@faraday said in Alternate Game Systems:
Falkenstein is a card-based system with no agency, for example
I don't know what you mean by "agency" in this case, but it's more like a system where you roll a whole bunch of dice at the start of the scene and as the scene progresses you pick which die (only one) to aid you. You can only re-roll when you're out of dice.
To add a layer to that, if you use 4 different colored dice, and each skill has its color, you get a bonus if you match the die you use to the color of the skill.
So in a way, it's a randomized luck pool, plus one dimension.
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Now that I mention it with dice, I can imagine an interesting tabletop system.
Each skill has a die type.
At the start of an event, you roll one die per skill, regardless of the skill or the die.
Through the scene, you can use any die's result with any skill. If you match the die to the skill type, you get that die's value.
If you mis-match the die's type to the skill's type, something interesting happens. Depending on the deeper system, some examples are:
- Die counts as '0' but you get to add your Attribute anyhow.
- Soft failure with the mis-matched die, hard failure without a die.
- Critical failure with +1 die (of that skill's type) next refresh.
You'd keep the number of dice type down to a Castle Faulk "4 suits" and number of skills at about a WoD-level "8 per type". Say: 4, 6, 8, 10. (Drop the 12. It would cause far too many mismatches.)
This also assumes a WoD/CF/Fate-like assumption that you have access to skills even if they are at '0'.
The big drawback I can see here is that people would be rewarded hugely for keeping their character even, or put a disproportionate weight on Attributes in an Attr + Skill style system.
I still think it's worth some system-building.
(edit): The more I think about it, the more the "color" thing would be better. So if you have 3 Social (blue) skills and 4 Physical (red) skills, you roll 3 Social dice and 4 Physical dice. You can match a red die to a blue skill, but you'd be at a disadvantage or something else interesting would happen.