Skip to main content

Mechanic Monday: Kicking Off Out of Mana with Haste

‘Allo! I took a week off.  On accident.  It’s fine, I still managed to do 52 entries in 52 weeks, so, cheers to me, huh? Anyway I have half an hour to try and knock one of these out.  The first entry in my Out of Mana series! No buffer, a clock ticking down, an idea pulled out of my posterior, just like I drew it up!

Timer as Cost

Inspired by Haste, GREEM has cards where the cost to play represents the number of turns between when the card is played and when it becomes active or takes effect.  Stronger cards tend to take more turns to activate, or are limited in how many copies can be in a deck.  The game is one of timing and disruption.


So what I’m picturing here is maybe a time travel theme, two opposing chronosorcerers trying to pull off immense feats while undermining and disrupting one another.  Probably cards that let you add, remove, or move around time counters, destroy cards that are at a certain timer count, get more than one card going, activate cards at a specific high number, etc.  Play with speed, play with time.  Hell, I could even call it Velocimancer.


Well, that’s all I got! Next week’s entry will be more thought out and written out, I promise, probably!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

TTRPG Tuesday: Three Means Of Resolving

Hi it’s another TTRPG Tuesday! First of the year.  Let’s get right into it. Saw a challenge on Twitter to make some resolution mechanics.  I can do those! Here we go: Hand to Hand The player performing the action and the person running the game or otherwise opposing the action both put their dominant fists toward one another, bounce them three times to get a rhythm, and reveal a number with their fingers, 0-5.  Sum the two numbers, and if the number is greater than 5, subtract six, so that the final number is always between 0 and 5.  On a 0, the action fails catastrophically, on a 1-2 it fails, 3-4 it succeeds, on a 5 it succeeds spectacularly.  The player taking the action starts the game with all five fingers up on their non-dominant hand; after an attempt, they may lower fingers on that hand to add to the sum of the attempt. Ex. Alice attempts to seduce Cat’s character over to the coup conspirators.  They put their dominant hands together (right for ...

TTRPG Tuesday: Campaigning

  Hey it's TTRPG Tuesday, let's see if I get something written before sleep overtakes me. I'm still on that Channelers kick, but today I want to talk about a possible campaign path: The Magpie Offensive.  I see this as a military campaign where the PCs are conscripted, volunteers, or mercenaries for an army that is marching to quell Spirit threats and unite the region under a protectorate. There should be free RP sections as interludes between missions, and missions should be chosen by the party.  The army ensures loyalty with intangible rewards as well as artifact items. NOTE: This whole thing is being designed with the Rascal article on militarization in ttrpgs in mind. What is the thrust of the campaign? It's fundamentally one of conquest.  How do I encourage characters to question their presence and their complicity? How much interpersonal violence is an acceptable price to pay for environmental justice? How can party composition affect all this from jump? H...

TTRPG Tuesday: Channeling Curses

  Hey it's TTRPG Tuesday.  Well I’m gonna start writing one on a Tuesday.  We’ll see how it goes. Been doing a lot of writing on Channelers lately.  And this time is no exception! In particular, I’ve been wondering if there's room for a sixth Calling: the Haunted. The Haunted There are those who live with a Spiritual affliction: a family curse, intermittent possession, psychic wounds from exposure to a manifestation - whatever the cause, the Haunted lives with a power they can try to manage but never fully control.  The act of Channeling itself is risky, with twisted and unpredictable Techniques and Incarnations, and a tendency for the Haunted’s power to run away from them. The hidden truth of every Haunted is that they bear their burden because they believe they deserve it.  They may despise their state or try to suppress it, but they will remain cursed only as long as they believe, consciously or otherwise, that they should be.  If a Haunted eve...