Tribute — RPGaDay #5

If there’s a tribute to be espied from The Dee Sanction‘s development, it would be in the form of the developing role of the Usage Die.

The concept appeared notably (but not uniquely) in The Black Hack as an easy mechanism to track consumables without keeping a precise tally.

Seeing that concept triggered the thought in my head that you might extend the role of the mechanic into other dwindling resources, like Sanity and the capacity to keep yourself together during an investigation. The Cthulhu Hack has Resource Dice that covers this.

In both instances, you roll a die and a result of 1 or 2 results in a drop to the next lower die on the scale—like down-shifting from a D8 to a D6.

I mentioned that the original mechanic for The Dee Sanction required the player roll a 7 to succeed. Well, someone with basic training could succeed on a 6 through 8. Well, in thinking about other mechanics, it occurred to me that you might sort of go with a Usage Dice approach instead. Roll a 1 or 2, things work out but not so well. 3 or higher, then you succeed.

Anyway, the root of the (brief) post is that each game owes something to those that come before it and that’s no bad thing. You can’t copyright mechanics—only the scene dressing/product identity that surrounds them—so, why not get some reuse from things that work.

Every day during August, I’ll be writing something new on The Dee Sanction and aim to connect the word prompt of the day with the development of the game. Check out the concept, the list and the graphics over at AUTOCRATIK.