Name an RPG you like that has something about it you think is innovative, neat, or just runs the way you like?

For example.  I like Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool because it uses the D4 to D12 dice as attributes, skills, and special class ability bonuses.   Roll all of them, pick the best two, and add.  Beat a target number.  I like this setup. 

Another is an add-on set of rules for any of the D6 set of games called Dueling Blades by Griffon Publishing.  It treats combat as an opposed roll, with the margin of success setting one of four outcomes that range from simply moving, a stun, a wound, and last is a GM discretion critical hit.  Just adding movement to combat makes it more interesting than two dudes taking turns until one dies. 

It doesn't need to be combat either. 

Most of the older games I play?

That's an exaggeration, but it is true that most of the 80's and 90's games I still play are due to some combination of nostalgia and a neat mechanic or two. Not to say they're bad, but I could probably get by using a couple of much newer game systems and just adapting the source material.

The original Deadlands games immediately leap to mind. I run Savage Worlds games, but any Deadlads has to be OG. There's just a...flavor? Energy? to the old game that I don't find SW captures, despite being a smoother system. 

I've mentioned before that I really like the way Dragon Warriors handles melee combat, with active defense scores and armor piercing checks, but that game has another mechanic which I not only like, but will probably be importing into other games going forward: Attribute checks.

Like a lot of old-school games, attribute checks are made by rolling under your character's score on the relevant attribute. However, for challenges which would in reality have a fairly static difficulty, the task is given a difficulty rating, and if your score exceeds that rating, you don't have to roll.

As an example: You want to climb a wall. Barring extraordinary conditions like high winds or ice, that wall is going to be the same difficulty to climb every time. Let's say the wall has a difficulty rating of 13. If you have a Reflexes score of 14 or more, you are able to climb that wall. If not, roll under your Reflexes; maybe you manage to pull off something you wouldn't usually be good enough for. This is a very handy way of providing variable difficulties without needing dice modifiers, it speeds up the game, and it makes less likely the situation you get all the time in D&D, where your 9 strength wizard rolls lucky and gets to break down the same door that your 18 strength fighter just failed to do so.

A variation of the system also works well for certain assisted checks. Say you need to lift a heavy stone block. The strength rating for it might be 35. The GM shouldn't even let a single character roll for that, but you can get three or four characters together, and if their strengths add up together to 38, they can now lift it no problem.

I love Dark Heresy just because of the 8 pages of critical hit tables with detailed descriptions of what happens, with what type of weapon and how severe it is. The few times I've run Dark Heresy it's always been a treat for my group to roll on the critical hit tables and see what messed up thing happens.

I like the way the Dragon Quest critical hits work. 

DQ has the basic critical (bypassing armor in its case), and then it has a critical hit chart that is highly varied in the results.  Based on the type of damage being done, the chart can do nothing additional all the way to effectively an outright kill.  Moreover, it is one chart that manages to get a lot of variety by weapon type.  For example, piercing weapons only do extra critical damage on the chart 20% of the time, but those results are typically rough.  Get a critical hit from an arrow or spear, it could be nothing more than the usual critical.   Or it could be an arrow in the eye.  Then even better, the slashing and bludgeoning weapons overlap on some results but not others, accounting for things like battle axes that are both edged and heavy.

Given the age of the system, and how the base mechanic works, the implementation could be improved in a streamlined system.  However, for its time, it does a remarkable job of showing weapons being able to kill in one hit, using a chart that fits on a single page, but the fact that critical hits mostly don't produce additional results on the chart make the characters more survivable.  (Surviving disease in DQ, not so much. )  This has the overall effect of making combat seem much more deadly than it is--because occasionally it is even worse.

Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP

All abilities, including Attributes (Primary Abilities), Powers and Gear, are rated using a descriptive Rank and Rank Number, with a universal color coded table for related ability rolls. All actions are resolved by making an Ability/Power Rank roll and the color rolled determines degree of success and has a special result: White (Fail), Green (Marginal Success), Yellow (Complete Success) or Red (Critical Success). If the attack you're using inflicts damage the amount is Rank Number damage. If it heals damage the amount is Rank Number damage. If it resists damage, the amount resisted is Rank Number damage. If its a condition, the difficulty to resist it is Power Rank. If the power has a rank it's determined by the power's Rank as well, as is your speed if it's a power like Lightning Speed, etc.

Basically everything revolves around Rank and Rank Number, and once you understand that you can easily run the game. If a situation arises, as a GM you can pretty much assign a Rank and it gives you any rolls, difficulty to resist or damage inflicted, healed or resisted. And the descriptive nature of the ranks (Poor, Typical, Excellent, Remarkable, etc.) makes it very intuitive.

Quote from: King Tyranno on December 28, 2022, 02:23:05 PM
I love Dark Heresy just because of the 8 pages of critical hit tables with detailed descriptions of what happens, with what type of weapon and how severe it is. The few times I've run Dark Heresy it's always been a treat for my group to roll on the critical hit tables and see what messed up thing happens.

I've implemented a similar system in my D&D game based on the original WFRPG. Like WFRPG, you only roll when you are at zero hit points so while it may seem like it makes the game more lethal, it actually does the opposite.

Three mechanics that I think are great innovations:

1) The Stress Dice from Alien RPG. A great way of adding tension and a better way of handling insanity IMO

2) The Chase system from James Bond 007. The part in question is the "Red Line" mechanic. The general idea is that each player bids for their Initiative with the lowers your Initiative bid meaning your more likely you to go first but also the less likely you are to succeed on your rolls. I'd like to implement this idea as a general rule but have never found a decent way. The JB007 game uses multiplication to resolve it which not many games use as a difficulty adjustment mechanism.

3) Bushido's Zanshin. A weird name but it basically is a chart where you compare your level with your mental ability scores to see how many actions you get per round. This way characters gain more actions per round as they level up which is a good and simple way of reflecting combat experience. Not only does it replace the extra attacks that some games get but can make high level characters more effective without just giving them higher and higher bonuses.

It's not really a specific mechanic, but even though I don't love all of the theming, worldbuilding and cetera in Ascendant as much as some other RPGs...

Ascendant has awesome mechanics more generally from my perspective. I like knowing what each value means in roughly concrete terms. It appeals to me on a simulationist level, and its mechanics do that. They're heavy in character design but fast and easy in play. They also make me feel like the stats have meaning both in contested plays and more generally within the setting. Just all around a pretty fun and interesting system for my tastes. Basically the only reason I like it as much as I do comes down to the overall mechanics.

I really like how FUDGE dice work. It's just that the games they're associated with aren't too my liking for various reasons.

Exalted 3e, for Withering and Decisive. It plays a lot like Dissidia but on tabletop.

Spiritual Attributes from The Riddle of Steel (although I renamed them "Spiritual Aspects" in my homebrew second edition). Basically, each PC picks five traits that reflect their biggest drives, passions, conscience, luck, destiny or faith, each of which can rank from 0 to 5 dice; rolls that match the SAs gain those dice as a dice bonus, and you earn more dice in them by taking actions that they support or encourage (e.g. you gain Conscience dice by doing the right thing, as you understand it, when it's risky or costly to do so).  These dice are also spent as your experience points, so playing in accord with your own PC's most important motivations is both a way to be more effective in the moment and how you gain experience to become more competent long-term.

It's not just a mechanic - but it's a mechanical expression that I find elegant that requires some thought to the math in how it's used.

Savage Worlds does it very well. The idea that one has a Stat that is either direct or derived that is mechanically representative of ones ability to passively defend one's self that is tied *directly* to ones attacker's ability to hit them. In this case, ones Parry Rating is derived directly from ones Fighting Skill. This immediately lets melee combatants really shine.

Talislanta does this by having one's Skill (be it offensive, or Acrobatics or whatever) added as a penalty to an attacker's roll.

This requires there be a uniform target-number to succeed. Further extrapolations of this allow degrees of success depending on the roll.

Most systems don't go this far, they'll use a flat number like AC and the characters skill means literally nothing. (Although Fantasy Craft did fix this in their 3.x rules).

Quote from: tenbones on December 29, 2022, 05:39:11 PM
It's not just a mechanic - but it's a mechanical expression that I find elegant that requires some thought to the math in how it's used.

Savage Worlds does it very well. The idea that one has a Stat that is either direct or derived that is mechanically representative of ones ability to passively defend one's self that is tied *directly* to ones attacker's ability to hit them. In this case, ones Parry Rating is derived directly from ones Fighting Skill. This immediately lets melee combatants really shine.

Talislanta does this by having one's Skill (be it offensive, or Acrobatics or whatever) added as a penalty to an attacker's roll.

This requires there be a uniform target-number to succeed. Further extrapolations of this allow degrees of success depending on the roll.

Most systems don't go this far, they'll use a flat number like AC and the characters skill means literally nothing. (Although Fantasy Craft did fix this in their 3.x rules).

Most skill-based systems tend to be kinda like this, with attacks often being an opposed skill check against the defender's skill (either the appropriate melee skill if parrying, or some kind of Athletics or Acrobatic skill if dodging). Since it's skill vs skill, and all skills use basically the same mechanics it all works out neatly and character skill has an appropriate impact on their ability to defend themselves (as it should IMO). But then armor needs to work a different way, other than it just making you harder to hit, like in D&D. You need to use Damage Reduction, or maybe something like Armor as Extra HP, like Palladium games.

I prefer unified mechanics that fade into the background.