Finding a good mechanic

[Fatespinner]

Hi all,

I have been reading a lot of rpg mechanics lately and tried to think about a good mechanic, but I can't decide what might fullfill what I want. I have a clear list of goals:

- Have a mechanic that forces, description like in WUSHU.
- Have a mechanic that tells you your level of success, like in Houses of the Blooded.
- It should have an interessting mechanic for advantages and disadvantages, like in Agon.
- It should not use more then 6d6.
- It should scale well, from normal Human to gods.
- It should be simple, a child should be able to learn it fast.

Till now I haven't found a mechanic that satisfies me, does anybody of you have a good idea? My main goal is to use the system for Cyberpunk/Transhuman games and cyberware, advantages and an interesting combat are important.

My current ideas go strongly into the direction of Houses of the Blooded, but the game becomes a bit strange when you can have many wagers. Another thougth train goes to octaNe and yet another to Dread (Jenga).

[Fatespinner]

After re-reading ... In Spaaace! and thinking about token effort and Dread, I came up with a new attempt to create a nice mechanic.

The GM sets a hidden difficulity by betting a number of cards. For a standard action the GM should reveal this number, for a combat it should stay hidden to make things more interessting and chaotic. Now the player bets cards from his card pool and hopes to beat the amount of cards the GM bet. If the player has less cards, he looses and gain all cards that he and the GM risked, if the player wins, the GM gets the cards. Traits allow a player to reduce his risks, if he has an applicable trait he can "save" a number of cards equal to the rating of the trait. It should be possible to use more then one trait, but all traits beside the first one, save only one card.

There are some rules to how many cards you can bet. First the maximum number of cards is limited, by the power level. Second you get to bet one card per detail/description that you give, like in WUSHU. Every card the you have bet more then the opposition is a success level, which work like in HotB.

There are still some issues open and I have no clue about the number of cards each player startes with and so on. Also I am not sure how number of cards balance and if combat has enough randomness.

[Fatespinner]

Well by the ... In Spaaace! rules you loose your whole bet only in case of a tie, which should also apply here. Normally you would only loose one token/card.

[Fatespinner]

Well, after a few more work hours and the subway, I have came up with a few modifications. Token Effort looks nice and I would give the GM a number of tokens, that is calculated similar like 3:!6 does it. Thse tokens may be used to present obstacles to the players. Conflicts would be handled also like in 3:16. Tokens have to be divided up into the obstacle level and the number of "hit point" tokens.
To make the combat a bit more inpredictable the GM can roll a d6 telling him, how many tokens he bets. The obstacle rating is then the max number that he can roll.

If you want to spice things up you can give the players no token and instead let them draw cards from a stack. Nothing changes, but if a player draws the fourth ace, then something bad happens to him..probable death. This would requiere that tokens/cards are discarded after the bet.

[Vulpinoid]

I thought I'd add something in here, even though you seem to be having a marvelous time asking and answering your own questions in this thread.

But first an aside...

It's interesting...in this part of the world I've been grammatically corrected a number of times by people who have told me...

"A mechanic is someone who look after mechanisms. What you should be saying is that you're looking for the right mechanism to accomplish these goals..."

...but everywhere else, the term mechanism seems to suffice.

Besides, we have far too many arguments around here about the difference between real world definitions and forge definitions. No point starting another one. I'm sure we all know what you mean.

Have you actually played with any of the mechanism you've encountered? Or have you merely read them? Quite often the visceral interaction with dice (or other randomisers) and social context can bring about a very different feel merely reading the text. I thought I had AGON pretty straight in my mind until I actually played a decent game of it, 3:16 was similar (seeming really simplistic on the surface but revealing some nice subtlety once it got going).

Similarly, you've indicated that you want the mechanisms to interact in such a way that they "force description" and produce "interesting combat". So my next questions may seem a bit oblique, but they're just trying to get at things from a different perspective before I start my traditional barrage of ideas...

How detailed do you want your characters (front loaded with heaps of detail before they enter play, developed through the course of story/game interaction, deliberately vague)?

What sort of play experience do you want people to get from your game?

If you can answer these you'll probably be on your own way to choosing the right mechanisms for the job...

Just my 2 cents.

V

[Fatespinner]

Hi,

thanks for your answer. Well I did answer my questions a bit myself. As I said I have worked a bit with different mechanics. What I need is a bit more of new ideas and different perspectives. It is very easy to run in circles and not to see the obvious.

I have played Houses of the Blooded and the wager  mechanisms worked great. I hope I can try octaNe this weekend with some friends. Concerning Agon and 3:16 I share your thoughs. I have only read them, but by reading both games some concepts became very clear, that were also confusing me with DRYH. I love the way how conflicts are handled and how "adventures" are designed. I don't like games with my prepaterion work and both Agon and 3:16 show easy ways how to create a good story out of a simple structure and how you can make "winning" an interessting part of the game.

Well the "force description" thing... it goes a bit hand in hand with the interesting combat that I mentioned. Short and vivid descriptions are fun, the players should feel that they can influence the world with their words. Combats with jumping, hiding, shooting and running often fun, as long as you don't have to think about modifiers. Just say what you think is cool and then roll to see how far it helps you to get your goal. But the descriptions shouldn't be lenghty nor to short. The game should still feel fluent. So 1 to 6 details or facts seem to be good.

As I said I had a very good experience with Houses of the Blooded, there the players had a lot of fun to tell what happens after the die roll.

So lets see how I can answer your questions.

For me characters don't have to be very detailed. A list with stuff, that they can do and can't do is more then enough. I really like Hero Wars skills, fate Aspects and Unknown Armies skills. So just write down a handfull of stuff that your character can do and what defines him and then go playing. Also adding stuff during play is very neat.

The game should feel fast and fun. It doesn't need to be realistic, adding a hit location table is simple. Because the main setting I am looking at is cyberpunk and transhuman. Fast action, cool scenes and strange locations.

[Adam Dray]

The only way to force description is to tie a player's description to his stats, and then make his description important to the player who has to respond to him. Vincent Baker talks about how this works in Dogs in the Vineyard and why it makes the description vital to play. It is hard to keep playing if a player doesn't describe in detail what his character is doing, because you have to determine whether or not you will Block/Dodge, Reverse the Blow, or Take the Blow.