Sunday, August 7, 2022

#RPGaDay2022 - Day 7: A Cool Part of a System


Day Seven of #RPGaDay2022 is one of the weird Sunday questions - this one is "Describe a cool part of a system that you love". Oh, man. So many to choose from. There have been many times over the last few years when I've read or played a relatively new game and thought "Wow, I wish I'd come up with that". 

Some cool elements that I particularly admire include the whole "Blades in the Dark" thing of rolling against a difficulty and the result determines if you succeed, succeed but with a consequence, or fail. That's bloomin' brilliant, and I think it's something that's been adapted from Powered by the Apocalypse - however, it was my first game of Scum and Villainy that I first encountered it. 

The other "wow" moment was experiencing Tales from the Loop for the first time. Just the simplicity of the game system, how the rules were a fraction of the size of most of the games I'd been playing, allowing the players to build their 'character' rather than a bunch of numbers. Flippin amazing. I guess that's my only frustration at the moment, is that there are no more official in-house Tales from the Loop books. I'd snap them up in an instant. 
 

2 comments:

Ricardo said...

Dave, you might have heard of Broken Compass, maybe even watched Anthony Boyd and others play. Have you played it yourself?
Well, I haven't (yet!) but that dice mechanic of rolling a pool and ANY matching dice being a success is one of those that I wish I had thought of. :D

I mean, it had always bothered me that you would roll a bunch of dice (in other games) and come up with results that you couldn't use for anything (and adding dice together like in the WEG games isn't really my thing). But in Broken Compass rolling a bunch of 1s is an awesome result!

So simple, so effective, so elegant!

Maybe some day I'll put a twist on that.

David F. Chapman said...

Oh heck yes, I bought Broken Compass but haven't played it yet. Fantastic design, and great production on that corebook. Love it!!