Mechanics that RPGs don't use

And a look at the Black Sword Hack

This week on Questing Beast, I took a look at Black Sword Hack, an offshoot of The Black Hack that focuses on Appendix N-like worlds. Think Elric, Conan, and the Dying Earth. I think I might like it better than DCC.

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In the last post I looked at how boardgames tend to provide a more consistently fun experience than RPGs, because 1.) they don’t have to rely on a human to drive the action and 2.) their mechanics make sure that players usually have an interesting, impactful choice to make. After decades of development, boardgame mechanics have ended up exploring a huge swath of game design space, much of which hasn’t been used in RPGs. But what if it was?

When looking at mechanics, I’ll be drawing from the list found on Boardgamegeek (which is about as comprehensive a list as you can find) and focusing on mechanics that RPGs tend to avoid. Of course, there are tons of RPGs out there that I haven’t read, so if you know of one that does use a rare mechanic let me know down in the comments.

One thing I noticed as I was writing this was that RPGs actually use a lot more mechanics than I originally thought. Given that many RPGs’ goal is to simulate a whole world, I suppose that’s not too surprising. No unified mechanic can encompass the complexity of a world, so since the beginning of the hobby GMs and designers have taken a hodge-podge approach, creating minigames for different activities using whatever mechanics seemed appropriate. In many campaigns, play switches between minigames as they come up, or zooms in or out to a level of abstraction that meets the needs of the situation.

Not every game needs to do this, of course. Some RPGs have a much narrower focus that doesn’t try to take in the whole universe and understanding boardgame mechanics is still useful for designers in that niche. But I think this post will be most useful if you’re an old-school DMs who often finds yourself in the role of designer as well as referee (gamemasters are game designers, to a certain extent). It should help you add variety to gameplay, get the players involved in new aspects of your setting, and most importantly increase the fun by giving players more interesting choices.

I’ll take a look at 20 mechanics below, and then 20 more next week.

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Action Queue

In an action queue, players create sequences of actions that they want to perform, which are then activated in order. Burning Wheel and En Garde! do this to simulate the chaos of battle and to allow players to outthink their opponents by anticipating the actions in their queue. Often has rock-paper-scissors elements. The downside is that it can feel too chaotic.

Advantage Token

Circle of Hands has a mechanic where in a conflict one side is always granted a bonus for having the upper hand. There is never an “even match.” This forces players to always be thinking about how to claw an advantage from the situation.

Area Control

An type of battle game has area control to some extent, but you could make it more explicit. For example: divide the battlefield into zones, and make movement very important by granting big bonuses for teaming up on enemies, but make it hard to change zones. You could also use it when playing a domain game where having followers in city districts or provinces would grant you greater control.

Auction / Bidding

To resolve a conflict of any kind, you could have players bids on what they are willing to lose in order to win, or to gain bonuses on a roll. Bids could include HP loss, reputation loss, item damage, putting yourself in a risky position, etc. You could take turns escalating the bids, or each write down your final bid and then reveal all at once.

Bingo

This is a mechanic where random items are drawn and then players have to use those items on their player boards. A bit too abstract and restricting for most RPG activities, but you could use it as part of minigames. For example, when foraging you could roll on random tables to see when ingredients you find, and then you have to place those ingredients on a board to form patterns in order to make potions. Could also be useable in magic systems or crafting.