In the spirit of "Tell me about... your unfinished game ideas"...

What's a clever, cute, interesting unfinished mechanic that you're rather fond of, but that you haven't put into an actual game yet?

Here's my contribution: For John Woo-esque gun opera: Start with a 6-die pool, and "shoot" some or all of the pool on your actions. When the pool is empty, you must "reload", which uses your turn and resets your pool to six.

When not in combat, "shooting" vs. "reloading" could have implications about who gets scene framing power; "reloading" in this circumstance might entail a break in the action, a "quiet" character driven scene, before you dive back into the carnage.

-Hans

the random walk: everytime you roll, your base score either goes up or down by one, with two boundaries (upper and lower), the option to increase step size (+-2 instead of +-1) and different starting points. Might end up as either a relationship mechanic, personality mechanic or some kind of fate stuff, where every time you use it brings you closer to one end-point or the other, though _in theory_ this might run forever.

Hm, I like this idea.

Trust: For a heist game, or maybe for my take on the classic unscrupulous D&D tomb robbing adventuring party. Characters have a set of more or less standard stats of some kind to represent their abilities, particularly their thieving or dungeon delving abilities. 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.” Each score starts with a rating of 0. During the adventure, whenever someone is in trouble, either failing a roll or perhaps before trying a difficult roll, another player can say “I’ll help,” which automatically gives the troubled PC a bonus die. It also raises the Trust score between those two characters by one point (on both of their sheets). These points don’t come out of a pool or anything, they’re just granted automatically. The GM cannot interfere with the establishment of Trust directly, cannot modify Trust scores, cannot have any direct effect on them.

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. This way, much like in so many heist movies, at the end of the job someone can use those dice, screw over his party members, take the goods, and get away with them.

If you get away with the goods, you win.

The GM’s job is to push the characters hard, by setting up challenges and twists that are impossible to overcome without establishing Trust, so by the end of the adventure, the players have built up a bunch of varied Trust scores, a web of Trust. And the GM’s other job is to provide lots of opportunities for betrayal that the players know about but the characters don’t. If the players destroy themselves and cause the mission to fail through the use of Trust, then the GM wins.

That’s the broad outline. I know it has some kinks and problems that could be worked out.

Techniques, Secrets, and Mysteries: This is for a martial arts game, probably Proving Ground. It’s not entirely unique (Donjon magic is similar in some ways), but it is distinct in the specifics. Basically, the characters all start out with a broad set of martial arts techniques, each of which is mechanically distinct in its effects (For example, for Proving Ground, the list is something like: Punch, Kick, Smash, Lock, Throw, Pin). Then, through painstaking training and learning secrets from the masters, and so on, the characters can learn “Secrets” and “Mysteries” (the main difference between these being power and rarity). Each Secret or Mystery is a single word, in it’s core form. Examples include things like “Eagle, Power, Demon, Dragon, Ascend, Heaven,” and so on, and on, and on. This is a specific list, and each one has a single game mechanical effect. Each is unique, so think of each maybe as the equivalent to a card in a game like Magic. Ok, when the players are fighting, they can use these Secrets and Mysteries to empower their Techniques. So, for example, a player with the words “Meditate, Dragon, Ascend, Power,” and “Wong Fei Hung,” can do any of these attacks:

Ascending Dragon Punch
Meditating Power Kick
Dragon Kick of Wong Fei Hung
Power Throw Meditation

Etc. Etc.

Each is a different attack because each Technique, Secret, and Mystery has its own specific mechanical effect.

Anyway, I have more beloved little mechanics, since pretty much none of my games are finished and all have one “gimmick.” But I won't bore you with all of them ;-)

Rich

Hey, I like that trust/betrayal mechanic. For added color in a casino heist game, I wonder if you could couple it with a craps-based dice mechanic...

Each player has a sack of color-coded six-siders. For conflict resolution, you draw out some of them and roll. The colors indicate different things and the numbers tied to the colors indicate level of success or influence. I'm imagining one color for aggression, one for defense and one for initiative with a relatively scarse smattering of special other dice, both good and bad. the person with the highest initiative defines narrative or resolution flow, the person with the highest aggression succeeds at something and the person with the highest defense is immune to something. Or something.

I've played with other variants too, but it hasn't gone anywhere.

Chris

I pledge to purchase any game whose designer finds an effective means of using a Kaledoscope as a resolution mechanic.

That's not a gag. I've long pondered how to do it with no success. I did have a go at using a View Master as a mechanic...but not a Kaledoscope.

Lately I've had this idea bouncing around in my head to use a Rubik's Cube for scene/conflict resolution. The idea is that each color on the cube would be mapped to an abstract concept, (ie, blue=hate, red=desire, green=serenity, etc.) the cube would be rolled for each scene or conflict, and the number or positioning of different colors determine how the scene comes out, with the players narrating the elements into the resolution of the scene. The center square determines the overall outcome (meaning if the center square is blue, the central conflict of the scene would have to be resolved with hatred somehow). As a form of control, players might also have a number of "turns" for each scene (reward mechanic, anyone?), where they can turn a side of the cube, producing different squares on top than were originally rolled, thus changing the content of the scene.

Anyway, it's not fully formed, but I think it might be cool for a co-operative storytelling style RPG.

By the way, I think there should be a place to discuss this kind of thing all the time. It doesn't really fit into the RPG theory or IDG forums, but it could be a potential source of great idea exchange.

I think the game mechanic I have for Lux and Hyle (the gnostic/pseudopigraphia-based game) is pretty clever. roll a d10 against a TN to see if you succeed... but you also roll one or more white and black d6s. if the d10 result is equal to or less than the highest black d6, something bad happens somewhere, because the forces of Darkness have just expressed themselves. if the d10 is equal/less than the highest white d6, you've channeled a little bit of Light into the world, and you can either add another white d6 to future pools (narrating your success in a magical manner,) or you can remove a white d6 and a black d6 permanently from play (and narrate something good happening somewhere.) the white/black dice pools are a group resource, and can fluctuate in other ways, too.

I think variations of this could be used for other games. like a hack-and-slash barbarian fantasy game: just roll that d10 and a bunch of d6s (color's not important, here) and treat rolls below the high d6 result as critical successes. or a sorcerous fantasy game where the d6s represent magical backfires.

(In theory, RPG Theory is the place to toss cute/clever mechanics. That's what been said in the past. Not that it's very clear)

First, some random comments:

* I like the system you've put in Lux and Hyle, talysman. Very nicely done.
* I'd take up your kaleidoscope challenge, Ralph (I mean, heck, I used a roulette wheel), but I really have no clue where to even start. How the heck did you get a viewmaster to even work, 'cause I got no clue on that one either.
* I'm very fond of the Trust mechanic. I can see combining it with craps very easily, even with bonus dice - the player in question just gets to choose his best combination of two dice. Makes lucky 7 a little easier to get, or whatever other number you might need to get (craps is sorta weird in its betting, or at least I don't fully understand it, but y'all get my drift I hope).
* I'm intrigued about the random walk, and would love to see more happen to it. Right now it's just an interesting idea that shares a little bit with Fastlane ("every time you use a facet, it goes down by one; but if you win, you can use your winnings to buy it back up, or buy it higher" - Fastlane purposefully doesn't have anything set up for the high side because, well, burning out is part of the built-in point of the game)

Grr. I was gonna post an actual mechanic too, but I hit "submit" instead of "preview." So, here it is, and if someone posts in between, so be it.

I do plan, by the way, on using this in an actual game (Earth Too, in point of fact), but it hasn't been used YET, 'cause that's just at the concept stage. So...conflict resolution with cards:

Every player gets a hand of cards, drawn from a communal deck - how many is based on traits, or other game-mechanical thingamajiggers. They each choose an opening card, and put it down in front of them. Once all cards are placed, face-up, the rest of the cards can be placed, free-for-all, on ANY player's stack.

Scoring is done baccarat style. Tens, jacks, queens, kings are all zeros; aces are one; all other numbers are standard, but if they add up to ten or higher, you subtract ten, or twenty, or whatever. This leaves everyone with a score of 0-9. This is, more or less, the order in which you resolve your conflict. The cards in your stack determine WHAT you can do - each suit represents one type of action or resolution (subdivisions undetermined at this point, 'cause it's just a mechanic); you can only perform one of them, and the number of cards you have of that suit determines how well that task would go.

So, you can go first, but suck. You can go first, and then have to choose - be good at something you have a lot of cards in, or be not-so-good at something you really want to do. You can go last, but have all the cards you want. I like the potential byplays this has.

* I'd take up your kaleidoscope challenge, Ralph (I mean, heck, I used a roulette wheel), but I really have no clue where to even start. How the heck did you get a viewmaster to even work, 'cause I got no clue on that one either.

A kaleidoscope could be basically a spinner, but one that yields a mix of colors as a result. If the colored bits in the spinny part are fairly high contrast and arranged not to be able to slide over each other (that is, they're more than half as thick as the chamber containing them), it should be pretty easy to give the scope a spin, look in, and judge which color is dominant, which is next most prevalent, and so forth. Each color is associated with some aspect of the result in Otherkind style (but without the player choice of which color to apply to which aspect of the outcome), such as:

Green:
-- most prevalent: complete success
-- second: partial success
-- third: marginal success
-- fourth: no success

Red:
-- most prevalent: no complications
-- second: one complication
-- third: two complications
-- fourth: major complication

Blue:
-- most prevalent: player narrates
-- second: GM specifies one fact, player narrates
-- third: player specifies one fact, GM narrates
-- fourth: GM narrates

and so forth.

Still needs a way to have player-character and/or situational variations, but you can probably figure out ways for that.

Another idea is to use the type of kaleidoscope that has just mirrors and an open end, showing a kaleidoscope image of whatever you point it at. Mount a cheap digital camera at the viewing end. This would give you a way of making random or semi-random Rorschach-like images of visible real-life objects, people, etc., but I can't think of what you would want to do with them.

- Walt

I like the die-scale:

1- d4
2- d6
3- d8
4- d10
5- d12
6- d20

I had this concept in mind for about 6 months now and I think that I saw that Orx is using it. (Note to self: check out Orx).

And just to throw something out there: how would a marbles resolution mechanic work?

The Prisoner's Dilemma

Each character has a pool of Resource, which starts at 50. Each x2 Skill costs 5 points. Each x4 Skill costs 10 points.

When characters do something, they enlist help. They say what they're trying to accomplish, and ask others to throw in with them. Everyone contributing sets aside a number of their points of Resource, up to 1/10 their starting amount (round down). This maximum is modified by Skills. You do not have to tell anyone what Skill you are using nor the size of your contribution until after actions are resolved (see below). The GM publicly states a target number, from 5 (sinch) to 10 (slightly difficult) to 15 (very difficult) to 20 (incredibly difficult) Then, everyone shoots rock paper scissors.

Rock: Reliable. I'm doing what I said I would. I'm helping with the action that we talked about. Add up the contributions of everyone who played a Rock. If this total equals or exceeds DOUBLE the TN, then the action that everyone agreed upon is a success.

Paper: Breakable. Back down. Totally not part of this.

Scissors: Cutting and scheming. I'm doing something totally different, and using you to do it! Add up your own contribution and that of everyone who played a Rock. If this total equals or exceeds the TN, then your private action is a success.

For instance: this game is about scheming wizards. Our characters are James (pool 40, base max 4, Army At Disposal 8, Fire Magic 8), Wormsworth (pool 40, base max 4, Illusion 16), and William (pool 35, base max 3, Friends in High Places 7, Gate In Demons 17).

James proposes they fight off the barbarians from the North. The other two agree. The GM sets the TN at 10. They show:

James: Rock, contribution 7 (army)
Wormsworth: Rock, contribution 4
William: Scissors! Summon demons to CRUSH YOU while you're busy with the barbarian hordes! contribution 12 (demon summoning)

So. James and Wormsworth have a combined score of 11, which is enough to fight of the barbarians. But now they have a TN 12 pack of demons to deal with. William comes in and says he apologizes, and pledges his help in fighting off the demons that he himself created. They show:

James: Rock: contribution 8 (army)
Wormsworth: Scissors! Use illusions to maneuver James into the jaws of the demons! contribution 10 (illusion)
Wlliam: Scissors! summon MORE demons to get rid of Wormsworth! contribution 12 (demons)

So James has an 8 fighting off the demon horde, Wormsworth has an 18 doing in James, and William has a 20 doing in Wormsworth. This means that the demons overrun James and Wormsworth. If James survives, he'll have to deal with a TN 18 threat. If Wormsworth survives, he'll have to deal with a TN 20 threat.

Mechanic: When you have a chance of being eliminated, find your margin of error, ie TN minus opposing total. (In the case of James vs. Demons, this is 12-8, or 4.) Then either spend no resources, resources equal to 1/2 the margin, or resources equal to the margin or x times the margin. Play a standard game or rock/paper/scissors with the GM.

No Payment: Down if you lose or tie
1/2 Payment: Down if you lose
Full Payment: Down if you lose 2 games running.
x Payments: Down if you lose x+1 games running.

Suppose James pays 8 resources. That's twice the margin of 4. So, he's out of the game if he loses three matches of rock/paper/scissors running.

Mechanic: Players will somehow need to get resource BACK. When they succeed at a task, Resource isn't automatically lost. Instead they lose Resource equal to the TN of the task or Resource spent, whichever is lower. They gain Resource equal to double the margin of success. If you're starting a new action, instead of responding to something, you can't gain Resource.

For instance: When James and Wormsworth were fighting the barbarians, they had a total of 11. That's 1 over the TN of 10. They each gain back 2 points of resource.

Erm. This is more of a full game than mechanic. Off to Indie Design I go!
--jeff

Search on Crux here on the Forge, for one possible marbles mechanic.

Not to mention Wyrd....

(in re: marble mechanics)

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.

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

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.)

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.

A quick one before the forum goes into hibernation:

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

I was thinking about that earlier today.

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

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.

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.

gobi wrote: A quick one before the forum goes into hibernation:

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

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.

Rich Forest wrote: 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.

ADGConscience wrote: 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. [...] and narrate their success if they use it for one.

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

timfire wrote: Rich deserves some credit, it was his basic idea.

To harp on my favourite theme of Option (sorry), I really like the mechanic I've established for dealing with fatigue/injury/spellcasting/anything else, which is that rather than having a certain number of hitpoints or what-not, as you get more tired, injured, cast too much magic, whatever you acquire penalties to different classes of rolls. Death is handled by having a survival roll which you (in theory) have to make every half hour or so, but until you've racked up a wopping big penalty on your roll you can pass it on a 1 so don't need to roll.

This may prove too mechanically clunky to use, but I hope not.

Doug Ruff wrote: Character development through boasting.

(Details snipped)

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

Blame my stats class I suppose, but I've grown very keen on 2d spreads.

Just a showcase mechanic really- me game Imps (http://www.neoproductions.net/imp/) follows as such:

- All players use the same TN for everything, which starts at 2
- Using points, which all players start with 10 of, they can spend 1 or 2 points per attempt to raise the TN
- Rolling 2d6, the player attempts to roll under the TN. Doing so nets the player more points equal to the roll and resetting the TN back to 2. Losing the roll means the player gets nothing, but the TN remains at the new value.

Works out that success is inevitable, but since players can roll on anything, it becomes a question of "who succeeds at what?"
Posted it though because I've been tossing around several variations in my mind. Tis quick and simple really, and can be played with.
One idea is similar, except a "roll higher than" situation: TN starts at 2, roll higher than TN, but each success raises the TN one point. Failure then becomes the inevitable, and you can almost tick it down, bwahahahaha!

I rather like that though. A countdown to failure. *grins evilly*

nikola wrote:

timfire wrote: Rich deserves some credit, it was his basic idea.

Ahem.

Mad props to Rich. It's an excellent idea.

LEadership, Orders and yells

For use in a strategic/tactical focused game: your leadership score translates, in some way, to the ability to give a number of orders. Those that get the orders get a bonus to actions following that order, based on that same leadership skill. Following orders reinforces the social status, but there's rules for rebelling as well.

Outside of combat, a similar thing could be used (political leadership, spiritual leadership, etc.).

Also, none of this 'it costs you an action to speak during combat stuff' - it makes speaking to your comrades a less attractive option during combat - I want people to yell 'look out' (an order, basically), and have it matter.

The Bag

Even though it's gone from YGAD, I still think a bag from which both successes and failures are drawn, mixed with special results and tiles based on player's chargen en DM's opposition-generation could be fast & cool.

To that last - Tobias, the guy doing the dev work for the (wargame, not RPG) Attack Vector: Fleets has gone one step further... imagine a gamist RPG where if you don't yell "Look out!" or "Move! Move! Move!" then you don't decide what the secondary characters do - the GM does. And as the leader, there's only so much you can do...

Harlequin wrote: To that last - Tobias, the guy doing the dev work for the (wargame, not RPG) Attack Vector: Fleets has gone one step further... imagine a gamist RPG where if you don't yell "Look out!" or "Move! Move! Move!" then you don't decide what the secondary characters do - the GM does. And as the leader, there's only so much you can do...

Yah - the GM trying to cover two roles as 'antagonist' and 'randomizer' at once. What you're looking for is decidedly not the game where a failure to command someone automatically results in them doing the worst possible thing. (Or is it? That could be spooky.) Tricky role mix, as ever, best handled by splitting the jobs up more or else setting down some guidelines. The abovementioned wargame handles it fine because it's a two-person wargame; you give the other player constraints on how many decisions (off of a checklist that's there already) he makes on behalf of your "uncontrolled" units, and away you go.

Inclined to suggest something resembling Fvulminata's intrigue system... Tell me a way that Ned could crack, a way he could fail to help, and a way he could shine. Roll (modified by leadership), one of those comes true.

Well, you could always, in a RPG, have all characters able of the 'bare bones' stuff (so that they don't feel deprotagonised), but any 'additional' stuff is gained through 'boosts' provided through communication with others.

(Where 'order' is a type of 'boost').

True 'nuff.

In fact you could probably steal a Mountain Witch style trick, and make those boosts essentially necessary. If you wanted to tangle it, make the bonus dependent on a clear statement of your place in the hierarchy (giving or receiving orders), and then let the GM pressure that hierarchy into instability.

Simple addon to a conflict mechanic:

You have a graph (in the sense of a set of nodes and edges) that represents the relationships between a group of factions in conflict; nodes that have shorter paths connecting them are more closely related. These can be anything you can think of, like martial arts traditions or courtly cliques or closely related but fractious language communities.

Example: The "Five Animal Styles" of Shaolin are all connected to one another by paths of length 1. They're connected to Rainbow Kirin Dance and Exploding Dragon Style by paths of length 2.

The length of the path between nodes sets the minimum stakes of a productive conflict between members of the nodes. So, in the context of DitV, a conflict between monks practicing Leopard and Mantis of Shaolin could be resolved by words, but a conflict between exponents of Crane of Shaolin and Exploding Dragon Style has to escalate to blows before anyone can accomplish anything.