Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 28, 2025, 01:20:14 PMA single roll for attack and damage.

I agree on wilderness procedures. One thing I think should be more popular is "reverse random encounter rolls", i.e., instead of rolling 1d6 to see if you have an encounter TODAY, roll 1d6 to see HOW MANY DAYS until next encounter. This saves quite a lot of rolls.

(OTOH automation would be even better for that).

I'm a fan of both.  With regard to a single roll to rule them all, I'm actually hoping to use that with my heartbreaker.   Regarding the latter, I only recently discovered that when doing some research on other RPGs and saw that mechanic (rolling how many days/shifts/miles/whatever until an encounter) in the One Ring/LOTR5e games as well as iirc Broken Empire as well.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 28, 2025, 01:20:14 PMOne thing I think should be more popular is "reverse random encounter rolls", i.e., instead of rolling 1d6 to see if you have an encounter TODAY, roll 1d6 to see HOW MANY DAYS until next encounter. This saves quite a lot of rolls.

I think swapping time for odds could be a good axis-flip to consider for a lot of cases. Similarly, multiple attacks with a failure chance could be swapped with a roll for the number of hits.

For this case, I also like the "Hazard Die", where 1d6 represents 6 different potential event types, one of which is a random encounter.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 28, 2025, 01:20:14 PMA single roll for attack and damage.

I'm not sure I've run across this before. Anyone have an example? Color me intrigued.

Quote from: Shteve on March 28, 2025, 03:47:49 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 28, 2025, 01:20:14 PMA single roll for attack and damage.

I'm not sure I've run across this before. Anyone have an example? Color me intrigued.

Any system that uses a flat damage value for a weapon/attack/ability and then adds damage based on the margin of success (whether extra "hits" on a d6 dice pool, +1 damage for every 10% under the target in a percentile game, or extra damage for every 2-5 over AC in a d20 game).   Forbidden Lands is a good example of a dice pool game that does it; one success gets you the base damage and each additional success gives you an extra point of damage on that attack.   I think I remember reading that Mutants and Masterminds does something like that with their d20 system but I could be wrong (and admittedly haven't ever played it... I just recall reading something about it).

Quote from: RNGm on March 28, 2025, 04:01:08 PM

Quote from: Shteve on March 28, 2025, 03:47:49 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 28, 2025, 01:20:14 PMA single roll for attack and damage.

I'm not sure I've run across this before. Anyone have an example? Color me intrigued.

Any system that uses a flat damage value for a weapon/attack/ability and then adds damage based on the margin of success (whether extra "hits" on a d6 dice pool, +1 damage for every 10% under the target in a percentile game, or extra damage for every 2-5 over AC in a d20 game).   Forbidden Lands is a good example of a dice pool game that does it; one success gets you the base damage and each additional success gives you an extra point of damage on that attack.   I think I remember reading that Mutants and Masterminds does something like that with their d20 system but I could be wrong (and admittedly haven't ever played it... I just recall reading something about it).

Awesome, thanks! I own Forbidden Lands and haven't been able to play it yet, so I missed that. Looking forward to trying it.

Quote from: Shteve on March 28, 2025, 03:47:49 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 28, 2025, 01:20:14 PMA single roll for attack and damage.

I'm not sure I've run across this before. Anyone have an example? Color me intrigued.

Probably the most widespread for this is NWoD/CoD where your successes on the attack dice pool are how much damage the attack deals.

My personal favorite for this though is Silhouette's system where each attack has a damage multiplier and when you hit, you multiply the margin of success by the multiplier for damage dealt.

Due to the rest of the system the margin is typically in the low single digits so the math is actually pretty quick.

One thing I like about it is that, since the margin of success determines how much damage is done, some types of armor really do make sense as just improving your defense value (sloped armor or similar deflectors or anything where the effectiveness is a percentage of incoming energy reduced)... because each +1 lowers the margin of success and therefore the damage taken.

Quote from: RNGm on March 28, 2025, 03:15:38 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 28, 2025, 12:32:21 PMI'd like to see more games where injuries are less common (easier to avoid being hit/damaged) but where the injuries are more meaningful and harder to remove (e.g., you can't just take 8 hours to sleep off nearly being killed).

I think game designers are worried about death spirals that may result.  My most recent experience was with the Alien RPG by Free League last year where my heavy gunner took an unlucky wound early in the mini-campaign to the arm and was now just a pistol shooter.  Since it was a mini campaign and the healing time was beyond the scope of the campaign (the characters were on a "base is self destructing in t-minus... situation) so I was just mostly useless in my primary role for the rest of the sessions.  In that case, a d&d style "long rest" wouldn't have helped but the injury met your criteria in that it was quite meaningful and effectively impossible to remove... and it made the gameplay experience much worse for it unfortunately.

It might have made for great high-tension roleplay under certain circumstances (and with the right group), but if the only concern for the game in question (whether by game or by group) is the combat aspect, then I can see why you considered it "much worse."

Quote from: ForgottenF on March 28, 2025, 09:38:58 AM-Slot-based inventory/encumbrance. I think it's the best compromise between realism and gameplay convenience. Probably the only reason it hasn't caught on is that 90%+ gamers are already used to ignoring encumbrance entirely.

-Simultaneous attack and defense in melee. To me, this is just obviously how combat should work, but I think I've only seen it in Warlock! and the system Zalman posted recently.

-Armor penetration rolls/armor saves. I feel less strongly about this one, but it makes more sense to me than armor soak or armor folded into defense score.

-Chase/pursuit rules. They're starting to be more common now, but they were a glaring omission in most mainstream games for a long time.

-mix-and-match class/profession systems a la Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or Shadow of the Demon Lord. Not a good fit for every game, but it's a great system and far superior to D&D multiclassing.

Just gonna ditto your list given a lot of what I'm currently working on features this to some degree or another.

Here's some mechanics I really like that I house rule into all my games now.

Zones - Rather than doing grid and movement for combat, I use zones.  A zone is an area that is the size of a single turn normal movement (25ft in D&D).  Everyone in that zone can engage in melee with anyone else in that zone without worrying about counting off squares.  A PC can move to an adjacent zone with their normal movement and further zones with run and sprint as prescribed by the rules set the game is using.  I just use hexes for open spaces.  This has the added effect of making ranged combat more relevant.

Effort - Effort is kind of like combat in that you roll to succeed and then you roll to for amount of effort.  A task will have two stats, success and effort and it's kind of like AC and HP.  It changes skill rolls from "can you do this" to "how long will it take you."  Now it's not a matter of if you can pick a lock, it's a matter of can you pick the lock before the guard comes through on his rounds.

Success bonus - Rather than crits, I offer success bonuses.  If you roll 6 over the target, you can add that to your damage or effort.

Quote from: jhkim on March 28, 2025, 02:09:13 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on March 28, 2025, 01:10:44 PM

Quote from: jhkim on March 28, 2025, 12:53:39 PMSimultaneous attack and defense is standard in Powered-by-the-Apocalypse (PbtA) systems, which are quite widespread. So this one is popular, just not in the OSR.

https://www.therpgsite.com/design-development-and-gameplay/the-smor-system/

Is that a thing in PBTA? The only PBTA game I've played is Dungeon World, which either doesn't work that way, or my DM was running it wrong.

I think your DM was running it wrong. In Dungeon World, the DM never rolls for enemy attacks. (The DM never touches dice at all for resolution.) Instead, the player rolls his "Hack and Slash" Move. On success (10+), only the PC does damage. On a limited success (7-9), both sides deal damage. On failure, only the enemy deals damage. Here's the Dungeon World SRD

https://www.dungeonworldsrd.com/moves/

Yeah, the DM I had played it that whenever an enemy attacked you, you had to roll a Defy Danger move. Just looking over the SRD, it looks like you could interpret it either way.

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 28, 2025, 05:39:15 PMIt might have made for great high-tension roleplay under certain circumstances (and with the right group), but if the only concern for the game in question (whether by game or by group) is the combat aspect, then I can see why you considered it "much worse."

Yeah, in this mini-campaign (four sessions I think), the entirety of the action took place over basically one afternoon/evening in game so "rests" of anything more than 15 min weren't really applicable but it certainly wasn't all combat as we had multiple RP segments in each session other than the last (which was a run towards the last shuttle type scenario).  I could see long standing injuries being interesting to roleplay in a campaign with long downtime sessions of healing, training, carousing, realm-building, etc though but I could see plenty of players simply being reasonably pissed off if the ranger they spec'ed out for ranged longbow combat can't use one at all let alone effectively for multiple sessions/weeks or months IRL and I wouldn't consider them to be murderhobos or anything. 

For what it's worth, I actually agree with you and am struggling how to balance that in my own very early fantasy heartbreaker.  I just don't have an easy answer unfortunately.

Quote from: Shteve on March 28, 2025, 03:47:49 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on March 28, 2025, 01:20:14 PMA single roll for attack and damage.

I'm not sure I've run across this before. Anyone have an example? Color me intrigued.

Pocket Fantasy (which is free) has this.  Characters all have a Combat Skill of 1D6, 1D6-1, or 1D6-2 based on your chosen class.  Some bottom tier enemies can even be as bad as 1D6-3. 

You roll your CS to attack and the other guy rolls their CS to block damage.  If any damage is left, the victim takes that number in damage.

Spell interruption and individual initiative.  These were both a thing in early D&D and moving away from them made combat a lot less interesting

Quote from: Mishihari on March 29, 2025, 04:15:45 PMSpell interruption and individual initiative.  These were both a thing in early D&D and moving away from them made combat a lot less interesting

Regarding individual initiative, are you referring to everone rolling individually and going on their own initiative result?   Is that really that uncommon nowadays?  I agree that side based initiative has increased in popularity but i always figured that individual was still the most popular.

Quote from: RNGm on March 29, 2025, 06:25:47 PM

Quote from: Mishihari on March 29, 2025, 04:15:45 PMSpell interruption and individual initiative.  These were both a thing in early D&D and moving away from them made combat a lot less interesting

Regarding individual initiative, are you referring to everone rolling individually and going on their own initiative result?   Is that really that uncommon nowadays?  I agree that side based initiative has increased in popularity but i always figured that individual was still the most popular.

5E has individual initiative.
I remember using side based Initiative for AD&D but we might have house ruled it, I don't recall.