Systems and Concepts of Note
As I have browsed blogs and read through things, I have stumbled across unique and interesting mechanics or systems. I am not alone in this, but instead of just making blog posts about them as I come across them (which I still might do), I want to record and index them. Note, however, that this is specifically geared toward mechanical creations. I can't really put it into words well right now, but just looking over what I am starting with should give you some ideas about what I mean. The core idea, however, is that they are unique and something that I don't see most places.
So, let me present to you (in no particular order), different systems or ideas that I have discovered or found interesting.
Hex Flowers
So, this one is an interesting one. Effectively, it is a hex grid five hexes across. Each hex corresponds to something and a d6 is rolled to determine direction of travel. This works as a great randomizer as it allows random generation to be shaped by the designer, while also ensuring results "remember" previous results.
I first came across it on Coins and Scrolls, where it is used to chart the progress of wars that don't really go anywhere or just take place in the background for the most part. This idea wasn't originally by Skerples, however. Instead he links back to What Would Conan Do, where the mechanic is used for the generation of weather patterns.
I didn't know this when I first found them, but IdleDoodler over on the OSR subreddit pointed me toward other uses. Specifically, they pointed me toward where Goblin's Henchman has been using this method for various topics, including alignment and encounters. There is a very unique idea here of rolling 2d6 and moving in the direction of the number on a clock, which weights the flower toward the results in its bottom and left sides. It is a really creative way to further shape the possibilities.
An important difference, however, between these two different usages is how they handle edges. With 1d6, you can just "slide" along an edge and getting stuck in a corner is something that is fine, since getting out of it happens 50% of the time. With 2d6, that is no longer true. To correct for this, the edges of a flower can be connected, normally with their opposite side. This both prevents getting stuck and can add a bit of chaos by allowing even the unlikely events to crop up every once in a while.
Voronoi Diagram City Maps
Oh boy, does this one really get my creative brain firing. Effectively, Voronoi diagrams are a bunch of polygons around dots that define areas where any point in an area is closest to one particular dot. I can't really do the explanation justice, but it works fabulously for creating weird, almost cell-looking shapes that are all tiled together.
It was d4 Caltrops that turned me onto the idea that they could make a good way of dividing up a city into navigable areas. Put simply, it allows a DM to create a sort of grid of navigation over a city that can help simulate how moving from one area of a city is not always just a function of their literal distance. I think it is very helpful, and I plan to try and use it to form out some urbancrawl rules for my own system.
The Conspyramid and the Vampyramid
During his work on developing his own urbancrawl rules (to fill out the trifecta of urban, wilderness, and dungeon crawls), The Alexandrian came across Night's Black Agents. The game is about unraveling a vampire conspiracy and comes with two pyramid structures for DMs to use and make their lives easier.
The Conspyramid is intended for the DM to create for their own campaign. Effectively, it is a multi-level pyramid showing how different parts of the conspiracy inter-connect. Higher levels have fewer nodes, but the ones up their get more important to compensate.
The Vampyramid, instead, is pre-written by my understanding. It shows the different responses the vampire conspiracy will have to investigators. These obviously start small, but get more serious and active as investigators work their way up the pyramid.
It is noted that some of the ideas for this may have come from a different RPG, Blowback, but I haven't had a chance to check it out and see what it has to offer.
Caravan Point Crawl
Ultraviolet Grasslands (UVG) is a very unique game. I just linked to the free introduction, because it has the caravan rules and that is what I care about here. UVG simplifies organizing a caravan to an enormous degree. You just fill out one character sheet, buy supplies for everyone (or don't), and set off. There is an elegant 6 step process for travelling between locations and it all works together fabulously.
Simply, carrying things has been abstracted into Sacks and travel times have been abstracted into Weeks (you gain days if you are slow and that can add a week to your travel, but you otherwise don't track days). A Sack is a full set of adventuring gear, a person, or enough food and water for someone for a week. A person has a carrying capacity of 1 Sack and animals tend to have a capacity of 2 Sacks.
I love the ideas behind it, and it works really well. The catch, however, is that it makes some fundamental assumptions that will put it at odds with most normal settings. First, places of interest are normally a week or two apart. For context, that is about enough time to cross most of Spain. The idea that there would probably be nothing interesting across a distance that huge? That you might have an encounter over the course of a week? Further, the assumption in UVG is that you are going over pretty inhospitable land. If you want water, you need to pack it yourself. In many fantasy locations, that just isn't true. Basically, unless your campaign takes place in a desert, the UVG rules are going to need to see some work.
Random Spell Generation
This one comes from the wonderful Maze Rats. By rolling pairs of d6s, this system works to generate a highly descriptive spell name. First, you roll a pair and look to see which descriptive tables to use. Each of these tables has six listings of six adjectives/verbs/nouns, and the end result is a two word spell name that is hopefully usable.
Examples results include: Dividing Whisper, Avenging Dust, and Ember Pyramid. The system is surprisingly elegant and easy to use (and not labelled well making it easy to justify a slightly different result). By my estimations, there are approximately 12*(36*36) or 15,552 possibilities, which should be plenty for most uses and is impressive considering it easily fits on one page with room to spare.
Magic Dice
This one was pointed out to me by IdleDoodler on the OSR subreddit, but it can also be found within the GLOG rules. Effectively, magic users are given a pool of magic dice that scale as they level. When casting a spell, the caster is able to dynamically shape its power by contributing more or less dice. When dice get rolled they normally have a 50/50 chance of being used up or returning to the pool, though the odds could be made different.
Combining with that, there may be consequences for rolling doubles and worse consequences for rolling triples. Another way to modify the system is to instead tie the power of a spell to the total of the roll, with increasing values for totals determining the level the spell was cast at.
Overloaded Encounter Dice
Unfortunately, I can't remember where I first stumbled across this idea, but Necropraxis and Meandering Banter both have good articles about it. In standard OSR play, random encounters pop up when the DM rolls a 1 on a d6. The idea behind overloading the encounter die is to have other stuff happen on the other results. One of the most handy ideas for this, is using it to keep track of when characters need to take a break and when their light sources begin to go out.
It certainly has a lot of potential uses, though I think that using a d6 sort of limits things. Expanding up to a d12 makes converting easy enough while also providing more granularity. For example:
3-4: Omen of an encounter or something else
5-6: Local timer or event progresses
7-8: Party needs a rest
9: Lantern goes out
10-12: Torch goes out
Usage Dice / Dice Trees
This mechanic comes from the popular Black Hack. In this system, instead of tracking how many torches, arrows, or whatever else, you give the unspecified quantity a die representing how much you have. A d4 is a small amount, d6 is more, and it can continue as high as you want it to. Whenever an item gets used, the usage die is rolled. On a 1, the die moves down the tree (ie. a d8 to a d6), with a 1 on a d4 representing that the item has been used up.
This is a pretty creative way of getting around some of the tedious bookkeeping that is sort of necessary in dungeon dives and expeditions. Of course, it also has its downsides. If you get some lucky rolls, it effectively gives you infinite resources and if you aren't you can get massively screwed over despite purchasing what was likely an ungodly number of torches. It can make it hard to make sure you have exactly as much as you need, which certainly annoys some people.
The idea, however, of having some resource represented by a die that moves up or down the tree depending on its results, is not an unusual one. Wizards of the Coast tested a similar idea with 5e psionics and Matt Colville has used it to represent the health and size of armies in his warfare rules.
Death Tables
While perhaps not the most revolutionary idea here on this page, death tables are still pretty handy. MatroxLusch on the OSR subreddit reminded me of them, but two notable examples exist within ACKS and Many Rats on Sticks GLOG hack.
In ACKS, when someone hits 0 hp, no one knows if they are alive or dead until someone goes over to check. When someone finally checks, a d20 roll is made. It gets modified by tons of stuff like the constitution of the person in question, if they are receiving proper or magical medical attention, and how long they were left potentially dying. This is used to determine what tier of death the character is in (ranging from super dead to completely fine), and a d6 is used to give a bit of randomness to exactly how badly injured they were in that tier.
In the GLOG hack, characters aren't instantly taken down when they hit 0 hp. Instead, they can begin taking injuries and wounds. A d12 is rolled, along with the damage below zero and the characters number of injuries, and a table of combining tiers is consulted. At a minimum, this results in the disabling of something (arm, leg, magic, etc) depending on how you were injured. Further up, you start taking fatal wounds (which will kill in a few rounds) and risk potentially losing limbs or stats. At the highest level, you can get saddled with so many fatal wounds that survival is effectively impossible.
Side Doubles
In an article on Goblin's Henchman, it is pointed out that there are some issues with using doubles based on what the d6s rolled. Results of 2 and 12 require a double, while odd results cannot be doubles. As a potential way around this, it is suggested that the dice can be pinched together so that they are flush, and then the outside faces can be checked for doubles.
It is really interesting, and because of how the dice work side dice can be doubles effectively independently of what the actual rolled result is. The idea seems like it would work well, but I also feel like it might have a couple issues to work around. One is that is breaks down with digital dice rollers and the other is that it feels like it could be easy to surreptitiously pinch the dice so that certain faces end up inside, skewing results. Still, those aren't deal-breakers and I think this could be a good idea for expanding the results of a 2d6 roll.
Discretionary Monsters
I recently came across an old article on Telecanter's Receding Rules, which was about what was dubbed as Discretionary Monsters. These monsters, unlike wandering monsters or keyed encounters, come and go as the DM wishes. They are entirely DM controlled, but to prevent adversarial usage, they cann't attack the players, physically or magically.
The function of these monsters is to provide flavor or setting material, allowing for wandering monsters and even planned encounters to be more mundane. Ideally, they should come when players are vulnerable (one way or another) and interacting with them could make their situation worse. Effectively, they are horror material and work to make the mythic underworld that much creepier.
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