Zenagos Mechanics Test Run

 My plan for the Zenagos Mechanics is a little like the Year Zero Engine mixed in with a healthy dose of Pokethulhu and a dash of narrative design..maybe I got the idea from 13th Age, but I'm not sure.

For this system, you roll a pool of d6s just like in Y0E. Your skills are the main source of these dice, with each skill granting from 5 to 2 dice each. The skills are tiered like those in Gods of Aureata.

Then the character also has 5 backgrounds. These can include Species if there are more than just Human, as well as hobbies, jobs, and Class (much like in Dwindle). Each background that applies to the roll adds 1 die.

In the playtest I was running the game for my daughter. She made a character that was half Carmen Sandiego and half 9-Tailed Fox. She groked the system very quickly (quicker than other systems I've played with her). I am thinking of having about 2/3rds of the skill points allocated at character creation, leaving about 10 points to be distributed as the character advances. For my daughter, I let her start with max points.

She was usually able to apply 2 backgrounds to each of her rolls (often Gymnastics and Gadgets paired together as she flew around the adventure space). This means without stress, she was usually rolling 4 to 6 dice at a time. At times there were 1 or 2 stress on a roll. It was difficult to remember to take dice out of the pool before she rolled.

She wouldn't think to spend her stress on her own on her magic spells, but when she described what she wanted to do, I would suggest using her matching abilities for the roll.

In general, everything worked well. She would often fail the first roll, but succeed the reroll. She had a few double successes, and a few failures. 

I still want to try it with a group, passing stress to each other. Maybe I can arrange a one-shot next weekend.

Overall, I think it was a success, and I think it can serve as a foundation for several games. I am also considering how to combine it with some Dwindle mechanics, but that will be for another day.