The Best and Most 'Stealable' Mechanics from Tabletop RPGs

Comments · 179

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  @QuestingBeast · 2 years ago

  Awesome to see my Knave and Maze Rats games on here! Thanks Evan! I've never heard of Willowby Hall referred to as a "Lasagna of Problems" but now I'm going to start calling it that.

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• SI

  @SirMorganD · 2 years ago

  Im gonna use this as my notebook:<br>- Flashbacks, using a system of &quot;Stress&quot; to meassure how much they can do it and how it affects them. (Checking Blades in the Dark)<br>- Clocks.<br>- Beliefs and Instincts. Points that the DM can use without the player declaring it. This one sounds cool af.<br>- Vice Stat. An stat that is better and grows the more you use it, but it causes on-rol consecuences. Cool af too.<br>- Nature. Bonuses by the nature of the character, and it must be balance betweeen the esscence of the character. If you act according to nature, you get a bonus, and against it too, but with the possibility of failing the roll and loosing nature. You can tap that number as a raw bonus.<br>- Those game where you use a Jenga. Basically, mechanics that build tension over time until the boot hits the vent.<br>- Games with dice alocation.<br>- One page systems. Great and simple and cool.<br>- OSR, Pick up and play. KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid.<br>- Story Logic as Mechanics. Using dice and a tracker and thats &nbsp;it. Check Out Powered By the Apocalipse. <br>- Mind Map to desing quests?<br>- Learn and Steal from the best.<br><br>Thank you very much Evan Hill!

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• KE

  @keremmadran · 2 years ago

  Citizen Sleeper is an awesome video game that yoinks clocks from Blades in the Dark awesomely

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• SO

  @Solanaar · 2 years ago

  A cool game that came to mind when I saw the jenga tower is Icarus. It&apos;s a world building game about a city and its inevitable fall. The mechanic that I love is that the dice you roll and that represent decisions, resources, peopple and more, get stacked on top of each other in the middle of the desk. As the consequences of the player&apos;s actions pile on the dice tower becomes more and more unstable until at one point it will fall. When it happens nobody knows. But everybody gets more and more tense, more and more careful to not shake the table. And the fall, as is often the case, comes sudden and unexpected. I think that is a great mechanic that adds not only to tension but also to replay value as you&apos;re always left wondering &quot;what if I could&apos;ve stacked one more dice, one more event?&quot;<br>Maybe that&apos;s something videogames can implement too?

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• DO

  @donatodiniccolodibettobardi842 · 2 years ago

  I also find it interesting that these &quot;stolen&quot; ideas can be embedded very deeply into the gameplay and narrative, as core design principles or pacing mechanics or you name it. &nbsp;And they can be implemented on a very much a surface level, as a visible UI and reference to its predecessors, moment to moment resolution mechanics. <br><br>My friend runs and co-runs LARPs from time to time and every time he asked me for advice I couldn&apos;t help myself, but steal from card-based video games. &quot;You need magical abilities, that are invocative of Fae and Pride and Prejudice? Why don&apos;t you write some cards and give them to your players?&quot; <br>&quot;Portents and visions? Why not give them the sealed letters with precise time?&quot; <br>&quot;Predestination? Just reward them for being at the right time at the right place and say certain things.&quot;<br><br>Players still largely get freedom, but they would feel larger forces at play and they could be empowered by deciding and where and when the powerful curses can be uttered.<br><br>So it is very enjoyable to see the video game design do the opposite.

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• BA

  @barterjke · 2 years ago

  You really should&apos;ve called it &quot;How to tell that you love Disco in 1 million different ways as GDC talk&quot;<br>But really it&apos;s a great talk. I found even more examples of what you&apos;ve talked about. Like inspiration points from BG3 is very much inspiration points, and souls uses XP system that is both stats and resources.

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• BO

  @BoredToBoardGames · 2 years ago (edited)

  I’m sure I missed something or made a mistake, so please correct or add in the comments but hope this helps with searches and purchases as I thought I’d rewatch and come up with a list:<br><br>TTRPG:<br>Numenera &amp; Cypher System (Monte Cook)<br>Blades in the Dark<br>Darkest Dungeon (board game currently on KS)<br>Burning Wheel &amp; Mouse Guard<br>Dread &amp; Star Crossed<br><br>One Page RPGs:<br>Honey Heist<br>Sexy Battle Wizards<br>Everyone Is John<br><br>OSR:<br>Knave 2<br>Waking of Willowby Hall<br>Maze Rats<br>Into The Odd<br>Electric Bastionland<br><br>Bonus stuff:<br>Pathologic 2<br>Gnosia (novel and a video game)<br><br>Apocalypse World (PbtA):<br>Dungeon World<br>Monsterhearts 2<br>City of Mist (modified)<br>Disco Elysium (modified)<br><br>Video Game RPG:<br>Outer Worlds 2<br>The Last of Us II<br>Torment Tides of Numenera<br>Plane scape Torment<br>Solar Ash<br>Palia <br>Darkest Dungeon<br>Pathologic 2<br>Fall Out (image)<br>Metal Gear Solid<br>Mass Effect<br>Disco Elysium <br>Roll &amp; Write Genre’s Citizen Sleeper<br>Tharsis <br>Dicey Dungeons<br>Rogue<br>System Shock<br>Hitman

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• TH

  @TheShiumy · 2 years ago

  I&apos;ve just started to play citizen sleeper, and they totally borrow this clock idea for everything !

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• BJ

  @bjhale · 2 years ago

  It&apos;s awesome to hear someone else advocate for BitD style flashbacks in Assassin&apos;s Creed. Hope someone from Ubisoft is listening. The best part is they can justify it as a new and improved animus feature, which lets the user jump to an earlier &quot;glossed over&quot; memory in the middle of synchronizing a different memory.

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• TH

  @TheLyricalCleric · 2 years ago

  Not sure why the initial hate for the Cypher system—I’ve recently gotten into cypher and it seems very rules-light and intuitive from what I’m reading.

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• SU

  @sub-jec-tiv · 2 years ago

  Ugh so cool. GDC is doing so much for independent game creators. (Let’s be honest, only indies are going to implement all the cool ideas on display at GDC… AAA still gonna chase the tail of the biggest games from 10 years ago.)

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• WA

  @wailfulcrab · 2 years ago

  First Fallout was supposed to be based on Gurps system but was denied the licence &quot;because it was too violent&quot; so they made a derivative SPECIAL. First 2 Elder Scrolls games also take some aspects of that point buy system with ability to take advantages and disadvantages at the cost of slower exp gain.

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