Cleverest game mechanics in your opinion?

[Kaelik]

Imagine thinking that always getting drain was a better system than usually not but being afraid to cast spells because of the possibility.

[pragma]

Being judicious with spells isn't a consequence?

Touche, but I wanted them to be more judicious. It always felt like they had infinite ammo for the best solutions in the game. Though, upon reflection, deciding exactly how much to overcast something in SR4 did make for some fun gameplay moments when I was in the player's seat instead of the GMs.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I suppose the superiority or inferiority of either Drain system depends on what you're going for. I like Shadowrun's system specifically because spellcasting becomes tense at dramatic moments, like after you've been injected with drugs or you're debating short-term survival versus medium-term survival. For mundane shit Drain doesn't matter. If Drain is always on, it's always a background element that impacts your long-term survival, even if you're just fucking around with your orgasm spells in the back of a van.

[Whipstitch]

It really depends on builds. Samurai-Mage hybrids with utility magic and a hojillion sensory enhancements are surprisingly affordable if you're willing to risk some drain by tanking your Will stat and instead simply soft-cap a drain attribute that actually does stuff like Charisma, Intellect or Intuition. It's not the ultimate powergamer build, but if your Samurai is rocking a dozen Perception dice and can drop clutch Mana Statics and Heals via Edge when the chips are down then he can have a spot on my roster any time.

[Foxwarrior]

Whaaat?! Your samurai doesn't have all stats maxed due to spirits with Increase Attribute, and/or a possession tradition? What kind of basket weaver nonsense is this?

[OgreBattle]

"If you do a big thing you get tired and risk straining yourself" is... the real life resource system that every human has experienced, I'd expect it to be used beyond Shadowrun and various action video games (Did Punch Out did that first?)

Shadowrun doesn't use drain for physical exertion yeah? It would be suitable for pushing your body/ware past limits, like the climax of Oshii's Ghost in the Shell:

[Whipstitch]

They've actually toyed around with 'ware that causes you to soak damage such as adrenal glands but generally those augs have died unmourned deaths because they don't actually give you real ultimate power in exchange for your troubles.

[OgreBattle]

They've actually toyed around with 'ware that causes you to soak damage such as adrenal glands but generally those augs have died unmourned deaths because they don't actually give you real ultimate power in exchange for your troubles.

I could see a revamp where a 2nd initiative pass can only be gained through "pushing body beyond breaking point"

Here we have Goku taking twice as many actions as Vegeta, but potentially taking damage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0njNEdL0pEE

[Whipstitch]

I think there's too many moving parts involved for this to be a short conversation. "Only samurai and adepts get extra IPs" isn't a terrible idea but giving them harsh penalties for the privilege is pretty bad unless you're also nerfing the everlovin' christ out of riggers and mages at a minimum. Getting an IP or even two at the risk of personal harm is bullshit weak compared to having a push button or summoned army at your beck and call. After all, most of the challenges Samurai face aren't duels with other hardasses and the bit where a two man patrol unit gets separate actions by virtue of being individual people is a design issue you have to take seriously if you intend to deliver on the promise of being a bad ass mercenary from the future. The whole post SR5 thing where Samurai have to skirt the rules as hard as possible just to go John Wick on some untrained randos is one of the more disempowering elements of modern Shadowrun. So while it'd be very cool to have extra passes come with serious consequences it doesn't fit very well into the established arms race as more than an NPC gimmick.

[Orca]

Magic actually causing fatigue is something that Ars Magica went with. Also way back a lot of VtM or Werewolf powers cost willpower which the way we played it - no idea whether this was correct - actually lowered your willpower for all purposes. A bunch of powers used the subjects' willpower as their target number so this mattered. That's at least similar to magic causing fatigue.

[Kaelik]

Magic actually causing fatigue is something that Ars Magica went with. Also way back a lot of VtM or Werewolf powers cost willpower which the way we played it - no idea whether this was correct - actually lowered your willpower for all purposes. A bunch of powers used the subjects' willpower as their target number so this mattered. That's at least similar to magic causing fatigue.

As some people have outlined "causing fatigue" is not the thing that is interesting about Shadowrun Drain. The interesting good thing no one copies is the way it make important big events in moments of tension matter without cutting into fucking around with magic or feeling like you can't do investigation magic because you will be low health for the fight later.

[Ignimortis]

I could see a revamp where a 2nd initiative pass can only be gained through "pushing body beyond breaking point"

That would make combat characters feel way worse, because that's basically half of their mechanical identity in Shadowrun - you get a lot of actions and good defenses, which mean that you can kill targets at a speed of 1 corpse per second or better, and you don't die when you make a mistake.

While Shadowrun isn't as bad with Street Samurai and Adepts as D&D is with Fighters, getting rid of any features at all should begin with magic users in both games.

[OgreBattle]

Yes many adjustments would be needed, it's more a thought on "how to do initiative passes"

The interesting good thing no one copies is the way it make important big events in moments of tension matter without cutting into fucking around with magic or feeling like you can't do investigation magic because you will be low health for the fight later.

Got any memorable moments of overcasting?

[Blade]

I've recently heard about an interesting mechanic in a Space Opera game, it might have been "Metal Adventures" (a French space op game about heroic space pirates) but I'm not sure.

Anyway, the idea was that you could give some of your "Fate" points (similar to the expandables Luck/Edge/Destiny/Fate/etc. points many games have) to generic NPCs to turn them into named NPC with better stats and survival chances.
Since you play in a pirate ship full of NPCs, this is a great way to let players flesh out and get attached to some main members of their crew. (Or to let a player play a "master of minions")

[Emerald]

I had a similar mechanic in the last campaign I ran. It was focused around settlement-building and exploration, so the party had a bunch of different specialized NPCs for crafting, building structures, ocean navigation, training soldiers, and so forth and worked with them a lot during downtime, so it made sense to let them turn those NPCs into specialists rather than go recruit some from elsewhere.

It definitely did a good job of getting the players invested. At one point they needed an NPC with good divination capabilities so they Named one of their random wilderness guides, the party necromancer decided they'd been dating on the sly, and the party cleric decided that the NPC was part of the same niche and not-well-regarded religion the cleric belonged to and they did a bit of proselytizing and/or heresy together. It generated several nice little side quests down the road, and great fun was had by all.

[Unity]

Dominion (the card game) has a mechanic where you start off with some shitty cards, then temporarily use your money cards to permanently get other cards, including better money cards. There's also a lot you can do to turn your worse cards into better cards, and even more enjoyably things you can do to give your opponents even worse cards.

[GâtFromKI]

What mechanics do you think are really clever? Be it due to innovating in some way, doing things in elegant fashion or some other reason altogether.

Luchadores, action economy.

During his turn, a character can make as many action as he wants. Every action past the third one increases the defense of the opponents. So the optimal number of action is 3, but you're never blocked because "with one more action, I could do this awesome combo and it would be awesome": just take one more action (and reduce your success chance).

Second most clever mechanics: Luchadores, resolving action.
When you do a combo, you roll only the first move of your combo - and the whole combo is a success depending on this roll. If you're looking for realism it doesn't work - but if you're looking for a wrestling game where the small, mobile guy can punch a bear, it works - mobile guy initiate his combo with a move, and during his combo he include a punch.

[OgreBattle]

During his turn, a character can make as many action as he wants. Every action past the third one increases the defense of the opponents. So the optimal number of action is 3, but you're never blocked because "with one more action, I could do this awesome combo and it would be awesome": just take one more action (and reduce your success chance).

Second most clever mechanics: Luchadores, resolving action.
When you do a combo, you roll only the first move of your combo - and the whole combo is a success depending on this roll. If you're looking for realism it doesn't work - but if you're looking for a wrestling game where the small, mobile guy can punch a bear, it works - mobile guy initiate his combo with a move, and during his combo he include a punch.

So how is movement handled in Luchadores, and what are some examples of interesting 3+ action strings?

How does it fit with the one roll combo's you mentioned? Like would I be saying "I do a 5 action combo, the target's defense increases twice, I roll one die" ?

----

Mechanics I like... the Shinobigami and Hunter's Moon structured roleplay system:
https://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=56491

Been reading about Japanese tabletop RPG's on various blogs, one of the things that gets mentioned is Japanese groups tend to meet less often, like once a month, and games are focused more on one-shot so there's an emphasis on quick character generation but not much on character growth over multiple sessions.

Here's a breakdown of how Hunter's Moon works.


Character Creation
You start with character motivation that gives a general motive of why your PC is hunting monsters. An 'avenger' lost something precious to a monster and is out for revenge, a thrill seeker just wants to test himself and get the adrenaline flowing, a magician belongs to an order with a duty to hunt monsters, and so on. You determine if your character 'hates' or 'fears' the monster, hate means when your hitpoints are low your attack power rises, while fear means when your hitpoints are low your defense rises.

You then pick from a list of skills that you're good at. Different attack powers are tied to skills, and you can have skills disabled from damage. This also applies to monsters.

The game has set phases called "Sundown", "Night", and "Sunrise", so it represents one night of hunting for one gameplay session. Sundown, Night and Sunrise are broken down into further phases of...


Pursuit ("Legwork"): The phase starts off with the GM determining what the monster is up to, and then the PC's react to that.
-Monster roll: The GM rolls for what the monster is up to such as targeting specific people or going on a rampage, if the monster succeeds they get a benefit like a new ability to use, more morale (ablative hitpoints). and PC’s have to roll against that skill to stop it
-Location roll: Determines where the upcoming battle takes place, locations have unique effects like “Warehouse: players receive a free item”, “subway: anyone who rolls a fumble takes damage from being hit by a train”.

PC’s get 1 action to spend on things like researching the monster's weakness, stopping the monster from eating people, and so on:
-Weakness investigation: Finding out the monster’s weakness, making it easier to kill the monster or figuring out what body part you have to damage to disable its powers ("By piercing its chest it can't breath fire anymore!")
-Behavior Investigation: Finding out what the monster’s capabilities are, what triggers its super powers. ("The monster feeds off of anger and gets stronger when it senses it")
-Location Change: Change location of battle ("This monster flies, lets not fight it on the cliffside")
-Practice: Training, prepping weapons and so on, gives a bonus to the next battle.
-Support: Lower emotion, change status condition of allies (healing them), change emotion from fear/hate

After that's done you move on to...


Battle: PC’s run into the monster and fight
Battles are pretty short, with everyone getting maybe 1-3 turns before one side has to flee or dies. Hunter's Moon has a 'ablative hp and real hp' system with 'morale' (restores after battle) and 'hp' (when you lose hp you roll to see if you take injuries that disable skills and abilities).

This cycle of "Legwork-> Battle" is then repeated for "midnight" and "sunrise".




The same guys who made Hunter's Moon also made Shinobigami, which focuses on more player vs player interaction as PC's all have hidden agendas. It's kind of like "Mafia". It's still in phases but there's a PC who gets to decide the general theme of the phase like "I'm attacking player X" or "I'm spying on player Y", but other players can interact with it like "I use my scrying ability to jump into the scene and rescue player X from player Z"

Shinobigami overview

Shinobigami is designed to be played in a single sitting, with an entire scenario wrapping up in about four hours. This feature of many Japanese role-playing games is put to great effect in Shinobigami, allowing dynamic characterization between sessions and exciting long-term storyline possibilities.

Before the game begins, each player should have a completed character sheet. The Game Master will hand each player a handout containing their character’s Mission and Secret. Once everyone is ready, play begins.

A scenario is made up of four separate phases: Introduction, Main, Climax, and Ending.
Introduction Phase

The Game Master will introduce the NPCs and the scenario’s inciting incident during this phase, and give each player character a scene. During these Introductory Phase scenes, the character gets to show off their character, describe their appearance, and reveal their Mission to each other. The players will record the names of each character in the People section of the character sheet for future reference. The objective of the scenario, and the “prize”, is introduced.
Main Phase
In the Main Phase, the Prize is put into play: It may stay with one person or change hands several times over the course of the three cycles. During the Main Phase, the players takes turns as the Scene Player. While acting as a Scene Player, a player has narrative control over a scene in which their character comes closer to fulfilling their Mission.

A Scene Player may choose between a Drama Scene and a Combat Scene. During each Drama Scene, a player will roll on the Scene Chart for inspiration, then narrate a scene in which their character uses a skill to forge an Emotional Bond, uncover another character’s Secret or Location, or recover a lost Life Point. If a character has found another character’s Location, they may engage them in a Combat Scene. Combat Scenes are quick, lasting only a number of turns equal to the number of combatants, meaning that each combat is quick and bloody.

A Cycle is complete as soon as each player has taken their turn as Scene Player. A scenario typically has 3 Cycles. Once the final cycle is complete, the Climax Phase begins.


Climax Phase

The Climax Phase is where lines are drawn and the ending determined. Each player will need to rely on allies they think they can trust to survive and complete their goals. A final combat scene with special rules will last a number of rounds as decided by the GM or scenario. This is the only point in the game where a character can be knocked out of the game or even killed. The last person standing can claim the Prize, or perhaps they will reject it in favor of another reward more in line with their true character goals!

Once the people standing lay down their arms, the game moves to the Ending Phase.

Ending Phase
The events of the Ending Phase are largely determined by the outcome of the Climax Phase. Repercussions and the results of complete or failed missions are shown or acted out in a final scene for each character. Finally, experience points are handed based on completed goals, secret goals and player actions. And from there…

Commonly the next step is… to play the game again! Likely another day, and perhaps with a new Game Master. Perhaps all or some of the previous session’s characters will appear again (though it’s not a given). Maybe there will be a new antagonist, or maybe the characters will act as each other’s enemies. With a simple new scenario (and a new “prize” to capture) and new secrets, no two games of Shinobigami will ever feel the same!



Emotional bond mechanic

-Info Sharing: If anyone towards whom you have a bond (positive or negative) learns someone’s Secret, Location, or Ougi, you will automatically and instantly receive that information. So it’s good strategy to start the game off by forming bonds, then letting other people find information for you.

-Emotion Mods: Whenever someone makes a roll, anyone with a bond towards that character may give a +1 bonus or -1 penalty, depending on whether the bond is positive or negative. This can occur once per bond per cycle (of drama scenes) or rounds (battle). In a co-op style game, this can be quite powerful, if everyone was nice enough to be positive towards each other.

-Battle Burst: If a character towards whom you have an emotional bond becomes involved in combat, you may jump in at any time. Normally, only the character called out by the Scene Player, and/or whomever else they decide, joins combat. Of course, you may join in to help or hinder as you see fit.

-Ninpo: Ninpo that either affect the way that bonds or formed or their effects. Missions and Secrets may also involve emotions, too, like the Secret: “You are in love with Player 1. If you and Player 1 don’t have ‘Loyalty’ or ‘Affection’ bonds towards each other by the beginning of the Climax Phase, your Mission becomes: Kill Player 1.”


Enigmas: Environmental secrets that have mechanical effects, usually on the last boss of the scenario. They consist of the ruse, its true form and effect, and the way to cancel it. Enigmas start off unknown, with only the ruse uncovered, and the rest must be uncovered like a Secret, and only then can it be canceled. For example, in a scenario with a boss and 4 underlings, an Enigma might be that “4 generals protect the boss’s weak spot” with the effect being that during a battle, the boss will never suffer the effects of any fumbles he rolls. In order to cancel that effect, the players must defeat all 4 underlings during the Main Phase.

The dice mechanics for both games is a chart based d66 and a roll over/under (I forget) thing, but I'm not really interested in that as you could convert it to dice pools or d20 and work out better math, it's the structured storytelling that interested me.

Shinobigami has a chart for initiative AND distance/space... but I've read in practice a lot of people just end up showing up where otehrs aren't like Scooby Doo and the fights don't start. So I'd like to try it and see how it can be fixed.

Here's a look at how range and initiative works in Shinobigami, called the "Velocity System" because it's a game about super fast ninjas.


Here it is in English: http://www.shinobigami.com/files/eng_battlefield.pdf

When combat happens you choose what velocity you want to fight at. Actions are done from highest to lowest. Attack range is also measured by velocity spaces, so if you're at velocity 5 and have a range 1 attack you can hit a velocity 4 or 6 guy.

The drawback to higher velocities is it increases your chance to fumble. Actions in Shinobigami are done with a 2d6, you fumble if you roll under the listed velocity number. Fumbling makes you easier to hit by other players.

Some actions can increase or decrease a character's velocity, so if you're at v7 somebody can knock you 'out of bounds' into v7 (thematically I think it means you've left the battlefield), if you're at v1 you can get knocked to v0. I'm not exactly sure what happens when you're out of bounds.

Combat ends when every player has taken one action so you don't worry about back and forth repositioning. Oh yeah you can do multiple actions in that one round, the slower you are the more you can do.

I figure this would also work well as a chase minigame in other games, the goal being to reach v7 (you escape, catch up) or knock antagonists to v0 (they're caught, unable to pursue) Or a 3D combat game like Gundam, space/aircraft battles.

More complexity could be added with another row, but too much and you defeat the purpose of the velocity track.

[GâtFromKI]

During his turn, a character can make as many action as he wants. Every action past the third one increases the defense of the opponents. So the optimal number of action is 3, but you're never blocked because "with one more action, I could do this awesome combo and it would be awesome": just take one more action (and reduce your success chance).

Second most clever mechanics: Luchadores, resolving action.
When you do a combo, you roll only the first move of your combo - and the whole combo is a success depending on this roll. If you're looking for realism it doesn't work - but if you're looking for a wrestling game where the small, mobile guy can punch a bear, it works - mobile guy initiate his combo with a move, and during his combo he include a punch.

So how is movement handled in Luchadores, and what are some examples of interesting 3+ action strings?

How does it fit with the one roll combo's you mentioned? Like would I be saying "I do a 5 action combo, the target's defense increases twice, I roll one die" ?

First, the game is about magical lucha libre wrestlers fighting monster of the week.

if this premisse is too stupid for you, then... You won't like the system. x)

So obviously, you want to do wrestling combo. Like "since he's on the ground, I jump on the ropes of the ring, I raise my arms to incite the public to applause - and make them wait for my next jump with anticipation. Finally I jump on the back of the monster with all my weight, trying to immobilize him!".

Before you ask:
- Usually you don't fight vampires or werewolves or chtuluh on a ring. But you find some stuffs to jump on nonetheless.
- Yes, there may be a public - the innocent people you're trying to help.
- Showing off makes you gain magic points. Because this is a wrestling RPG, so obviously there's a mechanic to show off during fights.
- Yes this is silly. This is a game about divine wrestlers fighting Chtuluh, what do you expect?

In the combo I described, my first action is an aerial move (a sub-category of move), then a showman action, and an immobilization (you could argue there's another jump action in-between, but since my combo already contains an aerial move...). I roll move, and if I succeed, since my combo contains a show off action, I regain magic, and since I finish with an immobilization, then the monster is immobilized. If I fail, I get nothing, and the MC decides where I fail (I may fail my first jump, or the second one, or the immobilization).

There are 6 abilities (strength, move, technical, endurance (which is used to use weapon and some other big objects), dirty, showman), each divided in two sub-ability (eg showman contains the show off stuff, I don't remember its name, and "taunt" to make enemies lose magic points). There are other elements of balance - eg, with high showman you regain/remove more magic point per action, or breaking free from an immobilization is always a roll against the immobilization stat of the opponent. In other words, in the combo I described, my character only need move to succeed (and deal damages) (since damages are tied to your degree of success), and can do it while being very weak at showman and immobilization, but:
- if he's weak at showman, he won't gain a lot of magic points.
- if he's weak at immobilization, the monster will easily break free (... and remember, breaking free doesn't use the opponent's round. Like you, he gets as many action as he wants each round...).

So it's not the best idea ever to use an action that doesn't fit your stats... Anyway, if I feel, at any point, that a projection would be awesome, I'm not limited by my lack of strength: I just need to initiate with another ability (and for more awesomeness, I describe how my move gives me inertia, and how I use this inertia to throw the monster) and I can do my awesome projection.

The distance you can move using a move action depends on your move stat. I guess this answer your question about move. There's a last mechanic to prevent people to always use the same stat to initiate combo, but yes, a mobile wrestler should begin most of his turn by a move or a jump or something (not always a useful jump... remember, it's a game about wrestling about showing off, etc: a cool jump is justified by its coolness). And a strong opponent should immobilize him to prevent a move as the first element of the combo.


I forgot another good mechanics: since this is obviously a game about fight, the characters are defined by their fighting abilities. What they can do outside of combat is almost an afterthough - dirty is the intelligence of the character, showman is obviously his charisma, technical is his dexterity with small object... This isn't the best mechanic ever, but at least this game knows what it want to do: combat first, so characters are designed and balanced around combat.

In D&D, the character have charisma because they need a social stat, and charisma is useless in fight because why would the social stat be usefull?

In luchadores, they want a taunt/show off mechanic, so there's a showman stats defined by what it does in combat. Then, they define what it does out of combat.

Since both game are about combat and should be balanced around combat, luchadores has a better approach. Obviously, this wouldn't be a good approach if the main focus wasn't combat.

Note: our MC made some modifications on the base system of Luchadores. So I don't really know what comes from the system and what comes from him. According to him, the base system is OK and contains good ideas - but has obvious flaws as well.

hope you understand my explanations despite my awful English skill... :/