Best Potential Mechanics

I’ve come across two games which have excellent mechanics that I’m tempted to use or borrow for my own game design. I will discuss the first here and the second one in a later post.

The first comes from the new Warhammer RPG. The new game features non-numbered dice. The dice themselves have Axes (hits) and/or Boost icons on them which is reminiscent of their Descent board game.

What you loose in legacy you make up in potential. One of the best things that a system like this COULD do is mediate various effects into the dice. (I do not believe that they are going to from the previews that I’ve read but I’m talking about potential here).

Say you had a HIT icon and a BOOST icon on your dice. When you roll the dice, the HIT icons could reveal how hard you hit your opponent. It’s both accuracy and damage. Easy. Now what do those BOOSTS represent?

If you had a HAMMER – How about knocking your foe back?
If you had an AXE – How about damaging their armour?
If you had a SWORD – How about maneuvering your foe?

The point being that the dice can start telling more than just hitting and damage. They can show how the battle unfolds. It’s a neat concept that has a lot of potential.

Further to this, the new Warhammer RPG brings in Misfortune and some sort of Difficulty dice. It’s the Misfortune dice that I like the idea of.

Most games have generic (and boring) ways to inflict the character with hindrances. Disease, poisons, lingering wounds, exhaustion, etc all have the same thing. They hit the character with a negative of some sort. It’s not generally that much fun to play a character with a negative. You miss lots or inflict no real damage. In short you fail because of your hindrances.

A Misfortune dice is an interesting concept. How I could see using it is quite simple. You roll the Misfortune dice along with your regular dice. Thy do not ‘eat up’ successes or anything but add some sort of complications if they come up with any HITS. The complication can be narrative as much as a rule.

For example, say your character is a great warrior but sick with the Skaven plague. You’ve got a couple of Misfortune dice. You roll your attack against an enemy adding in two Misfortune dice. Say you get HITS on both your attack dice and Misfortune dice. What happens? Well your attack still hits and causes damage. Go you! But something back happens as well. Maybe you’ve lost your weapon in the attack? Maybe you’ve slipped on the mud and are on your ass? Maybe you enter into a coughing fit. Regardless for once, the dice encourage a more dramatic scene.

What I really like about the Misfortune die is that it’s not just versatile but it’s easily adaptable. You can fluidly insert it into virtually any game. It’s just an add-on to the dice that you’re already rolling. The only modification is for how to interpret the effects for that system.

Warhammer brings an exciting new dice mechanic potential to gaming but I’ll hold my reservation. I was extremely excited about Android the board game until I played it three times and it lost it’s shine entirely. I was extremely excited about 4th D&D and it proved a disaster (IMHO, of course). I’m not expecting greatness from the new Warhammer game. But the previous incarnations presented themselves as a grim and gritty world, in which the both adjectives could be largely ignored by a well constructed party due to some shoddy rule loopholes (Allow Damage reduction to get too high and healing to be too casual). This new Warhammer looks to turn it more into a ‘game’ than a role playing experience. There is nothing wrong with that, I suppose. But it would be nice to look forward to a game where the mechanics themselves not just supported the grim and gritty feel but rather encouraged it.

Well, if I can find a way to afford the huge buy in ($100 for the box set) when it comes out, I'll have to give it a whirl.