Skip to main content

Mechanic Monday: Out of Mana Returns, as Foretold

Hello and welcome back to Out of Mana, a limited run of Mechanic Mondays where I take a look at Magic: The Gathering abilities and postulate a way that mechanic could form the basis of its own game (or serve a larger role as a central mechanic anyhow) despite not having played Magic since high school.  There’s been a lot more, uh, armed insurrection since my last post, so, you know.  Not entirely sure this one’s going to be the well-reasoned erudite entry into the canon that I hoped for at the end of my last entry.  But at least it’s inspired by a more recent ability? And so hopefully it’s a more mature mechanical basis on which to build?

Circumventing Hand Size with Partially Purchased Actions

In GREEM, you have a default of one and a half actions per turn.  Cards half an action to prepare (play face-down from hand to tableau), half an action to complete (activate a face-down card from your tableau), or a full action to rush (activate a card directly from your hand).  You start with a maximum of three cards in your hand, but may have up to five cards in your tableau.

In case it wasn’t obvious, this is based off of Foretell, which I think is a TERRIFIC mechanic, I’m ALWAYS a fan of face-down cards waiting to be activated, and it feels like if Exile manipulation were formalized and simplified, because my primitive brain still thinks of exiled as “perma-killed”, instead of the liminal extradimensional space that it has become in the modern Magic meta.  Foretell is also uniquely under the player’s control, unlike Exile, and I love that it circumvents hand size, while also acting as an investment for a future action.  Breaking up hand and breaking up card cost; two incredible efficiency engines.  So I thought, hey, how about an engine builder that comes down to how much you want to space out or speed up your investments.  And maybe it could even have a deckbuilding element (like Magic) with stronger or weaker  cards contributing to penalties or benefits to your starting action pool (like the Chains handicaps from Keyforge).  Cool eh?

Well, til next week!

Comments

Post a Comment

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

TTRPG Tuesday: The Secret Calendar

Welcome back to TTRPG Tuesday! Have I done any this year? Looks like no! On pace to be a pretty low-posting year I guess. Today I actually have a full-fledged one pager TTRPG to share.  I was listening to a Ludology with Camilla Zamboni as the guest and was inspired by her collection Roll for Learning.  The Secret Calendar came to me pretty much fully formed as I walked and listened to the episode, though I do want to acquire RfL to get layout inspo. Anyhow, the first draft can be found HERE .  I think this could be a fun activity for students (was also thinking of Wolfenoot) and maybe I’ll publish it or submit it at some point. Okay I’m out of practice so that's it buh bye!
Post a Comment
Read more