Few days back (holidays) I was digging through the artifacts of my youth. Strangely, amongst the detritus was a huge collection of pogs. I say strangely because I have zero memory of playing or even owning said collection of pogs. At what point in my juvenile delinquency did I sink so low as to spend ill gotten currency on pogs? Had a backwater swamp witch cursed me into possessing such frivolous and deranged items? There are dark marshes in the woods of my childhood home. Marshes I swore never to set foot in again, less the evil there follow me out. Perhaps the answer lays there? It will remain, if so.
Confused, I returned the junk to the cubbyhole allotted to me in my mother's attic.
Days later, I discovered this challenge issued by Reginald Prismatic of Prismatic Wasteland. I assume that's his name. I didn't...I didn't look very hard.
I don't know what that damned swamp witch intended, but this seemed the time to inflict the curse on others:
Pog Mechanics
"You remember mechanics, Bart? They're back. In pog form."
You got yourself an Attribute. I don't know what it is or how you determine it, but I DO know it has a [value]. This [value] determines how many caps you get.
Whenever you're called to test that Attribute, be it a check or a save or what have you, you place [value] caps into the center of the table. You then take a Slammer and knock the shit out of the stack of caps. Any cap that lands face up is a Success. Certain Difficulties require a certain number of Success in order to succeed.
If doing damage, then Damage Chips are placed into the stack. Any that land face up is a Success AND a point of damage.
Essentially it's 20d2. Which is basically just a 4d4.
But, unlike common dice rolls, the stack itself can be messed with and other meta values adjusted:
- Effects can add or remove caps.
- Fatigue can force you to stack Fatigue caps first before the rest of the stack is added. These are required in all stacks until healed, but Successes don't count for nothing.
- Some Monsters have Effect chips which, if Successful, cause effects.
- Wyld Fire elemental's Effect chips inflict Fire damage if Successful, from you being so close to the unnatural fire.
- Those Infected by the Mind Worm add a Parasite chip to the stack, which causes a whole new set of problems should it be Successful.
- Spells can effect your throwing (i.e, make you throw the slammer from your off hand; make you stand farther from the table)
It'll take ten times as long as just rolling dice, but it'll get ya playing pogs again.
This started as a pogs only post, but I've had other mechanic ideas that never went anywhere. Seems a good time to dump them out of my brain meat:
Success Pogs: Each player throws once at the start of the session. Each Success is kept by the player to use as tokens to be traded in. Attempting an action? Costs you one token. (Actually in hindsight, not great. Might cause players to not try anything and over ration the tokens)
Mechanic based on playlist. "No stats, just vibes"
Number stations. I feel like there's something gameable in them, I just need to crack it. Every time I try I blackout and wake up in the basement of a foreign embassy.
Random Number Books. Back before we had these fancy-dancey high speed processors to generate random numbers, thick books of random numbers were printed and useful for statistics and cryptography. At the start of the session, the GM rolls secretly. That result tells you where to start in the book and which way to read the random number tables (row wise vs column wise). As the game progresses the GM pulls success and failures from the sequential digits in the book, never stopping to roll again.
Gom Jabbar. Part of a Dune themed GLoG I got too side tracked to complete, the premise was rather simple: just as Paul was tested via the Gom Jabber using a pain box, so too shall the players be. This requires one of them hand shocking toys, specifically ones that increase their power the longer the triggers are held. The last person holding the buzzer takes the Win.
Another rule from the Dune GLoG was drinking ipecac to determine who could play the Kwisatz Haderach, just as Paul had converted the Water of Life
I have suggested these rules to Modius for the next version of Dune. I have not heard back.
