The Extra Mechanics Grab Bag
Miscellaneous rules to keep you on your toes.
Tracking with Pools
Dice pools can be built to a number of dice to track progress or threat. This might be to recruit Knuckleheads to a gang, track the mob boss’ Patience wearing thin, or see How Much Mrs. Silverlake Likes Us. These might need rolls, plot, or time to change, or the pool might be rolled to see what happens. The GM sets the goal value, usually between 3 and 8 deep.
Push Mods
These options change how pushing works, giving the game a different tone.
Action. Add a hit instead of a die. This will make the game over-the-top at times.
Belief. Characters can push for each other. This fosters teamwork.
Dark. Take stress and reduce a tag when you push. This makes the game deadlier.
Flashbacks. Push to make a tag roll before the current scene. This reduces time spent planning, by letting characters 'plan' before the players.
Grim. If a character ever has 5 stress, they're taken out. This lets characters get one-shot.
Heroic. Full tag values are rolled when reduced. Heroes are always capable.
Pulp. Push to reroll all dice. This encourages risk-taking.
Characters Getting Better
Mark a tick by a tag each time it’s pushed, complicates the story, or has a creative use. After each game session, add a tick on any tag. Once you have 5, increase that tag or add a new one at 1.
GM-less Play
Players work together to establish the start of a story. Each scene is set by one player, while the player to their left rolls a d6, and adds complications (tags) to the scene totaling the result. The players play out the scene, overcoming it and going to the next until the story has an end. After each scene, the player that rolled the d6 sets the next. Try using pools to track plot progress.
Last Minute Tips
Fiction First! The story comes before mechanics in this kind of game. The GM and the players look at the narrative to see what happens, then to the mechanics if needed. Is the character doing something risky? Would it be interesting to see how well they did? As the GM, ask that kind of question to yourself before pulling out the dice.
What about the bad guys? The characters are the only ones that roll in this game. Everybody else's actions just happen unless a friendly neighborhood player character decides to stop them -- then they can roll to see how they did!
Do I need to do any planning? Don't overdo it -- the story conflict only needs to be a tag, which means most of it can be done on the fly. Keep in mind a lot of the story can come from the players too, if they have an idea for a drawback listen to them!