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The old rules for the 40K Ork Battlewagon. The transport capacity of the battlewagon was however many models you could physically fit on it. Any models that fell off in play had actually fallen off, and took damage as normal.

Abusable, but so, so in character.

That sounds like fun.

The old rules for the 40K Ork Battlewagon. The transport capacity of the battlewagon was however many models you could physically fit on it. Any models that fell off in play had actually fallen off, and took damage as normal.

Abusable, but so, so in character.

I forgot all about that until just now! That was a great mechanic! Second edition was so colorful ...

I like the mechanism in Stars N Bars that each figure has a percent chance to hit depending on weapon, range and tactical factors, and you simply multiply this by the number of figures firing and that give the percentage.

For example, if 12 veteran infantry with breech loading rifles fire their first volley (x2 factor) at close range, the factor is 12% per figure, double to 24, times 12 = 288%. So you get two hits and 88% chance of a third.

It is a very elegant system.

 -Loki- wrote:
I'm a big fan of the ARO system in Infinity, as it better represents how two smaller teams of elite soldiers would act. Someone walks in front of you and shoots? Shoot back. Someone runs across your line of sight between cover? Shoot at them. Someone starts shooting you as you're running? Start dodging.

It has its complexities (face to face rolls are ridiculously hard to figure out when you're starting), but it creates a very tense small scale game.

Definitely agree with this!

Some of the coolest moments I have seen in tabletop games; of guys getting nailed by a sniper when running between buildings for instance, have been because of this mechanic.

I like the chance to hit being based on the target skill .
And the armour value +dice roll beating the weapon AP to save.(Both , from FoW.)

I also like opposed rolls/stats as a resolution mechanic in general.

I prefer more interactive game turns , over fixed game turns , with or without reaction mechanics though.
Generaly ...
Variable bound game turns ,Blood Bowl, Crossfire.
Also the actions points , random draw for skirmish games,
'Order counter' , for battle games.(Like Epic .)
Or alternating phases is an easy way to get interleaved actions .

The automatic reactive order (ARO) of the Infinity system allows you to interrupt / answer to the other orders of the other player, meaning you get to make tactical decisions even in the enemy's turn.

One of my favorite game mechanics is that of the original Deadlands RPG and its use of a deck of playing cards. Instead of rolling dice for characteristics, you would draw cards from a standard 52 playing card deck and the value of the card would give you the die type (2 = D4, 3-8 = D6, 9-Jack = D8, Queen or King = D10 and Ace = D12) for that stat and the suit would give you how many of that die you would get (Club = 1, Diamond = 2, Heart = 3 & Spade = 4). If you pulled a Joker, it counted as a D12...you would draw a second card for the suit. The Joker would also give you the Mysterious Background trait, bad if the Joker was red and good if it was black, to be determined by the GM.

Initiative during combat also used the deck of cards for order of actions. You would roll a D20, add/subtract any modifiers, and get a total. For each full five points you would get a card from the initiative deck....so if you rolled an 18, you would get 3 cards. Once everyone has their cards the order of actions starting with Aces and working down to 2's. If players have the same card value the suit would determine who would go first.

The magic system also used a deck of cards to determine if a spell would go off and how effective it would be. The player would declare what spell he was casting and then draw cards for that spell from his personal deck, trying to make the best poker hand possible. The hand drawn by the player would determine how powerful the spell would be.....and woe to the player that draws the "Dead Man's Hand" (both black aces and both black 8's) for his spell.

I hate I-go-U-go systems, so I prefer any type of activation method other than that. This includes:

1. Alternate activation
2. Random activation
2. Alternate activation by phase
3. Action/Reaction systems
4. Initiative order systems

I have two that both deal with activation/initiative.

Monsterpocalypse dice pools: you have 10 action dice that circulate between your Unit Pool and your Monster Pool. The game is IGOUGO, but when it's your turn you decide whether to take a Monster turn or a Unit turn. You pay for your figures' movement, attacks and special actions by moving the Action dice from that figure's pool to the other pool. Typically this means you will alternate taking Monster turns and Unit turns, but careful dice budgeting to take multiple Monster turns in a row is a huge part of the game.

Relic Knights initiative: each player has a dashboard where he arranges stat cards for the next 3 models he intends to activate in order. The rest of the cards are off to the side. Players alternate their model activations, but there is no stipulation that each model should be activated once before any can be activated a second time. As soon as you're done with one, you can place it at the tail end of your queue again, so you can keep activating the same 3 models over and over (until they die). It also creates opportunity for some creative special rules, such as "stun" weapons being able to knock models out of the initiative queue, or certain abilities being more or less effective depending on whether a model is in the queue or not.

I love in gorkamorka how orks just get bounced about when hit by vehicles.

I rather l like the "quidity" mechanic in Quarriors, having played that recently!

I like the alternating activation sequence of Warpath 2.0. Your guarenteed 1 squad activation, and then can try to activate a second on a 3+, failure means the squad can not act, and the turn passes over to the other player. If you suceed the 2nd activation, you can keep attempting to activate subsequent units on a 5+, again passing the turn over if you fail. If one side runs out of the units the other player can test for all his remaining units on a 3+, continuing to test until all units have a chance for activation.

It adds an extra layer of strategy, of when and in which order, to activating units. The added uncertainty helps foster the feeling of a chaotic battelfield.

As mentioned earlier, all of the Ganesha Games use a similar mechanic, but their activation number is tied to unit quality, so activation order is usually boils down to just best to worst when playing any Ganesha game.

 adamsouza wrote:
On a side note, I beta tested SHOCKFORCE and was one of the people who ran around demonstrating it at local shops. We still see a game of Shockforce played maybe once a year , when the mood strikes. I argued with Aaron about the "k" part being "d" for discard, but he wanted something that looked more unique and couldn't be confused with "d" meaning dice like in RPGs.

Not sure when SHOCKFORCE came out, but the akb form has been used in the Legend of the Five Rings RPG since around 1996...

SHOCKFORCE came out in 1998, according to TMP.

The "k" for Keep, instead of discard, wasn't implemented until GWAR: Rumble in Antarctica, which was the basis for SHOCKFORCE 2nd Edition
.
I don't think it was a "borrowed" mechanic as much as parralalel development along logical lines.

Dysartes wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:
On a side note, I beta tested SHOCKFORCE and was one of the people who ran around demonstrating it at local shops. We still see a game of Shockforce played maybe once a year , when the mood strikes. I argued with Aaron about the "k" part being "d" for discard, but he wanted something that looked more unique and couldn't be confused with "d" meaning dice like in RPGs.

Not sure when SHOCKFORCE came out, but the akb form has been used in the Legend of the Five Rings RPG since around 1996...

adamsouza wrote:SHOCKFORCE came out in 1998, according to TMP.

The "k" for Keep, instead of discard, wasn't implemented until GWAR: Rumble in Antarctica, which was the basis for SHOCKFORCE 2nd Edition
.
I don't think it was a "borrowed" mechanic as much as parralalel development along logical lines.

Doesn't bother me too much about exactly who developed/copied/parallel-developed a particular mechanic. Still, it's interesting to see it's use in another setting.

D&D 3.5 Critical Hit system: weapons have may customizable critical multipliers, ranges and effects and the system always scales (even if you get an automatic hit vs. a much higher AC creature does not guarantee a critical confirmation).

So when you do (once in a blue moon) get that critical hit, you can get a plethora of possible results (from damage to non-dice related effects). Once you get beyond the base mechanics of a system, it's always little things like this that still make it interesting.

The wound/wind system from Deadlands. Oh lordie, how awesome that system was. It was simultaneously easy to work, complex enough to preserve realism in a variety of situations, and lethal enough to still threaten veteran PCs. The Marshal's Guide presented ways to short-circuit the system to reduce your bookkeeping as the GM, all while preserving the integrity of the combat system and keeping your players from realizing you weren't subject to all the mathematic intricacies they were.

Honestly, the whole Deadlands system deserves mention here. Probably the best RPG system I've ever played under, although the wound system is the part that sticks out most to my mind.

Tycho wrote:
I was a huge fan of the reaction system Andy Chambers wrote into his Starship Troopers rules for Mongoose Publishing. It's been so long since I played it that I can't remember the exact mechanics off the top of my head, but they basically created a system where both players were often doing things at the same time.

This. Starship Troopers is the best ruleset I have ever played and still outshines everything else to this day. Easy to learn and incredibly difficult to master. Games became less a matter of rolling dice and more of outwitting your opponent by outmaneouvering him. Being able to carry over the 'ready' action into reactions was brilliant. Some turns were incredibly tense as mobile infantry squads had to choose between shooting to wear down the bug horde or taking special ready action and jumping to try to stay away from the bugs, while the bugs had to move in order to trap and overwhelm MI squads. God, every game I played was amazing and I really miss it to this day. I got a local group involved, I even demo'ed it for Mongoose, and ran tournaments. Sigh.

I'm a huge fan of any mechanic which allows for reactive gameplay (or actions "out of turn") - whether they have to be planned in advance (e.g. Space Hulk's overwatch rules), activated at a cost (e.g. War of the Ring's Heroic Actions) or is the default state (e.g. Infinity's ARO), they make sure both players an invested at every point in the game, not just during their own turn.

 -Loki- wrote:
I'm a big fan of the ARO system in Infinity, as it better represents how two smaller teams of elite soldiers would act. Someone walks in front of you and shoots? Shoot back. Someone runs across your line of sight between cover? Shoot at them. Someone starts shooting you as you're running? Start dodging.

It has its complexities (face to face rolls are ridiculously hard to figure out when you're starting), but it creates a very tense small scale game.

This. Definitely a fun game

For me it would be the use of cards over dice in Malifaux. A deck of 54 cards versus the six sides of a die add a lot of variables.

Reaper's Warlord and CAV games used a good unit activation mechanic. Each unit added a card to the activation deck (one player would be the red cards, the other player the black). Each time you had to activate a unit, you drew a card to see which side it would be, meaning one side could potentially get to use all of their units before the other side that turn. Some characters would have an ability that added an extra card to the deck to help improve your chances, and one army had the ability to, once per turn, after a card was drawn, to bury that card at the bottom of the deck and redraw. After all units has activated, reshuffle the deck and start a new turn.

I also liked a lot of the mechanics in Battlefleet Gothic. Ships having to always move at least half their movement rate meant you always had to be thinking ahead a couple of turns. The special orders you could use to improve one of a ship's abilities while reducing its other abilities. The use of the blast markers to slow down ships, reduce shields, reduce weapon accuracy, etc.

And I'll also put in a vote for X-Wing's maneuver system.

Finally, I have to say that, hands down, the best ever game mechanic of all time, is THAC0. (just kidding)

Call me crazy, but I miss the old Epic Space Marine orders system.

Alternating activation where the action range of each specific unit was determined in advance of the overall turn.

Place orders (First Fire, Advance, or Charge), roll a d6, winner chooses to activate first or second and alternating thereafter. Reveal the unit's orders as it activates, and choose what to do from the options you have available.

Charge: Double move, no shooting.
Advance: Normal move, normal shooting.
First Fire: No move, but you could interrupt enemy movement to fire with a -1 modifier.

There were more subtleties and rule interactions, but that covered the gist of it.

THAC0. If you don't know, you'll never know.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
THAC0. If you don't know, you'll never know.

THAC0 featured in Baldur's Gate/Baldur's Gate II so it's not that obscure. I know about it and I'm not a role player.

I love the turn sequence or non sequence of Bolt Action.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
THAC0. If you don't know, you'll never know.

That is solid nostalgia on your part, THAC, it's logical and current successor, is vastly superior.

Did enjoy the old time reference though.

the best mechanic in any game is simply "mathematics" it seems like the best games are written by people with a strong background in mathematics (Catan,MTG,RoboRally etc etc).
one of the reasons i stopped playing 40k and WFB is the horribly written rules which are written based on "it just feels right" as described in the designers notes.

my favorite miniatures rule mechanic was in the old AEG ClanWar game.
you had units in blocks like WFB and you rolled a D10 and set it in front of the unit for initiative. your unit leader could then adjust the dice roll by their leadership value. so you could go earlier or later depending on what you wanted. simultaneous turn order seems more logical in a mini game.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
THAC0. If you don't know, you'll never know.

It's kind of ugly in the same way 40k's "7 minus BS is the die roll you need to hit" system. It's a number that requires a relatively fixed calculation to be useful. GW could just change BS to be the actual, useful number (So SM would be BS 3) but it'd be an ugly changeover and I don't think they like the idea of having one stat that is best when low (although Armor Saves are "lower is better" anyway).

THAC0 was nto a big loss when I started playing 3rd edition. I think the more important 'thing' from 2nd edition was the wealth of cool setting ideas that got released in that era.