An Elden Ring Game Idea
DISCLAIMER: This is not a fully developed idea, just musing. I advise skipping it if you're looking for something actionable.
This is going to seem like I'm doing it out of belligerence. I promise I'm not. I already had these two tabletop mechanic ideas floating about disparately in my head, but reading this great article written by Arnold K over on Goblin Punch titled Lessons from Elden Ring has caused them to collide and result in something I actually find very interesting (despite both elements being specifically cautioned against in the aforementioned blog post).
I'm not being very clear. Give me a moment; I will explain.
First off, let me say that the article itself is very cool and interesting and worth your time to read. Even if you are not the biggest Elden Ring fan in the world, I still think there is a lot of really good actionable DM advice in there, so go check it out. However, early in the article he makes two points back to-back-which are both related to what I've got in mind. I'll post both quotes here:
You could decide that you are going to attempt to emulate Elden Ring as much as possible, and give characters stamina points that regenerate every round, and ask them to split it between offensive and defensive actions . . . but that would make for slow, mechanically heavy combat. Some people will like a game like that, but I wouldn't want to play in it.
When Iām fighting a Dark Souls boss, Iām paying a lot of attention to recognize the different attacks before they are made, and Iām trying to figure out if I have time to make a heavy attack before I need to dodge again. These are exciting calculationsāIām paying a lot of attention. However, this doesnāt translate into a tabletop game. It canāt. Thereās no analogue, because thereās never any ambiguity in the enemyās actions, and once the best defense/attack is known, it can be selected every time.
It's actually amazing timing, in a way. I very recently posted on Mastodon about an idea that is more or less EXACTLY what Arnold has described in the first quote. To save you from clicking the link, the TL;DR: All of your actions cost Vigour or Calm to perform, and target either Vigour or Calm. Your Vigour and Calm pools recharge slowly each round.
To be clear, I've never tried this. It would be a pretty substantial amount of design work, I think, since you'd need to assign everything a cost and a target, and work out all the scaling and progression and so on. It would be a lot of work! But I think it's doable.
In regards to the second quote, I see the point Arnold is making: You can't truly capture the feeling of recognizing and reacting to the enemy's attack animations in a game. That is a real-time experience that relies on your reflexes and a sharp eye. This really isn't transferable.
...OR IS IT??
I have been listening to the extremely fun Arden Vul campaign from 3d6DTL, and in the early part of that campaign they used a simultaneous initiative system that REALLY appeals to me. I stole it for use in my Fallout knock-off ttrpg All-Out Apocalypse. In a nutshell: Initiative does not determine who goes first, but instead determines who has to declare their action first. Failing initiative means you have to commit to an action before the enemy. Succeeding allows you to declare your action with the benefit of knowledge. Finally once everyone has declared their actions, the next ten seconds of of the scene plays out all at once. It works very well in the rules light system I have used in All-Out, but I can see it potentially being slower in a more mechanically dense game. In fact, I asked the campaign's DM (Jon) his thoughts on the system and he said " It killed pacing, so we ended up dropping it." However, in my experience this system does a pretty darn good job of capturing the feeling of spotting your opponent's "tells" and capitalizing on them.
So we've got two systems, both of which have been cautioned against by respected online DMs. And yet... I can't help but think that together, these two systems could result in something pretty interesting! The experience I'm imagining: You roll initiative to see if you can tell what your enemy is going to try. You succeed! You know they're going to back off and focus on recharging their stamina this turn, so you decide the opportunity is ripe for attack! But you don't want to go too hard: you know they're saving stamina for some reason, so you want to have some reserve in the tank for when they unleash it. Unless... maybe you could destroy them this turn if you spend it all on one Hail Mary attack?
I don't know if this would work. It's probably slow and full of hidden design problems I can't spot from the surface. But I think, if well developed, it could provide a pretty unique gameplay experience. I might chew on this a bit. Maybe I'll start by welding it onto my All-Out game and running a few tests. We'll see!