What games do you draw inspiration from?

Post title, I'm generally curious as what has influenced you guys to make certain design or stylistic choices and/or exclude certain other ones for the betterment of your own projects as a whole.


For me, it has to be the /Stress Bar/ in the tabletop game Scum and Villainy.





(Pictured, the stress bar in question.)


Now, how stress works in SAB (And it's sister game, /Blades in the Dark/.) is that it's a resource that players can use and lose to do things or avoid damage. Sometimes, the DM may offer a trade in exchange for stress. Once you max it out you gain a trauma, which could end up being good in the long haul; particularly in terms of XP gain by roleplaying that trauma out and creating conflict out of that. Pretty cool, right?

Now, there are things about this that I like and dislike. I love that this stress bar makes the players worry about something other than their health, and I love that it makes for such an engaging mechanic for players.

What I don't is that after you gain three traumas you cannot gain another and simply cannot play as that character anymore. It's another kind of death that I don't see necessary to take a players PC away for. It also makes players scared of taking any kind of risk from stress as they COULD die if they take it too far. This makes players more cautious about even gaining a trauma and so 90% of games I host with this system: nobody takes one ever out of fear. (Of course, unless it's life or death.) You also exclusively gain it via rest period/rare lucky roll, this isn't too bad but it makes certain things odd- especially when popping in on other players rest phases. And of course, this isn't everything but it's a good summery of what you can do.

So, I saw it- and it inspired me to make my own version!


Here it is in it's sexy beta version! I know, not the most functional.


Mine is based on Sanity as opposed to stress, as being in a system like mine (which is full of the horrors of the future) really takes a toll on you. Sanity can be gained back in many ways as opposed to several rarer ways and through gameplay. Enemies can inflict it directly during combat as well as you. When you take a trauma you don't just take a vague cover all- you take a condition that might even have a small stat upside as opposed to just a downside, enforcing these mechanically and even making them parts of potential builds. In addition: once you take four you are not ejected from the game, but rather broken and missing a piece of yourself. This can create lots of interactions and RP on it's own already, but finally and not least: you can heal and grow from those traumas.

One thing that urked me was you are given no chance to work past that trauma, it doesn't sit right with me that you can't grow as a person from those traumatic events. So, I made a way for PC's to recover from them and grow. It's a long road and a lot of DM/PC involvement, but it can be done with enough RP and growing your character: and that I'm happy about.