Do you find that certain classes of mechanics, procedures or “sub”-systems fascinate you, the kinds of things that can often sell you on or off of a game, or is the area of game that you find yourself fiddling with the most?
These could be thematic or area-of-interest, such as combat, initiative, exploration. Or they might be more specific to the implemented procedure and technique itself, such as bidding, dice pool, or class systems?
I know for myself, I tend to get really focused on initiative. I don’t know why, but the means by which one arranges the actions in a tense situation, how long certain things take to enact, and how “much” of time is occupied always attracts my interest. Which is funny because I almost always, when at the table, end up using either side-based initiative or a more free-form “you tell me what you do and I kind of figure it out” method.
I get drawn to games like HackMaster 5e with its tick-based initiative and cooldowns, GURPS for its one-second rounds, Mythras for its Action Point and reaction methods, etc. I think this is even more intense in wargames, where I really yawn if I have to play a I-Go-You-Go initiative system in lieu of something fancier like bag draw, fatigue cost systems, action points, etc.
What about you, do you find yourself just gravitating towards certain system preoccupation(s), even if you might not always play with them?
My white whale especially when it comes to adventure gaming has very much been combat procedures. I have a vision of what I want combat to look like specifically in dungeon crawling focused games, and while I have experimented with various ways of achieving that in my previous campaigns, it has never felt like I’ve achieved what I’m aiming for. B/X and OD&D have been a good start, but at higher levels they can still slow things down too much due to the uneven relationship between HD and to hit bonuses.
My current fascination for all of this has been Tunnels & Trolls with its very abstract (huge plus already) and relatively fast combat. The few T&T games I managed to run in 2024 were satisfactory enough, though still produced less than ideal results as having to tally up big dice pools of numbers ends up eating away at the speed of combat resolution. There are numerous solutions to this, both from various versions of T&T as well as fan made ones, but I suspect that until I get a proper campaign going of it I won’t be able to fine tune it to the point where I am satisfied.
For those big d6 pools in T&T, we tend to speed things up a little bit by not adding up the dice. We roll and leave everything as it lays. Then, we cancel out matching dice (6s, 5s, etc.) between the Player and Monster sides until the pool shrinks to something more manageable and use this an Adds to resolve the round. For some reason, the dice with pips on them work a bit faster for us with this (but that might just be personal preference!)
Does take a little practice, but it works very quick in person after the table gets the hang of it. Not too sure how well it would work with less tactile situations, like online games though.
I am really fascinated with design without/with less variability. Dice are interesting and probabilitie distributions allow for very different feeling experiences, but ideas such as Skorn’s auto hitting static damage, Into the Odd’s and Adventure Hour! static odds with variable outcomes based on situational (dis)advantages, and ability design formulated in absolutes like the immovable rod are really gripping to me.
It is why I was really excited for Chris McDowall’s experiment with qualitative game design (the early stages of what became Mythic Bastionland when it was still called Primordial Bastionland).
Not necessarily something I think is inherently better (numbers can be incredibly useful to model relative competence and randomness can be very fun), but it does always speak to me.
For me the fixation isnt a specific mechanic but instead the contradiction of me wanting unique resolutions for different stuff at still have an easy to play game.
I am kind of going through cycles where i focus on a thing(i.e. a herbalism system for one of my players) get it more and more bloated and then have too simplify it again to make it actually playable. While i think this is a productive process overall all too often i end up completly ditching a system i obsessed over a month or more because i feel like its either too complicated or too bland.
I’m always looking at the procedure the new game has that the retroclone it looks like doesn’t have at all. If you have a big set of tules for cooking and eating dungeon monsters, as was a trend a couple years ago in the blogging world, a big part of my assessment of the game is going to be in whether I would like to use that procedure or not. Domain games often scratch that itch for me, and it’s why I found Jenx’s Pride and Prejudice wizard campaign idea so fun. Suddenly having a detailed and satisfying way to conduct a trade war or start an infrastructure advancement really takes the game in a specific and interesting direction, as does routinely having to worry about if your letter will be misconstrued.
This is not exactly the prompt that started this thread, but can anyone recommend someone’s breakdown of popular RPG game mechanics? I assume someone has taken a critical lens to this aspect of the hobby, and I would love to hear/read a perspective on potential strengths, weaknesses, considerations, etc. around different RPGs’ mechanical choices.
There kind of isn’t any of sufficient quality, as we haven’t even really developed a mature vocabulary for the hobby in the abstract, let alone in the specific.
A smaller fixation I have is surprise, because I love seeing players plan an ambush and seeing if it works. Even when I do mechanical determination of surprise (like 1-in-6 for each side), I describe the situation in a way that leaves it with many avenues for the party. So I guess this fixation is not quite “what’s the best mechanic to use for this?” and more like “how an i build an interesting setup for an encounter with this mechanic?”
Also, I have been on a movement/encumbrance fixation lately. I didn’t like weight-based encumbrance and distance-based movement rate. My game currently runs with modifying encounter rolls and light drain instead of distance/turn. The gist is: if you move carefully, and/or are over-encumbered (holding more items than inventory slots), the probability of a random encounter increases and light sources burn down quicker between room explorations. It gives roughly the same number of encounters per exploration turn, but it’s based on room exploration, so going down a long hallway will never trigger an encounter roll (!!!). Still figuring it out.
Simulating time passing faster by increasing depletion and encounter chance is pretty damn clever. I might try to play around with that as well.
A potential fix for long hallways could be to give them turn amount to pass through, kinda treating them like one or several rooms depending on length maybe?
That’s a good idea. I was thinking of ‘encounter points’ on long hallways where once that point is passed, an encounter roll is rolled. Which amounts to about the same thing, but is more clear/specific of when the roll happens.
I think the thing I find myself tinkering most with is the encounter check or “random events” roll. When I first read over the Necropraxis post on overloading the encounter die, I started using it for everything, then have modded it a few times with different results and then additional sub-results from those.
However, after running like this a lot, I found that sometimes the mechanics of it were too intrusive. I also missed having the “empty space” where nothing happens, since that time passing thing can also just give a bit of room to breathe and let people make decisions. So now I am back to mostly doing regular encounter rolls while in dungeons, with the addition of a spoor/monster sign on 2s, whereas for outdoors travel I have a table that’s a bit more expanded and has a few sub-layers. It’s a way to sorta make outdoors travel a bit more distinct from dungeon-crawling.
Relatedly, I’ve been thinking a lot more about empty space in game design, stuff like empty rooms, searching for traps and finding nothing, rolling for an attack and missing, etc. This table from Jared Sinclair’s Anti-Sisyphus has been haunting me a bit:
On the one hand, one of the first things you learn in improvy/rpg spaces is the “yes-and” rule. A lot of storygamey RPGs have almost codified this into the principle of always failing forwards, making sure every “no” is a “no, but” and that you include some interesting detail or something. So in a D&D context, instead of just missing an attack, you would miss but then this would maybe trigger something else or push the scene forward in some way. At the same time, sometimes a blank wall is just a blank wall. Not that there aren’t always more details to figure out about a wall (material type, texture, smell, and so on), but negative space has its own usefulness too? Just not sure how to think about it really.
I also came around pretty hard on the Overloaded Encounter Die. I know the advice is “use referee’s discretion for repeat/illogical events,” but when you need to do that at best 2:6 times every turn, if not more, I questioned how much work I was creating for myself by using it.
I still mean to experiment with splitting the overloaded encounter dice.
Basically give everything you would want a usage die and roll the lot every turn. If each torch lasts usage d6, it will always burn for at least 2 turns. Same with fatigue, same with magical effects or anything else you’d want to track on an overloaded encounter dice.
I have a blogpost that explains it in a little more detail.
it worked fine when I tried it solo, but I want to give it a go with a genuine crawl as well to see how players like it.
I’m planning to combine this idea of increasing odds to represent taking more time with the usage dice idea I mention above btw. So normally the dice step down a size on 1, if you go slower (due to fatigue, injury or overencumbrance) it increases to 1 and 2 or even 1 to 3.
