How would you guys implement a light, "preparation stage" mechanic to an RPG system?

Just make it so they can only have 1 such effect at a time

I'm not really talking about just narrating the PCs hunting some game and cooking some meat and asking for a Wis check or something to see how many "rations worth of food" they gather, I'm talking about a deeper system designed around preparing the players for upcoming dangers by getting boosts and buffs before the actual conflicts start, instead of using their items and spells during the encounters.

Instead of having hard stats, the characters could tailor their bonuses before each challenge, and the GM could introduce complications based on that planning.

That could work, maybe something like an "intoxication meter" for potions or "fullness meter" for foods and drinks.

Play World of Warcraft, then. Fuck.

Yeah, having mechanical benefits to in-game actions is such a non-traditional tabletop RPG concept.

Like 4e rests but less abstract?

I still maintain that most systems have tools for this, you just need to work them in to the sort of game you're running. I also maintain that I wouldn't implement this, because I tend to balance my encounters around the idea that the party will be using up the spells and items they have on hand, and giving them the chance to slap on some resting buffs means not just tuning that, but possibly rethinking how that impacts entire adventures.

>I still maintain that most systems have tools for this, you just need to work them in to the sort of game you're running

That's pretty much what the OP is asking for though, tips on making this work.

>I also maintain that I wouldn't implement this

Okay, but OP would, so that's why he made the thread.

I guess, but with more options. Instead of just "should I use my healing surges or not", the player would have the option of brewing and cooking things that would benefit him in the near future. So maybe they get a beating in some dungeon and have to retreat to lick their wounds. The party then thinks about what made the perils of that specific dungeon hard to deal with, and prepare themselves accordingly, using whatever resources they have at hand, to try and tackle the challenge once again.

On a separate note I was wondering if anyone had some monster hunter style crafting list for monster parts. I wanted to run a campaign where all the players gear would come from the monsters they kill but putting stuff like that together is harder than I thought.

Check Torchlight, IIRC Darkest Dungeon's system was based on it.

You mean Torchbearer? If so, I have. It has a really great camp mechanic indeed. It would be my go-to fantasy system if the "conflict" rules weren't so weird.

>Okay, but OP would

Then OP needs a lot more than this thread can readily provide because the question is deeply entangled with the particulars of the system being run, and the nature of the experience OP wants to create.

Yeah, Torchbearer, by bad.

Literally all that information is in the OP and in the rest of the thread. There's no need to be so grump, user. If you don't like these types of mechanics you can just not talk about them.

It's a really neat system. I like all the different sub-systems working together, like the resource rules, the inventory mechanics, the camping phase, etc. Too bad most rules end up tied to the conflict system, which is too weird for me. It's the same with Mouse Guard; the results of the conflict aren't really clear until it has ended, so narration has to be kept as vague as possible during the running of the scene, and the cards encourage heavy meta thinking when everything else about the system doesn't. I don't know why Luke Crane keeps doing this, when it clearly pushes a lot of people away from his systems.

Luckily Burning Wheel has much more refined conflict rules with immediate consequences during each exchange. The problem in hacking together a different system into Torchbearer is that much of the rules are too attached to its conflict systems, and the whole thing would break down if you poked it around too much.

OP literally does not say what system is being run or what the tone and character of the game is like. Never. Not once. 5e is mentioned, but not stated as the base system.

I don't dislike these mechanics, but I think the question, as asked, is redundant in most tabletop systems. I think it's coming from a place of vidya gaeming (also stated in the OP) where the presence of these mechanics is something of such a totally different nature that it's actually productive to discuss the underlying motive for even including such a thing, and the hows and whys of them possibly being a poor fit for a more medium with more opportunity for improvisation. Which makes "don't" a legitimate answer to the question of "how".

>The problem comes along when they do everything they can to abuse the system.

The best systems are those which expect players attempting to abuse the system and punish them for making wrong assumptions.

For example, each player may be only able to "prepare" in one way, if the preparation comes in the form of a full meal to fill their stomachs.
Let's say the elf has the ability to make the party a salad of sylvan grove greens, magical spices and nuts, and lemon juice. If a character fills their belly by eating just this meal, they gain improved night vision.
The fighter instead opts to eat a hearty minotaur tongue stew with shallots, fingerling potatoes, and blue carrots. Eating this stew grants him +2 damage.

Their adventure takes them into a forest searching for X, but their search takes them far longer than they thought, and the forest gets incredibly dark very fast. When they get ambushed in the dark, only the fighter is forced to hold a torch in one hand instead of his shield since he's the only one who decided not to go with night vision.

OP here.

I didn't talk about specific systems because I'm asking for general ideas that might be applied to most systems, or complete systems that already have this mechanic built into them.

And why would a preparation stage system be redundant to tabletop gaming? Shadowrun has lots of this when you're doing leg work before each run, and it works pretty well.

Like I said hereI'm thinking of a system where the players gather information, or find out the hard way, about the obstacles they might have to face in the very near future, so they prepare themselves accordingly.

So instead of characters relying solely on their innate stats and learned spells, they will buff themselves between each obstacle to have some sort of advantage over it.

That's exactly what I'm thinking. It could even be coupled with what was asking for, to make up a game in which the party could go on hunting adventures before a big mission to get ingredients and crafting materials for their upcoming challenges.

Id say take a look at the camp skills from Darkest Dungeon. I think different classes had different things they could do and there was a level of allocating time of the rest to these actions.
Set a hard limit on the economy of actions like a pool of time points or something and each action having a value that is allocated to this.

4e had some classes (wizards) and some feats (swordmage spellbooks, some weird martial ones for all AEDU) that could 'swap out' powers after rests, which is kinda a big deal in 4e.

If your game is narrative enough to get serious modifiers from the tone of food or banter, maybe look at Masks, the teen superhero RPG? Damage conditions re all things like being disheartened, angry, insecure or otherwise not thinking straight, and interacting with the rest of the party let's you heal them or trade them around as everyone gets into little dialogues expressing or defining how they feel about each other.

That sounds neat, I'll definitely check it out.

I was thinking that the "create advantage" action in Fate could also be used similarly, creating temporary aspects for the players to use during upcoming scenes.

Isn't this literally just roleplaying?

Anything is roleplaying, but if it's not in the game, it's not in the game.

If there aren't actually any mechanics behind something, even if narratively-based mechanics, then it has literally no bearing on the game whatsoever.

I’m writing a Memento system for a game I’m working on right now.

It’s a trinket that a character can mess with between sessions. So when the group re-convenes, the character has been fishing or reading or working out or whatever.
Mementos level based on use and have better effects the more they’re used. Pretty basic, but I think it’s a fun add-on.

That sounds pretty interesting. How exactly do they benefit the characters using them?

Well I’m still working on it, but some of them are used to find, create or craft materials (fishing poles, cooking pots, medicinal beakers) as well as a few that bolster certain dice rolls (bodybuilding gives a boost to power while moving, pushing or pulling heavy things).

What stops a half decent GM from putting something thing?
It's not particularly difficult.

The point of the thread is precisely to discuss ways of doing that, no one's saying it's hard.

The whole benefit to playing a pen and paper instead of a video game is the GM isn't a program, and can react to things like this. You don't need this written into rules, it a character does something like this react to it

By that logic then we could jus throw away all rules systems and just use coin tosses to decide the outcome of an action.

Mechanics exist for a reason; sure you can always improvise, but if something is going to be prominently featured in a game you should flesh it out.

There's a reason you use different systems for different types of games.

I was writing a game where characters would spend a week in downtime brewing potions, training their minions, etc and made that stuff valuable in the game, so they would actually think to do it.

Not him, but I think it's kind of funny you're being sarcastic.

If you want to give your players a chance to "prepare for upcoming dangers by getting boosts and buffs before actual conflicts start instead of using their items and spells during their encounters" then do so.

For most dnd systems it's as simple as saying they get x amount of time or rounds to buff or sneak about before the fight.

You don't need a set of rules for this. The mechanics suggested in the OP also have "over-world" or "exploration" mechanics while traditional PnP has a GM.

By your logic you should just play a video game.

Depending on how much you're going to flesh out a prominent gimmick like a camp or inventory system. Different strokes for different folks, but it sounds like you're just advocating red tape for something that dosen't need it by default. You said it yourself, there's a reason you use different systems for different types of games.

>You don't need a set of rules for this.

You don't need a set of rules for anything, but having them adds depth to the game. It's not hard to understand why someone would want to implement a mechanic into a ruleset.

If you want your game to have a focus on hunting and cooking monsters, you should really think of mechanics that reflect that, otherwise your game won't be about that at all.

That made zero sense.

>it sounds like you're just advocating red tape for something that dosen't need it by default

What is the default? The point is making these mechanics central to the game. Of course you're not going to need them in a game that isn't about that, so you'd just hand wave it and improvise some rulings whenever it comes up, but if you're going to have it featured prominently in your game, it's neat to come up with your own mechanics for it. It's the entire reason rules exist in games, I don't see why the idea bothers you.

What if the system was a GM only system that the players know about, but impacts things that are coming next that they don’t know about.

Maybe something like this very basic idea:
>GM has scenario that the players have collected some clues about, like a group of bandits in a trap-filled lair they made in an old fort in the woods.
>Players elect to prepare for the encounter, and the GM prepares five questions: who, what, where, when, and why.
>Players are given the five questions that each have theee multiple choice questions.
>Then based on the score, the DM adjusts the difficulty of the encounter to reflect the players’ correct preparation.

This is just spitballing, but this way the players never know that their assumptions going in mean anything until it happens. So if a cult was the real threat and the bandits were just gathering funds, the who question guess was wrong because the players missed several clues about the cult in the small town they traveled through. That question means the bandits, instead of being caught off-guard, have set up an ambush or have a mystical buff on them.

That would be a really neat way to make an investigative game; make like a bunch of NPCs and factions with conflicting motivations, and give the PCs reasons to suspect everyone and everything might be the correct choice, so they have to really weight their options when preparing and planning.

OP just wanted a suggestion.

Grognards react like it's an abuse of the conceptual purity of RPGs, and say "go away, gamer".

More options? In my elfgames? Not today!

Is that a 5e feat? It looks pretty great. UA?

I took the idea from an investigation game (I forget the name) where you answer the questions after the investigation phase of the game and hope to be right. I just applied it to The Village of Honmet module, which was the first to come to mind for some reason.

Feats UA

It's not really more options, now, is it? Crunchy subsystems are not about options, they're about limiting the game for mechanical balance. I personally think the user who said "just tell them they can only have one mechanical preparation ready beforehand". Give your players a clear and obvious boost (You sharpen your sword? Okay, increase the damage die size one step) but don't define what they actually have to do when you can just rule on the spot and make the game better as a result.

Creating subsystems means referencing them in play, which is a drag, and also disincentivizes your players from being creative.

Nice. Maybe something like that, but instead of long rest, you could do it every short rest but with lesser benefits, and the benefits could be specific to the recipe you're using. Maybe each different meal could have a main "ingredient", with a cost, like a spell's material components. The party could either buy the components, or go hunting for them in the wild.

>Creating subsystems means referencing them in play, which is a drag, and also disincentivizes your players from being creative.

So every single system should be a rules-lite narrativist game?

I said subsystems, user, and in this case for an overly-specific set of situations. Why does it have to be all or nothing with you? Can't we have mechanics for shit that'd be uncreative anyways, like resting, and keep the bits where you get to show what kind of character you're playing free from that? Would you be cool if the game had a social system that worked by forcing you to make checks in a chain so the GM could prep the whole thing? There's room for improv in TTRPGs, and that's what sets them apart.

>Why does it have to be all or nothing with you?

I ask you the exact same thing. Why does having a system for cooking meals to get buffs bother you so much?

If OP wanted to improvise during play, he wouldn't have made this thread in the first place. You're just being unnecessarily grump by barging in and telling everyone else that coming up with homebrew rules for anything that you specifically think isn't interesting is bad form and they should do it your way.

Maybe you're confusing me with a different user. I've only posted twice in this thread and none of it was grumping, just stating my position on the matter.

I think Op's better off creating a standard (Ingredients worth this much gives this level of buff) but that the specifics should be up to the player. IE, choosing what the meal affects, for example.

More options for those dipping outside 5e, but still in the D&D spirit

And another

Damn, these are 10/10 finds, user. Thanks a lot.

Be welcome

Let's eat, drink, and be merry
for tomorrow we die

I don't really see how this would be incompatible with 5e