What interesting mechanics exist out there?
I don’t mean just “here’s a new way to roll combinations of polyhedral dice”, or “here’s a new theme overlaid on a standard progress tracker”, or “here’s stress with another name”.
I mean, actual new conceptual mechanics that produce new and interesting behaviours in-game. Things like CoC’s push rolls, or Slugblaster’s Beats/Character Arc, or Blades in the Dark’s Flashbacks (these might not be the first games that those appeared in, but the point isn’t the game, it’s the mechanic).
Interested particularly in what those new mechanics bring to the table in terms of player interactions or story development.
I really love Mouse Guards simple skill progression where skills advance when you have succeeded AND failed with them enough times.
I like the fighting mechanics of Honor+Intrigue
In a gist, you have Health Point and Stances, you can « dodge » an attack by decreasing your Stance (which give you penalties) or accept the blow. When you’re out of Stances or HP you have lost
Its a lot of work to deal with it, but in theory I’m a huge fan of Avatar Legends’ Principles system. Basically, every playbook has an internal struggle between to extremes - compared to an Yin/Yang - and work to find their own Balance in that. The Center of this Balance starts on 0, but over the course of the game players will move towards one side or the other, to a max of +3/-3 (moving positively towards one side means you’re moving negatively towards the other)
The Guardian, for example, struggles between Self-Reliance Vs. Trust; They want to protect others not just to keep them safe, but also because they don’t believe they’re capable of doing so. A Guardian shifting towards Self-Reliance is more cynical, while a Guardian shifting towards Trust will rely on their companions more often.
Aside from the narrative meaning, the Balance can be used for rolls; if a PC performs an action in accord to their Principles - say, the Guardian attempting to Comfort someone not out of sympathy, but because they believe they’re the only ones capable of doing it - they would roll with that Principle instead of the Attribute that the Move requires. That way, if your Self-Reliance is higher than the Attribute, it might be a good idea to pitch the scene in that way.
Characters can also be called out on acting/not acting according to their Principles, or Lose their Balance (basically have a mental breakdown) if it goes past one of the extremes.
it’s not particularly new but i’ve always found it interesting when games mechanize metagaming.
fate’s point economy allows players to actively change the game by putting themselves at an immediate disadvantage. when you play to your character’s weakness, you get a point which you can cash in later to modify a story beat or situation. but you can also pay other players with them to suggest actions for them.
Yeah fate points are a killer idea. I think Slugblaster’s Nope mechanic is somewhat similar, in that it lets you skip some unwanted bad outcome, but you take on Trouble, which causes consequences later. Fate’s implementation seems more flexible and broadly useful though.
Dune: Adventures in the Imperium does a version of this. Extra successes on a challenge give the players Momentum points which they can use to generally make things better for them. But the GM has Threat points which make things harder for the players. Points can also be used to buy off bad outcomes or improve good ones.
But the most fun bit is that the GM can cash in a bunch of Threat to introduce a rival to the players into a scene. So their nemesis can drop in on the party where they’re trying to gather allies to confront the nemesis.
yeah the big thing is how fate points tie into the characterisation of the pcs. they anchor role playing decisions in the rules in a way i’ve not seen many systems do.
Lighthearted has an interesting emotion mechanic.
At the start of a scene, you describe your current emotion. Then, when rolling you choose an emotion based on how you describe the action and the closer it is from your current emotions, the higher dice you roll. However, it’ll make your emotional state shift. And if you roll your current emotion you gain stress.
While it’s pretty interesting, it let a lot of room for negotiation between PC and GM which isn’t always great compared to games with tighter rules
