5e - Advantage/Disadvantage 0:00 Blades in the Dark - Flashbacks 6:38 PF2e & Call of Cthulu - Degrees of Success 12:35 Traveller - Backstory link skill bonus 19:02 Fantasy Flight's Star Wars (Edge of the Empire) - Obligations 23:25
My problem with Advantage/Disadvantage in 5e is that there's no granularity to it, if you have two sources of advantage one and one source of disadvantage, you have neither, which in turn restricts how much one can prepare for any given task. Or to put it in a common example, if you're opening a door having a crowbar or assistant yields the same effect, so either the tool or aid goes unused, so you either feel stupid for bringing the tool or the other player feels like they aren't contributing. While if there was more granularity, then breaking through a door with a crowbar and assistant in the dead of night would at least leave you with advantage rather than nothing.
Some honourable mentions: - Rivals/Allies from blades in the Dark: Pick one ally & one rival from a list of in-world characters. Gives PCs good tie-ins to the world. - Ammo Rules from FF Star Wars: If you roll a crit fail with a weapon that uses ammunition, you run out unless you're carrying spare. - Force Points (again from FF Star Wars RPG). In SW it's a special D12 with light and dark pips. Each Player rolls and this creates a shared pool of 'deus ex machina' points. Light points can be used by players to manifest small advantages. GM can use Dark side points to manifest obstacles. Whenever either side uses a point, it flips to the other side. I've used this as a "Fate" or "Luck" system in 5e and its super fun. You can also add in PC/enemy abilities that use these points as fuel, or an ability that lets you steal from the opposite pool.
Definitely recommend Blades in the Dark, the depth of the setting is fantastic. Flashbacks do spend your stress points (basically health), but it is so nice for spontaneous, colloborative storytelling at the table
Interesting video. I have "borrowed" from several systems myself. GURPS + Heroquest + Cairn + Cypher System = my madness. Simple. Cyclical. An abomination wearing a D&D skin.
To be fair, Blades in the Dark didn't invent the Flashback system. My first exposure to it was the Leverage RPG (Cortex). This was very similar in that the system was based around pulling off elaborate heists.
Came to say the same thing :) and I'm not sure that Leverage originated the mechanic either. There's also Night's Black Agents and 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars I believe...
The greatest weaknesses of Traveller is that there is no mechanic for character improvement and the ability scores do not always fit well with non-Traveller Imperium campaign settings (notably, Social Standing, which is a good concept, but I feel it should not be placed within the core ability mechanics). Otherwise, it's better than most SFRPG systems, and there is some actual fuzzy physics underlying the technologies. Avoid Traveller 5 though. It's over-complicated to the nth degree and almost unplayable.
Visual aids would have greatly improved the video. Honestly, their lack would've been enough for me to skip this video, had you not pinned the timestamp comment.
Advantage / disadvsntage is a fine solution to a probelm created by 3e, but is a terrible mechanic in and of itself. The DM is the referee and they are in charge of setting a difficulty. If the difficulty is 15 and the player argues "but im good at x and y and z, and i have these buffs, and ive got this situation going for me" then the DM should instead LOWER the difficulty reaonably. This is rulings over rules.
