but no hit location). That being said, 2nd place goes to games where they don't worry about hit locations at all and let that come down to specific situations in the game

The least you can do is apologize for bringing up that abomination of a mechanic in Veeky Forums

Simplicity.

You need a really good justification why I'd need to roll more than 1, maybe 2 dice for an action.

Also explain why you are using a % system instead of a simple d10/20 when 90%/95% of the results are the same.

>t. FATE player

FATE uses like 4 dice.

And they are not even simple dice, they are FATE dice.

I mean, if you are doing special dice, you may as well make one that has the same distribution as your resolution mechanic.

A system where you can trade exp for sexual favors from the other players.

i like the archetype system pathfinder has; it's a decent way to enable loads of characters variations in a class based crunchfull enviroment.
it's pretty good when you can combine multiple "feature swaps".

>t. Numenera player
Mah nigga

Damn. Let me just look up 3 things in the books and roll 4 die and add some modifiers by way of apology, the way all roleplaying should be

Tracts from Legend are a massively improved version of the archetype system.

Advantage/disadvantage could easily gain granularity if you use more than one dice:

example: the game uses the sum of 3d6 as its standard roll for attacks, skill checks, everything.
Having advantage would be throwing one extra dice and picking the top 3, having disadvantage would be throwing one extra dice and picking the lower 3.
This way you could have more than one advantage and more than one disadvantage easily, you could let the DM decide a particular situation is worth a twice as big advantage/disadvantage, without ever having to open the book.

Stats from 1 to 10
Skills from 1 to 10

Add two together and roll k20 under to see if you succeed.
In combat it goes to who rolled higher while still within limit of their total score.

Half of success is your natural ability and the other is experience.

Also, advantages and disadvantages.

The same works for a d20, doofus. You just keep rolling more dice and pick one. They gain about the same amount of granularity.

I like systems that have a vive/virtue (CoD) advantage/disadvantage (Kult) edge/disadvantage? (Savage Worlds) thing going on. It's more characterization/rp than crunchy/a mechanic, but a good GM can and should incorporate them into the game imo.

I'm in love with the dogs in the vineyard conflict system.
Look it up, I don't want to describe it here. But its somewhat quick, easy to pick up, dramatic and dangerous.

Its only problem is that the more people you add, the worse it gets.

It does work best if you run it as between two characters with other people providing support via the aid rule

Mine would probably be the strings and conditions from monsterhearts, it's relatively simple but you can manage some pretty interesting social situations using them

I think that's easily fixed by rewriting the table for it. As a DM I'd probably rewrite some parts to be better in line with both the theme of my setting and the level of seriousness (In fact in my setting I already had made sorcerers into the Psyker of the setting, dangerous until trained)

Why are you even making a system if you don't even have a basic idea of what you want?

You are retarded user. He said re-rolling one of the 3d6, not all of them. That way you are substitution just a part of the roll, which allows for different degrees of advantage.

Re-rolling d20s and picking the higher substitutes the entirety of the roll as there's one one part of it (The single d20).

You sure can add granularity that way, but it's too overblown: The problem user had is that there's an abysmal step from a normal roll and one with advantage.

The magic system from Barbarians of Lemuria.

It's meant to reflect sword-and-sorcery fiction rather than the high fantasy default of D&D, so instead of casting a specific spell you describe what you want the effect to be (eg. 'I want to distract the guard by conjuring an illusion of a citizen crying out for help at the other side of the market square').

The GM than determines what 'Magnitude' of spell it is (Cantrip, First, Second, or Third) which determines its difficulty (against which you roll your Mind attribute and your Magician career rank, eg. 2d6 + 3 Mind + 2 Magician) and its cost in Arcane Power. You can reduce a spell's arcane power cost by imposing restrictive conditions (eg. can only be cast at night, requires a certain component) on it, making it chaper to cast but less often available.

It suits that particular system because magic isn't meant to be a science in the way it is with D&D, and reflects the speed and spontaneity of Sword and Sorcery fiction.

If I was going to run a Star Wars game, I've always thought I'd adapt this system rather than using lists of 'force powers' you often see in Star Wars game adaptations.

I really like the way that sounds.
Although it imposes more responsibility on the GM to maintain consistency with what magnitude he determines the spells to be, (and in the interest of fairness, a player WILL eventually draw complaint with what magnitude his/her spell was in comparison to another player's), encouraging more creative applications of magic and abilities from the players seems like a worthy trade-off.

Projects can be fun, brajj.

General d100 stat test mechanics with difficulity/skill/item induced modifiers from Warhammer Fantasy and later 40k rpgs. Fast, reliable, easy to muster and tweak/houserule if you find a part of it not-fitting.

I like a lot of the stuff New New WoD does (and by extension, older editions)

Virtue & Vice, Integrity/Humanity, Willpower, and the way they handle experience (beats into exp points) are the main things I can think of right now

>Also explain why you are using a % system instead of a simple d10/20 when 90%/95% of the results are the same.
we could inform you but it's more fun to see you continuing to post in ignorance.

Metacurrency.

Lack of skill in one thing limiting the skill in another if both are immediately applicable to the current situation. You might be a hella good swordsmen but if you're on a horse your ability to ride factors into how well you hit.

Allows you to keep skill ranks smaller and easier to handle quickly, and add additional 0 math difficulty options.

Turns have less than one second.
Stats and skills dictates the amount of time you use to do the action.

You tell you will do an action and after X turns you do it.
Every player/npc..... act at same time

>Simplicity.
>Also explain why you are using a % system instead of a simple d10/20 when 90%/95% of the results are the same.

Pick one.
% is the simplest one ever

I do have a decent idea what I want, and some rough plans written down.

I just figured I would ask about good mechanics people like in different games, so I could check them out and see if I find any ideas I want to incorporate into what I'm making.

Shadowrun 5e style bonuses.

"Does it raise your actual bonus to the roll, or increase the maxmum on the actual bonus to the roll"?

Rolemaster:
The species you're born as, and culture grew up in, as separate things you choose during chargen.

Rolemaster/GURPS/RuneQuest: Profession packages, that define minimum training in different areas to be trained in a given profession.

You might (depending on if your game has a steep power curve) have multiple levels of each package.

The light side/dark side point system from Star Wars: Edge of the Empire.

Basically, there is a pool of two sided (dark and light) tokens in the center of the table. You determine how many of these there are, and what side is up for each, via a dice roll at the beginning of the session.

Basically, at any time, a player can flip a light side token to gain some advantage to a roll, and the GM can flip a dark side token to give some kind of advantage to an enemy. Since they're dual sided, every time a player uses one it's giving it back for the GM to use against the party, whereas every time the GM uses one, it's giving back that advantage to the players.

There's other things they can do that I won't get into here, but that's the gist of it. It's a really neat system. It's also the only thing I actually like about that game

This is how Open Legend works.

I had forgotten about that. That is almost only "actions points" system that I really like.

Shadowrun's Luck system is also good though, having it be its own stat, and how you have to permanently reduce it if you're using it to cheat death.

It's three different mp pools, and they double up as HP so that powering abilities lowers your health.

Mechanics heavily flavor the game, so, really, you should say what type of gane you want to make before soliciting mechanics.

>Physical and Mental
>3 Pools
>Combined, they're your HP.
What's the third pool?

Might, Speed, and Intellect.

I'm not going to use all of the ideas here, merely read over and consider them.

But if you really want to know, I'm working on a a classless, level-based, point-buy character creation & advancement, heavily tactical skirmish combat, fantasy superpowers RPG.

It'll be a "SortOfLikeD&D" type game like FantasyCraft or d20Conan, but It's going to be less like D&D than either of those two are, and I'll be drawing inspiration from mechanics I liked from a wide variety of other games I've played, and the design will have a focus on numerical and effects balance that will be closer to 4e than to 5e or Pathfinder.

As for why?

I'm not nearly satisfied with the existing high powered fantasy supers RPGs I've tried (2e/3e/3.5/PF/4e/5e/FC/M&M3e/SW) and therefore want to make something that fills the same niche but is different.

I'll play many of the games on that list, and I do like some other games for other genres (d20 Conan or GURPS or RQ for Sword and Sorcery, Shadowrun for Medium Powered Urban Fantasy, GURPS for SciFi or Modern Superheroes, EotE (with minor houserules) for SciFi and StarWars.

A minimalist number of actual stats, with everything else being abilities (possibly tiered/ranked abilities, in some cases).

Consider FFT.
>PA/MA/SP/HP/MP/M.Ev/P.Ev
And then everything uses one of those.

If you have a stat, it should be for meaningful mechanical reasons, not merely for fluff differences, like Dex vs Con vs Str.

Just have a "Physical" stat, and if they want anything specialized on top of that, make it an ability they can take or not take.

But your question should more or less be answered between
and
Do you have any suggestions for me, now that I've spelled out where I'm leaning?

At this point, I've got a bunch of ideas I intend to draw from a variety of D&D editions, as well as other RPGs, from Ghosts of Albion, Shadowrun, Rolemaster, GURPS, EotE, True20, and d20 Conan; and many things I'm going to be considering from a wide variety of other games.

I love morality systems that are based around a character's personal values, like Scion's Virtues and Sufficiently Advanced's Core Values.

>My Values are Efficiency 2, Teamwork 1, and Justice 4.
>Modest bonus when acting efficiently, small bonus when working as part of a team, large bonus when enforcing justice.
>Corresponding penalties when acting in a way that opposes them.
>Opponents who know your Values can take advantage of them, and vice versa against recurring antagonists.
>Discourages murderhoboing by making it mechanically beneficial to play a character with a clear and reasonable moral code.

>But if you really want to know, I'm working on a a classless, level-based, point-buy character creation & advancement, heavily tactical skirmish combat, fantasy superpowers RPG.

you just used a lot words to give me no information on what your RPG is like. You described the tools you'll use to run it but you need to make sure they match the FLAVOR your going for

Is it about dungeon delving, sandbox open world, city building. Is it high lethality? low? is it Swords and Sandals or Swords and Sorcery? Is it Dark Fantasy? Noblebright?

if you have no idea what kind of game your trying to run I would suggest starting with that before choosing what mechanics you're going to use otherwise you're going to get 25% of the way into playtesting before you realize your game foundations don't feel right.

I thought you were asking about the kind of mechanical feel I'm going for, so that's what I focused on.

It's high-powered fantasy, with tactical combat. Will be more or less sandbox open world, not a ton of delving. Maybe a guilds & factions subgame focus. Not high lethality, but death will be possible.

"Fantasy Superpowers" covered the tone, I thought.

Not Sword and Sorcery, Not Sword & Sandals. Not Dark or Noblebright.

High Powered - The PCs will be capable of big effects, but they're hardly special or unique in that regard. The way they'll fit into the setting will be more like how shadowrunners fit in shadowrunners than like in the average D&D campaign where they're worlds above the power level of the city guard and military and whatnot.
Fantasy - There will be magic, fantasy creatures, etc.
Low-Tech - Aside from the magic stuff (which I'm working out, but will be widespread), tech is going to be mostly, 14th-15th Century stuff.
Society - Going to vary from country to country, but the political landscape will likely be more like the 18th century than the 11th century.
Religion - There will be religions, and there will be magic, but there will be no *Gods* in the D&D sense. The closest thing to gods will be like D&D style archdevils in terms of power. They exist - and in theory they can be beaten or killed.

There may be planar shenanigans or airships or something of that sort involved.

But I'm going to use this as my go-to replacement for campaign concepts where I would otherwise use D&D to run the game.

Does that answer your questions?

The idea of characters who are "mundane" and can proceed beyond the lower levels without learning abilities well beyond what people can do in real life, will simply be unsupported.

Everyone will get some kind of social/utility/knowledge abilities in addition to combat abilities; bought using a separate pool of points to guarantee some degree of roundedness rather than allowing you to build a guy who can only do one thing.

Since there is no /gdg/ and this seems to be the closest thing, I think I will ask here.
Basically, I want to make magic noticeably different than mundane action in my setting. I want to shy away from vancian casting if possible.

I've thought about making it more random. Maybe doing a wild magic/perils of the warp type thing. Possibly an increased chance of crits and fumbles. Or maybe it could use 1d20 instead of 3d6, or something upon these lines. Being more random would make it possibly more potent than any mundane solution, but at greater risk.

Another Idea is that you could effectively charge your spells. So if a weapon attack did d8 damage, then a spell would do d6 damage if uncharged, 2d6 if charged for a turn and maybe 3d6 if charged for even longer. This would likely be in tandem with more prevalent flat damage reduction, so that the higher potential would be worth the rounds spent casting the spell.

Or I could have magic be less controlled and more of some aid you ask for, where you would basically try to convince a magical being (possibly magical spirits that are just in everything) to intervene for you. It would help (or not) it whatever way it saw fit.

I'm also looking for more suggestions, since I'm sure their must be some better ideas floating out there.

>characters who are "mundane" and can proceed beyond the lower levels without learning abilities well beyond what people can do in real life, will simply be unsupported.
Because there's no way the Punisher (impressive though he may be) is of much use to the avengers fighting off alien hordes, or is the equal of Dr. Strange for fighting Dormammu.

Look at GURPS Thaumatology, Ghosts of Albion, Buffy, or (to a much lesser extent) Shadowrun.

Why not just make a gdg, if you want one?

Since OP would presumably also benefit from this information.
Although it might be better to just go make a /gdg/

>slapping random crap together without thinking of rule synergy or ease of use

Congrats OP this game is shaping up to be a real turd

Do you want it to have the resource management focus of DnD? You said it wont be big on dungeon delving, so, do you want less fights/day?

The health rules in Fate Core are pretty interesting.
Characters have stress boxes and consequence boxes, each of which is worth a certain amount of damage but not divisible, so they cannot survive more hits than they have boxes even if it's 1 damage per hit.

How do you handle character advancement?

I don't like just magically levelling up or just buying new abilities with new build points.

What do you like?

I'm a fan of point buy systems rather than class based things, though I would like to try the narrative system FATE uses. Though I'll probably never get any of my players to try it.
If I recall, if you've already ticked off the highest Shift box and take a 1 Shift attack you get taken out right?

I don't have a better idea which is why I'm asking for advice.

Came here to say this. My two favorite examples of it done well are Marvel Heroic Roleplaying and Barbarians of Lemuria. They're obviously designed from the ground up with their respective meta-currencies in mind, and it's implemented fantastically.

I ran it through AnyDice and this is what I got:

anydice.com/program/9b6e

It's pretty nice, actually. You definitely get diminishing returns after a certain number of d6es added to the roll, but I kind of like that.

Why would I need your system when all of my desires are covered between FATE and GUMSHOE? Don't stitch together a Frankensystem out of good pieces, pick an end goal and build towards it.

The mechanics I like most in horror games do fuck-all when I want to play collaborative drama.

all opposed action being some form of contested check on two dice, both you and opponent roll a dice and add "skill" in the thing you are opposing each other in, the difference between them is the amount one does better than the other or the damage in combat

so you roll 2d10 + 1 for having a good sword + 2 for practicing swords, they roll 2d10 + 4 for being very good at swords, you get 6, they get 5, you deal 1 damage (+1 from your good sword)

so archery becomes archery skill vs enemy dodge, with bonus damage from how strong your bow is (so long as you have sufficient strength to use it fully), magic blasting becomes magic vs dodging OR counter magic etc etc

Rifts attack/parry combat. It's opposed rolls to hit (for melee). Gives a sense of actually fighting someone in combat.

Point buy systems where sticking to a theme tends to be cheaper then branching out.

The 40k systems are a good example of this, where players start with a handful of 'attributes'. Skills and feats that belong to these attributes are cheaper to level up.
Cypher(Numenera) is similar but different. You pick a 'type'(class) which gives you access to a broad pool from which you can pick. You have spend experience points on a few different things as you level up. Alongside this you have a 'focus' which is a pre-determined theme that gives you set powers. The selection of a focus is completely agnostic to the type you picked.

Basically, it's cool when a levelling system allows you to do a lot, but it's best to have some way to keep characters distinct.

Don't do this. Rolling against a static target allows for much faster resolution.

all actions happen in initiative order, but all actions at the same initiative happen at the same time

you can choose to delay your action (even till next turn to go before someone with more initiative) and spend some form of "Points" to react to an incoming action before it happens even without delaying (but points are limited, dont regenerate in combat and more are required to react to actions with initiative higher than your own)

What about Red Markets' system, where the target number is on one of the two dice you roll?

Defense scales much slower than offense.

So your lvl 20 can kill an army on their own, but a mook they dont see could stab them and kill them if they were sufficiantly distracted/didnt have any reactions left/were tied down or unable to move and dodge

Gives a real good low magic feeling while allowing high magic effects commonly.

Makes high level play tense as shit and dependent on reactions to dodge/deflect/reduce enemy attacks, wizards all need counterspells and damage controll out the wazoo because even a small fireball can kill the smartest oldest human easily.

Not familiar with that, could you go into more depth?

Every roll is 2d10, one black, one red. If black is higher than red, you win! Skills are pools of points to be spent pre-emptively to add to your black. Crit successes are even doubles, crit fails are odd doubles.

It works so long as not all actions are opposed actions. So like, you have to "spend" an action in the action economy to turn an action into an opposed action, otherwise it hits your static defense.

So you are attacked by two people much weaker than yourself. You spend your action to turn one of the attacks into an opposed check, beating it by a lot (knocking the attack out the way and dealing massive damage to the attacker), while you cant turn the second into an opposed check, so it just goes against your static "armour" and deals damage to you.

It could be social attacks, being on the end of multiple people arguing against you and not being able to reply to them all, martial attacks and knocking away the first spearpoint with your sword and killing the attacker only for the second to go straight through your side, magic attacks where you turn one spell back on its user but the second they had hidden behind it hits you full in the face.

Its pretty good but only for low density or highly abstracted encounters, and still slows things down a bit.

Failing Forward. Basically, rolling below the Difficulty isn't just a boring failure, it moves the adventure along, creates some new obstacle, or costs the character a meaningful resource. Missing with an attack doesn't just mean you do nothing, it leaves you open for a counter-attack. Failing a knowledge check doesn't mean you know nothing, maybe you're misinformed about a subject and should act accordingly. Failing to pick a lock doesn't just waste time, you might break your lockpicks, trigger an alarm, or draw unwanted attention to yourself.

In a similar vein, Degrees of Success. Matching the Difficulty should be a narrow success with limited gains, while exceeding it by a huge margin should have spectacular results. Maybe your attack hit a vital point, or you know something incredibly useful that could help you with your current problem, or you pick the lock in a third the time you'd normally have to.

Basically, don't just have a binary pass/fail situation. Reward players for exceptionally good rolls, and make their lives more difficult for exceptionally poor rolls. This is probably the only thing I actually like about Dungeon World.

If you don't mind me asking what do you find good about FATE?

If I'm reading the rules right to invoke the aspect of the "Pit of Sharks" and toss someone in it I'd need to spend a fate point which seems completely bonkers to me. IMO solving a problem should be more about being clever than simply spending fate points.

Gotten to the point I cant be fucked to care.

If I get a chance to play, I will strap on my big boy britches and get down to business if I do not have to worry about people bitching about mechanics again.

That's not really how Fate works, at all. You don't need to spend a point to interact with the environment, but you can spend a point to get a bonus for interacting with a relevant piece of it. You could even get a bonus for free if it seems obvious that the element should be a benefit.

Since it's obvious that you've never made a game, let me explain something to you.

A well designed game is one where the creator threw random shit against a wall until something stuck and they figured out what they wanted their game to be.

Then after numerous trials and rewrites, then you'll get a CRB that is good enough to show others.

>Legend
My nigga

Still sad that game's development is essentially dead. It had a lot of cool bits going on with it.

This.

Also
>Assuming absolutely every suggested mechanic in this thread will see implementation, without any concern for rule synergy or gameplay.

I mean, really? This is called canvassing. It's simply one part of the research I'm doing for my project.

I'm looking for ideas to *CONSIDER*. Things I might not have considered if I were just brainstorming on my own; or things I wouldn't think of, for a lack of experience with the game it comes from.

>D&D Style Resource management?
I'm inclined to make the limited resources more easily replenished, for sure.

>Don't Like levels or point-buy
Those are the two real options. You can obfuscate things with tech-trees, like EotE I guess.

I'm leaning towards using both. When you level up, your numbers (which all your abilities will make use of) you will first improve your numbers, and then spend points on the new abilities you might want.

>Why would I want to play your game? I can do everything with FATE and GUMSHOE.
Well, neither game is to my tastes. I prefer a less narratively abstracted system.
>Don't stitch together a Frankensystem out of good pieces, pick an end goal and build towards it.
Like you can't build towards an end goal while borrowing ideas from other games that would help you accomplish that goal.

I will keep this in mind, as a possible approach, if it seems like the characters you would want to build in order to be effective end up being too samey through optimization.

That's an interesting idea, though it doesn't really fit what I'm going for with this particular project.

This sounds odd.I will hunt down a copy of Red markets and read through it to see what I think when I read it in more depth.

Not sure how I feel about "Failing Forward" - should really be called "Failing Onward" as forward implies progress towards your actual goal, but I had been considering Degrees of Success as a possible mechanic.

Who are you responding to?

Here, I'll keep on my OP hat, since it seems many of the posts could be interpreted as being by me, but are not.

These are my posts.

Many of the ideas mentioned that I haven't responded to sound interesting, but I wasn't planning to actually try to steer this thread, simply get people to discuss mechanics they liked, so I could look into the ones that seemed potentially a good fit for me, and other people could hear about good mechanics they might like as well.

But since people have asked my views, as well as stupidly implied I'm just going to grab every suggested mechanic and slap them all together (especially the alternate approaches to the same mechanic!) without any thought or design or consideration or testing; These posts are actually by me; and I guess I will just namefag for the rest of the thread.

As for me trying to sell other people my game?

That seems like a task for after I have something good and playable and at least mostly finished.

I'll tell ya hwat

I'm a real fan of rock-paper-scissors and the simplicity of its balance.
On the very remote other hand, if there's anything I despise in the realm of mechanics, it's the metagame surrounding picking "correct" build options and avoiding the so-called trap options.

So OP, what is the game about?

It'll be designed for what I typically run with some edition of D&D these days, because I'm simply not sufficiently satisfied with any D&D for my purposes.

But to sum up:

High-Magic, High-Powered Medieval Fantasy Sandbox Adventure, with a bit more focus on the interplay between factions, rather than on delving.

I do agree, to some extent, that the quality of mechanics ranging between trap options and awesome options is undesirable. That's my main gripe with Pathfinder.

Not such a fan of RPS. Not enough depth for me