Borrowing Rules for Better Games

A lot of tabletops have attempts to make the perfect system. This of course has lent to tons of iterations of different ways of rolling dice, creating statistics and skill tests. This however has the amazing byproduct of creating some mechanics that are system agnostic that you can use to make your games more exciting and more interesting regardless of the game you are running. Here are 6 examples from games that are near and dear to my heart. As a collector I tend to play a lot of different games and have enjoyed learning new systems. Hopefully you can find something worthwhile to use in your game!

Push a Roll (Call of Cthulhu - Keepers Guide - Players Guide) - In the newest edition of Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition i believe) they created a new mechanic called “Pushing a Roll”. Whenever a character fails a skill check, they can ask to “push the roll”. If they do, they need to lay out exactly how they are doing something extra to try and succeed after failing. As well they need to put something on the line. If the roll fails this time, it will yield some kind of negative outcome. Once the GM and the Player agree that the extra effort makes sense and that the negative is worth their extra chance, the player then makes the skill roll as they had before. On success they get whatever the normal outcome would have been. If they fail they suffer the consequences of the agreed failure condition.

This adds drama to rolls and on single dice roll systems (DnD, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, etc) a better feel where one bad roll won’t stop your character dead in their tracks. A lot of my players absolutely loathe that single dice roll, so Boons/Advantage and Bane/Disadvantage has helped us a lot to make single dice rolls not have so much swing, but this rule has been extremely fun when the stakes are high!

Player/GM incursions (Cypher Systems) - This is a fun little mechanic where the GM can introduce a complication to the current scene or combat. The introduction is made with the full explanation of what will happen. If the player accepts this complication, they are offered some kind of reward (For DnD, it would be something like inspiration, for Shadowrun an Edge or Karma Pool point restored). With the player incursion, they can introduce a fact about the scene by spending some resource (Karma Pool, Edge, Inspiration, Hero Point, etc) in order to add something to the scene that wasn’t there previously. The GM has to agree of course but this will allow characters to find the perfect ramp for a chase, a handy rope with chandelier for swinging across the room, or having that out of order elevator sign turn out to be a prank by the locals and is in fact in full working order.

Devil’s Bargain (Blades in the Dark) - As with Pushing Rolls above, this is another “fail safe” when the dice just don’t want to play nice with your character. When you are making a roll of significance (your GM determines if it’s worthwhile to engage this system) you can get some kind of mechanical advantage (rolling more dice, lower Target number, etc) but it will come at the cost of something decided on before the test is rolled. This is generally at the cost of a future success, losing something, etc. It shouldn’t be hidden from the player and should be fully decided on before they say yes or no to the deal.

Stunts (Exalted) - One of the more interesting things about Exalted is its drive to push characters to do incredible stunts every time they attempt to do something important. It creates a very cinematic feel at the table and gives a mechanical advantage the more people are intrigued and impressed by how fun the description is. This comes down to offering people more dice in Exalted but you can easily say instead that it will offer some more dice (for multi dice systems), lowering a TN or offering a Boon/Advantage if you really like the descriptions.

Exalted offers 3 levels of Stunts. The First is a minor advantage for anything that’s described in general. Second level is a description that gives a larger advantage and must be agreed upon by both the GM and Players that hits the level of “awesome” they are looking for. This can happen a few times a session, but maybe cap it at twice per character per session. The third should be rare (like once every 3 or so sessions of play) that offer a huge advantage, but must really wow everyone.

Succeed with Consequences (Fate) - Sometimes even if the dice roll fails or the characters can’t possibly succeed, you still want the story to allow them to do so. This much like the Devil’s Bargain is a way of allowing players to have a bit more agency at the cost of something near and dear to their character. This feels very fitting into the fiction you run into in most modern fantasy or super hero style stories. Spiderman and Harry Dresden always come to mind, their actions needed to save the city usually come at the cost of their loved ones.

Any time they fail a story significant roll, the GM can offer to allow them to succeed instead at an agreed upon cost. When I use this rule I tend to allow for heroic levels of strength or endurance at the cost of permanent stat points or permanent wounds (Which can become a quest in itself to overcome). One of my favorite stories was in a Gamma World where someone had to hold onto a cart during an intense chase scene. He held on at the cost of his hand after the two carts collided and crushed it to oblivion. Later in that story he got a new mechanical hand that became a character gimmick where he was constantly in search of new widgets to attach to the mechanical stump.

Raises (Legend of the Five Rings) - Legend of the Five Rings has some of the most complex rules for skills to allow characters to truly show off how dangerous or talented the characters are. The most interesting feature of this system is the ability for characters to raise the difficulty in return for extra rewards. They use a static amount per “raise” declared (So for something like DnD you could say +3 to the DC per raise) and then using different amounts of raises to determine how much of an impact those raises make. If they fail the roll with the higher DC it IS still a normal failure.

In general 1 raise will give you a minor bonus, 2 raises gives you a moderate bonus, 3 should be significant enough to change something big for the characters in general and 4+ should be a huge change or effect.

So for example, shooting an arrow to cut the coin purse off the belt of a target. On a normal success, the bag will fall at the target’s feet. For 1 raise, you could cut strings and make the bag fall out of his reach for 1 turn. For 2 raises you could cut the strings and pin the satchel to a far tree. For 3 raises you could take the satchel and cut his belt so his pants fall and give him trouble for the combat or encounter since he has to now hold them up. For 4 raises, you will do everything for 3 raises AND they won’t notice right away. Having the target walk away for a while before they realize their pants are sagging and then begin more concerned that their pants are falling off they won’t think about their coin purse for a while.

Taking these rules into whatever game you are currently playing I hope will add some zest to an already fun game. If you have any suggestions on new rules that you use at your table for different games, let me know! I’m always interested in learning new things to make my own games even better.

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