The Best and Most 'Stealable' Mechanics from Tabletop RPGs

Awesome to see my Knave and Maze Rats games on here! Thanks Evan! I've never heard of Willowby Hall referred to as a "Lasagna of Problems" but now I'm going to start calling it that.

Im gonna use this as my notebook: - Flashbacks, using a system of "Stress" to meassure how much they can do it and how it affects them. (Checking Blades in the Dark) - Clocks. - Beliefs and Instincts. Points that the DM can use without the player declaring it. This one sounds cool af. - Vice Stat. An stat that is better and grows the more you use it, but it causes on-rol consecuences. Cool af too. - Nature. Bonuses by the nature of the character, and it must be balance betweeen the esscence of the character. If you act according to nature, you get a bonus, and against it too, but with the possibility of failing the roll and loosing nature. You can tap that number as a raw bonus. - Those game where you use a Jenga. Basically, mechanics that build tension over time until the boot hits the vent. - Games with dice alocation. - One page systems. Great and simple and cool. - OSR, Pick up and play. KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. - Story Logic as Mechanics. Using dice and a tracker and thats it. Check Out Powered By the Apocalipse. - Mind Map to desing quests? - Learn and Steal from the best. Thank you very much Evan Hill!

I’m sure I missed something or made a mistake, so please correct or add in the comments but hope this helps with searches and purchases as I thought I’d rewatch and come up with a list: TTRPG: Numenera & Cypher System (Monte Cook) Blades in the Dark Darkest Dungeon (board game currently on KS) Burning Wheel & Mouse Guard Dread & Star Crossed One Page RPGs: Honey Heist Sexy Battle Wizards Everyone Is John OSR: Knave 2 Waking of Willowby Hall Maze Rats Into The Odd Electric Bastionland Bonus stuff: Pathologic 2 Gnosia (novel and a video game) Apocalypse World (PbtA): Dungeon World Monsterhearts 2 City of Mist (modified) Disco Elysium (modified) Video Game RPG: Outer Worlds 2 The Last of Us II Torment Tides of Numenera Plane scape Torment Solar Ash Palia Darkest Dungeon Pathologic 2 Fall Out (image) Metal Gear Solid Mass Effect Disco Elysium Roll & Write Genre’s Citizen Sleeper Tharsis Dicey Dungeons Rogue System Shock Hitman

It's awesome to hear someone else advocate for BitD style flashbacks in Assassin's Creed. Hope someone from Ubisoft is listening. The best part is they can justify it as a new and improved animus feature, which lets the user jump to an earlier "glossed over" memory in the middle of synchronizing a different memory.

A cool game that came to mind when I saw the jenga tower is Icarus. It's a world building game about a city and its inevitable fall. The mechanic that I love is that the dice you roll and that represent decisions, resources, peopple and more, get stacked on top of each other in the middle of the desk. As the consequences of the player's actions pile on the dice tower becomes more and more unstable until at one point it will fall. When it happens nobody knows. But everybody gets more and more tense, more and more careful to not shake the table. And the fall, as is often the case, comes sudden and unexpected. I think that is a great mechanic that adds not only to tension but also to replay value as you're always left wondering "what if I could've stacked one more dice, one more event?" Maybe that's something videogames can implement too?

Ugh so cool. GDC is doing so much for independent game creators. (Let’s be honest, only indies are going to implement all the cool ideas on display at GDC… AAA still gonna chase the tail of the biggest games from 10 years ago.)

It's cool how many diverse RPGs there are. I've played Masks before and it's another powered by the apocalypse game. The hardest thing about ttrpgs is getting people out of the headspace of optimizing character builds and into focus of making a fun and interesting story.

Citizen Sleeper is an awesome video game that yoinks clocks from Blades in the Dark awesomely

Will there be another talk about stealable mechanics from boardgames? I'd like to see more than just deckbuilding, tile-laying, and casino games(blackjack, poker etc)

Nice. I pitched a similar talk but around more obscure and experimental genres like ARGs, living games, unique games, legacy games, hybrid games, mega games, and more. Sadly, they said the talk was too tabletop focused and the tabletop summit said it wasn't focused enough on tabletop. Oh well! Maybe will repitch it with more focus in the future. Still would love to run a roundtable discussion on these topics at GDC since there's a lot of awesome potential there to learn from others.

I've just started to play citizen sleeper, and they totally borrow this clock idea for everything !

Fooork me - Just give this brilliant guy 2-3 hours to elaborate ❤️ Such a shame to rush through it 😱

Not sure why the initial hate for the Cypher system—I’ve recently gotten into cypher and it seems very rules-light and intuitive from what I’m reading.

You should look at Pendragon for its passions and traits. While the Powered by the Apocalypses game is good, in some cases, any system that has degrees of success as a mandatory puts a lot of strain on the Game Master. Some can handle it, but many can not. Same thing with player-facing things. While that is great for those who can handle being forced into the driver's seat, my experience is that it is not your average gamer. Most gamers need simple, and in situations where you need degrees for something, having those degrees already available avoids annalizes paralysis.

I also find it interesting that these "stolen" ideas can be embedded very deeply into the gameplay and narrative, as core design principles or pacing mechanics or you name it. And they can be implemented on a very much a surface level, as a visible UI and reference to its predecessors, moment to moment resolution mechanics. My friend runs and co-runs LARPs from time to time and every time he asked me for advice I couldn't help myself, but steal from card-based video games. "You need magical abilities, that are invocative of Fae and Pride and Prejudice? Why don't you write some cards and give them to your players?" "Portents and visions? Why not give them the sealed letters with precise time?" "Predestination? Just reward them for being at the right time at the right place and say certain things." Players still largely get freedom, but they would feel larger forces at play and they could be empowered by deciding and where and when the powerful curses can be uttered. So it is very enjoyable to see the video game design do the opposite.

Great talk! I've been wondering about this exact thing. Some of my favourite games ever have been very directly inspired by tabletop RPGs, or at least the sort of... design sensibilities of TTRPGs (Disco Elysium, Sunless Sea, Citizen Sleeper) and although I haven't had the opportunity to play any with a group, I got like 200 of them in an itch bundle ages ago and have loved reading them, they're very creatively inspiring. I don't think people really get what he means by "stealing." good artists steal all the time. Nothing just... appears fully formed in a vacuum. it's often a good artist's job to figure out how to intelligently combine different ideas from other places together with this... little spark, to create an alchemy, something that has truly never existed in this way before, but is still grounded in like... something. Standing on the shoulders of giants, as he said. The way TTRPGs are designed, the way they incorporate tension/drama and storytelling so elegantly into such simple elements makes them perfect for studying when thinking about designing videogames. I mean, as well as actual videogames also. Also board-games!

Amazing!!!!

Great talk. Whether it's ttrpg's or videogames, or even boardgames, I'm always fascinated with game mechanics of all sorts and how they do and can intermingle.

Dan Harmon's Story Circle is basically a progress clock, where the goal is "Return, Changed."

"Pathologic" is not just a tabletop game, there is a video game version as well. It is quiet creepy.