GuardianLurker
Adventurer
I think you're a little fine-grained here, and would benefit a bit by zooming out/abstracting a a little bit. I'll also say that those look more like "what kinds of things need resolving in a TTRPG", rather than a list of mechanics. (Though I suppose that depends on your definition of mechanic - for me, a mechanic is "roll a d20", or "roll 3d6".)I understand that there are many different TTRPGs, many different style of playstyles etc. But in your opinion, what are "essential" (whatever that means for you) mechanisms that your games (usually) have to have?
For me:
- Perception check
- Ability checks
- Skill checks
- Combat mechanisms (Hand-to-hand, ranged, magic, spaceship, etc.)
- Health system (insanity, critical hits, armor etc.)
- Equipment/tools (lock picking tools, magical ingredients, fuel for spaceship etc.) and economy simulator
- Powers/abilities/spells (D&D 4e style daily, encounter and at-will powers, for example normal spells), a bare bones game where the fighter can swing his sword and that's it is boring for me.
Still it's not a bad list:
- A way for characters to discover details in the fiction; you may also want to add a way to add details to the fiction.
- A way to resolve tasks, or goals,, or conflicts in fiction (ability, skill, combat, spell checks)
- A way to track resources; short term, long term, personal, etc. (HP, SAN, spell slots, items,...)
- The effects of gaining/losing/spending/having those resources; fine-grain effects, larger-scoped effects, per-resource effects, etc.
Powers, spells, etc. are ultimately meta-resolution mechanics, as well as kind of resource.
Now the actual physical mechanics (remember my definition) to achieve these needs is what distinguishes one system from another - d20 from 3d6 (GURPS, HERO) from dice pools (WoD, Shadowrun) from "keep and drop" (7th Sea, Cortex(?)). I don't know of any purely "resource spend" systems, but I don't see why they wouldn't work.
Now, the choice of mechanic(s) strongly influences the feel of the game, and thus may be more or less appropriate for whatever genre the system is trying to deal with. And though different people have different opinions about which mechanic/system is best suited for which feel/genre, I don't think there's much argument that the choice matters.