Cute/Clever Mechanics Swap Meet

[Sean]

Not to mention Wyrd....

(in re: marble mechanics)

[Daniel Solis]

I absolutely LOVE that trust mechanic and I might even adapt it for Take.

I've been looking for a way to use the traditional latin american dice game Perudo as a method of task resolution, also for Take. The gist of that game is that you have a set of dice that you roll in secret. You take a peek and announce the result. Other players can attempt to call your bluff and if they're right, they win. If they're wrong, you win. Or something like that anyway. It's basically the same social dynamic as poker but with dice instead of cards.

The way I had it working for Take was that players could declare their dice results and those declarations would be taken as fact unless someone attempted to call it. If proven right in their accusation, they get some kind of reward. If incorrect, some kind of penalty. It never really got developed beyond that because I had trouble working out the probabilities of die pools and thus couldn't give advice on what were "safe" or "risky" results to declare.

[Rich Forest]

I absolutely LOVE that trust mechanic and I might even adapt it for Take.

If some variant of it works for you, feel free to use it. I have just that mechanic but don't have the rest of a game for it right now. I'd love to put it in something, but I don't know that I have the time/energy to do say, a "heist" game right--well researched, etc.--which is why I had considered it for an "angle" on D&D style fantasy.

Rich

[DevP]

For fast gunplay action:
* If you have a clip on you, you create a stack of poker chips to represent it, 1 chip per bullet. If you have a gun in hand, you put that stack of chips in your buggerin' hands.
* Red chips = hits, white chips = misses; your skill & the gun type determine the red:white ration in the stacks.
* Each side has a steel bowl or something. To "fire", you throw your chips from the top into the enemy bowl. For resolution, the targetted enemy randomly draws a chip from the bowl, where red = hit and white = miss.
* The action happens in Real Time. (More or less.)

[ADGConscience]

The Trump Card.

Players can use this once a session to get around the Whiff Factor in D&D and the like.

Alternately, you can add what I did, for formerly dysfunctional groups: playing the Trump card with your character on it means that he/she "claims" the spotlight in a situation where their "professional" skills can be expected to be important.

EDIT: Oh, and narrate their success if they use it for one.

[Daniel Solis]

A quick one before the forum goes into hibernation:

I dare someone to build a system around the Aztec calendar.

[Shreyas Sampat]

I was thinking about that earlier today.

[Harlequin]

A game in which the traits on the sheet are assigned specific dice.

Not specific die types.  Specific dice.  "My purple d20" or "chipped blue d8" as examples.  A friend of mine has a misprinted d6 (w/ pips) which runs 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7.  Pirate dice, foam animal dice, my d30 with the letters of the alphabet plus "wild"s, and so forth.

This featured into a robots-themed example game I gave in the bricolage discussion, which might (yeah right) someday happen, but it's a cute nod of the head to dice fetishism even taken by itself.  C'mon, you know you all do it.

Weirdoes who like to have all their dice matching may get special rules... or may be told to get stuffed.

-Eric

[timfire]

I've thought about using the Pool's mechanic, or some variation of it, for a 'Hope' mechanic. I might use it in my next game, or maybe not. I'm trying to decide if it'll fit, both thematically and mechanically.

[Jason Morningstar]

I was thinking about an effective and low maintenance way to simulate factors that would impact a collective group of player characters, like hunger or illness.  This led to some cogitation on the nature of individual attributes in a group setting.  Attributes (strength, agility, &c) are often called on in play to resolve specific physical challenges most of the time.  Why do they have to be static?  Assuming every character is reasonably competent, why not have them fluctuate – allowing characters to have an off day or be totally in the zone.  This can provide dramatic complications and successes for characters who, were these factors static, could count on steady success or failure, session after session.

The solution I came up with is to use a "group deck" of cards that players use to collectively form their characters current state of being.  They choose which cards to take, and the cards change from session to session.  You could have a damage/injury mechanic requiring swapping out cards.

Two cool added benefits – your entire "character sheet" is six cards, and each of those cards has additional fun stuff for your character to do printed on it – an action for you to incorporate into the session.

So imagine a card:  It has a number on it (from 2 to 5) and some printed text like "JUST KEEP POUNDING ON IT – repair or maintain a balky piece of technology" or "LOOK WHAT I FOUND – scrounge up a valuable or useful item" – hooks for the player to do something special in play.

[Daniel Solis]

A quick one before the forum goes into hibernation:

I dare someone to build a system around the Aztec calendar.

Wow. A year changes so much. Since working full time at an ad agency, I haven't had the time to devote to something as intense as a role-playing game. Instead, I've shifted much of my game design attention to making board games on the weekends. I ended up abstracting the aztec calendar for a board game called Tiamat. (On my new game site, Luchacabra.com.)

[Doug Ruff]

Character development through boasting.

Each player starts with no skills or abilities of note. They take turns to frame scenes with obstacles, and then engage in a boasting auction for how they are going to overcome the challenge.

Each boast must demonstrate some skill or ability.

"I'm going to beat up the kobold in single combat."
"That's nothing, I'm going to kick his arse with both hands tied behind my back."
"You think that's hard? I'm going to seduce the kobold into letting us past..."

Each time they up the stakes, they have to throw a (playing) card on to the table. The winner gets to challenge the hand of cards that's been built up from the auction - through some resolution mechanic that I haven't come up with yet.

If you win the challenge, you get to record the feat you boasted about on your sheet - this becomes a usable skill in future conflicts (but to increase the skill, you have to boast something more difficult next time.)

Winner is the player who gets to retire with the most outlandish boasts.

Shit, that's nearly a complete game. I'll write it up some time between drafts of Schrodinger's War.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Trust: ... They also have a set of relationships—one relationship with each other member of the party. Each is listed as "Trust fill in other PC's name here." ... But here's the thing. Whenever a player wants, he can spend those Trust dice to penalize or cancel out the actions of the other player his character has a Trust relationship with.

You've just described the core of Mountain Witch there, written by Tim Kleinert of timfire. It's a most excellent game.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

The Trump Card.

Players can use this once a session to get around the Whiff Factor in D&D and the like.

GURPS has the Lucky spectrum that gives you this. I think both of these are kinda weak, though: what you really want to do is have an economy between players. E.g. everyone starts off with two coins. The give a +5 to anyone when you give it, but you can't use it on yourself. Therefore, the thing to do is a) give everyone else +5 when they need it so b) you can jump into conflict so they can help you out. It's a karma system.

Alternately, you can add what I did, for formerly dysfunctional groups: playing the Trump card with your character on it means that he/she "claims" the spotlight in a situation where their "professional" skills can be expected to be important. [...] and narrate their success if they use it for one.

Why not just always do that, trump card or no? Then have Trump only work when two players want the same scene.

[timfire]

You've just described the core of Mountain Witch there, written by Tim Kleinert of timfire. It's a most excellent game.

Yeah, Joshua, you probably didn't notice the date, that was from a year ago. I used Rich's idea when I wrote MW for the IGC competition, which came, like... a week or two after the Birthday forum.

Rich deserves some credit, it was his basic idea.