Been thinking about combining ideas from Blades in the Dark, FATE, and Escape From the Curse of the Temple. It’s something that might be good to roleplay a game about enduring a crisis or escaping an in-progress calamity, maybe a superpowers setting.
Superpowers particularly seems appealing because it’s a design white whale for me.
So maybe there would be some kind of big Crisis “clock” which causes the players to lose, and a big Escape “clock” which causes then to win.
Components:
- Dice: d6s, d8s, d10s, d12s, d20s
- blank cards, split into 3 sections: Aspect title section, and two blank sections for placing dice. The first dice section is “fictionally locked” dice, the second is “mechanically locked” dice
Core Resolution
Like BitD, a player tells the GM an action and intent. But only if the situation is desperate, the GM calls for a roll.
| Highest die | result |
|---|---|
| 1-5 | fail / worsen crisis / impose fictional lock |
| 6-10 | pass / fair result / trade one fictional lock for another |
| 11-15 | excellent result / remove one fictional lock |
| 16-20 | supernatural result / remove three fictional locks |
To roll, a player takes their Luck Die (usually a d6) and at most one die from one of their Aspect cards (unless that aspect die is “locked”) they then roll the two dice and can take either result. If they take the result from the Aspect die, that die gets placed on the “mechanically locked” section of the Aspect card.
The Luck Die can never be locked.
If they ever roll doubles, they unlock all of their dice.
If they ever roll doubles when they have no locked dice, they gain a new Aspect.
Character Creation
Players have 30 points to spend. Eg: they can take:
- one d20 Aspect, one d10 Aspect
- or five d6 Aspects
That’s it. Whaddya think?