I’ve heard of a dice mechanic that I found interesting after some deliberation. I don’t think I’d ever use it as it’s too much like a combination Heroes’ speed system and Action Points of CRPGS.
But it comes down to time is set up in blocks of x units. This block of time is divided into rounds. Your speed determines how many of those rounds you get to act. (Disclaimer, I hate the Heroes speed system). In addition you get a pool of dice to use that’s associated with the block of time. You can spend as many dice as you wish on an action, obviously the higher your dice roll the better your chances of winning.
Its interesting in that it adds tactics and deferred risk to the player’s decisions. Do they portion out the dice in singles and doubles hoping to get a lot of actions with good rolls, the quantity over quality path. Or do they dump a lot of dice on fewer actions going for quality over quantity.
It could make for interesting play from the players side although I see it as being a big PITA for the game master trying to keep track of dice counts for multiple NPC’s. Even if you do something like “All minions only get to roll 1 (or 2 or 3) dice on the rounds they can go” you still have to add non-minions and that brings piles of dice laying around to keep track for each one.
The overhead involved I don’t see as being worth what it adds to gameplay but who knows it might be cool.
In other news I’ve been listening to various podcasts, it’s kind of what I do in the car and I just have one thing to say, “Post editing is your friend!”.
Blimey but some of the latest ones I’ve listened to have so much filler i.e. non-game stuff that I can’t keep interested in them. It’s 15 minutes of mundane real life chat, idle commentary and/or questionable humor, usually bathroom or homophobic based for the all male groups and flirtatious for the mixed groups for each 2 minutes of gaming. I can literally hear and feel the frustration in these game masters as they try to run a game when everyone is too busy bullshitting to remember why they’re in theory all sitting around the table.
I know everyone has sessions that everyone is there just to get together. I’ve had them, but I also would early on close all my books and say “Disinterest has reared it’s head, we’re going to table this for another time.” Not mean or accusingly or anything, just factually. And we’d sit around and bullshit, make fun of Star Wars movies or whatever. And some of these sessions could gain from that. Just sayin’.
2 comments
Trickster
May 20, 2011 at 10:54 pm (UTC -5) Link to this comment
Totally agree, its why I’ve stopped listening to several RPG gaming podcasts. I find it equally annoying when the hosts talk about a board game or a TV show, that’s not why I’m listening to your podcast!
Dennis
May 21, 2011 at 7:33 am (UTC -5) Link to this comment
I don’t mind some side tracking at all. I just can’t keep interested when there’s so little RPG in something post as such. And a lot of them could be fixed by editing and cutting out all the non game related chatter and probably cut the length ignite cats by half or more. Especially the half hour chat sessions at the start.
I guess the takeaway from my complaint is, if youre going to go to the trouble of podcasting a game session if you want people to continue to download and listen aftr ther first couple then it might benefit your long term goal of acruimg listeners to keep the game on track or simply edit the non-game parts out.
The penny arcade podcasts for the most part are a shining example of interesting focused gameplay that still manages to be fun and entertaining.