Over the Top: Great RPG Mechanics
#RPGMechanics: Week Four
I love big-scale, completely-cracked, widescreen high fantasy. It’s part of why I adore Final Fantasy Advent Children, Zu Warriors, and a ton of dumb anime. I mentioned Exalted yesterday, a game which has the promise of that, but often bogs down in the resolution (the same for me with Scion). Not that those games aren’t good, but there’s a set of complexities that take away from the energy.
On the other hand the other game I mentioned yesterday, Apocalypse Keys, does that big scale stuff and doubles down on it. It hits the gas right from the first scene and initial moves– and the GM & players have to be on board for it. When I run it I love the simultaneous feeling of keeping the car on the road and making sweet jumps with it. It’s not for everyone, but there’s a real pleasure when people realize the fictional permissions given (FP being a topic for another time).
One of my other favs in this genre is a weird one, coming as it does out of a more OSR track. Kevin Crawford describes his sandbox games as “Old School Renaissance-informed.” That’s a solid way to put it. These kinds of OSR-ish games would generally be described as restrained– in power level, complexity of factors, durability of PCs, etc.. Godbound uses a classic resolution system with a generally “Rulings Not Rules” approach, but then it marries that to the most colossal, wildly hyperpowered set of abilities. Each one of Godbound’s Words and Gifts has both potentially huge effects and also massive implications. Other rules might stop to draw those out and explain– going through how they interact, corner cases, how they’re actually balanced.
Godbound says screw that. Here’s the power, It is awesome. Lets see what your players do with that. For example from Bow,
None Beyond Reach
Your ranged attacks have no maximum range provided you can see what you’re shooting at with your natural sight or know its location to within ten feet. This ability extends only to the same realm as the one you are currently inhabiting.
Crawford has an economy to his language and descriptions– you can work things out from just this minimal amount of information.
Or from Night
A Darkness at Noon
You bring or dispel night in a radius up to a mile per level. At night, the moon is at whatever phase you desire, while banished night leaves the sun overhead. Optionally, you may ensure that no lesser foe sleepers within that area will wake up for anything but severe physical injury, or send them specific dreams.
I love this stuff and in play it is dynamite. It’s combined with a flexible set of tools for players to create Miracles. The whole thing works and even when it gets baroque later in a campaign when players have a host of powers it still feels fun and coherent.
The small icing on top of this is the secondary feature of the Fray Die. Basically when you’re in combat with lesser foes, each round you reflexively roll this die and do that many levels of damage to the enemy combatants. You don’t have to take an action, it’s just the casual power of your awesomeness dispatching them.