That resources idea could be optional. If you don't want to do the bookkeeping, you roll the dice because you are playing a character who doesn't keep track of their arrows or whatever. Or you can keep track.
This is an excellent video. Can you make this a series of videos of more RPGs on your shelf Hyperboria, One Ring, Numenera, Cypher system, FATE, Blades in the Dark or whatever else you have 3 or 4 mechanics each video would be really cool
I will certainly give that some thought. People seem to have enjoyed the first two, and as you noticed, I have more books with wisdom to share. Stay tuned!
Great suggestions! I'm actually using variations of the Effort and Push Your Roll in a system already, and both are immense improvements to the typical D&D-like game. Effort is so straightforward and gives a unified mechanism for handling almost any ongoing task or event. It can be easily applied to chases, arm-wrestling, and pretty much any contest, but also to things like social encounters (the flagship use in my case) and mass combat. Just about anything that is not combat but more than a single skill check can easily fit in, and you can use rolls and targets that resemble combat to make it more familiar and comfortable to players. It's all in how you describe it at the table. Push your Roll is maybe the favorite piece of my system based on their feedback. In my case, they can reroll any non-combat check by taking a point reduction to the relevant ability score and risking another point if they fail again. The reductions take a while to recover and can't be restored by normal means. One of the reasons people love it is, while you can use it for a second shot at a hard task, it also gives you a way to retry that roll in your specialty that happened to fail at the worst moment. But you don't have to if you'd rather just roll with the punches and avoid the stat hit. It's great for heroic games since it puts more agency in player hands and gives them a risky way to fight the whims of fate.
I think you nailed a key element of many of the different mechanics I share, 1) simple, speeds up play or at least doesn’t deter it 2) adds player agency. If you look at modern game design, one of the key innovations is the level of player agency compared to the past. Glad you have had luck with some of these already! Good gaming and God bless!
The first mechanic you said is basically the same as the "victory point" system in PF2E, which all the subsystems are based off of (for instance, chases, influence, heists etc) - it works surprisingly well and can easily be used to knock up a new "system" for the game
Good I hope that they help you out! Players will look at you like you are crazy the first time you introduce one of these rules… then the next time they will be excited because the game isn’t what they expected, in a good way!
I like to get a game or 2 for each genre. DCC and OSE for fantasy, Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland for Post-apocalyptic and I think I'm gonna grab Death in Space for Sci-fi. Good video!
I absolutely agree on having multiple genre options. One that you might look into, for sci fi, Solar Blades and Cosmic Spells. It is a sci fi adaptation of Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, which I would describe as an expanded Black Hack with clear nods to Dungeon Crawl Classics design principles (which makes sense as the author has worked on many DCC projects). Also, it happens to be a gorgeous book! Gotta love when the indy publishers give the big boys a run for their money!
The push mechanic is pretty decent, I use it in my games. The dice chain is... a bit much for d20. The usage dice, though, is pretty neat for systems where there isn't a "fixed" usage limit, like poisons as mentioned, or for handfuls of sand, etc.
Yessir! Adds an unknown element to create tension. Could also be a “timer” on an unstable item (maybe a mutagen bomb), each time it is jostled you check to see if it degrades. So many great ways to use that!
I took a significant break three times, first from early high school to college(5 years), then from late college until after I was a parent (6 years), then from late 4th edition until the pandemic (about 8 years). It gets harder to find a group I want to play with each time, but it is worth the effort. Now I have my “youngster group” with all 20-30 something’s, and my “oldies group” with 3 of us in our 40’s and one son of the group in his teens(old soul). It really does a good job of scratching different itches. The young group is willing to do one shots in several systems and genres, which I enjoy exploring. The older group is more reliable and steady and willing to stay the course and actually finish a campaign, which has its own rewards. Between the 2 I play a couple games a month, 8-10 hours table time, plus another 5-8 hours of prep. Just enough to feel I keep up my gamer designation ;). If my groups would dissolve again, I would force myself to learn Roll20, but until that happens I prefer in person! Good luck and I hope you are able to get in a game soon!
@Books, Bricks and Boards i work full time from the road these days. Last estimate was over 20k in RPG related kickstarters and Minis on top of 4 4ft x 7 ft tallbook shelves of books. Someday i will retire and enjoy them
@@Drakecoinus I understand completely brother. I cover 13 financial institution branches, managing their branch managers, so I travel a bit myself. Luckily, I'm usually home every night and I am always around on the weekends. Sounds like you have some well earned table time coming up!
Hey bud, RU-vid just started recommending your videos to my account today, but I think you and I are on the same frequency when it comes to the consideration and analysis of TTRPG rules systems. Like you, I rarely get a chance to play, and I’m open to experimenting with various systems and seeing how they match different genres. In particular, I have a Democratic Method that I can’t seem to get any players interested in, so it’s not yet tested. I also prefer for my stories to be connected in some way to current events, cooperation, morality and to be taken a bit more seriously than any other actual play you’ll find these days. If you are interested in working with me, on a publication maybe that is the result of a series of game sessions with a social scientific goal that will hopefully spawn a niche in the TTRPG community for players like me, and maybe you, then reply here and we can start the conversation. 🎉
Appreciate the views and the kind and thoughtful responses. I have a pretty demanding job and a family, so my time is pretty limited, but it sounds like you have some interesting theories on the values that are represented in RPG’s and I would like to talk more about them as time permits. If you would like to reach out and have a longer discussion, booksbricksandboards@gmail.com is a show email account. If I don’t answer right away it is not a result of disinterest but probably just lack of availability!
Right off the bat, effort isn't nessecary. There are optional rules for skill challenges, or you can use the rules from 4th edition for a more involved way of using this concept. Easily adapted to any situation once you understand the concept.
There is some value in having a mechanic that is analogous to the way hit points work. It allows the players to relate to the game without trying to memorize which mechanic goes in which situation. Not for every table, but worth looking at.
For me it felt like a more convoluted way of doing the same, but I'm already used to skill challenges, so maybe my perspective is skewed. And for me skill challenges are better because there's actual chance of failure. In situations where you want them to succeed but just expend some resources to do it, this might indeed be a better fit for some. Thanks for the additional perspective!
@@SSNewberry I think that this is it really. That is probably what drives the "perpetual GM" archetype. We want to experiment with all the ways to interpret the simulation of interactive story telling, which is the root purpose of an RPG. If I had the time to fully enjoy every RPG I want to now, I feel like I would only find as many more that I would also want to explore. It is a deep, deep rabbit hole, but the treasures therein are quite tantalizing!
Lol! Comment of the year contender right here! To answer your question, yes indeed, it is safe and tested. Little larger than a d12, rolls very similar.
Comment on the Black Hack Usage die: Player uses an arrow and asks the GM if he has any arrows left. GM replies "roll your Usage die". Player, "What's my usage die for arrows, d12?". GM replies "No, your Rations are currently at a d12, you arrow Resource die is... ah, I've forgotten, didn't you make a note of it?". Player, "No, isn't the whole point of using a Usage die not to keep track of resources? So, should I use a d12? GM replies "I seem to remember you rolled low on your last Usage die, so maybe it should be a d10". Player, grumbles "OK", rolls a d10 and rolls a 2. "Darn, I'm down to a d8". GM, "Make sure you make a note of your Arrows Usage die is now a d8". Wouldn't it be quicker and easier just to keep track of the number of items or resources? Why invent an abstract mechanism that you STILL need to keep track of? Each time you use this abstract mechanism you need to interpret its meaning, check to see what dice you should be rolling and then you make a die roll. Might as well just keep track of the actual resource. There are some mechanisms this (i.e. a Usage die) might be appropriate but rolling the extra die and noting when it goes down can just slow the game down.
I have used it with different groups and seemed to work pretty well for us. The player writes down the die next to the resource, so it isn’t really memorizing. For ammo you roll the die at the end of combat not each shot. Might try it and find you like it better than you think.
@@booksbricksandboards783Using what works for you is important. We just find that if the abstract mechanism still requires to be tracked in some way, then there's no real need to use an abstract mechanism, instead you can just track the actual numbers. If a group uses and enjoys the Usage die, good, then it works for them :)
That auction mechanic is not going to be faster than just rolling contested d20s and looking at margins of success to determine which contestent did better. All you're doing is adding a gambling minigame to the process, which might be engaging for some people but to me it's just pointlessly slowing the game. Two rolls with a decision point before you make your bid is not only slower, it makes having the high bid (and rolling first) an active disadvantage, since you hand an automatic win to your opponent if there's just the two of you in a contest. DCC's screwy dice are beyond pointless in this day and age. All you're getting with it is finer granularity in your potential results than traditional poly dice grant. You can do that better with five minutes of setting up randomizers on your phone or PC. Your personal electronics can generate any spread of numbers you want, you don't need physical dice for such a niche purpose.
I actually haven’t played D&D proper in a couple years. I do still enjoy several retro clones of varying fidelity to D&D (played a great session of Old School Essentials last night!). While my overall preference is to play Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old School Essentials or Hyperborea , if I were playing a version of D&D, I still believe there are a lot of DM’s out there that can’t get their group to try another game. In those cases, introducing great mechanics from other systems is a good way to ease them into an alternative system. I’m really enjoying my time with Torchbearer right now as well, but that is a story for another day! As far as non-fantasy games, when I can get my groups to play them, I enjoy Call of Cthulhu, Cypher, and Sentinel Comics RPG, having ran multiple sessions of each not too long ago. Thanks for watching!
@@booksbricksandboards783 Call of Cthulhu is fun and so are most old school RPGs. Do you have a video reviewing Torchbearer? I cannot find it anywhere on your channel. Looks like a nice system.
