The old DC Heroes RPG had a thing called "Omni-Gadgets", meant to reflect how characters like Batman always seem to have the exact gadget they need at any given time. Instead of spelling out specifically what gear you're carrying, you can have a number of Omni-Gadgets, which have general stats for how powerful they are, and what categories of abilities they can have. But it's not until you actually use it that you decide whether it's a smoke bomb, or a lockpick, or a tuna salad sandwich (hey, those Gotham stakeouts can be pretty long!). It's sort of like spell slots for techies.
That sounds awesome. I'm surprised I haven't seen that before in a Pulp Game (or any game). Reminds me how in Traveller the Ship's Locker has "Whatever basic thing you need". You can't inventory it, and players are expected not abuse it, but instead of tracking every random thing on the ship, you'll simply check the Ship's Locker for it like the World's Greatest Junk Drawer.
Loved DC Heroes. Also loved the way hero points were interchangeable between a die bonus or could be accumulated to spend on increasing stats. It gave players the dilemma "do I boost this crucial role or do I risk it so I have enough hp to increase my Strength after the adventure". A nice way to handle advancement
My RPG group moved to Traveller after finishing a long D&D campaign. When one of my players does some cool or awesome, my reaction is to reward them inspiration. And then I catch myself "oh, wrong game". After watching this, I'm like why am I doing that? Next game session I'm totally going to give out inspiration to travellers! Thanks again for the great ideas!
@@jesternario , they liked the idea! Instead of metal dice like Seth presented in the video, I found some odd shaped plastic 6-sided dice at my local game store. I have a wooden game table; so, I'd rather not be throwing metal dice around. Long and short of it, they liked it but we just barely got into a new adventure; so, no one earned inspiration to try it out. Maybe next session in a couple of weeks. Thanks for asking!
I learnt from my game master the rule of the candle. Before the game starts, GM asks all players a question or description of what their characters are thinking or something from their story one by one, by holding a candle and passing it amongst the players. It's a nice way of sharing their backstory or to see what their character thought about last encounter.
I've used lighting a candle as a signal the game session is starting, but I hadn't thought of passing it around as a talking stick. That's a really great idea!
Heads up. Because I talked about it in the video I wanted to share that there a killer Humble Bundle going on for Mongoose 2e Traveller. It's got the Core Rulebook, Central Supply Catalog, several adventures, the Pirates of Drinax campaign (which includes the Trojan Reach sector guide), some novels, and a soundtrack. Only 2 days left on it, but definitely worth it. www.humblebundle.com/books/traveller-mongoose-publishing-books?partner=sskorkowsky
I grabbed that the last time it was up because of hearing how cool Traveller sounded in this channel. Although sadly still haven’t had a chance to play. 😂
Oooh. Thanks for that heads up! I've been meaning to get into Traveller, since it sounds super fun. It's not like I *just* bought a ton of Kult: Divinity Lost last month or anything 😅
In Kevin Crawford's "Number" games (Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number, Cities Without Number) there is a rule that I'm a huge fan of that ties XP to goals (both short and long term) that the players decide on their own. I really dig it and feel it encourages the players to come up with motivations for their characters and also plot hooks that the GM can flesh out that the players will have incentive to actually follow up on. Also, having a unified long term group goal helps to keep the party focused.
I'll add a suggestion: Cyberpunk 2020's Reputation and Face-downs. It's a great way to scare off fodder goons that would be more waste of ammo and not worth the effort Plus its always hilarious to see a boostergang lord being scared off by a Netrunner otaku with high COOL stat and decent rep.
The rule I stole from Traveller is the idea of the task chain :D It just allows for so many more different skills to come up and the players always feel great about helping each other out and on top of that it encourages them to think "how?" their skill checks are performed and how somebody might be able to help them :D
DnD 5e Mastermind Help as a bonus action paired with Historian that allows you to apply your Prof Bonus to anyones roll on anything, now as a bonus action. Artificer for Flash of Genius ability(+you Int modifier as a reaction) and the Guidance(1d4), Borrowed Knowledge(free skill prof), and Enhanced Ability (advantage to one stat's checks) spells. One character can enure that anyone in party can always succeed on those essential checks... without having a bard You yell out "he is a ball-chinian" and Agent K get a crit. You yell out "damnit sam pull" and Frodo is now up and on his feet. You yell out "it's got 6 tumblers not 5" and the theif opens the chest.
Indeed. Low births have a nasty habit of dying? Madic: I'll examine each 'patient' using life sciences! Engineer: I'll then use engineer (life support) to spec each birth for that specific person! Two months later with no deaths; Broker: yes... the fee for low births is double. It's worth it.
The connections rule from a third party Savage Worlds pulp game. Once per session someone in the party can declare they know a guy in the area. This NPC is limited in the help they can give, and can even hate the PCs. Things like an ex girlfriend or a guy they knew in college. It's like Escape from New York where Snake keeps bumping into people he knows. As a game mechanic, it's a handy way to get back on the rails if the players are short on essential supplies or don't know what to do.
I absolutely love Bennies from Savage Worlds as currency the players can spend to reroll things that matter to them, get back resources they need, and otherwise effect the narrative. Good reward for roleplaying and jokes and cool ideas, and one I definitely feel naked without when running some other games.
yeah bennies have modeled how I like meta-currencies in RPGs. A good flow of meta points allows prevents hoarding. My second favorite is pathfinder second edition's hero point system, and we give those out every hour of play to a random party member as well as starting with one. Gives a good flow of points
I've never liked clocks in any game I've come across that uses them. They seem way too meta. I also like being able to decide myself when a task is complete and not locking myself into something when I have no idea how it'll turn out
Yes, I use the clock as well, I think it's great! Also, the best mechanic in Blades is the "Flashback", I give my Call of Cthulhu players each one free flashback per session.
@@feral_orc They're basically just HP, but used more generally. I find them very useful as trackers personally; why use "6/6" to track how much ammo is in a revolver when you have each chamber accounted for in clock form? And tracking how much time until something arrives somewhere, or the approximate location of something that moves along a patrol is made much easier with a visual indicator. Like, their intended use is as a tool to track stuff, tracking task HP is just one of the many features of clocks.
@@feral_orc I'm not sure I follow your concern. The GM decides whether any given event advances the clock or not and can advance it more than one segment if needed, so it's not like you're "locked in" to a certain number of actions. "Clock" is more in reference to the appearance than the function most of the time since they're more for progress-tracking (and useful for tracking both success and failure condition progress) than time-tracking. In fact, the only time I've personally had one used as an actual turn timer was in a "moving wall coming to crush you" tomb trap.
@@aeonise yeah but that's the problem. A lot of that is meta knowledge that the players just shouldn't have. You give them a meta goal to target and work towards and you've just given them access to what is effectively an MMO quest tracker telling you how close something is to happening, and that's informing player decisions for their characters. Let's say the players know a bad thing is gonna happen unless they do something about it. Super generic. They know the bad guy is getting ready to blow up an orphanage. So the players start coming up with ideas for how to stop it, and now they have a clock to track how close the bomb is to blowing/how close they are to saving people/how much work they've done to stop it. None of this info should be available to the players. It's like letting them know every enemy's HP.
to "yes and..." the Traveller connection rule for late additions. Traveller links skill gains to characters on backstory of the other Travellers. "That old Marine Sgt you have a rivalry with? Its her that taught me ...X" Ties into the party even faster, possibly with complications.
I like Hero Coins (it's like inspiration) but, I'll give it a Cthulhu Luck twist. You forgot spare ammo? _Spend a Hero Coin to remember_ Rocks fall and everybody dies? _Spend a Hero Coin to spot a foxhole no one noticed and escape_
Is that anything like the token system in Chill 3rd edition? That game has a pool of tokens that are light on one side and dark on the other. The players can flip a token from light to dark to modify a roll or activate a supernatural ability, and the GM can flip a token to the light side to do the same for evil NPCs, or to complicate the current situation (NPC the players are trying to protect gets spooked and runs away, car won't start, etc.) A player can also flip *all* the tokens to the dark side to save a character from certain death.
A cool one I got from RuneQuest was augmenting. If you're about to do something that you're not very good at, you can roll for a different skill, ability or trait to gain a bonus on the roll. E.g. If your character is a researcher who needs to craft rope, they may use their Plant Lore skill to give a bonus by finding fibrous plants to use as rope. On the flip side, failing will add a penalty to the roll so players only use it when it really counts.
Sounds like World of Darkness games (comboing your choice of any attribute + skill) as well as Burning Wheel (you may add dice to a skill roll if you can argue how others skill you have help).
Part of the Rogue Trader RPG for 40K has an interesting system for character generation. They use a flow chart where you chose the classification of your home world at the top, then work downwards through the layers going either straight down or 1 step to the side each time. Each level give you a title such as 'Survivor' or 'Stranded' the give you bonus skills and prompts you to make thatnpart of your back story. And if multiple people get the same result that's hiw your characters met.
I'm a fan of the "wild die" from WEG's Ghostbusters and Star Wars RPGs. Those systems used buckets of d6s. Whenever you rolled any dice, even one, one of them was a different color, size or whatever. If you rolled a 1 on that die there was a complication even if you succeeded. A 6 on that die was a bonus, even if you failed. So something could always go a little wrong or in your favor. It's an interesting twist that I have carried over into many games.
When it comes to starting a new campaign, I try to adapt the solo and group questions from Tales From The Loop - they're so effective at bonding the team, and ensuring the players are playing their own story.
The one rule I've seen in an RPG that I want to steal is a bit more structural. It's a system called Nerve from the 1st edition of an independent game called HC SVNT DRACONES, more often referred to as HSD for short. The idea behind the mechanic was that, even for soldiers, life and death combat can be a terrifying thing that can wear on your nerves (hence the name) as much or even more than your body. It was, in theory, more likely that given enough stressors a character would surrender if that seemed a reasonable option than fight to the death. Essentially, either you could be taken out of the fight from Wounds, or have the fight taken out of you from Nerve. If you lost all of your Nerve, you don't necessarily cower in fear for the rest of the fight (though with the right/wrong traits I believe that was a possibility), but you are barred from taking offensive action against an enemy or willingly moving closer to them, so you can at least still try to give support to friendlies or drag a wounded buddy away from danger, but as far as dealing with the active threat goes, you're not really "fighting" anymore, which still weakens the party, just not quite as much as a KOd party member would be. I rarely see that level of "mental fortitude for combat" mechanically represented that isn't more like sanity checks from Call of Cthulhu, which is a different vibe and tone of mental wellbeing, and I would love to see that sort of mechanical representation for that line at which a person goes "I can't do this anymore, I'm done" and surrenders that isn't purely an RP decision by the game master or players (because it's hard to get some people to roleplay as anything but totally fearless even if their character is a 9 to 5 office worker and NPC surrender is otherwise a pure judgement call when it doesn't make sense for them to necessarily be fighting to the death).
Some comments touched on this, but inspiration/bennies being spent to break rules is a fun one. Does a player want to backflip over an enemy that snuck up on them? Spend a bennie/inspiration. Want to charge through that horde slashing wildly even though technically they only get 1 attack a turn? Bennie/inspiration. Another one is giving inspiration for "wasted" crits, such as getting a crit on a monster with 1hp. Related to that is granting inspiration if the player chooses to take a fumble on nat 1, or chooses to fail a check before the roll.
Before watching the video, the things I've stolen from different RPGs: Fronts from Apocalypse World, running factions from Godbound, campaign cards from Wrath and Glory, minions from D&D 4E, and Fate Points from the FFG Warhammer 40'000 RPGs. I don't use all of them all the time, but they're each tools that have a proud place in my toolbox. Edit: I also want to add on to what Seth said at the start; don't just run a system rules as written, run it the way it wants to be run. My first impression of L5R wasn't amazing because the GM was running it more like 5E and less like a drama game. Fortunately, we could all see the potential of what the game could be and I ended up running a few one-shots and short campaigns that really rammed home for me how much I love the system, but it had to be run the way it wanted to be for me to really enjoy it.
I'll echo that. We played Cyberpunk2020 for several years as a side game to our regular AD&D campaign and we played it pretty much like D&D with guns and cyber. It was only after we switched to it being our primary game and I read some Cyberpunk modules and saw how it was supposed to be run, and that changed everything.
Oh, I forgot one! I used the Traveller connections in character creation concept for two of the L5R mini-campaigns I ran, and that went really well because it gave me a built-in reason why these samurai from different clans would form their own social clique.
Always love to see some L5R love. It is an amazing system, but you really have to lean into it. It is also one where, despite them sort of being in the rules, I'd say "No 13th warriors". It's theme campaigns. Don't play a foreigner!
@@AGrumpyPanda If they fit in, sure. But the few times I've tried to run it, those foreign characters have felt like an excuse not to care about the setting
Thanks for sharing this! I really like the Connection Rule because I've been in many groups where players tend to be rather shy and reserved or the group dynamic is just sort of awkward and incohesive; I think the Connection Rule is a really nice way of incentivizing players to collaborate and communicate with each other more. I find all too often, at least with 5e, that players are a little too focused on their own characters and will often try to solve problems on their own without discussing it much with the rest of the group. I definitely want to try using this the next time I run a game! Thanks again!
I recently ran a home-brew Horror Mystery 1 shot that went really well. I included a custom rule called a regroup phase. The players had access to 2 regroup phases throughout the game that they could choose to take whenever they were not in combat and were in a safe environment. There are 5 things that players could do in a regroup phase; analyze clues, regain sanity, regain health, search for resources, or repair weapons/items. The clue analysis check is an opportunity for the players to essentially ask for help from the GM for solving the clues they have gathered. Help piecing things together or figuring out what their next step should be. Nothing worse than a mystery game where the players are just stuck at a dead end. Each player had to decide which of the 5 options listed above they wanted to do in the regroup phase. These are the only opportunities in the game to restore any health/sanity, or find loot/more resources so their decisions are pretty important. This rule was one of my favorite parts of the game. The players would pour over the clues together and try to figure out what they knew and what questions to ask me for help. It worked great and having these be the only opportunities to restore health or sanity made the game even more threatening and tense!
I would also highly recommend one rule from Frontier Scum, that I really liked during the game. «ACE IN A SLEEVE. Spend an Ace to reroll any dice that’s not a natural 1 or 20. Gain an Ace at the start of every session. If you roll a natural 20 on an ability check, you can gain a new Ace. Everyone immediately loses all their Aces when any PC rolls a natural 1 on an ability». I think it's a great balance between «use it now to shine» and «risk of loosing it because you waited too long».
The momentum pool from Möedipius Games. I liked it in the Conan RPG but it blew my mind in Star Trek Adventures because it was perfect for a team of Starfleet officers aboard the same ship working together. The ability to "store" your extra succecces in a pool that the whole group has access to for their own rolls was for me the best representation of working together as a group since Team Karma from Marvel Superheroes (TSR).
I agree with you about the momentum pool and also the threat pool really builds a sense of foreboding for the players as they have to wait for when the GM is going to cash in all his threat chips. This would be a good addition to horror games. In Call of Cthulhu every time you push a roll and get a failure it could be converted into threat.
While I haven't had a chance to actually _play_ any of their games (still looking for a chance to use the Dishonored RPG book I got!), I love the "Momentum/Threat" mechanic that Modiphius uses in their 2d20 systems. In this system, whether you pass or fail a roll is based on how many successes you roll on your 2d20 (rolling under a target number, typically determined by your character's stats, is a success, a 1 on the die is a critical success that counts for two successes), with the number of successes needed depending on the difficulty of the action you're attempting. If you roll more successes than you need to, however, you gain _Momentum._ Momentum is a pool of resources available to the entire party, and it can be used in a few ways - "buying" extra d20s when they make a roll, dealing extra damage with attacks, taking additional actions, even adding something to a scene that can swing things in the players' favor! However, the DM has their own version of this mechanic: "Threat" (or "Doom", "Heat", "Chaos", etc. depending on the game). They can earn Threat in all the same ways as the players, and they can use it for all of the same things to crank up the challenge against the players. The DM has one additional tool with their Threat pool, however: if the players are all out of Momentum and they absolutely *need* to pass a skill check or get that last hit in to stop the enemy before it's too late, they have the option of "buying" Momentum from the DM... and for every point of Momentum they get by doing this, the DM gains a point of Threat that can be used against the players later on. Momentum and Threat make for an interesting way to keep an ebb and flow between the players and the DM, helping to make sure that one side doesn't get too much of an edge and that there's always a chance of one side turning things around.
Great video, I like the push roll idea. Somewhat similar to inspiration, is the DCC mechanic around "Luck" from the 2012 game. One of the base six statistics is called Luck (they make room for it by squashing Wisdom and Intelligence together into Personality). First, this is really useful for skill checks that maybe have more to do with luck than actual skill... maybe half the chairs are booby-trapped... was your character lucky in sitting on a safe one? But also, you can "burn" luck, adding to your dice roll in exchange for a lower luck score... and you can choose to do this, AFTER you've rolled. But when you do something awesome, the Judge can award you luck points somewhat similar to how one can award inspiration. Inspiration is simpler and easier to use perhaps, but I think the idea of a character's innate luckiness is actually a really fun addition to the game.
I really like the "Destiny Pool" from Edge of the Empire (it might be in the other Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPGs, I haven't played them). At the start of the game each player rolls the Force Die, building up Light Side and Dark Side points. The players can spend the Light Side points to upgrade their dice pool, make an NPCs roll more challenging, utilise certain character abilities, or to introduce new elements to a scene if the DM agrees (the example the rulebook gives is your character "remembering" that they packed rebreathers when you land on a planet with a toxic atmosphere). The DM gets to spend Dark side points to upgrade an NPCs dice pool or to increase the difficulty of something the players want to do. The thing that makes the whole system come together for me is that when you spend a point, and after any appropriate dice rolls have been made, it flips over and becomes the other type. So any benefit the players get is a future buff to the NPCs, and any time the DM chooses to make the players lives harder they're making something in future easier for them
The Talking and Analysis phase is such a cool way to integrate specific weaknesses in a combat, while also rerolling initiative to make combat fresh every round, or every other round if that's too frequent. Amazing idea in my mind.
oh yes! That sounds good! I really like this rule to encourage RP but I am also a bit scared of it pulling the brakes too hard. I play a lot of 5E and combat can get really long there already so stopping after every round for an RP round could just kill momentum even more. I am thinking of just keeping it for boss battles or at least semi-boss battles and using it only every two rounds or something. Or maybe it could be a whole new action. Like...a character can choose to not attack, cast a spell or do anything else but just talk to the opponent and then give advantage to someone else because they found a weakness the next player can exploit or because they intimidated the opponent so they get disadvantage. Idk..something like that. Needs some work but as someone who always tries to make combat more than just mindless dicerolling without story, the "Talking/Analysis"-phase definitely inspires me
@@TaliesinBHeidkamp I described it in another comment, but I have enemies shit-talk the party *during* their turns. We chirp back and forth and it actually helps momentum since it limits the planning players can do during combat. Combined with my "only your characters can talk during combat, not you" rule it makes combat more chaotic which is kinda the goal in the systems I run anyway. It forces players to be prepared if they expect to handle combat tactically, while also greatly adding to the roleplaying aspect of it. The players have to be able to keep up, but the reward is huge and this aspect is standard now in my OSR games.
Fantastic video. My group just changed from Call of Cthulhu to Vampire the Masquerade and there are some of these rules that I intend to implement. I really appreciate these types of videos that make it easier to run games for players with your suggestions.
One thing I stole from Shadowrun and used in D&D was Astral Quests. In Shadowrun, an astral quest can be used by a user of magic to gain magical power (gross oversimplification here) or find out obscure information. The mage or shaman uses ritual to enter the astral plane on a quest. They can sometimes take others with them. One of the key parts of the quest is getting past the Dweller on the Threshold. The Dweller is an entity who sets an obstacle for the players to overcome before they can enter the astral plane. The Dweller, the obstacle and the quest can be anything you like, but I like to have some connection to the players back story or their mission. An example: The Dweller appeared as Papa Smurf and I gave the players character sheets of smurf characters. Then I had them all singing smurf songs. Only one of the players didn't get engaged with the singing, so the Dweller turned to his character and said "Is this too easy a task for you, would you like something a little harder?". Then I handed the players character sheets with a variety of Warhammer 40K characters and led them through a WH40K one shot suicide mission.
These ideas are so interesting. I have had a system I want to build on the back burner called Secret Expert where the player only gets most of the skills for their character once the game starts and they need those skills, reveling they were the right person for the job. I had not considered adding relationships to that system, that would add a tremendous amount of depth it was missing.
Last Saturday my dm added the connections rule from Traveller in our one shot. It was very helpful to establish a shared history within the party. It made the start of the one shot much more fluid.
I just finished my first year dming for my current group. You, Seth, and so many other generous experienced game masters have given me the tools and examples to make my own world sing... Or scream, muhahaha. Got lots to learn but how can I fail with such wonderful examples and lessons for communicating with my players. Great video on merging awesome mechanics
I love this tip. It's very cool. I always bring the devil's bargain mechanic and segment clocks from Blades in the Dark since having learned them. Right now I'm DMing a campaign in Avernus and playing in a Curse of Strahd with a newbie DM that plays with me for a while now, both D&D 5e. And these mechanics open more possibilities. Sacrifices. They're heisting devils and demons of their artifacts and one fail shouldn't bring all hell towards them. So a failed stealth check, for instance, fills a segment in the 'clock' that when filled alerts a lot of enemies and they should run away. Very fun to offer advantages in roles in exchange of different future penalties or a different kind of succes.
This video is brilliant. There are so many tabletop games with brilliant mechanics that really bring the game to life. But not all of them can be applied liberally to other games. This is a great list of rules that can.
Thanks, Seth! Sometimes it's easy to forget about things like this. I use a couple of these already, but there are a couple more that I'm adding to my arsenal. Great video as always!
The last one had me think of game masters making their one shots count by making it so that the players know their characters are going to be dead by the end of the session and their corpses along with whatever they have on them will be presented in another game along with the story of how they died.
Traveller is one of my favourite RPGs, but I never thought about using the Connections Rule in the middle of play. That's a cool idea! Something that's not really a mechanical thing but my group likes is the Touchstone system from Vampire: The Masquerade, where you tie some belief a character has to an NPC. We changed it so it doesn't necessarily have to be positive, so a character's protectiveness of children might come from someone they saw harming children and now they're hunting that character. It makes players flesh out their characters a bit while building the world a bit.
man i really like your voice seth, its like a 40-50s radio voice spiked with some 70-80s weed head terms. love it! that said, this video gave me some interesting ideas.
As always, a very big thank you! One of my friends stole/ported the combat-system from Twillight to Kult D L. Thank you Seth! Sincerely, Alicia from Sweden
One rule/idea that I have really come to love is from a new ttrpg called Break!! (Honestly there is a lot I love in that system) But the idea comes from the way they break down fights with massive monsters or creatures. In their system all massive enemies have their body divided up into separate HP regions and have a core of some kind (heart, brain, battery, etc) so the idea around it is you can cripple different parts of the massive enemy but to fully defeat the enemy you have to destroy the core
I would love more of these videos! My favorite rule/mechanic to steal is Clocks. I first learned about them from Blades in the Dark but apparently they've been around for a long time.
Another great video from two-time ENNIE award winner, Seth Skorkowsky. It's a little system dependent, but I've used "taking 10" and "taking 20" from 3x D&D. It's a nice balance between requiring investment in a skill or ability in order to accomplish something without letting chance get in the way when nothing is on the line. Only really needed in high variance dice system like d20 though.
For a dice pool related variation, allow players to trade in dice for successes, but not quite at the odds. In other words, if a 5 or 6 is a success on a d6, then you theoretically should have a success for every 3 dice in a perfect world, so I let my peeps trade 4 dice for a guaranteed success. Since my system requires different numbers of successes for harder rolls, this is still not enough to give total success all the time, just like taking 10 (although I am also good for just waving away rolls that the equivalent of taking 10 would succeed on lol)
The World of Darkness/Storyteller system has a dice pool-related version where if your dice pool is higher than the difficulty number, you get a single success
If nothing is on the line, I'd say you shouldn't be rolling dice. An acrobat isn't going to fail to jump between rooftops on a dry, hot night, and a wizard isn't going to forget critical parts of the cosmology of your world, so why would you roll for acrobatics and arcana? Rolls are chance, and they represent scenarios where chance is involved. No luck in the situation, no roll is needed, in my opinion.
Always love your videos Seth. Even though I don't play TTRPGs anymore I really love listening to your ideas and stories. Your channel is my go to for RPG stuff. Even if it's just listening to it while I draw or game. :D
What I love about pushed rolls is that the Keeper can allow a pushed roll to still succeed, albeit with a consequence. I've often used this to keep the story moving forward despite the failure, though something bad is going to happen as well. I used inspiration before I knew it existed. I got 50 little coins from a friend for Christmas so started to give them out in Call of Cthulhu games for good roleplaying. I wanted to encourage it. Each coin could be cashed in for a +1 to a roll (technically a -1 in Call of Cthulhu). Players could accumulate several coins over the course of a session and even give their coins to other players to help them with die rolls. I'm still trying to figure out a way to make this work online, but haven't had much luck yet. Great video as always. Some great ideas here.
Great idea for a vid Seth. I seem to remember “inspiration” was a pretty popular mechanic before DnD 5e. I think that is one of the secrets to its success. It basically pilfered a bunch of successful ideas from others and brought them into Dungeons & Dragons. It’s always useful to broaden horizons and exposure to different systems. I do like the interaction between the Traveller buddy system and Call of Cthulhu. I think it really promotes some better story moments and CoC really needs those skill buffs at important moments.
Yeah, I don't play D&D, but Inspiration sounds a lot like WEG's D6 system's character points (originally brownie points in Ghostbusters back in 1986). WEG Star Wars was probably a point of exposure for that sort of mechanic for a generation of gamers. Could be systems that used a similar mechanic even earlier, but I'm blanking at the moment.
I feel clock from BitD, timers and effort from ICRPG, fronts from Dungeon World and momentum from IronSworn are all fantastic and can be implemented alsomt everywhere
The escalation die is a good answer to any of (many) d20-based D&D-a-likes out there (including actual D&D) where you're finding combat bogging down and taking too long to wrap up. The constant increase in player (and some opponent) accuracy ramps up the action steadily even when not using 13A. It's even stronger in its parent game, where many PC and monster abilities manipulate or key off of the ED, but even in its basic form it's pretty good.
In my home game of 5e, rather than inspiration i use Hero Points. I found that my players tended to hoard inspiration, always waiting till the perfect moment to use it. I then changed the rules so that inspiration gets burned at the end of the session and they would just end up losing it. So in my recent campaign i implemented Hero Points. This allows a player to modify rolls either positively or negitively. At the beginning of every session i award a player for cool and epic moments, trying something creative, roleplay, or just being a team player (maybe bringing cookies or resolving player conflict in a calm manor) that happened the previous session. And that player gets to roll a d6 and add that to their hero point pool. At any time a player can use those hero points to modify rolls. 1:1 for their own rolls, 2:1 for other pcs or their allies, and 3:1 for everyone else including enemies. Just last session i had a pc go down and as the bbeg came down to finish them off all the players pooled their hero points together to force a miss. Its a great way to make moments feel more cinematic and be as epic as the protagonists are in our stories, doing impossible/improvable tasks! I cant recommend it enough!
Doesn't inspiration already work like that, and how do they "hoard" it? As Seth says, a player either has it or doesn't! You can't have inspiration multiple times! Though there is BARDIC inspiration that makes regular inspiration confusing and I think that's why so many people hate trying to use it in 5e.
@@JacksonOwex by hoarding it I mean not using it at all. Keeping it for so many sessions that there is never an opportunity to give out more. Literally went through an entire campaign with all players having inspiration and it only got used twice. That's when I started doing the only lasting for one session before fading out into the ephemeral sea. We'll they ever used it then either but with hero points they have been using them far more judiciously
I like the talking one. Seems like a good way to get some villain monogues in. Pushed rolls, one of my favourites as well. I really like corruption from dakr heresy. It creates wonderful negative character arcs. Same with delta green's bonds.
Annother good one. I was just surprised about the choice for ALIEN. Woud have bet you'd go with the Stress mechanic. Nothing against the Story points but they are so similar to inspiration as you said. Whereas the Stress mechanic is something really different. And I was kind of hoping for ideas how to transfere it into different systems.
I really like the Obligation system from Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. It gives your player a recurring ongoing personal issue as long as it doesn't get addressed. For example, maybe you're a wanted criminal, or owe a large sum to a crime lord. Maybe you need funds to buy medicine for a chronically ill loved one, or you have a vendetta against a specific faction in the world. I find it's a fun way to build character backstory while giving the GM good material for both personal quests and random encounters.
Clues system from Chronicles of Darkness 2e. The whole system is neat for when you don't actually have a preplanned mystery. Players basically use the dice to determine what clues they find. You can use any skill if you can describe how you think your character would find clues(roll wits+Athletics to see if there are signs that someone brute-forced a drawer for example). So any character can scooby doo their way through a mystery regardless of build. You find clues no matter the result of the dice. A success or exceptional means that you find better clues. A failure means the clue is somehow inconclusive or tainted somehow. Players tell you what likely happened by what theories they came up and what clues they tried to find. There is a bit more to the system, but I basically always use this part in any game when players search for stuff because the premise of the Clues system is that if a mystery pops up in a game, it doesn't feel good if it just ends with "Well, I guess we don't find out what happened". Fail forward as a mechanic is pretty damn useful, especially in games like Call of Cthulhu which is extremely dependent on investigating. Finding at least cryptic clues and giving people ominous hints when they use them to try and figure stuff out is more fun, lends itself to the atmosphere better, and creates more interesting outcomes.
Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPG has an amazing system of Triumphs and Despairs. You can fail but get something cool or succeed and have something horrible happen. It’s an underrated mechanic unique to their dice system.
Clocks from Blades In The Dark is a great rule to transfer. It's basically a countdown to an event (ex. The Law arrives), and works great for the heist nature of Blades I plan to use it in my next Call Of Cthulhu campaign for cults and others being made aware of the players
Three points at a time is a much better mechanism than one-and-only-one point of inspiration. If you only have one, and you have no idea when you might get another, you'll always sit on it, waiting for that perfect moment to use it, thereby blowing opportunities where you might have gotten another point. But if you can have three, then you'll always quickly use the third so you have a slot open to get another. And you'll readily use the second, knowing you still have the first in reserve for that perfect moment. And they need to reset at the end of the adventure, so you'll be encouraged to use the last one during the climactic battle.
Savage Worlds also has this kind of 3-point system. They call them "Bennies" and they can be used in a wide variety of ways. My favorite way is the when the players are absolutely stuck and have no idea how to proceed in an adventure, a player can spend a bennie to get a clue.
Awesome video! I'm a big fan of stealing things that work and putting them into games that don't necessarily lack anything, but could benefit from something new. An addition to the Connection rule from Traveller, I'd recommend checking out the Focus rule from Numenera. Basically, every character's focus is their Power and Ability Set. It can be anything from Explores Dark Places, Holds a Shard of the Sun or Murders. Each power improves as the player levels, but on character creation, you pick one other PC from the party, and they have some kind of insight or impact on your powers. For example, one of the powers if Howls at the Moon, allowing your PC a form of lycanthropy of your choice with a set series of buffs and debuffs. When you make a character with this Focus, you pick one other PC. You choose from one of a few options: they've seen your transformation and know you've committed cold-blooded murder, they know how to calm you down in your monstrous form, or you wounded them in your monster form and you're worried they might be infected by you. It's amazingly diverse, and can be both a mechanical and roleplaying device. Sometimes both at once!
Since I saw your video on Achtung! Chtulhu, I thought a neat rule to steal would be the ability to add a "Truth" to a scene. Like, if inspiration wasn't just getting to re-roll or getting a bonus on something, players could also choose to spend it to insert something into the scenario. No idea how well that would work, though.
I really love the item breakage rules in the Year 0 Engine by Free League. I have problems with the rest of the system but the color-coded dice representing the stat/skill/item are very very neat.
1. Thanks for the Humble bundle. Have been eyeing the new Traveler Core book for awhile 2. I like attribute pools where you roll for attribute and then place the die roll on the attribute you want. Great for players that want to try a certain class or build. I think this was from D&D second edition but Traveller uses it 3. "its only a flesh wound" Character who get 0 Hp don't really die but get knocked out of the game (but they can come back next session). Don't remember where this rule came from. 4. Spare NPC's to replace player characters - Call of Cthulhu. This is such a great idea. It shock me that I've never heard of it until I started watching UA-cam. Also the most important "rule" - If something doesn't work, don't use it. Kevin Siemba always mention this in his forward for all the Palladium books. I'm sure it's older than Palladium
I love the load out system from Blades in the Dark (and others) where you decide in advance how much stuff you're bringing but only declare what the actual items are when you go to use them. I added this to a game of mine with a few tweaks. The party'a inventory worked normally but in addition, they had a 'Stockpile' of a few specific items. One time an adventure, they could declare they were using X item from the Stockpile, and then it was exhausted until they returned to their base and had an opportunity to restock. This had the added benefit of giving some progression hooks for them to explore. Help out these local merchants, and they'll give you a second access to your Stockpile per adventure. Secure this optional payload and we'll add a new item to the existing Stockpile. It was really really fun both as a GM and for the players to feel they had a little flexibility going into adventures. Highly recommend giving it a try.
A few honorable mentions? 1- No-confirmed crits after a nat 20 still unlock "exploding dice" (just once) so a nat 20 is still exciting even though you didn't confirm that crit, but not as great as a full crit. 2- the "Flashback" that allows players to tell a short story about how they get to add a modifier to the next check... (anything that adds story to combat is a plus) 3- Using "Hero Points" (or equivalent) like Destiny Points, as in by rolling for your pool at the start and for every Hero Point spent, the DM gets a "Villain Point" to add to that push-pull to the story thanks for sharing this post, Seth - fun stuff
I have two that I use in all my games now. The first is Skill Challenges from D&D4e that gave a narrative-based framework for resolving an involved scene that wasn't combat. You can use it for courtly intrigue, corporate espionage, a chase along rooftops, bargaining with a crime lord, infiltrating an enemy stronghold, and anything else you could think of. It's a system where the GM sets the scene and then the players suggest how their characters are solving it, using Skills/Feats/Abilities/Whatever the system has to solve parts of the overarching scene. The GM describes the development based on whether the character succeeded or failed and then another player can let their character try something. Each player can only let their character participate in the Skill Challenge two times, and they are not allowed to use the same skill twice (but another character can use the same skill). It's highly engaging, very creative, and allows for character-focused solutions to interesting story-telling moments rather than breaking everything up in turns and actions. The second is scene actions from Sentinels. The idea is that all combatants can act during a conflict scene, but once every round the scene also acts. This could be a burning building that collapses more, a shore with a rising waterline, attack helicopters that circle closer, a giant octopus hammering down the bulk heads leading to the underwater base, something that puts a bit of fire under the players, and adds to the tension and therefore drama. Having it formally put into the turn order it means that the players can feel the tick-tock of the escalation but they also know when stuff is going to happen, allowing them to plan and maybe even mitigate the escalation during the turn, perhaps making sub-optimum moves in order to net the rest of the party or some friendly NPCs less of an impact once the scene action comes along.
Back in the 80s we grabbed a large number of rules from other places for our AD&D system. We grabbed body area specific armor class from Runequest. When a mob attacked, it rolled to see where it was aiming. It meant wearing a metal helmet didn’t increase the AC of your legs. It meant stuff like magical armor might actually lower ac in other areas. A +1 mail tunic might lower ac to the now bare arms etc. We also grabbed 1) the spell law and arms law critical rolls tables from ICE. 2) the herbalism plant rules from middle earth rpg. 3) cantrip spells from an independent books system (can’t remember who exactly).
Oh I really like the “talking phase.” I feel like a lot of RPGs will give specific people an “analyze your foe” ability as a class power, but it almost never works out to being worth it with the action economy. Having a dedicated phase for it is a great solution.
My favorite stolen 'rule' is the "one unique thing" from 13th age character creation. The player is supposed to work with the keeper to come up with something unique or interesting about the character that serves as a story hook. I find that it really helps some player types to engage with the game when they get to have a tangible backstory element like 'The last apprentice of Master Ki-Shun, or Keeper of The Book of Secrets- the tome used by all of the Egyptian pyramid chief architects.' Stuff like that can really help with buy in, and since it is worked out with the Keeper, it will normally be involved with the story. (I have some players that dont want to be super unique and pick things like 'ALWAYS bowls a 181.' That stuff can be fun too.
Having watched the Glass Cannon, I looked at the retroactive connections idea - what I chose was to retain the standard version (two connections established pre-game) because it really ramps up the ties within the group (and that can be important when one character is trying to justify why they’re allowing the mass murderer aboard their 100MCr ship); however I give everyone one additional connection (which cannot be used to increase a skill to 3 or more) which they can use retroactively. I also use something like the Pushed Roll system, particularly for training - a failed roll can immediately be re-rolled with a Bane (yes, you wasted most of your study period getting your revision timetable perfect; but you pulled a caffeine-fuelled all-nighter and scraped through the astrogation exam in the end). I will consider expanding that to something more like the full Pushed Rolls system.
My top 5 favorite rules to steal are: 1. Stunts/Flair - Players describing their actions cinematically gain mechanical benefits, sometimes with more benefit for detail/coolness or using the scenery. Exalted, 7th Sea 2e, and tons of other games made use of this, but I haven't seen it much recently. I love anything that encourages players to be more descriptive and interact more with the scene. 2. Pushing/Strain - As described in the vid, players failing a roll can risk greater consequences for the chance to turn that failure into a success. It creates a fun dynamic where players can take the extra risk to both push past flukes in their specialties (most of the time...) and have a chance at those Hail Mary attempts. 3. Clocks - Visual representations of progress are great. I use clocks pretty liberally both for goal progress and countdowns to disaster. Sometimes both at once as dueling clocks. 4. Dramatic Sequence - A general system for handling any activity that goes on for a while and has stakes but isn't combat. This is actually a small set of rules I made myself (based loosely on pieces of 7th Sea, Mage: The Ascension, and many others) that I adjust for any game that needs it. Namely, a lot of systems (especially those related to D&D) struggle with non-combat events that can't be handled in a single skill roll. I've found it very useful for social encounters as well. 5. Momentum/Threat - I've seen a lot of variations of this (individual vs pooled on the player side, different methods of getting points and using them, etc). The pooled version Modiphius Entertainment uses is probably my favorite. It encourages a team dynamic (though be careful of the occasional player hogging the pool) and can be adjusted as needed by a system/game.
One of my favorite mechanics is the experience point system from the Cypher System, which uses PX as a meta-currency, rather than a passive score, allowing players to spend them to get rerolls, temporary bonuses or in story bonuses (like a house or a title). Another interesting one, although I never played the game, is the Escalation Die from 13th Age.
Thas for this. I love kit bashing rules into other games. I even wrote an article about it a while back with my top ten game systems that I love using in other systems. I was surprised by how many people do this as well and love seeing others suggestions. I'm absolutely grabbing the relationship inspiration and connection rules for my next campaign.
My D&D 5E group granted me a modifier of sorts. I think it was a house rule. Playing as a bard, I was the party's jack of all trades, and had a skill or spell for almost anything. However, they had a catch and were all technically "spoken." Healing word, vicious mockery, bardic inspiration, etc. If I could come up with a sufficiently good saying, phrase, or insult, then I got to roll with advantage or roll an additional die of healing or damage. When I got Tasha's Hideous Laughter, if I provided a sufficiently funny joke, the target creature rolled with disadvantage. It really encouraged me to get in character, and the party always had fun seeing what I would come up with on my turn.
Seth, this video came out in the nick of time for me! I'm in the middle of play testing my ttrpg system, and I was inspired to make some good changes from this video alone! Thanks a million!
I play Rolemaster and the penalties on action by condition are second nature to me. I just say this is +40, this is -25. Works like a charm... when you have put in hundreds of hours, haha.
That relations inspiration reminds me of runequest passions. From alien, I LOVE the mechanics for food, water and air, already stole and using them everywhere 😊
When I hear "story points" I think of the way they are used in some other games - where the players can spend them to add conveniences to the session. Need a lockpick to get out of the cell? Spend a story point and find an old fork that'll work; get cornered by the town guard, spend three points and it turns out the lieutenant is an old friend who will help you in a pinch, etc. I loved how the points flowed in the Serenity rpg, where players earned and spent them constantly throughout the session. I use some variation on these points in most of my campaigns.
I use the morale rules from old-school D&D in most of my games now. It gives players an explicit way to end combat early and allows me to be a bit more unforgiving in terms of enemy tactics. Reaction rolls also get used if I don't already know how an NPC will react to the player.
We use monster morale, and rotate DM's; so one of my jobs as a player is to holler "Morale Check" when I think the DM should perform a morale check, as they have their hands full.
Not sure you'll see this, but inspiration is actually a much older idea, earliest RPG I saw it in was Warhammer Fantasy 1e, called Fate Points, next major game I saw it in was as an optional rule for 3.5 I believe, was also a thing in D20M if I recall. Also Fate, pretty famous RPG as well.
Mongoose Traveller also has an interesting way to use Luck to survive. The Luck stat is a regular 2d6 stat done during Character Creation. If a PC is killed, the player may roll 2D6. If they roll a 12, they somehow survive. If they roll less than 12, they can permanently reduce their Luck stat by however many points to make the difference.
I really like the aspirations system from Chronicles of Darkness. Basically, you ask each of your players to give you two or three short/long term objectives their character have. Short term objectives can be accomplished in the span of one game session (maybe two) and long term ones in three sessions or more. Those can be objectives tied to the plot or just small personal challenges. From then on, your story just write itself. All you have to do is give each player an opportunity to fulfill one or two aspirations per game session. If they don't take it, its on them. But if they fulfill their aspiration, you give them an appropriate reward (exp, hero points, etc.).
Thanks for the video. Great work as always. I would also like to suggest the Pathfinder 2e exploration mode, where you assign jobs for everyone traveling into wilderness or exploring a dungeon, basically when you are not in combat or downtime instead of your rogue constantly saying "I search for traps" he simply states that during exploration he searches for traps and if there is a trap you either ask him to roll or like in your previous video he already rolled at the start and you use those rolls, of course there are jobs for everyone and they are all useful.
Trail of C'thulhu rule on "If you use an appropriate skill in a situation, you get the information, no roll needed.". Makes it so players can get the investigation moving by being creative using their skills. I use that in Call of C'thulhu all the time. Love it.
Momentum and Doom points from all of Modiphius' 2d20 systems. Having a pool of physical tokens for the players to share, and one for the DM to psyche out their players is great for building tension and creating heroic moments
There's a tabletop role-playing game called, "Fate of the Norns". It has a game mechanic for leveling the player as well as leveling the character. And the player levels if their character ascends to Valhalla upon death. It's really cool and it has awesome rules and requires the other players at the table to roleplay and sing praise of their death and hold a proper burial and all kinds of fun stuff. It's totally awesome. I'm going to guess you didn't see this mechanic, because if you did, you'd absolutely love it.
The old DC Heroes RPG had a thing called "Omni-Gadgets", meant to reflect how characters like Batman always seem to have the exact gadget they need at any given time. Instead of spelling out specifically what gear you're carrying, you can have a number of Omni-Gadgets, which have general stats for how powerful they are, and what categories of abilities they can have. But it's not until you actually use it that you decide whether it's a smoke bomb, or a lockpick, or a tuna salad sandwich (hey, those Gotham stakeouts can be pretty long!). It's sort of like spell slots for techies.
That sounds awesome. I'm surprised I haven't seen that before in a Pulp Game (or any game).
Reminds me how in Traveller the Ship's Locker has "Whatever basic thing you need". You can't inventory it, and players are expected not abuse it, but instead of tracking every random thing on the ship, you'll simply check the Ship's Locker for it like the World's Greatest Junk Drawer.
Got it.
You might enjoy Kits from Dragods & Gobliches!
Five Torches Deep has something like that, where you have "Supply", which stays pretty nebulous, until you decide what those supplies are.
Loved DC Heroes. Also loved the way hero points were interchangeable between a die bonus or could be accumulated to spend on increasing stats. It gave players the dilemma "do I boost this crucial role or do I risk it so I have enough hp to increase my Strength after the adventure". A nice way to handle advancement
Every time a screen capture of rules appear, I can't help but pause and read the entire rule. That might be a forever DM trait.
My RPG group moved to Traveller after finishing a long D&D campaign. When one of my players does some cool or awesome, my reaction is to reward them inspiration. And then I catch myself "oh, wrong game". After watching this, I'm like why am I doing that? Next game session I'm totally going to give out inspiration to travellers!
Thanks again for the great ideas!
How did they react to getting Inspiration in Traveller? Happy, I hope.
@@jesternario , they liked the idea! Instead of metal dice like Seth presented in the video, I found some odd shaped plastic 6-sided dice at my local game store. I have a wooden game table; so, I'd rather not be throwing metal dice around.
Long and short of it, they liked it but we just barely got into a new adventure; so, no one earned inspiration to try it out. Maybe next session in a couple of weeks.
Thanks for asking!
Any new news about the inspiration rules?
I learnt from my game master the rule of the candle. Before the game starts, GM asks all players a question or description of what their characters are thinking or something from their story one by one, by holding a candle and passing it amongst the players. It's a nice way of sharing their backstory or to see what their character thought about last encounter.
I've used lighting a candle as a signal the game session is starting, but I hadn't thought of passing it around as a talking stick. That's a really great idea!
Heads up. Because I talked about it in the video I wanted to share that there a killer Humble Bundle going on for Mongoose 2e Traveller. It's got the Core Rulebook, Central Supply Catalog, several adventures, the Pirates of Drinax campaign (which includes the Trojan Reach sector guide), some novels, and a soundtrack. Only 2 days left on it, but definitely worth it.
www.humblebundle.com/books/traveller-mongoose-publishing-books?partner=sskorkowsky
I grabbed that the last time it was up because of hearing how cool Traveller sounded in this channel. Although sadly still haven’t had a chance to play. 😂
You at least make a character? That's always a fun little mini-game.
Oooh. Thanks for that heads up!
I've been meaning to get into Traveller, since it sounds super fun.
It's not like I *just* bought a ton of Kult: Divinity Lost last month or anything 😅
Getting it soon. Already have most of the books in the bundle but the three main ones I don't still makes it worth buying...
For $18, quite the deal! Thanks for sharing, Picked it up with your affiliate link to hopefully float some of that back your way!
In Kevin Crawford's "Number" games (Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number, Cities Without Number) there is a rule that I'm a huge fan of that ties XP to goals (both short and long term) that the players decide on their own. I really dig it and feel it encourages the players to come up with motivations for their characters and also plot hooks that the GM can flesh out that the players will have incentive to actually follow up on. Also, having a unified long term group goal helps to keep the party focused.
I'll add a suggestion: Cyberpunk 2020's Reputation and Face-downs. It's a great way to scare off fodder goons that would be more waste of ammo and not worth the effort
Plus its always hilarious to see a boostergang lord being scared off by a Netrunner otaku with high COOL stat and decent rep.
Yeah, Rep and Face-downs are great - my players have already seen the advantage of those.
The rule I stole from Traveller is the idea of the task chain :D It just allows for so many more different skills to come up and the players always feel great about helping each other out and on top of that it encourages them to think "how?" their skill checks are performed and how somebody might be able to help them :D
Apart from character creation, task chains are the best thing of Traveller
DnD 5e Mastermind Help as a bonus action paired with Historian that allows you to apply your Prof Bonus to anyones roll on anything, now as a bonus action.
Artificer for Flash of Genius ability(+you Int modifier as a reaction) and the Guidance(1d4), Borrowed Knowledge(free skill prof), and Enhanced Ability (advantage to one stat's checks) spells.
One character can enure that anyone in party can always succeed on those essential checks... without having a bard
You yell out "he is a ball-chinian" and Agent K get a crit.
You yell out "damnit sam pull" and Frodo is now up and on his feet.
You yell out "it's got 6 tumblers not 5" and the theif opens the chest.
Indeed. Low births have a nasty habit of dying?
Madic: I'll examine each 'patient' using life sciences!
Engineer: I'll then use engineer (life support) to spec each birth for that specific person!
Two months later with no deaths;
Broker: yes... the fee for low births is double. It's worth it.
The connections rule from a third party Savage Worlds pulp game. Once per session someone in the party can declare they know a guy in the area. This NPC is limited in the help they can give, and can even hate the PCs. Things like an ex girlfriend or a guy they knew in college. It's like Escape from New York where Snake keeps bumping into people he knows. As a game mechanic, it's a handy way to get back on the rails if the players are short on essential supplies or don't know what to do.
I absolutely love Bennies from Savage Worlds as currency the players can spend to reroll things that matter to them, get back resources they need, and otherwise effect the narrative. Good reward for roleplaying and jokes and cool ideas, and one I definitely feel naked without when running some other games.
yeah bennies have modeled how I like meta-currencies in RPGs. A good flow of meta points allows prevents hoarding. My second favorite is pathfinder second edition's hero point system, and we give those out every hour of play to a random party member as well as starting with one. Gives a good flow of points
The clocks system from blades in the dark. It gives players a very obvious timer as you fill in the segments for just how much time they have left.
I've never liked clocks in any game I've come across that uses them. They seem way too meta. I also like being able to decide myself when a task is complete and not locking myself into something when I have no idea how it'll turn out
Yes, I use the clock as well, I think it's great!
Also, the best mechanic in Blades is the "Flashback", I give my Call of Cthulhu players each one free flashback per session.
@@feral_orc They're basically just HP, but used more generally. I find them very useful as trackers personally; why use "6/6" to track how much ammo is in a revolver when you have each chamber accounted for in clock form? And tracking how much time until something arrives somewhere, or the approximate location of something that moves along a patrol is made much easier with a visual indicator.
Like, their intended use is as a tool to track stuff, tracking task HP is just one of the many features of clocks.
@@feral_orc I'm not sure I follow your concern. The GM decides whether any given event advances the clock or not and can advance it more than one segment if needed, so it's not like you're "locked in" to a certain number of actions. "Clock" is more in reference to the appearance than the function most of the time since they're more for progress-tracking (and useful for tracking both success and failure condition progress) than time-tracking. In fact, the only time I've personally had one used as an actual turn timer was in a "moving wall coming to crush you" tomb trap.
@@aeonise yeah but that's the problem. A lot of that is meta knowledge that the players just shouldn't have. You give them a meta goal to target and work towards and you've just given them access to what is effectively an MMO quest tracker telling you how close something is to happening, and that's informing player decisions for their characters.
Let's say the players know a bad thing is gonna happen unless they do something about it. Super generic. They know the bad guy is getting ready to blow up an orphanage. So the players start coming up with ideas for how to stop it, and now they have a clock to track how close the bomb is to blowing/how close they are to saving people/how much work they've done to stop it. None of this info should be available to the players. It's like letting them know every enemy's HP.
to "yes and..." the Traveller connection rule for late additions. Traveller links skill gains to characters on backstory of the other Travellers. "That old Marine Sgt you have a rivalry with? Its her that taught me ...X" Ties into the party even faster, possibly with complications.
I like Hero Coins (it's like inspiration) but, I'll give it a Cthulhu Luck twist.
You forgot spare ammo?
_Spend a Hero Coin to remember_
Rocks fall and everybody dies?
_Spend a Hero Coin to spot a foxhole no one noticed and escape_
Is that anything like the token system in Chill 3rd edition?
That game has a pool of tokens that are light on one side and dark on the other. The players can flip a token from light to dark to modify a roll or activate a supernatural ability, and the GM can flip a token to the light side to do the same for evil NPCs, or to complicate the current situation (NPC the players are trying to protect gets spooked and runs away, car won't start, etc.)
A player can also flip *all* the tokens to the dark side to save a character from certain death.
@ChrisSpecker Oh, that is very cool. No it isn't. But I like that mechanic.
@@ChrisSpeckerFFG used a similar system with Star Wars for Light Side and Dark Side points
I used Luck Points in Traveller for that. You need an item? Spend Luck or roll Luck Check.
BlackBird actually has a system similar to this.
I'd like a part two, where uou explore the other ones you left on the cutting room floor. These were great
A cool one I got from RuneQuest was augmenting. If you're about to do something that you're not very good at, you can roll for a different skill, ability or trait to gain a bonus on the roll. E.g. If your character is a researcher who needs to craft rope, they may use their Plant Lore skill to give a bonus by finding fibrous plants to use as rope. On the flip side, failing will add a penalty to the roll so players only use it when it really counts.
Sounds like World of Darkness games (comboing your choice of any attribute + skill) as well as Burning Wheel (you may add dice to a skill roll if you can argue how others skill you have help).
The Hero System calls that a "Complimentary Skill Roll." =^[.]^=
Part of the Rogue Trader RPG for 40K has an interesting system for character generation. They use a flow chart where you chose the classification of your home world at the top, then work downwards through the layers going either straight down or 1 step to the side each time. Each level give you a title such as 'Survivor' or 'Stranded' the give you bonus skills and prompts you to make thatnpart of your back story. And if multiple people get the same result that's hiw your characters met.
I'm a fan of the "wild die" from WEG's Ghostbusters and Star Wars RPGs.
Those systems used buckets of d6s. Whenever you rolled any dice, even one, one of them was a different color, size or whatever. If you rolled a 1 on that die there was a complication even if you succeeded. A 6 on that die was a bonus, even if you failed. So something could always go a little wrong or in your favor.
It's an interesting twist that I have carried over into many games.
When it comes to starting a new campaign, I try to adapt the solo and group questions from Tales From The Loop - they're so effective at bonding the team, and ensuring the players are playing their own story.
What's this?
The one rule I've seen in an RPG that I want to steal is a bit more structural. It's a system called Nerve from the 1st edition of an independent game called HC SVNT DRACONES, more often referred to as HSD for short. The idea behind the mechanic was that, even for soldiers, life and death combat can be a terrifying thing that can wear on your nerves (hence the name) as much or even more than your body. It was, in theory, more likely that given enough stressors a character would surrender if that seemed a reasonable option than fight to the death. Essentially, either you could be taken out of the fight from Wounds, or have the fight taken out of you from Nerve. If you lost all of your Nerve, you don't necessarily cower in fear for the rest of the fight (though with the right/wrong traits I believe that was a possibility), but you are barred from taking offensive action against an enemy or willingly moving closer to them, so you can at least still try to give support to friendlies or drag a wounded buddy away from danger, but as far as dealing with the active threat goes, you're not really "fighting" anymore, which still weakens the party, just not quite as much as a KOd party member would be. I rarely see that level of "mental fortitude for combat" mechanically represented that isn't more like sanity checks from Call of Cthulhu, which is a different vibe and tone of mental wellbeing, and I would love to see that sort of mechanical representation for that line at which a person goes "I can't do this anymore, I'm done" and surrenders that isn't purely an RP decision by the game master or players (because it's hard to get some people to roleplay as anything but totally fearless even if their character is a 9 to 5 office worker and NPC surrender is otherwise a pure judgement call when it doesn't make sense for them to necessarily be fighting to the death).
Some comments touched on this, but inspiration/bennies being spent to break rules is a fun one. Does a player want to backflip over an enemy that snuck up on them? Spend a bennie/inspiration. Want to charge through that horde slashing wildly even though technically they only get 1 attack a turn? Bennie/inspiration.
Another one is giving inspiration for "wasted" crits, such as getting a crit on a monster with 1hp. Related to that is granting inspiration if the player chooses to take a fumble on nat 1, or chooses to fail a check before the roll.
Before watching the video, the things I've stolen from different RPGs: Fronts from Apocalypse World, running factions from Godbound, campaign cards from Wrath and Glory, minions from D&D 4E, and Fate Points from the FFG Warhammer 40'000 RPGs. I don't use all of them all the time, but they're each tools that have a proud place in my toolbox.
Edit: I also want to add on to what Seth said at the start; don't just run a system rules as written, run it the way it wants to be run. My first impression of L5R wasn't amazing because the GM was running it more like 5E and less like a drama game. Fortunately, we could all see the potential of what the game could be and I ended up running a few one-shots and short campaigns that really rammed home for me how much I love the system, but it had to be run the way it wanted to be for me to really enjoy it.
I'll echo that. We played Cyberpunk2020 for several years as a side game to our regular AD&D campaign and we played it pretty much like D&D with guns and cyber. It was only after we switched to it being our primary game and I read some Cyberpunk modules and saw how it was supposed to be run, and that changed everything.
Oh, I forgot one! I used the Traveller connections in character creation concept for two of the L5R mini-campaigns I ran, and that went really well because it gave me a built-in reason why these samurai from different clans would form their own social clique.
Always love to see some L5R love. It is an amazing system, but you really have to lean into it. It is also one where, despite them sort of being in the rules, I'd say "No 13th warriors". It's theme campaigns. Don't play a foreigner!
@@kaspermoss Unless that foreigner is a Mantis, or even worse a Unicorn. Those you can play.
@@AGrumpyPanda If they fit in, sure. But the few times I've tried to run it, those foreign characters have felt like an excuse not to care about the setting
Thanks for sharing this! I really like the Connection Rule because I've been in many groups where players tend to be rather shy and reserved or the group dynamic is just sort of awkward and incohesive; I think the Connection Rule is a really nice way of incentivizing players to collaborate and communicate with each other more. I find all too often, at least with 5e, that players are a little too focused on their own characters and will often try to solve problems on their own without discussing it much with the rest of the group.
I definitely want to try using this the next time I run a game! Thanks again!
I recently ran a home-brew Horror Mystery 1 shot that went really well. I included a custom rule called a regroup phase. The players had access to 2 regroup phases throughout the game that they could choose to take whenever they were not in combat and were in a safe environment.
There are 5 things that players could do in a regroup phase; analyze clues, regain sanity, regain health, search for resources, or repair weapons/items.
The clue analysis check is an opportunity for the players to essentially ask for help from the GM for solving the clues they have gathered. Help piecing things together or figuring out what their next step should be. Nothing worse than a mystery game where the players are just stuck at a dead end. Each player had to decide which of the 5 options listed above they wanted to do in the regroup phase. These are the only opportunities in the game to restore any health/sanity, or find loot/more resources so their decisions are pretty important.
This rule was one of my favorite parts of the game. The players would pour over the clues together and try to figure out what they knew and what questions to ask me for help. It worked great and having these be the only opportunities to restore health or sanity made the game even more threatening and tense!
I would also highly recommend one rule from Frontier Scum, that I really liked during the game. «ACE IN A SLEEVE. Spend an Ace to reroll any dice that’s not a natural 1 or 20. Gain an Ace at the start of every session. If you roll a natural 20 on an ability check, you can gain a new Ace. Everyone immediately loses all their Aces when any PC rolls a natural 1 on an ability».
I think it's a great balance between «use it now to shine» and «risk of loosing it because you waited too long».
Thanks Seth! This is going to be the basis of my new RPG system, tentatively titled "Over the Dragon's Alien Edge: Travelling Blades of Cthulhu"
The momentum pool from Möedipius Games. I liked it in the Conan RPG but it blew my mind in Star Trek Adventures because it was perfect for a team of Starfleet officers aboard the same ship working together. The ability to "store" your extra succecces in a pool that the whole group has access to for their own rolls was for me the best representation of working together as a group since Team Karma from Marvel Superheroes (TSR).
It was the momentum that stopped me playing star trek. I hated it because it didn't make any sense from an in-game point of view.
I agree with you about the momentum pool and also the threat pool really builds a sense of foreboding for the players as they have to wait for when the GM is going to cash in all his threat chips. This would be a good addition to horror games. In Call of Cthulhu every time you push a roll and get a failure it could be converted into threat.
@@BD-sb7hb It's only a threat if your gm remembers to use it, unlike our gm 😆
While I haven't had a chance to actually _play_ any of their games (still looking for a chance to use the Dishonored RPG book I got!), I love the "Momentum/Threat" mechanic that Modiphius uses in their 2d20 systems.
In this system, whether you pass or fail a roll is based on how many successes you roll on your 2d20 (rolling under a target number, typically determined by your character's stats, is a success, a 1 on the die is a critical success that counts for two successes), with the number of successes needed depending on the difficulty of the action you're attempting. If you roll more successes than you need to, however, you gain _Momentum._
Momentum is a pool of resources available to the entire party, and it can be used in a few ways - "buying" extra d20s when they make a roll, dealing extra damage with attacks, taking additional actions, even adding something to a scene that can swing things in the players' favor!
However, the DM has their own version of this mechanic: "Threat" (or "Doom", "Heat", "Chaos", etc. depending on the game). They can earn Threat in all the same ways as the players, and they can use it for all of the same things to crank up the challenge against the players.
The DM has one additional tool with their Threat pool, however: if the players are all out of Momentum and they absolutely *need* to pass a skill check or get that last hit in to stop the enemy before it's too late, they have the option of "buying" Momentum from the DM... and for every point of Momentum they get by doing this, the DM gains a point of Threat that can be used against the players later on.
Momentum and Threat make for an interesting way to keep an ebb and flow between the players and the DM, helping to make sure that one side doesn't get too much of an edge and that there's always a chance of one side turning things around.
Just a warning dishonored had to be heavily patched after release so look up the fixes.
@@Skullkan6 Is the errata in the core book, or did they make the changes in the Gamemaster's book?
Great video, I like the push roll idea.
Somewhat similar to inspiration, is the DCC mechanic around "Luck" from the 2012 game. One of the base six statistics is called Luck (they make room for it by squashing Wisdom and Intelligence together into Personality). First, this is really useful for skill checks that maybe have more to do with luck than actual skill... maybe half the chairs are booby-trapped... was your character lucky in sitting on a safe one? But also, you can "burn" luck, adding to your dice roll in exchange for a lower luck score... and you can choose to do this, AFTER you've rolled. But when you do something awesome, the Judge can award you luck points somewhat similar to how one can award inspiration.
Inspiration is simpler and easier to use perhaps, but I think the idea of a character's innate luckiness is actually a really fun addition to the game.
LOVE the DCC Luck stat - often thought about incorporating it in other games.
I really like the "Destiny Pool" from Edge of the Empire (it might be in the other Fantasy Flight Star Wars RPGs, I haven't played them). At the start of the game each player rolls the Force Die, building up Light Side and Dark Side points. The players can spend the Light Side points to upgrade their dice pool, make an NPCs roll more challenging, utilise certain character abilities, or to introduce new elements to a scene if the DM agrees (the example the rulebook gives is your character "remembering" that they packed rebreathers when you land on a planet with a toxic atmosphere).
The DM gets to spend Dark side points to upgrade an NPCs dice pool or to increase the difficulty of something the players want to do.
The thing that makes the whole system come together for me is that when you spend a point, and after any appropriate dice rolls have been made, it flips over and becomes the other type. So any benefit the players get is a future buff to the NPCs, and any time the DM chooses to make the players lives harder they're making something in future easier for them
The Talking and Analysis phase is such a cool way to integrate specific weaknesses in a combat, while also rerolling initiative to make combat fresh every round, or every other round if that's too frequent. Amazing idea in my mind.
oh yes! That sounds good! I really like this rule to encourage RP but I am also a bit scared of it pulling the brakes too hard. I play a lot of 5E and combat can get really long there already so stopping after every round for an RP round could just kill momentum even more. I am thinking of just keeping it for boss battles or at least semi-boss battles and using it only every two rounds or something.
Or maybe it could be a whole new action. Like...a character can choose to not attack, cast a spell or do anything else but just talk to the opponent and then give advantage to someone else because they found a weakness the next player can exploit or because they intimidated the opponent so they get disadvantage. Idk..something like that. Needs some work but as someone who always tries to make combat more than just mindless dicerolling without story, the "Talking/Analysis"-phase definitely inspires me
@@TaliesinBHeidkamp I described it in another comment, but I have enemies shit-talk the party *during* their turns. We chirp back and forth and it actually helps momentum since it limits the planning players can do during combat. Combined with my "only your characters can talk during combat, not you" rule it makes combat more chaotic which is kinda the goal in the systems I run anyway. It forces players to be prepared if they expect to handle combat tactically, while also greatly adding to the roleplaying aspect of it. The players have to be able to keep up, but the reward is huge and this aspect is standard now in my OSR games.
Fantastic video. My group just changed from Call of Cthulhu to Vampire the Masquerade and there are some of these rules that I intend to implement. I really appreciate these types of videos that make it easier to run games for players with your suggestions.
I always recommend hindrances from Savage Worlds. Gain an extra boost to something you are good at in exchange for giving yourself a weakness
One thing I stole from Shadowrun and used in D&D was Astral Quests.
In Shadowrun, an astral quest can be used by a user of magic to gain magical power (gross oversimplification here) or find out obscure information. The mage or shaman uses ritual to enter the astral plane on a quest. They can sometimes take others with them. One of the key parts of the quest is getting past the Dweller on the Threshold. The Dweller is an entity who sets an obstacle for the players to overcome before they can enter the astral plane. The Dweller, the obstacle and the quest can be anything you like, but I like to have some connection to the players back story or their mission.
An example: The Dweller appeared as Papa Smurf and I gave the players character sheets of smurf characters. Then I had them all singing smurf songs. Only one of the players didn't get engaged with the singing, so the Dweller turned to his character and said "Is this too easy a task for you, would you like something a little harder?". Then I handed the players character sheets with a variety of Warhammer 40K characters and led them through a WH40K one shot suicide mission.
These ideas are so interesting. I have had a system I want to build on the back burner called Secret Expert where the player only gets most of the skills for their character once the game starts and they need those skills, reveling they were the right person for the job. I had not considered adding relationships to that system, that would add a tremendous amount of depth it was missing.
Last Saturday my dm added the connections rule from Traveller in our one shot. It was very helpful to establish a shared history within the party. It made the start of the one shot much more fluid.
I just finished my first year dming for my current group. You, Seth, and so many other generous experienced game masters have given me the tools and examples to make my own world sing... Or scream, muhahaha. Got lots to learn but how can I fail with such wonderful examples and lessons for communicating with my players. Great video on merging awesome mechanics
I love this tip. It's very cool. I always bring the devil's bargain mechanic and segment clocks from Blades in the Dark since having learned them. Right now I'm DMing a campaign in Avernus and playing in a Curse of Strahd with a newbie DM that plays with me for a while now, both D&D 5e. And these mechanics open more possibilities. Sacrifices. They're heisting devils and demons of their artifacts and one fail shouldn't bring all hell towards them. So a failed stealth check, for instance, fills a segment in the 'clock' that when filled alerts a lot of enemies and they should run away. Very fun to offer advantages in roles in exchange of different future penalties or a different kind of succes.
This video is brilliant. There are so many tabletop games with brilliant mechanics that really bring the game to life. But not all of them can be applied liberally to other games. This is a great list of rules that can.
Thanks, Seth! Sometimes it's easy to forget about things like this. I use a couple of these already, but there are a couple more that I'm adding to my arsenal.
Great video as always!
The last one had me think of game masters making their one shots count by making it so that the players know their characters are going to be dead by the end of the session and their corpses along with whatever they have on them will be presented in another game along with the story of how they died.
Traveller is one of my favourite RPGs, but I never thought about using the Connections Rule in the middle of play. That's a cool idea!
Something that's not really a mechanical thing but my group likes is the Touchstone system from Vampire: The Masquerade, where you tie some belief a character has to an NPC. We changed it so it doesn't necessarily have to be positive, so a character's protectiveness of children might come from someone they saw harming children and now they're hunting that character. It makes players flesh out their characters a bit while building the world a bit.
In the game Seth references there was one player who kept trying to use Jack-of-all-trades rather than spend her "connection points".
man i really like your voice seth, its like a 40-50s radio voice spiked with some 70-80s weed head terms. love it!
that said, this video gave me some interesting ideas.
As always, a very big thank you! One of my friends stole/ported the combat-system from Twillight to Kult D L.
Thank you Seth!
Sincerely,
Alicia from Sweden
One rule/idea that I have really come to love is from a new ttrpg called Break!! (Honestly there is a lot I love in that system) But the idea comes from the way they break down fights with massive monsters or creatures. In their system all massive enemies have their body divided up into separate HP regions and have a core of some kind (heart, brain, battery, etc) so the idea around it is you can cripple different parts of the massive enemy but to fully defeat the enemy you have to destroy the core
I would love more of these videos! My favorite rule/mechanic to steal is Clocks. I first learned about them from Blades in the Dark but apparently they've been around for a long time.
Another great video from two-time ENNIE award winner, Seth Skorkowsky. It's a little system dependent, but I've used "taking 10" and "taking 20" from 3x D&D. It's a nice balance between requiring investment in a skill or ability in order to accomplish something without letting chance get in the way when nothing is on the line. Only really needed in high variance dice system like d20 though.
For a dice pool related variation, allow players to trade in dice for successes, but not quite at the odds. In other words, if a 5 or 6 is a success on a d6, then you theoretically should have a success for every 3 dice in a perfect world, so I let my peeps trade 4 dice for a guaranteed success. Since my system requires different numbers of successes for harder rolls, this is still not enough to give total success all the time, just like taking 10 (although I am also good for just waving away rolls that the equivalent of taking 10 would succeed on lol)
The World of Darkness/Storyteller system has a dice pool-related version where if your dice pool is higher than the difficulty number, you get a single success
If nothing is on the line, I'd say you shouldn't be rolling dice. An acrobat isn't going to fail to jump between rooftops on a dry, hot night, and a wizard isn't going to forget critical parts of the cosmology of your world, so why would you roll for acrobatics and arcana? Rolls are chance, and they represent scenarios where chance is involved. No luck in the situation, no roll is needed, in my opinion.
Always love your videos Seth. Even though I don't play TTRPGs anymore I really love listening to your ideas and stories. Your channel is my go to for RPG stuff. Even if it's just listening to it while I draw or game. :D
What I love about pushed rolls is that the Keeper can allow a pushed roll to still succeed, albeit with a consequence. I've often used this to keep the story moving forward despite the failure, though something bad is going to happen as well.
I used inspiration before I knew it existed. I got 50 little coins from a friend for Christmas so started to give them out in Call of Cthulhu games for good roleplaying. I wanted to encourage it. Each coin could be cashed in for a +1 to a roll (technically a -1 in Call of Cthulhu). Players could accumulate several coins over the course of a session and even give their coins to other players to help them with die rolls. I'm still trying to figure out a way to make this work online, but haven't had much luck yet.
Great video as always. Some great ideas here.
Great idea for a vid Seth. I seem to remember “inspiration” was a pretty popular mechanic before DnD 5e. I think that is one of the secrets to its success. It basically pilfered a bunch of successful ideas from others and brought them into Dungeons & Dragons. It’s always useful to broaden horizons and exposure to different systems.
I do like the interaction between the Traveller buddy system and Call of Cthulhu. I think it really promotes some better story moments and CoC really needs those skill buffs at important moments.
Yeah, I don't play D&D, but Inspiration sounds a lot like WEG's D6 system's character points (originally brownie points in Ghostbusters back in 1986). WEG Star Wars was probably a point of exposure for that sort of mechanic for a generation of gamers. Could be systems that used a similar mechanic even earlier, but I'm blanking at the moment.
I feel clock from BitD, timers and effort from ICRPG, fronts from Dungeon World and momentum from IronSworn are all fantastic and can be implemented alsomt everywhere
Gonna use that Talking&Analysis phase for World of Darkness for sure. Thanks for the tip
Those bullet dice are really neat ^^
Excellent ideas Seth!
2 rules that I really like to include in other games are Timers from ICRPG and Clocks from Blades in the Dark.
The 13th Age Escalation Due is great because it worked on Named Enemies, which is always your bosses and mini bosses
The escalation die is a good answer to any of (many) d20-based D&D-a-likes out there (including actual D&D) where you're finding combat bogging down and taking too long to wrap up. The constant increase in player (and some opponent) accuracy ramps up the action steadily even when not using 13A. It's even stronger in its parent game, where many PC and monster abilities manipulate or key off of the ED, but even in its basic form it's pretty good.
In my home game of 5e, rather than inspiration i use Hero Points. I found that my players tended to hoard inspiration, always waiting till the perfect moment to use it. I then changed the rules so that inspiration gets burned at the end of the session and they would just end up losing it. So in my recent campaign i implemented Hero Points. This allows a player to modify rolls either positively or negitively. At the beginning of every session i award a player for cool and epic moments, trying something creative, roleplay, or just being a team player (maybe bringing cookies or resolving player conflict in a calm manor) that happened the previous session. And that player gets to roll a d6 and add that to their hero point pool. At any time a player can use those hero points to modify rolls. 1:1 for their own rolls, 2:1 for other pcs or their allies, and 3:1 for everyone else including enemies. Just last session i had a pc go down and as the bbeg came down to finish them off all the players pooled their hero points together to force a miss. Its a great way to make moments feel more cinematic and be as epic as the protagonists are in our stories, doing impossible/improvable tasks! I cant recommend it enough!
Doesn't inspiration already work like that, and how do they "hoard" it? As Seth says, a player either has it or doesn't! You can't have inspiration multiple times!
Though there is BARDIC inspiration that makes regular inspiration confusing and I think that's why so many people hate trying to use it in 5e.
@@JacksonOwex by hoarding it I mean not using it at all. Keeping it for so many sessions that there is never an opportunity to give out more. Literally went through an entire campaign with all players having inspiration and it only got used twice. That's when I started doing the only lasting for one session before fading out into the ephemeral sea. We'll they ever used it then either but with hero points they have been using them far more judiciously
The rules I love to bring in from DCC/Lankhmar
1. Fleeting Luck
2. Crit/Fumble Tables
Two rules that I tend to take with me everywhere are Clocks from Blades in the Dark and Drama Dice from 7th Sea.
I like the talking one. Seems like a good way to get some villain monogues in.
Pushed rolls, one of my favourites as well.
I really like corruption from dakr heresy. It creates wonderful negative character arcs. Same with delta green's bonds.
Annother good one. I was just surprised about the choice for ALIEN. Woud have bet you'd go with the Stress mechanic. Nothing against the Story points but they are so similar to inspiration as you said. Whereas the Stress mechanic is something really different. And I was kind of hoping for ideas how to transfere it into different systems.
Oh man, I love that ‘connections’ rule. Definitely going to steal that in some form.
I'll admit that I just wholesale stole the chase rules from CoC 7th for D&D and they were beautifully. Just the best chase rules I've ever used.
I really like the Obligation system from Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. It gives your player a recurring ongoing personal issue as long as it doesn't get addressed. For example, maybe you're a wanted criminal, or owe a large sum to a crime lord. Maybe you need funds to buy medicine for a chronically ill loved one, or you have a vendetta against a specific faction in the world. I find it's a fun way to build character backstory while giving the GM good material for both personal quests and random encounters.
Clues system from Chronicles of Darkness 2e. The whole system is neat for when you don't actually have a preplanned mystery. Players basically use the dice to determine what clues they find. You can use any skill if you can describe how you think your character would find clues(roll wits+Athletics to see if there are signs that someone brute-forced a drawer for example). So any character can scooby doo their way through a mystery regardless of build. You find clues no matter the result of the dice. A success or exceptional means that you find better clues. A failure means the clue is somehow inconclusive or tainted somehow. Players tell you what likely happened by what theories they came up and what clues they tried to find.
There is a bit more to the system, but I basically always use this part in any game when players search for stuff because the premise of the Clues system is that if a mystery pops up in a game, it doesn't feel good if it just ends with "Well, I guess we don't find out what happened". Fail forward as a mechanic is pretty damn useful, especially in games like Call of Cthulhu which is extremely dependent on investigating. Finding at least cryptic clues and giving people ominous hints when they use them to try and figure stuff out is more fun, lends itself to the atmosphere better, and creates more interesting outcomes.
Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPG has an amazing system of Triumphs and Despairs. You can fail but get something cool or succeed and have something horrible happen. It’s an underrated mechanic unique to their dice system.
Clocks from Blades In The Dark is a great rule to transfer. It's basically a countdown to an event (ex. The Law arrives), and works great for the heist nature of Blades
I plan to use it in my next Call Of Cthulhu campaign for cults and others being made aware of the players
I've been thinking about this topic since the character creation video of Kult.
Thanks for doing an entire video on this!
Three points at a time is a much better mechanism than one-and-only-one point of inspiration. If you only have one, and you have no idea when you might get another, you'll always sit on it, waiting for that perfect moment to use it, thereby blowing opportunities where you might have gotten another point. But if you can have three, then you'll always quickly use the third so you have a slot open to get another. And you'll readily use the second, knowing you still have the first in reserve for that perfect moment. And they need to reset at the end of the adventure, so you'll be encouraged to use the last one during the climactic battle.
So closer to Pathfinder 2e's Hero Points?
Savage Worlds also has this kind of 3-point system. They call them "Bennies" and they can be used in a wide variety of ways. My favorite way is the when the players are absolutely stuck and have no idea how to proceed in an adventure, a player can spend a bennie to get a clue.
Awesome video! I'm a big fan of stealing things that work and putting them into games that don't necessarily lack anything, but could benefit from something new.
An addition to the Connection rule from Traveller, I'd recommend checking out the Focus rule from Numenera. Basically, every character's focus is their Power and Ability Set. It can be anything from Explores Dark Places, Holds a Shard of the Sun or Murders. Each power improves as the player levels, but on character creation, you pick one other PC from the party, and they have some kind of insight or impact on your powers.
For example, one of the powers if Howls at the Moon, allowing your PC a form of lycanthropy of your choice with a set series of buffs and debuffs. When you make a character with this Focus, you pick one other PC. You choose from one of a few options: they've seen your transformation and know you've committed cold-blooded murder, they know how to calm you down in your monstrous form, or you wounded them in your monster form and you're worried they might be infected by you. It's amazingly diverse, and can be both a mechanical and roleplaying device. Sometimes both at once!
Since I saw your video on Achtung! Chtulhu, I thought a neat rule to steal would be the ability to add a "Truth" to a scene. Like, if inspiration wasn't just getting to re-roll or getting a bonus on something, players could also choose to spend it to insert something into the scenario. No idea how well that would work, though.
I really love the item breakage rules in the Year 0 Engine by Free League. I have problems with the rest of the system but the color-coded dice representing the stat/skill/item are very very neat.
1. Thanks for the Humble bundle. Have been eyeing the new Traveler Core book for awhile
2. I like attribute pools where you roll for attribute and then place the die roll on the attribute you want. Great for players that want to try a certain class or build. I think this was from D&D second edition but Traveller uses it
3. "its only a flesh wound" Character who get 0 Hp don't really die but get knocked out of the game (but they can come back next session). Don't remember where this rule came from.
4. Spare NPC's to replace player characters - Call of Cthulhu. This is such a great idea. It shock me that I've never heard of it until I started watching UA-cam.
Also the most important "rule" - If something doesn't work, don't use it. Kevin Siemba always mention this in his forward for all the Palladium books. I'm sure it's older than Palladium
Omg this colourful cover! Immediately clicked even though i am on the road
I will watch the video later tonight, can't wait.
I love the load out system from Blades in the Dark (and others) where you decide in advance how much stuff you're bringing but only declare what the actual items are when you go to use them.
I added this to a game of mine with a few tweaks. The party'a inventory worked normally but in addition, they had a 'Stockpile' of a few specific items. One time an adventure, they could declare they were using X item from the Stockpile, and then it was exhausted until they returned to their base and had an opportunity to restock.
This had the added benefit of giving some progression hooks for them to explore. Help out these local merchants, and they'll give you a second access to your Stockpile per adventure. Secure this optional payload and we'll add a new item to the existing Stockpile.
It was really really fun both as a GM and for the players to feel they had a little flexibility going into adventures. Highly recommend giving it a try.
A few honorable mentions?
1- No-confirmed crits after a nat 20 still unlock "exploding dice" (just once) so a nat 20 is still exciting even though you didn't confirm that crit, but not as great as a full crit.
2- the "Flashback" that allows players to tell a short story about how they get to add a modifier to the next check... (anything that adds story to combat is a plus)
3- Using "Hero Points" (or equivalent) like Destiny Points, as in by rolling for your pool at the start and for every Hero Point spent, the DM gets a "Villain Point" to add to that push-pull to the story
thanks for sharing this post, Seth - fun stuff
I do this all the time. I'm now finally making my own TTRP book and I'm adapting so many derivatives... :P
I have two that I use in all my games now. The first is Skill Challenges from D&D4e that gave a narrative-based framework for resolving an involved scene that wasn't combat. You can use it for courtly intrigue, corporate espionage, a chase along rooftops, bargaining with a crime lord, infiltrating an enemy stronghold, and anything else you could think of. It's a system where the GM sets the scene and then the players suggest how their characters are solving it, using Skills/Feats/Abilities/Whatever the system has to solve parts of the overarching scene. The GM describes the development based on whether the character succeeded or failed and then another player can let their character try something. Each player can only let their character participate in the Skill Challenge two times, and they are not allowed to use the same skill twice (but another character can use the same skill).
It's highly engaging, very creative, and allows for character-focused solutions to interesting story-telling moments rather than breaking everything up in turns and actions.
The second is scene actions from Sentinels. The idea is that all combatants can act during a conflict scene, but once every round the scene also acts. This could be a burning building that collapses more, a shore with a rising waterline, attack helicopters that circle closer, a giant octopus hammering down the bulk heads leading to the underwater base, something that puts a bit of fire under the players, and adds to the tension and therefore drama. Having it formally put into the turn order it means that the players can feel the tick-tock of the escalation but they also know when stuff is going to happen, allowing them to plan and maybe even mitigate the escalation during the turn, perhaps making sub-optimum moves in order to net the rest of the party or some friendly NPCs less of an impact once the scene action comes along.
Back in the 80s we grabbed a large number of rules from other places for our AD&D system.
We grabbed body area specific armor class from Runequest. When a mob attacked, it rolled to see where it was aiming. It meant wearing a metal helmet didn’t increase the AC of your legs. It meant stuff like magical armor might actually lower ac in other areas. A +1 mail tunic might lower ac to the now bare arms etc.
We also grabbed 1) the spell law and arms law critical rolls tables from ICE. 2) the herbalism plant rules from middle earth rpg. 3) cantrip spells from an independent books system (can’t remember who exactly).
Oh I really like the “talking phase.” I feel like a lot of RPGs will give specific people an “analyze your foe” ability as a class power, but it almost never works out to being worth it with the action economy. Having a dedicated phase for it is a great solution.
My favorite stolen 'rule' is the "one unique thing" from 13th age character creation. The player is supposed to work with the keeper to come up with something unique or interesting about the character that serves as a story hook.
I find that it really helps some player types to engage with the game when they get to have a tangible backstory element like 'The last apprentice of Master Ki-Shun, or Keeper of The Book of Secrets- the tome used by all of the Egyptian pyramid chief architects.'
Stuff like that can really help with buy in, and since it is worked out with the Keeper, it will normally be involved with the story.
(I have some players that dont want to be super unique and pick things like 'ALWAYS bowls a 181.' That stuff can be fun too.
Having watched the Glass Cannon, I looked at the retroactive connections idea - what I chose was to retain the standard version (two connections established pre-game) because it really ramps up the ties within the group (and that can be important when one character is trying to justify why they’re allowing the mass murderer aboard their 100MCr ship); however I give everyone one additional connection (which cannot be used to increase a skill to 3 or more) which they can use retroactively.
I also use something like the Pushed Roll system, particularly for training - a failed roll can immediately be re-rolled with a Bane (yes, you wasted most of your study period getting your revision timetable perfect; but you pulled a caffeine-fuelled all-nighter and scraped through the astrogation exam in the end). I will consider expanding that to something more like the full Pushed Rolls system.
My top 5 favorite rules to steal are:
1. Stunts/Flair - Players describing their actions cinematically gain mechanical benefits, sometimes with more benefit for detail/coolness or using the scenery. Exalted, 7th Sea 2e, and tons of other games made use of this, but I haven't seen it much recently. I love anything that encourages players to be more descriptive and interact more with the scene.
2. Pushing/Strain - As described in the vid, players failing a roll can risk greater consequences for the chance to turn that failure into a success. It creates a fun dynamic where players can take the extra risk to both push past flukes in their specialties (most of the time...) and have a chance at those Hail Mary attempts.
3. Clocks - Visual representations of progress are great. I use clocks pretty liberally both for goal progress and countdowns to disaster. Sometimes both at once as dueling clocks.
4. Dramatic Sequence - A general system for handling any activity that goes on for a while and has stakes but isn't combat. This is actually a small set of rules I made myself (based loosely on pieces of 7th Sea, Mage: The Ascension, and many others) that I adjust for any game that needs it. Namely, a lot of systems (especially those related to D&D) struggle with non-combat events that can't be handled in a single skill roll. I've found it very useful for social encounters as well.
5. Momentum/Threat - I've seen a lot of variations of this (individual vs pooled on the player side, different methods of getting points and using them, etc). The pooled version Modiphius Entertainment uses is probably my favorite. It encourages a team dynamic (though be careful of the occasional player hogging the pool) and can be adjusted as needed by a system/game.
One of my favorite mechanics is the experience point system from the Cypher System, which uses PX as a meta-currency, rather than a passive score, allowing players to spend them to get rerolls, temporary bonuses or in story bonuses (like a house or a title).
Another interesting one, although I never played the game, is the Escalation Die from 13th Age.
Thas for this. I love kit bashing rules into other games. I even wrote an article about it a while back with my top ten game systems that I love using in other systems. I was surprised by how many people do this as well and love seeing others suggestions. I'm absolutely grabbing the relationship inspiration and connection rules for my next campaign.
I really like the FFG Star Wars light/dark side tokens. Giving the players a means to add something to the narrative, works great.
Great content. I love that you've highlighted that "make up / steal" rules to make your game better is an actual thing !!
My D&D 5E group granted me a modifier of sorts. I think it was a house rule.
Playing as a bard, I was the party's jack of all trades, and had a skill or spell for almost anything. However, they had a catch and were all technically "spoken." Healing word, vicious mockery, bardic inspiration, etc. If I could come up with a sufficiently good saying, phrase, or insult, then I got to roll with advantage or roll an additional die of healing or damage. When I got Tasha's Hideous Laughter, if I provided a sufficiently funny joke, the target creature rolled with disadvantage. It really encouraged me to get in character, and the party always had fun seeing what I would come up with on my turn.
Seth, this video came out in the nick of time for me! I'm in the middle of play testing my ttrpg system, and I was inspired to make some good changes from this video alone! Thanks a million!
I love your little cutaways to the players to illustrate your point
I play Rolemaster and the penalties on action by condition are second nature to me. I just say this is +40, this is -25. Works like a charm... when you have put in hundreds of hours, haha.
That relations inspiration reminds me of runequest passions.
From alien, I LOVE the mechanics for food, water and air, already stole and using them everywhere 😊
When I hear "story points" I think of the way they are used in some other games - where the players can spend them to add conveniences to the session. Need a lockpick to get out of the cell? Spend a story point and find an old fork that'll work; get cornered by the town guard, spend three points and it turns out the lieutenant is an old friend who will help you in a pinch, etc. I loved how the points flowed in the Serenity rpg, where players earned and spent them constantly throughout the session. I use some variation on these points in most of my campaigns.
I use the morale rules from old-school D&D in most of my games now. It gives players an explicit way to end combat early and allows me to be a bit more unforgiving in terms of enemy tactics. Reaction rolls also get used if I don't already know how an NPC will react to the player.
We use monster morale, and rotate DM's; so one of my jobs as a player is to holler "Morale Check" when I think the DM should perform a morale check, as they have their hands full.
Not sure you'll see this, but inspiration is actually a much older idea, earliest RPG I saw it in was Warhammer Fantasy 1e, called Fate Points, next major game I saw it in was as an optional rule for 3.5 I believe, was also a thing in D20M if I recall. Also Fate, pretty famous RPG as well.
Great video. Starting my first home brew campaign next month. This is perfect research.
I really like Pulp Cthulhu's luck spends. It's hard to add to other games that already exist, but I keep it in mind when I work on my own systems.
I like Pulp's mechanic of using your Luck pool to live another day
Mongoose Traveller also has an interesting way to use Luck to survive. The Luck stat is a regular 2d6 stat done during Character Creation. If a PC is killed, the player may roll 2D6. If they roll a 12, they somehow survive. If they roll less than 12, they can permanently reduce their Luck stat by however many points to make the difference.
I really like the aspirations system from Chronicles of Darkness.
Basically, you ask each of your players to give you two or three short/long term objectives their character have. Short term objectives can be accomplished in the span of one game session (maybe two) and long term ones in three sessions or more. Those can be objectives tied to the plot or just small personal challenges.
From then on, your story just write itself. All you have to do is give each player an opportunity to fulfill one or two aspirations per game session. If they don't take it, its on them. But if they fulfill their aspiration, you give them an appropriate reward (exp, hero points, etc.).
Thanks for the video. Great work as always. I would also like to suggest the Pathfinder 2e exploration mode, where you assign jobs for everyone traveling into wilderness or exploring a dungeon, basically when you are not in combat or downtime instead of your rogue constantly saying "I search for traps" he simply states that during exploration he searches for traps and if there is a trap you either ask him to roll or like in your previous video he already rolled at the start and you use those rolls, of course there are jobs for everyone and they are all useful.
Trail of C'thulhu rule on "If you use an appropriate skill in a situation, you get the information, no roll needed.". Makes it so players can get the investigation moving by being creative using their skills. I use that in Call of C'thulhu all the time. Love it.
Momentum and Doom points from all of Modiphius' 2d20 systems. Having a pool of physical tokens for the players to share, and one for the DM to psyche out their players is great for building tension and creating heroic moments
There's a tabletop role-playing game called, "Fate of the Norns". It has a game mechanic for leveling the player as well as leveling the character. And the player levels if their character ascends to Valhalla upon death. It's really cool and it has awesome rules and requires the other players at the table to roleplay and sing praise of their death and hold a proper burial and all kinds of fun stuff. It's totally awesome.
I'm going to guess you didn't see this mechanic, because if you did, you'd absolutely love it.