Exploring a full Module Game Design

Can we design a game that can be tailored to most any game table?

So we are stripping down the Pressure System to its most basic components. We want to make a fun, succinct TTRPG, however, we want to make it flexible. That is where we can talk about the idea of Modules.

What do I mean by Modules? On the discord channel I posed the question:

"What are some different playstyles, and what are the different mechanical features that give it that feeling?"

So how did this look? Well, if you are playing a survival game then you might have the following two mechanics:

• resource management (gear, food, etc)

• increased risk

So instead of making a totally different system, you could technically just add those two modules to your game and you would have a suspenseful survival game.....in theory.

Let me also make something clear, before you proceed. A lot of these ideas are first attempts to synthesize ideas to their core, then brainstorm implementation. Because of that I hope that a lot of these ideas might spark concepts for you in your own games. In addition, these are not fully realized ideas. These are brainstorms. You will find charts that are incomplete, but it’s because the information that is provided are just quick examples of the concepts I am trying to convey. I was not trying to complete the entire Pressure System in one newsletter…..even though the length of this newsletter might say otherwise. 🤪

Pressure System So Far

Let's make this a fast recap of the base game, so that we can then discuss different modules and how we can graft them on (hopefully effortlessly) to this base system.

• Characters have the standard 6 attributes (strength, dex, con, int, wis, cha)

  • These attributes are represented by numbers between 2-5

• Characters have abilities (ranged, melee, magic, etc)

  • These abilities are represented by dice: d6, d8, d10

• Each player has a current Pressure Die rating that is a dice placed in front of them by the GM. It stays there representing the player's current situation and also their health or ability to stay in the scene

• What is a Check - player rolls the Pressure Die and is attempting to get under their attributes number (2-5)

• What is an Effort Roll - player is trying to accomplish something (attack a monster, convince someone, open a lock). They roll both their ability die and the Pressure Die.

  • If their die is equal to or greater than the PD they add both die together for their total effort

  • Otherwise they only take their ability die's result

    • potentially you can add your attribute number (2-5) to the end result no matter which, but this is not the case yet

• Different things might increase or decrease your Pressure Die. It can fluctuate between d6, d8, d10, and d12. If it ever has to go up after a d12 then you are knocked out of the scene

  • potentially adding in DCC dice for d7, d9, d14 etc can be an option for GMs and certain tables.

Modules

So how can we now take this base game, that has all the necessary parts for a GM to play with, but add a little bit extra based on their player’s needs?

Combat

Some people like to have a bit more crunch to their combat experience. They want the mini's and the maps. They want the tactical decisions. Here are some potential modules.

Tactical Actions

For a previous version of the Pressure System I was very much focused on the tactical combat. After going through a lot of games like Lancer and Savage Worlds I compiled a list of Tactical Actions that I really enjoyed.

Now, how can this be implemented into the system? I could see it being done a few ways.

• If you only have 1 action on your turn, this counts as your action

• You have a second action called a Tactical Action, and these are those options

• You have multiple actions on a turn, and these can be any one of those potentially.

I personally was trying to utilize the second option in my tests, but it was a long list for players to digest in a playtest. So, you could technically trim this list down, and only take the ones you think fit your system.

Don't have a Opportunity Attack mechanic in your system? Don't need to have the Withdraw action, etc

These are just the explanations, so how can some of these be mechanically implemented?

I think this gives us a good idea, and a potential jumping off point for more tactical actions. You can now put as many or as few of these into a game to give players different options on how they might mechanically take their turn.

Or, say that you don't have Classes or Roles in your game, you could give different players access to different Tactical Actions to give them a bit of flavor. Maybe limit the frequency of use, so they don't feel like they are having to spam that every turn and they don't have an actual decision to make.

Weapons

Option 1

The easiest thing to do here would be to say that different weapons add a different amount of Effort to your total output on an attack.

• Roll Ability Die + Pressure Die. If ability is higher than Pressure now I would add those together to get a total score.

• Then I could potentially add my STR (2-5) and the Weapon (0-3) to the end result.

The problem with this is you now have a situation where people just want to use the weapon that has the highest output. Why use a dagger if it only has +1 output? So now do we just have everyone running around with Greataxes and Greatswords?

Well, you could then limit the optionality by saying "only certain classes or roles have access to certain weapons". But does this feel fun? It might if those classes or roles have other stuff that makes them feel cool. Otherwise they might not feel cool.

For this so far maybe we have the following:

Option 2

Another option is to add different weapon properties to weapons to entice different playstyles. The tricky part with this is that you now might be making the game a lot more complex than it needs to be. Are you now having every attack require all sorts of rule lookups? Or could this be simple as well? Let's try and break down weapons into groups and see if we can give them some flavor.

The following list is a combination of weapon groups from Dragonbane and Vagabond.

Option 3

You could do something similar to ICRPG. Different types of attacks will end up doing different types of additional effort.

With this concept you are rolling additional Effort die that are just in addition to your primary ability die (effort die). The amount of effort that things require would have to be increased on average.

Tags/Conditions/Statuses

These are always fun because they seem to add flavor and tactical strategy to combat. It’s always satisfying to stun a target, or disarm someone. But again, these can be pretty complicated in some games. Let’s examine some options.

Option 1 - Use Common Sense

The first option for conditions is to do what Shadowbane does.

Some effects impose a condition on a character, such as blindness or immobility. Advantage and disadvantage apply to most situations. Use common sense.

For example, a blinded character has disadvantage on tasks requiring sight, and a PC stuck in a spider web can't move.

In this option you could just manipulate the Pressure Die or use Advantage/Disadvantage as you see fit as a GM.

Option 2 - Narrative Tags

If we look to recent kickstarters we find Legends in the Mist. This is a system that is almost 100% built around the ideas of Tags. They represent ways to get bonuses, potential hindrances, and in this system they even represent your health.

Narratives could turn anything into a Tag. You then just add a positive or negative number after it to represent what it would do. This just represents the +- that you get for your Ability roles for Effort.

Sleepy -2. You have a -2 to your total Effort.

This could be penalties or bonuses to Total Effort after calculation, or it could be solely to the Ability Die modifier prior to comparing it to the Pressure Die. Reduction to Ability Die would be much more harsh (or helpful if a Check).

Option 3 - Traditional Conditions

The last option I see here are more traditional Conditions. You have very specific predefined list. This would be more like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder.

Prone, Incapacitated, Fear, Dazed, Confused, Bloodied, Charmed, etc

Each would then have subtle differences in what they represent. I’m going to skip this one, to be honest. I think it’s too much to learn for the player, and too much to track. I do love them in games, but they can be a bit much.

BUT! Another game has specific conditions and uses them in a clever way. Dragonbane has 6 conditions that are tied directly to the 6 attributes. Therefore, when you have a condition, you know exactly what its effecting. I felt this was a nice thematic concept.

I like this idea of having a condition paired to one of your particular attributes. But I also like pairs of conditions too. Previously in one of my versions of Pressure System I had the following pairs of conditions.

So I think that using the Dragonbane concept we could have both positive and negative conditions for the Attributes. These then are applied through different means, and they all grant either Advantage or Disadvantage of some sort. The degree of advantage could be discussed later on.

Risk

I think that risk can be interpreted a few ways. The way I want to interpret it though is that you have a potential higher degree of repercussions with choices and actions. It shouldn't be that things are harder to accomplish, it should just mean that the stakes are higher if you fail. So how could this be interpreted?

Let's bullet out a few potential options:

• You have less health overall

• You take more damage when you do things

• There is a mechanic for success with consequences

Reducing Health

This seems like an easy solution if you are going to use some sort of hit points (HPs). For your game you just have less HPs per character to make it more frightening to get into combat. However, what if you are using the Pressure Die to resemble the amount of HP that a player has? In a variation of this system you can use the Pressure Die as a representation of your health, and as the die gets bigger it means you are closer to getting knocked out.

I would probably just set the base Pressure Die to a d8. In normal Pressure System you would start with a d6 Pressure Die and maybe could do things to drop it to a d4 potentially. But in order to increase the risk I would just make it so that the Pressure Die couldn't ever go lower than a d8.

Take More Damage

This seems like the least interesting option to me. I will note that I feel that this method and the having less health are mechanically similar. But I do think they are psychologically different. It's like in World of Warcraft how you start to do more damage but the monsters you fight just have a ton more hit points. So you only feel good because you have bigger hits, but it doesn't change the combat status.

Psychologically I think that the idea of less HPs feels more tense, so therefore feels more risky. However, maybe that fits more with a Horror game genre. This might fit more with a Super Hero game when you are fighting the Arch Villain. In order to make that more risky you just have the numbers feel larger. That I can get behind.

Success with Consequences

Currently this concept is not built into the base system, but its a popular mechanic for a lot of games. Powered by the Apocalypse, Quest, Open Legend, all sorts of games use this mechanic. It’s the idea that you can succeed but still have some sort of complication or choice to make. It’s the "Yes ... and" or "No...but" style of play. Yes you succeeded, and now this is happening. I think it’s important to point out that the Adventure Time TTRPG literally just has 2d6, one that says Yes and No on its sides, and the other that says And and But on its sides. That is how ubiquitous this concept is to TTRPG games.

Option 1 - Rolling 1’s are Bad

Whenever you roll a 1 on any die (Pressure or Ability/Effort) you now have a with consequence situation. The only problem with this method is that it might not make pure thematic sense. Technically you have a reduced chance of a "with consequence" situation when the Pressure Die gets bigger. Shouldn’t that be the reverse? Pressure get’s higher and you have more chance for consequence?

The flip side of that is that this might help create interesting stories. Typically in a TTRPG when there is a situation to have a "with consequence" moment, it’s an opportunity to spice up the story. Currently with this mechanic it would mean that when the Pressure is lower there is more opportunities for interesting things to randomly occur. Then when the Pressure is high the scenario is a bit more predictable for the players. They are already in a struggle, so it’s not going to pile on. This feels like a nice balance. It means that it is still riskier because every situation has an opportunity to escalate. That escalation, however, won’t result in a complete death spiral of disasters and complications.

Option 2 - Rolling Doubles are bad

With this option whenever you roll doubles on the dice you will have a “with consequence” moment. This probably has the same feelings as Option 1. As the Pressure Die get's higher then you have less chance to get a matching pair, especially if your Ability die is smaller.

If I have the math correctly, and we are just using 1d6 as our Ability/Effort Die and 1d6 as the Pressure Die, results in a 29% chance of getting at least a single 1. But you have a 16% of getting a pair. That means that using this method would decrease the rate of “with consequences” compared to Option 1.

Option 3 - The Dredd or FitD Mechanic

In the game Dredd whenever you want to do something of significance you have to pull a Jenga block from the Jenga tower. If you pull the block you were successful. If the tower falls you have just died. This is a high risk scenario game that wants you to feel like you’re in a horror movie.

This is a slight twist on success with consequence. This is saying that if you don’t succeed you now are going to have a major consequence. The player is setting the stakes. It isn’t random consequence that may/may not occur regardless of success or failure. Most resolutions can be a question of “if I don’t succeed at the roll then it just doesn’t happen”. This is tapping into more of the situations you might see in games like Blades in the Dark. In that game you have Position vs Effect. You might put yourself into a very risky position because you are trying to have a major effect.

The concept in BitD is that you have 3 Positions (Controlled, Risky, Desperate). These positions are answering the question “If i fail this test, how bad will it be for me?”. It also has 3 Effects (Great, Standard, Limited). These effects are answering the question of “how much do i have to gain currently for doing this?”.

So how could this look with Pressure System? The GM could dictate the position that the player is in based on what they are trying to do. What is the result of your position?

• Controlled = if you fail no change in Pressure

• Risky = if you fail increase Pressure by 1 step?

• Desperate = if you fail increase Pressure by 2 steps? (But player cannot 2 step over d12 from a d10 starting position)

Now we have narrative decisions for players to make. To entice players to attempt risky or desperate activities we would need the potential to have greater effects.

• Limited = Disadvantage with Effort Die with roll (potentially variable Dis d4-d12)

• Standard = normal Effort Die roll

• Greater = Advantage with Effort Die roll (potentially variable Adv d4-d12)

Potentially variable refers to the advantage/disadvantage system that can be a bit unique to the Pressure System.

Agency

Player Agency is the idea of players having more control over their situation. They are able to apply their will to control their destiny. In Dungeons & Dragons this might be having Inspiration or having the Lucky Feat. In other games you might have a Heroic Die that you get to roll in addition to your normal die. These are opportunities to increase your chances. Some games allow you can effect the narrative of the story directly, like with FATE allowing you to add Aspects to a scene. These Aspects are then things that any player (or enemy) can use to their advantage.

So what are some ways that players can have increased agency, but also have reduced agency like in a horror game genre?

• Some way to increase their chances of success on a roll

• Ways to add to the story narrative directly

• Penalties the players take on to have narrative shifts

Bonus Metacurrency

Option 1 - Hero Dice

Taking a page out of games like EZD6 or Deathbringer we can just have a resource pool that you can build and spend as you wish. These could be different dice: d6, d8, d10 or even d12 depending how we use this.

Case 1

You will have a pool of die that you can spend as many as you want on a Check or Effort roll. Of the dice rolled take the best result that will help you in the given situation. I could roll my ability die plus 2 hero dice, and take the best of those results and use it against the Pressure Die result. I think this works out well, especially if the ability die and the best hero die were added together. If they are not added then the size of the hero die starts to matter. If the Pressure Die is a d12 and you only have d6 hero die that could end up being unsatisfying.

Case 2

Another idea would be to allow all dice rolled to be used. This is only relevant to the Effort Rolls, but could end up making it so you could have massive effort outputs on a roll. I love this concept. I think this is definitely a way to have agency over a scenario.

Case 3

You could ALSO use the Hero Dice as a substitute for the Pressure Die. This gives you an opportunity to quickly reduce its size to make it easier to accomplish things in dire situations. I think this is pretty fun conceptually.

Maybe you get X amount of these at the start of a session. Maybe you get them for doing cool stuff. maybe you get them for failing Checks. Lots of options on how to accumulate them.

Option 2 - Tokens (Individual or Team)

Instead you could utilize tokens that are going to have multiple turn-in uses.

• Can increase Ability Die step per token

• Can decrease Pressure Die step per token

• Can grant a +1 after roll

• Can grant -1 after roll

• Can add 1 detail to a scene

This is much more in line with things like Bennies from Savage Worlds. The idea that you have these small tokens that can be used in bulk if necessary to increase your sway over the story. With this scenario you would have to have a GM who is not stingy with these. Individual tokens don’t give a ton of agency, but a pool would be very fun to have.

Another option that I personally love, and used in a previous version of Pressure, was Teamwork Points. Take these tokens, and put them into a universal pool for the players to draw from. Now each player is generating tokens, and it’s up to the players to decide when they want to burn some or all of those points. Previously I had specific powers that would earn Teamwork Points, or misses would generate Teamwork Points. This would have to be altered since you no longer miss on attacks.

Maybe you get X amount of these at the start of a session. Maybe you get them for doing cool stuff. Maybe you get them for failing Checks. Same as Hero Dice option.

Add to Narrative Directly

Option 1 - Narrative Tags

We already talked about Narrative Tags as a means for Conditions that were put on Players or NPCs. If we want more narrative agency we would have the ability to put Narrative Tags on people, places or things. This is something that both FATE and Legends in the Mist do. The question becomes, what do the narrative tags do for you?

It could be the same as the Tokens above. Just they are static on the bad guys or the environment, and all the players can now evoke them. Let’s say you put a Hobbled-2 on the bad guy. This could mean a couple things.

• Any Effort outcome on this guy gets +2

• Any Ability Roll gets the +2 (which could make it beat the Pressure)

• You get 2 extra dice to roll and take the best result

The next question has to be “How do you get the Narrative Tags on things?”. We could now say that Doubles is a good thing! If you roll Doubles with an Effort Roll or if you roll your exact Check then you get to add a Narrative Tag to the scene. Maybe all tags just start as 1, and if you continue to stack onto them then they can become 2,3,4, etc.

You could also say that the trigger for adding tags is rolling a 1 on the Effort or Pressure. You could even pair this with the Risk Mechanic above. Now rolling doubles or a 1 gives you agency, but comes with a consequence. Maybe it makes the story much more of a roller coaster.

You could also combine this with the Tokens above. This could be the last bullet point that states “add 1 detail to the scene”.

Option 2 - Temporary Narrative Control

Some games allow players to directly say what is going on in the scene, or potentially contributing to some of the options for the scene. These are much more Shared Story Telling systems. So if we want to build that into the Pressure System how do we do that mechanically?

A very thematic trigger for when you get to grab hold of narrative control is if your Pressure Die reduces. Any time you have a reduction in Pressure you get to narratively state why that happened.

What would be the triggers for reducing pressure? These could be thematic decisions, tactical actions, rolling specific results, etc. You could take any of the above concepts to trigger a potential drop in Pressure. You might combine it with increased Risk since the players might have a lot more power from using this option.

Reducing Agency through Narrative Shifts

This is challenging to think about. The idea of “reduced agency” is a hard thing to mechanically design, because you don’t really want to take agency away from a player. I think that this could be perceived as the opposite of TTRPGs! I almost feel the whole point of these games is to give players agency. Usually taking away agency (or choice) gets thought of as railroading in this genre. But, can we give the perception of agency loss without actually making the players feel powerless or that their choices don’t matter.

Option 1 - GM Resources

I think an awesome way to do this is to have a resource pool that the GM gets, and it builds based on the player’s doing things. The reason I like this is because it might give the feeling to the players that they are giving away agency, by allowing the GM to have more of this resource, but it actually isn’t dramatically taking away from the players.

What might this resource do for the GM?

• Bring in extra Mobs

• Add Narrative Tags to the scene

• Put negative tags on the players

• Give disadvantage to player’s (risky, takes away their power)

• Increase the Pressure Die temporarily (1 round) on a player

• Unlock powers on monsters (monsters could have certain powers behind paywalls)

• Give advantage to their monsters

I think any of these options could work. I’d probably want to lean more into the Monsters getting better, and the situation getting scarier, and less towards making the players worse with disadvantage.

Where could the GM get these resources? Any of the previous triggers of rolling 1s, doubles, etc. It could be something that comes from the Players spending resources that they have. This is something I believe FATE does with a cycle of resources from GM to players and back again. The only concern with this is potential hoarding of resources. The juice has to be worth the squeeze in terms of the opportunity cost of not using the resource by the players and the potential use case for the GM. It’s also very easy for the GM to just destroy a group if they build up too many resources, or are stingy giving them out. Daggerheart, a new Critical Role TTRPG, is now utilizing a passing of resources from player to GM, so we will see how this works out in their playtests.

Option 2 - Locking/Unlocking Powers

Maybe Players could have variable powers/tactical actions that are available depending on the Pressure Die that they have. Under less Pressure and you have the ability to perform certain actions, but at higher Pressure you don’t have access to those anymore, but you do have access to other powers. We don’t want players to feel gimped or that they are in a death spiral, so we have just different playstyle unlocks at different Pressure.

Why do we want to do this? Creativity is sparked by limitations. So hopefully we start to see creative solutions from players with their limited action types available. Hopefully we also get the feeling of “damn, i wish i could do this right now”, because that would be the feel of agency loss. The idea would be they aren’t losing effectiveness, they are just having a change in optionality.

Pressure Increase

I just want to add in here that certain scenarios might warrant the increase in Pressure. It becomes a tool for the GM to use thematically. They can just decide that a player now has an increase in Pressure. The reward for the player in this situation would be to get a reward for each die step you go up. They could be granted a Hero Dice or equivalent agency tool we’ve discussed above.

In addition players could have the voluntary ability to increase their own Pressure for these same rewards. Again, this would increase their agency (control over getting the rewards), but also their risk (increased Pressure die).

Resources

We already talked about Metacurrency for agency, but there are other resources that people can use in games to invoke different feelings. Hit points, stamina, spell slots, ammo…these are all resources that could require player management, depending on the style of game you want to play. Do we push on and continue forward? Do we rest/recoup and regain resources? These are the questions these games are trying to invoke at the table.

Health

Option 1 Hit Points

This is somewhat ubiquitous with a lot of TTRPGs and video games. The idea that you have a certain number of hit points, and as you get hit you then lose a certain amount of hit points. Once you hit 0 then you are unconscious.

The easiest way to implement this could be that monsters do damage equal to your Pressure Die + X, a number on their stat block. So then the GM either picks up the player’s Pressure Die and rolls it, or the players must do it when attacked on their turn!

Going back to Tactical Actions in the Combat section, now the actions of Evade and Brace matter. Players would have an armor class between 0-4 (the number indicating their damage resist, or how much is subtracted from what they should take).

Now the amount that the players would lose would be Pressure Die roll + Monster bonus - Armor. If the player Braces then the reduction is 2xArmor. If you have Heavy armor and a Shield, Bracing would reduce the damage by 8!

Option 2 - Tags

Another potential option for health is using Tags. This could be tied to the previous concept of Tags. A player might be able to survive 3 tags. Each time they take damage they would get a Tag instead. But in this scenario, what is considered taking damage? Anytime a player would increase their Pressure Die from a d10 to a d12 could be an example.

This feels thematic. Anytime you get up to d10 you are now on the precipice of getting “hurt”. Once a player goes up to a d12, they then are there for a full round of actions and then it would reduce back to a d10 Pressure. So now the idea of getting your Pressure down is a priority. Pairing this with the Hero Die concept gets interesting. Hero Die offer the players a bonus for voluntarily going up in Pressure, but if the Pressure gets to high, you might take a damage Tag. Risk/reward ;).

Sanity

Having players slowly lose their minds is very fun. That might have been the most sadistic thing i’ve ever typed, but it’s true. Fantastic opportunity for fun roleplay, and options for the GM to create weird narratives. Games like Arkham Horror, and Memento Mori do these well. Lets look at Memento Mori since its a relatively new design that was recently kickstarted.

In this game you have a dice pool. The majority are white d6s, but you start off with 1 black d6. You determine this by your attributes. Your attributes will have 2-3 bubbles to fill in under them on your character sheet. Empty bubbles mean you roll white dice, filled mean you roll black dice. When you need to make a check, you then gather up the appropriate dice, and hope to roll a certain number of 5-6s. If the black die rolls a 6 it means you get 3 successes! The other result from rolling a 6 on the black die is that you have to fill in another bubble. This means when you select your dice pool you now have more black die to roll. If you ever fill in all your bubbles you will be dead. BUT, for filling in more corruption/sanity you will get new powers unlocked. Pretty great mechanic. You want to become corrupt, but it also means you are rolling more black dice and spiraling down in corruption.

How could this work in the Pressure System? Since Pressure doesn't have a dice pool that can slowly shift over time we have to analyze what can have a similar representation of this core idea. We could use a Usage Die.

Option 1

With this module you have an extra Die called your Sanity Die. It starts as a d6, and you can use it to roll with any of your other rolls. It works as Advantage with Checks, and it is additive with Effort. If you roll the highest number (6) then the die actually steps upwards! It becomes a d8. However, if it is ever a d10 and rolls a 10 then you go insane (this could also be a d12 and you roll a 12).

Limitations. You would have a massive power creep potentially. When you have that d10 and you aren't worried about going crazy you might get a LOT of benefit out of that die. The other option is to step it down as you go through this process, but when it's a d6 there might not be any incentive to use it and roll as a player? The use of it in this case is optional still.

Option 2

The other option is to do a Step up Usage Die like in the above example, but then you compare it to the Pressure Die. Meaning, that if the Sanity Die is ever higher than the Pressure Die in size (d8 vs d6), maybe that means you are in control, but if its ever smaller than the Pressure Die (d6 vs d12) then you are out of control or reckless. This is playing with the ideas of Control vs Chaos, or Sanity vs Insanity. Different powers or actions could use the words controlled vs chaotic as keywords to activate them. In this option you would never go insane, but you would have some issues to deal with.

Option 3

A second pool of points like Hit Points. Monsters have different attacks that target the Sanity Pool. Players then have to make Checks to avoid losing these points. This is more straight forward and less thematic, but it’s the easiest option to implement.

Gear

I think the games that have the most interesting ways to manage Gear are Skull & Bones, Dragonbane, and Knave.

Knave uses a grid on your character sheet that represents the size of your inventory. Items take up certain amounts of space. A Battleaxe might be 1x3 grids, a shield might be 2x2. I’m not sure the specifics, but this gives you an idea that managing the inventory is almost a Tetris mini-game.

Dragonbane is a brilliant use case for a simplistic character sheet. There are three sections that are interesting; Equipped, Inventory, Tiny Items. You can use any equipped items without needing to do anything. You can constantly switch between any of those items without needing to spend extra actions. Inventory items require an action to access, and they have to be swapped with your an Equipped item if the Equipped area is full. The Inventory and the Equipped sections are limited by slots, but the Tiny Items section isn’t. You can have as many Tiny Items as you like, and can use those at will.

Finally we have Skull & Bones. This is pretty crazy. This game has a location for roughly 20 skills and equipment. These slots are not just your skills and equipment, but they represent your health! When you take damage you have a decision to make. What item did you just break? What skills do you know longer have access to because of the injury? These are really interesting thematic concepts. You now roleplay that your hand is broken or damaged and that is why you can’t pick locks as a skill anymore. Really fun to think about.

Gear seems to come down to choices for utility (not effectiveness). The idea of having more or less options. Can we take the concept of gear and abstract it? Another game not mentioned here was Forged in the Dark. This system was the first game that I saw that introduced having gear “loadouts”. Loadouts offered equipment boxes that you could check when using them, but all they said next to them was ‘item’. This meant that the player had agency and the ability to just say “oh yeah, i have a 15ft rope”. This only required them to then check a box. This way you weren’t penalized for not carrying some esoteric piece of gear. It made you feel really cool, like your character actually prepared and planned for the situation.

With that being said, can we do something similar to Hero Dice? Can we have dice that are multi-purposed. You have a pool of them, or maybe check boxes on your character sheet. Then we could think of them doing some of the following things:

• They represent a piece of equipment, you can spend one and then its gone

• They could be dice that you get to use just like Hero Dice for some sort of bonus

• They could also be damage reduction dice. Spend 1 to negate a hit.

This is a marriage of the 3 ideas: Hero Dice, Skull & Bones, and Forged in the Dark. Not too shabby.

Stamina

Stamina is always an interesting concept in games. I think it gets used a lot in tactical games, where the game is about “can sustain a certain level or output”. In other games its an alternative use for Hit Points.

The first concept would be something like Mana Points, but for all your abilities. You want to use a special maneuver or a power, spend your Stamina to do so. I think the problem with this is that you get less effective as combat goes on, so then combat could become a slog.

Other games think of Stamina as a replenishing health meter. Meaning that you have 2 pools of health; Hit Points, and Stamina. The difference between them being that Hit Points require healing or some sort of extended rest, whereas Stamina just means you need to catch your breath. I believe that Starfinder and an early iteration of MCDM+ used this. Once combat ended you would gain all your Stamina back, but your hit points were still low. Also, you typically would lose Stamina before you lost hit points.

Option 1

I like the idea of stamina being something you can tap into to push yourself, but it’s a limited resource. In the Pressure System this could be seen as the ability to rally yourself. Let’s say that you have 2-5 boxes on your character sheet. Maybe the number of these is dependent on character creation, or maybe they are the same for everyone. Let’s also say that you don’t have the Tactical Actions module in play, so you don’t have that Rally Action to use as a party. This means that you might not have a way to heal yourself, or reduce your Pressure. So with this stamina system, let’s just say that you can check a box, and reduce your Pressure Die one step.

Simple. You only have 2-5 of these boxes during an entire session, but it lets you gain a bit of control and push yourself in certain situations.

Maybe it’s temporary. Maybe it just reduces the Pressure for that round, or maybe it reduces it until something triggers it to go up again.

Option 2

The other idea would be that it is similar to stamina in Starfinder. That it is a damage reduction before you are truly hurt. In that situation at the beginning of the session you have 2 boxes that you can check, but you check them when you take any form of damage (which would increase your Pressure or take HP away). This option doesn’t have as much player agency, it’s not a tough decision whenever you get hurt. Option 1 you can just spend the resource at any point to reduce the Pressure. This option only has the choice of resisting Pressure when the trigger of taking damage occurs. “Do i use it now? Later? When is best?”

Time

Important to make the distinction of time as a resource vs pacing. Pacing is when you try to increase or decrease the play time of a game or scene. Time as a Resource to me is a metacurrency, or abstracted mechanic to give a sense of urgency even though the game might not change in terms of amount of time played.

The resource of time is a very interesting concept. There are 4 games that utilize time as key parts of their design; 10 Candles, Shadowdark, ICRPG, and Forged in the Dark. We will focus on 10 Candles and Shadowdark in this section, because they use it more as a resource.

I think that Shadowdark does it most literally. They use torches as a time for actual game hours in real time. When exploring, if you light a torch it will burn for 60 minutes real time. If you want to camp/rest, then you can burn 3 torches as a party to make a campfire that will last 8 hours. There is a limit to the number of torches your party will most likely have with you. This should drastically change your table’s pacing. You are now going to try and accomplish things more quickly. I suppose this uses Time as an excellent resource and tool for pacing.

In 10 Candles there is an understanding that the game will end when all 10 physical candles blow out. All of the characters will have died when this happens. When a candle goes out it signifies that the current scene is over. This can happen when a player fails a conflict roll. However, players can also choose to blow out a candle after a successful conflict roll in order to maintain control of the story’s narration. This is a highly narrative game, so having control is a prized activity.

Both of these games are tying the resource of time to the play time of a session. But they are also tying the resource of time to the idea of suspense. They want the concept of running out of time to feel like the end, or to feel threatening. They also focus on spending time, not necessarily your ability to build time.

Option 1

You could have time tied directly to your initiative order and your actions. Similar to a Rondel in board games. The idea being that actions cost an amount of time. You move around the Rondel a certain amount of spaces based on the actions time cost. The player/npc who is farthest back on the Rondel gets to go until another piece is farthest back. I’m not sure that I 100% like the concept of time tied to your actions, but it’s one place to look. This is also a highly Boardgame-y module, and might slow combat down.

Option 2

Personally, I think of time as a bit more of a Macro currency. It can be tied to the actions of players, but this might start to bloat the game experience, and slow things down. If I want to add suspense and fear of “running out” time, or the excitement of adding time, then tying it to a group metacurrency seems fun to me. It also makes time a group decision or conversation.

Let’s talk about betting. I feel like time should be a resource that you are spending out of combat, and potentially gaining back outside of encounters. I think it would be interesting to bet how long things will take to complete. You would place a bet on how long an encounter would take you. You are trying to be as close to that number without going over (Price is Right rules). The amount of rounds still counts towards time, so you can’t just say “oh, 20 rounds”.

You’d need ranges that are acceptable, or maybe enemies can get REALLY tough if you let combat go too long? I like where this is shaping up, but its not a finished idea yet.

Clues

There is a great article on The Aexandrian about clues, and the designing of a mystery campaign. The main thesis is that when you design a mystery or something that could be a chokepoint for your story, you need to have 3 different solutions to that problem.

There is a secret door that the players must find, then there should be 3 ways they can find it. Search, diary/journal talking about it, second door later that leads to same secret room, etc

This requires that the GM pre-design these features (which shouldn’t be a heavy lift), but it’s hard to think of these clues as resources. So how do we start to abstract the concept of clues as resources?

Option 1 - Shared Story Telling Clues

This is a very emergent style of play. Players will earn clues under particular circumstances. Use any of the following as potential options:

• Rolling Doubles (your die and the Pressure Die)

• Rolling max/min (ability die or Pressure die is max, and the other is min (1))

• Completing a particular challenging encounter/scenario

• Successfully reducing a Pressure Die from a d12

The result is that the players now have 1 clue token. They can turn these in to create a clue of their own desire. Anyone can turn it in whenever they’d like to! These create specific new story beats. Once they have successfully created 3 clues that link together they have now solved some sort of mystery.

The problem with this is that it might not feel earned. Clues should be things that are RP discovered, or through play. If I only get a clue by rolling well, that might not feel satisfying. However, that 3rd bullet point does say after completing a particular encounter/scenario. So that might be the primary method for gaining these.

Option 2 - Tables & Tokens

I’ve come to like the idea of Story Tables more and more lately. The Deficient Master had a fun video talking about using this for your story components and locations to help randomize the story some.

This requires the GM to do some extra session prep. Create a table of X clues. The players can turn in a token to roll on the story clue table. These clues help the players figure out what is necessary for story resolution (finding the bad guy, finding the treasure, etc).

What are the tokens they turn in to roll on this table? We can use lots of things. We could make up a new system, or we could use the Hero Dice from above, and now we have an interesting system. The player’s want to use the Hero Dice for agency, and they generate them like normal. But now they also want to potentially turn them in to continue to progress the story.

Can player’s still progress the story with pure RP? Of course, we don’t want to fully take away player agency. But maybe there are other things you get out of the story table.

Power (increased Effort)

This would be a module you’d use when you want to feel like a superhero, or high level hero. You can just smack people down or solve issues requiring effort more quickly!

Rise to the Occasion

A lot of times heroes will rise to the occasion. The superhero gets a beating and then bounces back to do massive damage. This is Captain America saying “I can do this all day” and then picking up Mjolnir. This is a really fun thematic effect, so can we mechanize it?

Option 1

When you get hit you build up power. Let’s say you have a Power Die. It’s a d6, and you can use it as additional Effort. Whenever you take hits or damage you can then increase the power die a step. Eventually if you get beat up enough you might be rolling an additional d12 of Effort.

Option 2

Instead we could tie this mechanic to the rounds of combat. This is similar to 13th Age. They use an Escalation Die. Every round in that system the escalation die just goes up +1. This +1 is a bonus to all attacks and damage in the game, meaning that combat is getting more deadly. Instead of that, it could be that it goes up a die step. 1d4->1d6->1d8->1d10->1d12.

So in this scenario your hero is doing an additional 1d12 Effort by the 5th round.

We could also implement encounter triggers that happen on different rounds. Yes the players are getting more powerful each round, but if you let the encounter go too long the enemy is going to have access to new powers or abilities.

Additional Effort Die

I think that you could just have an additional die you roll. You could choose what that die is for everyone, or it could be dependent on the types of things people doing. The 3rd option under Combat/Weapons could be used in this way. The idea of having the ICRPG effort die added to your Ability/Effort rolls.

Exploding Dice

If you roll the highest number on your Ability Die then you get to roll it again. This is really fun, but it could slow down the turns. I also have no idea how much this would effect the average Effort output for players.

Hero Dice (Agency)

You could utilize the same mechanic for the Agency Hero Dice, but then just increase the overall number of Hero Dice available. By doing this you would definitely increase the potential Effort that people are able to pump out.

I believe I said that players could start with 2 Hero Dice in the Agency section. If you are going for power then you might have them start with 4-5 Hero Dice.

Heroic Stat

This might be more suited for the next section on Roles, but you could get an additional +2 to one of your key attributes (str, dex, cha, etc). This would make it so that you are really good at specific Checks. It would make you very effective for sure.

Thresholds

We talked earlier about the idea of Death Numbers for monsters in a previous newsletter. If you end up getting a certain amount of Effort in one attack the monster/npc immediately dies.

For this Power concept you could just shift the Death Numbers lower. Therefore you don’t have to increase the number of dice or effort that players pump out, but they will instagib a lot more targets and feel pretty powerful.

Roles

The idea for this module is to allow players to specialize into particular playstyles.. This could be referred to as “class-lite” or “mini-classes”.

DPS / Tank / Healer

Let’s first breakdown how I see these three roles, and then we will bullet out some specific abilities they might have. I just want to use Hero Dice constantly as a meta-currency, and you technically could here as well to initiate powers, but I’m going to try and come up with other methods to do these.

DPS usually is a highly mobile character, tough to pin down, does lots of damage/highly effective/increased effort, has medium/low survivability.

• Damage Spike - when you succeed on an attack (Effort higher than Pressure), you can double your total Effort.

  • this might be too powerful! It might end up just being that you double your Effort die whenever you roll it. This would allow you to beat the Pressure more often.

• Escape - You can forgo your attack action for the round to get out of any sticky situation.

  • Since this is a general DPS class this could be themed as a hide and move, or a Blink spell. Works for both thematically

Tank is going to have high survivability, potentially extra armor or shrug off ability, does ok damage, is able to manipulate the enemies that are around them. They’d force the enemies to focus on them or make it hard for them to attack their allies.

• Taunt - anyone that you attack must attack you. Or maybe it’s a proximity thing

  • Another option could be that you can trade your Pressure Die with someone else that you get close to. So you take on the higher Pressure. Then we pair that with the next ability

• Survive - It takes two hits to go up in Pressure Die steps. Or it could be that you just go through the single digit die twice?

  • If you are using the HP module, then you would just have more HP as a Tank.

  • If you are using the Tactical Actions then you could Brace or Protect for free each round, but you have to choose which.

Healer is going to mainly buff or keep the rest of the team alive. They are medium survivability, able to heal, and have lower combat effort but potentially higher cerebral/mental effort.

• Heal - Can reduce the Pressure Die for another player. But you have to touch them, and this is a limited use. Have to playtest for number of uses. Or there is a specific trigger for it.

• Buff - Grant a bonus Effort die to use for next action, probably a d8. Also could have Advantage with a Check

• Know - same as the above Buff bonus, but its for yourself, and only for knowledge based Effort or Checks.

Controller/ Defender/ Leader / Striker

What is envisioned for these specific roles? Below are descriptions of what the roles may look like, but also some example abilities that each might get. I think it would be interesting also for the player to get a choice of which of the benefits they get. Some of them might get more than 1, it’s all for the GM to decide.

Controller

someone who is able to do things to the enemies. Manipulate them in some sort of way. This could be pushing, pulling, grabbing. This could also be charms, stuns, movement spells, illusions, etc.

• Physical - you are able to move the position or keep an enemy from moving. You need to have a thematic means to do this. Suppression fire, use a whip to pull someone towards you, grab someone with your free hand, etc.

  • Requires a successful Check of either Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution depending on how your player is built.

• Mental - demoralize or bluff to debuff the enemy. Confuse or disorient someone. Influence their potential targets or threats this way.

  • Requires a successful Check of either Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma depending on how your player is built.

  • This could also instead be the manipulation of others verbally. You are very good at either Deceiving or potentially Intimidating others.

• Magical - illusions, hold person, walls of fire/wind, etc. Grease

  • Requires a successful Check of their key attribute for whatever magic they use.

Defender

someone who is able to take hits for someone else, taunt the enemies, has high defenses. Interrupts to heroically save the day when someone is in danger.

• Self - able to front line and is harder to hit or is able to shrug off damage. They can utilize either Dexterity or Constitution to do this.

  • Might add their dex or con modifier to their method of dealing with health/attacks. How could this look depending on the way you are playing?

    • Damage reduction in HP taken away

    • Ability modifier bonus to defensive rolls (Checks) to not get hit

    • Increase to your AC number or ability to use Brace or Evade tactical actions.

• Ally - able to protect your friends. If you are close to your friend you can either improve their ability to defend themselves or you can be the target of the attack.

  • Use the above concepts for Self but now apply the bonus method to your ally.

  • Become the target of the enemy.

• Others - You are able to taunt and keep enemies on you. You are good at forcing people to deal with you before they can deal with others.

  • Which is your primary stat? Str or Dex? Whatever the modifier is you can taunt that many Close targets each round. A taunted creature has disadvantage attacking other targets.

    • The alternative would be that if the monster is causing the Pressure to increase on your ally, then when you taunt them your ally’s Pressure Die reduces for just that round. So it’s not a heal, its a temporary reprieve in pressure.

Leader

someone who can inspire others, heal, buff, communicate well. Someone who can move their teammates around the battlefield, give them other bonuses.

• Maneuver - you are able to give your allies an extra movement of some kind. They get to move during your turn.

• Prepare - This could be the idea of mentally preparing them for battle/conversation, or physically positioning and having advantage prior to a battle/conversation. For this I could see giving a Bonus Die to all players to use on their first round of combat/RPG.

• React - This could be the idea that you can deal out retroactive advantage rolls or bonus dies after an ally you can see has failed a Check, or rolled a poor Effort roll.

• Heal - Unlike the Defender who gives a reprieve in Pressure that goes back up, the Leader is able to reduce it. Probably only has a couple uses a session, but they are able to reduce the Pressure Die for someone they can see and communicate with.

• Communicate - whereas the Controller is good at deception/intimidation potentially, the Leader would be more skilled at Diplomacy and Performing (oration).

  • They can would pick their attribute they use Int, Cha, or maybe another one could be used if you use the Prime stat concept. They then get to add that modifier to their Checks for these sorts of skills.

Striker

Someone who is able to do lots of damage. Great at getting into good positions for combat or RP. Usually is also somewhat squishy, so is decent at getting out of range quickly.

• Physical Spike - synonymous to your backstab or your reckless attack. You get to do a ton of damage to someone. Let’s say you get to do +1d12 Effort on an attack. No idea how many times you get to do this.

• Mental Spike - These roles don’t really have the fixer type. This to me could be the idea of mental spike effort, you come up with a solution quickly. Could be skills, knowledge, quick reaction/decision making, etc. Maybe its an effective solution, but breaks or is irreversible in nature.

  • You get an additional +1d12 Effort for your attempt to solve something, but there is a consequence of some sort, and you can’t reverse what was done. Maybe you increase your Pressure in the process.

  • Most likely a limited number of uses needs to happen

• Magical blast - If you are magical in nature, then you can spread the wealth out. For this situation we haven’t talked about AOE’s or targeting multiple people. Let’s say we can split up that 1d12 Effort if attacking multiple targets.

  • 2 targets = +1d10 ea

  • 3 targets = +1d8 ea

  • 4 targets = +1d4 ea

  • Then range just has to be based on the theme of the spell and what you have allowed the player to do.

• Glide/Position/Escape - these strikers are typically a bit more squishy in nature. So they need a means to escape.

  • Move an extra full distance away from all enemies, but your Pressure is increased.

  • However, this will not increase you past 1d12 to being knocked out.

RP Roles - Diplomat / Etc

My first thought goes straight to the A-Team.

• Hannibal the leader/planner,

• Face the charismatic con-man,

• BA the pugilist intimidator/demolitions expert,

• Murdoch the tinkerer/skill monkey.

I think for the sake of brevity I would take the previous roles and start to split them up differently for these. For instance, Face has the Leader’s communication but also the Controller’s deception potentially. BA might have some of the Tank abilities of the Defender but also the magical ability from Striker to have the demolition’s aspect. Mix and match.

Roles based on Attributes

This idea was brought up by SooisZa in the Discord channel. Allowing people to potentially have a Con based fighter I believe was his intention. This makes me think about what DC20 is doing currently with its Prime Modifier. The idea is that your Prime Modifier is just equal to your highest stat modifier. You would then attack with that Prime Modifier for all attacks and spells. So you could have a int or con based fighter. Let’s think of some ways that you can have a Prime stat, or Stat Role.

Attribute Based Hero Dice

This is just a rip from some of the previous ideas we already have. For this situation we just say that you have the equivalent of Hero Die, maybe 3 a session, that are solely associated with the Attribute of your choice. This means that whenever you make a skill check or attack that is associated with this Attribute you then get to use those specific Hero Die.

Attribute Powers

I love the powers in the game Quest. A lot of the powers in this game are incredibly thematic and they don’t require checks or attack rolls. A lot of these just occur, which has a lot of player agency. Let’s just create some simple/generic powers for each of the attributes that can be 1x a session powers.

• Strength - the player can break, lift, climb, jump something of their choice as long as it’s a reasonable ask.

• Dexterity - the player can catch, dodge, balance, palm, quickly perform a task of their choice.

• Constitution - the player can outlast, endure, absorb a physical feat of their liking.

• Intelligence - the player can deduce, interpret, know a fact in the moment.

• Wisdom - the player can intuit, predict, or perceive something

• Charisma - the player can convince, charm, distract, beguile someone or something.

These might be uber powerful, but you only get each of them 1x a game session, but when you do use it, it should be pretty epic.

Prime Attribute

We could just take the idea directly from DC20 and say that you could use this module to decide which of your attributes is the one that you use to attack or do spell checks. This would mean that you just circle the attribute on your character sheet.

• As a twist to make this not too powerful you might have to choose if it is for your melee or ranged attack, and it can’t be for both.

• This could be broken. If the person says “I want my strength to be for my ranged attacks” and then they get to try and double dip with strength doing both ranged and melee damage.

  • So maybe you just say that whatever stat they choose as their Prime stat is then going to be for all attacks and all casts.

Divide up the Tactical Actions

I realized while creating some of these powers that you could instead take the Tactical Actions in the Combat section and just divide them up thematically to different roles in your party.

• Tank gets Brace and Evade

• Leader gets Rally, Inspire, Maneuver

• Etc….

You could divide up these tactical actions to make any particular roles you would like.

Movement (tactical)

Hexes

Feel free to use hexes and the classic 5ft spacing. Just have people move standard 30ft. Then label different powers from the abilities listed granting them between 5-30ft depending on how it thematically fits.

Zones

I have a whole video on zones. I enjoy the idea of splitting up combat into different zones. You can easily apply Aspects to different zones, or have the Pressure increase or decrease when you are in different zones.

When using individual personal Pressure Die just assign minimum thresholds for each zone. With certain zones your Pressure can’t be below; d8, d10, etc. Therefore you know to either step up someone’s die if they enter that zone, or keep it the same.

Here is an example of zones but disregard the idea of each zone having its own individual Pressure Die.

Ranges

I personally love the Ranges from Quest and ICRPG. You just describe things as Close, Nearby, Far, or Out of Range. I also like the idea of a keyword, that is technically a range, called Engaged. This would be if you wanted to use specific powers that need other trigger words or tags. Currently in this write-up there is no need for this trigger word.

Movement would then be going from 1 range increment to another. ICRPG has the simplicity of saying that things Nearby and Close means on your turn you can move and do an action. Things that are Far require you spend your entire turn moving just to get to, but you can’t take an action.

Daggerheart Approach

This system doesn’t really do anything new compared to the ranges above, but they did add in some fun measurement systems, which I thought were clever.

• Close = short side of playing card

• Nearby = length of pencil

• Far = long side of piece of paper

I think for live play this is slick, because it would be very easy to measure things quickly.

Pacing

Pacing is the speed of play in a game. This was different from Time as resource, which was just an abstracted resource. These are tools or module concepts that hopefully change the play speed or pacing of your sessions/encounters.

Let’s first give some examples of how this might look. Forged in the Dark uses its clock system. These clock faces are pretty famous at this point, but in essence they are empty pie charts that are divided into 6-12 slices. They are plot clocks. You are either trying to fill a clock to complete a story beat, or trying to not let a clock fill because something bad will happen. Different things you do (or don’t do) will fill different clocks.

ICRPG uses physical dice timers for the encounters. If there is an artillery gun on the field of battle, roll a d4. In that many rounds it will fire. Once it fires roll the d4 again and that’s how much time you have until it does it again. Sometimes the game might also say turns not rounds. So if you roll a 4 that means after all four players go it will fire, so one of us needs to deal with it!

Finally there is 13th Age. This game sets a d6 on the table for all to see. After round 1 they place it so that the single pip is up. Now, everyone has +1 for their actions. Start of round 3 it becomes a 2, then 3, then 4, etc. It means that as the battle/encounter goes on all the players become more effective and deadly (it also gives + to damage). But, at different points in the round, the pips on the die might trigger an action by the monster. This is similar to the Action Oriented Monsters that Matt Colville talks about. Having special actions unlocked at different rounds, so you probably want to deal with them quickly if possible.

Option 1 - Pressure Threshold

A simple Pacing technique would be to use Pressure Threshold again. For certain encounters the thresholds of certain zones might creep up over time. We just talked about Pressure Thresholds being the idea that certain zones, or even the entire encounter might have a minimum Pressure Die associated with them. So now certain rooms have increased minimum thresholds, or the entire encounter does. Again, this is not a Pressure Die in the zone, but player’s personal Pressure would rise when they are in that area. It becomes more desperate for the players because they are more easily knocked out of the fight.

Option 2 - Pressure Threshold instead of Health

You could get rid of health altogether. This would definitely change the pacing for the players. Instead just say that Pressure is going to increase every round, or every other round. Once it gets do d12 the players only have that last round to finish the encounter. These sorts of encounters should not be about eliminating the enemies, but should be about completing specific objectives.

Option 3 - Lift Clocks and ICRPG Timers

You could just use the Clocks of FitD and Timers from ICRPG directly. They are easily ported over. The Effort that you do produce could be directly influencing the different clock pie slices. Try to finish off clock prior to certain timers going off.

Option 4 - Analyzing Pacing

The idea of pacing is that you want to speed up combat, or you want to speed up decision making. The intent is to feel like an imminent threat is coming, so you need to do something quickly. However, this could be a negative perspective. Instead, you could reverse the emotions and make the player feel like “you need to act quickly before you lose this benefit”.

Now, how you add this in, or solve for this could be up for debate. I think about the Matt Colville video about rewards. The thesis of the video was that “players will naturally do the things that give them rewards”. So the game should design where those rewards are.

What if you used the ICRPG timers for different bonuses that could occur in play. There is a fire or item that exists temporarily on the map. The bad guy is distracted and susceptible to certain attacks. The GM then puts a d4 in that are after rolling it. A player can then access that bonus as long as the timer is counting down. Maybe the timer then goes away immediately, or it stays and everyone gets bonuses until the timer is exhausted.

Example: The player uses a Knowledge/Notice ability during the fight. The GM decides to roll a d4 and put it on the Giant saying that the players notice a whole in its defense. The players now have X rounds to exploit that weakness before the Giant changes tactics

The question though is “is this pacing”? It might speed up turns because players now have an action they more readily want to take? But is that a form of “railroading”? Meaning that the GM is forcing their action? I don’t think so. The player’s still have options, they just have an option that has a bit more effectiveness now? Food for thought.

Multi-Characters

One of the most recent games I ran as a GM was Mothership. I did something particularly different with that game. All 4 players had 4 different characters. I know, it sounds like a lot. They were on a spaceship that had a bridge crew, marines, scientists, and engineers. Each of them had a unique character in each of those groups. My job as the GM was to keep changing the spotlight to the different groups as the stress was ratcheting up. It also allowed me to kill off people much more carefree (and the players knew that people were going to die). We did about 3 sessions of this mini-arc, and they loved it. So what are other ways people do this sort of thing in games? Especially in campaigns where there might be only 2 players, so having more variety can be fun.

Vassals / Companions

The easiest method to have the feeling of multiple characters would be a vassal system. MCDM really leans into the companion system for their Strongholds & Followers supplemental book. So how can we represent having an ally/sidekick/assistant helping you during play?

Option 1 - Full Second Character

You build a completely separate character. This is more of a companion than a vassal or sidekick. This would allow 2 players to have 4 characters amongst the two of them.

Option 2 - Thematic Representation

The tricky thing with a thematic representation of another full character is the idea that a player can now just be amazing at everything. If they have a thematic sidekick who is fantastic at the things that they are lacking, then this could be a problem, so you have to have some limitations built into place.

We can also think about what the benefits of the “sidekick” theme in comic books and stories are.

• Foil to the hero - a means to make the hero look great

• Comic relief - allows player to have a serious hero and a silly sidekick

• Source of trouble (getting into) - GM can get the sidekick in trouble

• Someone to explain the plot to - more relevant as a TV Trope for the audience

• Replacement if hero dies - new main character for the hero

• Thematic nudge from GM - can give the sidekick knowledge or backstory

I like the idea of the sidekick having their own Pressure Die. Mainly, because it allows for fun play between the Hero and the Sidekick. I think that you can freely trade your Pressure Die at the start of each round between the two. In other words they keep getting each other out of trouble, but the other then gets into trouble. This seems fun to me. Especially since you decide who has which at the start of a round.

Sidekicks shouldn’t be able to do too much. They should be good at 1 thing, and mediocre at the rest. They should be able to help you, but not with everything.

Maybe sidekicks have predetermined flavors/roles. You choose the role and it then can help in those situations. It’s a Defender sidekick, then it can help you make saves of that sort? Etc.

Sidekicks might have their own Attributes, but just only have +1, +1, 0,0,0, -1 as their array.

Future Considerations

• Information Discovery. Opposed to Clues as a resource, what are the mechanics for discovery information

• Negotiation - MCDM+ utilizes a system for negotiation. it might be fun to also explore this consideration

• Exploration might also be a potential thought to explore as a module.

Wrap-up

This was a lot, but it was also a lot of fun. There are a lot of things to continue to consider for the Pressure System and how it can be tailored to multiple playstyles. I really look forward to seeing all the comments and potential discussions in the Discord Channels.