Re: New (Year’s) Resolution Mechanic

— Albert Robida, late 19th century

Blog Challenge

Over at Prismatic Wasteland, W.F. Smith issued a New Year’s challenge to fellow bloggers:

In January 2024, come up with a new resolution mechanic for a TTRPG and give it a name. It doesn’t need to be good (in fact, most [of] the good ones have probably already been taken). It just needs to be new! You don’t need to plan to use it in your games; it can be absolute detritus for you. But one blogger’s trash is another designer’s treasure. You never know how great an impact one throwaway idea on a blog might have.

It just so happens that I’ve been mulling over an idea lately, inspired by Necropraxis’ “Overloading the encounter die” and the board game The Quacks of Quedlingburg. May I present to you…

The Pouch of Peril

The Quacks of Quedlinburg features a fun push-your-luck mechanic: as you pull tokens at random from your pouch, you earn points and currency that may be spent on more tokens. However, pulling too many tokens of one particular type will spell disaster. Much has been written about dungeon crawls as push-your-luck endeavors, so combining the two seemed fitting.

You will need:

• Many six-sided dice in several colors, otherwise identical.
• A dice pouch—the gaudier the better.

Assign a category to each die color, for example:

• Green dice represent leverage: expertise, knowledge, tools, etc.
• Red dice represent encounters.
• White dice represent the emptiness of the dungeon.
• Black dice represent the supernatural hostility of the dungeon.
• Purple dice represent phenomena unique to the dungeon.

Place the leverage dice within the players’ reach. Place twelve dice of the other four colors into the Pouch of Peril. Use the following as a baseline but adjust to suit the dungeon:

• Five encounter dice,
• Four emptiness dice,
• Two hostility dice,
• One phenomena dice.

Whenever a character attempts something difficult and time-consuming, such as picking a lock, searching a room, or disarming a trap, the player of that character rolls a number of six-sided dice. Build the dice pool as follows:

• If the character has expertise related to the task at hand, add one leverage die.
• If the character applies specific knowledge to the task at hand, add one leverage die.
• If the character uses tools well-suited to the task at hand, add one leverage die.
• If the player devises a clever approach to the task at hand, add one leverage die.
• The player may then blindly pull any number of dice from the Pouch of Peril and add them to the dice pool.
• If the player “floated” on their most recent roll—meaning they did not pull any dice from the pouch—they must pull at least two dice from the pouch.

After the player rolls the dice, interpret as follows:

• A result of six on any die indicates that the character has succeeded at the task.
• For each encounter die showing a one, the referee rolls a random encounter.
• Disregard emptiness dice (except to indicate success as above).
• For each hostility die showing an odd number, a random nearby door slams shut and becomes stuck. If any hostility die shows an even number, the party’s light sources are extinguished.
• The interpretation of any phenomena dice rolled will be unique to the dungeon. For example, phenomena dice may trigger shifting passageways, rising water, etc.

After interpreting the results, return all dice to the pouch. Throughout the session, add dice to the pouch or remove dice according to an established procedure. For example:

• Add one encounter die to the pouch for each loud noise and every six turns.
• Remove one encounter die from the pouch each time the party neutralizes an encounter (through combat, by forging an alliance, etc).
• Remove one emptiness die from the pouch for every three rooms explored.
• Add one hostility die to the pouch each time the party defaces or damages the dungeon.
• Add one phenomena die to the pouch each time the party discovers a secret about the dungeon.

Closing Thoughts

Is this any good? I have no idea. I like that players can trade safety for efficacy—and vice versa. How badly do they want to get that locked door open? To what degree will they avoid triggering an encounter while injured? I’ve also always felt that random encounters should become more likely as the party explores the dungeon, and this mechanic does that. On the other hand, this mechanic almost certainly needs refinement, and interpreting several kinds of dice might simply prove too clunky.

That said, I believe there’s a lot of room for innovation in role-playing game mechanics, and I specifically view board games as a great potential source of inspiration. And just as Dread‘s Jenga tower reinforces themes of suspense, inevitable loss, and, well, dread, perhaps dungeon-crawling games can likewise reinforce the push-your-luck element, themes of risk and desperation, through their mechanics.