Mechanics up for grabs (Talk, Take, or Tweak)

I've only got one (untested) RPG system under my belt, and it's ridiculously simple. But, I do have lots of mechanics ideas that I've worked into house rules for other games or that just sit unused in countless Google Drive docs and Evernote files. I'd love to create something with them, but my time is limited. So, I'm going to post a handful of them here and hope that someone else might get some good use out of them.

Tactical Styles
This mechanic is meant to function like an advanced rock-paper-scissors. Each tactical style has strengths and weaknesses towards the other styles. For example, quick might beat strong, and wide might beat quick. The idea is to either use these as they are for a generic system or to use them as guidelines when designing race/class moves, skills, and abilities.
- Quick
- Strong
- Wide
- Piercing
- Deflecting
- Feint

Descriptor Stats
This mechanic is designed to create characters smoothly and allow their abilities to easily slip back and forth into the narrative. It is also (hopefully) simple enough to be quickly grasped by people new to RPGs. The idea is to fill in the blank with one or two words and then assign each item a number between 1 and 4. One option would be to roll 1d6, add the relevant number, and try to meet or exceed a 6. If you do, then your action succeeds.
My job is __________________.
I am very ________________.
I carry _____________________.
Others see me as _____________________.

Fight or Flight
Every round of combat, the opponents get deadlier and/or the PCs get weaker. In a d20 system, this could be as simple as adding +1 to enemy rolls and/or subtracting -1 from PC rolls. This creates an incentive to wrap combats up quickly. It also has the secondary effect of (hopefully) encouraging players to retreat if combat is going poorly.

Note: This would also need to have some other mechanical incentives, such as class abilities that make it easy to retreat.

Three Attributes
Characters have just three attributes with scores of 1-10: endurance, skill, and luck. Every action comes under the purview of one of these three attributes. When a player takes a difficult action, they roll 1d12. If the result is lower than their score, they succeed. If it is equal to or higher than the score, they fail. But, they can change a failure into a success by subtracting one point from that score temporarily.

Par System
Traits determine how many dice you get to roll for any given action. The better your trait, the more dice you get to roll against an obstacle.

An obstacle generally has two stats (Par and Threshold). Most obstacles also have a Twist of some kind.

The Par of any given obstacle is the number of successes needed to overcome it.
- Having fewer successes than Par results in a negative outcome.
- Having exactly as many successes as Par results in a neutral outcome.
- Having more successes than Par results in a positive outcome.
There is a single Par table to describe the severity of outcomes. It ranges from -3 to +5. For example: 9 successes against a Par 4 obstacle (+5) is the same as 7 successes against a Par 2 obstacle (+5).

The Threshold of an obstacle is the number that must be rolled on a d6 in order to achieve a successes. The default Threshold for an obstacle is 3, meaning that a result of 3 or higher is a success, and a result of 1 or 2 is a failure.

Twists are a way of making obstacles different from each other, giving them a unique twist. Example twists include:
- A result of 1 on a d6 negates a success.
- Roll one fewer die than given by your Trait.
- Reroll all 3s.

This is a crazy great list of the types and styles of mechanics, and its funny how reading through them, I see so many games: Numenera, Deadlands, DnD and its ilk.

I've not played either Numenera or Deadlands (though I've heard good things about both), but I think that cross-pollination in RPGs is a great thing, so hopefully it's good that these mechanics reminded you of other games.

Interesting list, thatonegm. I posted something in the same vein on my blog some time ago, about my "Favourite RPG Game Mechanics, Part 1".

I, too, like the idea of importing some mechanics into other game systems.

The Tactical Styles reminds me of Usagi Yojimbo: when attacking you declared either 1) Total Attack, 2) Total Defense, or 3) Cautious Attack. Total Attack beats Cautious Attack, Cautious Attack beats Total Defense, and Total Defense beats Total Attack.

The Tactical Styles reminded me of Mouse Guard or, more generally, Burning Wheel, which uses a modified RPS (with 4 options - Feint beats 2 options and loses really badly to 1 option).

Descriptive stats sounds a lot like the core system of Wushu (if you like that idea I recommend looking into Wushu, it's very simple and very fun to play).

Fight or Flight I would actually recommend against using. Making fights slower, and harder for the PC's just encourages rocket-tag approaches to combat (that's a term we used to describe high-level 3.5 D&D combat). In rocket-tag everyone comes to the fight with rockets, and whoever wins initiative wins the battle (this happens in 3.5 once your wizards are powerful enough to cast 8th/9th level spells and so can single-handedly end a combat in victory with one spell). If the odds stack up against you every round you have very little incentive to prolong a fight. It's a very 'stick' approach to discouraging combat (because really, the best option is to avoid combat all together).

Instead I'd suggest going the way 13th Age does. Every round all players get an incremental +1 to all rolls. On round 1 it's +0, round 2 it's +1, round 3 it's +2 ... up until a max of +6. Most monsters don't benefit from this (except really strong ones, like Dragons), and some of the character powers actually use it as as mechanic (some powers, for example, are reusable only if used on a turn where the attack bonus is even, and if used otherwise are consumed and can't be reused that encounter). It's nice because it actively *prevents* fights from being long and drawn out. It's a d20 system, but we can crash through easily twice as many combats as we can in 5e D&D. I think the escalation die mechanic is a big contributor to that.

I've just bookmarked your blog post, and looking at the first few points, it looks interesting.

I didn't even know there was an Usagi Yojimbo game, but that is the same kind of idea I was going for. Of course, it would be possible for a designer to use these as jumping-off points for unique abilities rather than as generic action descriptors.
I've not played either of those games, but I knew the concept wouldn't be unique. How many options does Mouse Guard present? I tried to include enough to make resolution interesting without being too complex.
Wushu is my very favorite RPG system, so I'm not surprised that it sounds similar. Descriptive Stats were originally a Frankenstein of Wushu and Risus, but I ended up with a very Wushu-esque system after several reevaluations. I hope that the focus on filling in the blanks (rather than Wushu's completely open-ended three traits) is enough of a difference to make it stand out as a system.
Yeah, I'd heard of 13th Age's escalation die, and thought there might be a way to use it to make combats less appealing. But I guess in the d20 system, you're right, it would frequently lead to rocket-tag.

I wonder if there's a better way to mechanically reinforce the idea of retreat as a viable option in the d20 system. Obviously, you could always use another system, but there are lots of aspects of d20 that I like.

Mouse Guard gives you 4 options. 3 stand in the usual rock paper scissors relationship (but the outcomes are different - so winning with an Attack provides a different result than winning with a Defense action). The fourth option, Feint, beats Attack and whatever the other aggressive option is, but loses (very badly) to defence. This creates a really interesting game structure with weighted betting on outcomes. And, to encourage teamwork, the *team* (not each player) selects their option.

I love Wushu as well. The system I posted here is my attempt to flesh out Wushu a bit more.

A problem with retreat in d20 systems is that the systems don't really support retreating. You really just need to add the capacity to retreat. Opportunity attacks, the way pursuit works (it being based mostly on movement speed, and so if your enemies can move just as fast as you, or happen to have ranged weapons, attempting to escape is just another way to get killed), are all reasons to simply fight to the death instead of run away (because running away has a low probability of saving your life).