So, I’ve been working on a few ApocWorld-powered games over the last couple of years – End of the World, Streets of Marienburg, Kingdoms of Ooo, and more recently Strange GENEration (though that one is still in more of a tinkering stage), and one thing that I’ve been wanting to do is use different dice mechanics to accomplish the whole -6/7-9/10+ dynamic.
I mean, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the system as-is. I like it. But every now and then I get an itch to switch things up a bit…which I can only attribute to my irrational dislike of negatives. Don’t ask…
There’s been a few others that’ve used alternate mechanics. Most notably Murderous Ghosts with the use of cards, and to a lesser extent Minions Inc. and NYC2123, with the different die sizes.
But I wonder, what other alternate mechanics have you seen, and do they accomplish the Miss/Pass/Hit as eloquently as Vincent Baker’s original?
I ask mostly out of morbid curiosity.
You could do what I’m doing with my hack and still use 5- ,6-8 and 9+ but not use modifiers.(like The Sundered Land) In my game, there will be a scarce player currency which will be able to be used to boost a roll from one category to up to the next.
The other thing you might do is adopt the stepped dice option from “The Bureau” which uses polyhedral dice steps instead of modifiers.
I’m working on a nWoD hack that would use the fail/partial/pass method of resolving successes without having to alter the dice pools of nWoD. So far I’ve come up with a pass occurs if one or more dice comes up as a 10 and a partial can occur if one or more dice comes up as an 8 or higher. I haven’t worked out chance die or exceptional successes into the system yet.
I’ve thought about this question as well. Ideally, what I’d like to try out is something with the same odds, but smaller increments so more modifiers would be applied without breaking the game, vs the current +1 to a roll being very powerful.
I haven’t tried it myself, but I think the idea I floated here has potential: https://plus.google.com/+DanMaruschak/posts/SWqBBGRm9mX
Basically, the idea is that instead of having stats affect whether you miss, hit, or strong-hit, that would always be a flat die roll and the stats would only come into play in determining what effect the hits have.
Dan Maruschak
I like that! I’m gonna have to take note of that for when I get back to Strange GENEration. That might fit perfectly.
John Harper’s Lasers & Feelings has an interesting mechanic. Have a look here: https://www.google.com/url?q=http://onesevendesign.com/lasers_and_feelings_rpg.pdf&sa=U&ei=SfJ9Up_RFK6O7AbjmIHQDw&ved=0CA0QFjAB&usg=AFQjCNHG3yG5MkMkA2nbeta9qo_UcIxvVA
Dan Maruschak I also like that idea! You’ve given me something to ponder.
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