Here is a mechanic I thought up while mowing the lawn this week. It seemed fairly obvious once I started to think about it so I would be surprised if someone else didn't dream this up a couple of decades ago. I'm posting it here because I don't want to forget it and I figure someone here could tell me that someone else beat me to it.

Instead of using dice, you use a normal deck of cards. You would probably need multiple decks for larger groups. At the beginning of any encounter, you start with a 5 card hand that you can look at. When you perform an action, you play one or more cards instead of rolling dice. The cards 2-10 are face value, jack is +1, queen is +2 and king is +3. Face cards can always be played with regular cards. An Ace counts as zero but allows you to play an extra regular card. For example, a 7, a jack, an ace and a 4 can be played as 7 +1 + 4 = 12. The largest hand you could have would be 30 (3 10's and 2 aces)
Any action requires you to play one card, even if it is something that would be a free action in other games (this allows you to dump low cards). Success would be defined by the DM and playing a value well over the success score would be a bigger success ( i.e. no damage rolls). With this system, you could save up for a big score, but it is likely to make you fairly useless for a while until you accumulated a few more cards. Whether you perform an action or not, if you have less than five cards, you get to draw one card.

Ah. I had no idea it could shrink, aside from one example involving Wolverine stealing a die.

Wushu Open's rule of narrative truth where the more details you provide (up to a set dice cap) add to your dice pool. It creates very cinematic conflict (not just combat.)

Ghost/Echo and OtherKind dice, you roll two dice and you can assign them to either success or consequences. So, the player must decide when they get a mixed roll which is more important to them, succeeding and taking harm or failing safely.

Yes, these two are on opposite ends of the resolution mechanic. With Wushu you narrate and roll for effectiveness and G/E you roll for results and then narrate. I love them both.
--
TAZ

GM should be spending those dice throughout the game. It's supposed to help create an economy of PP for the players and Doom Pool for the GM

Yes, it can. The GM can use them the way players use plot points. They can also spend one to force one of your limits to activate, or just take one out of the pool to add to an enemy's roll.

That's in addition to people like Beast weakening the pool through SFX.

Well, given the GM...I can't say I'm shocked he wasn't taking actions that weakened his ability to cockblock. Still not a fan of MHR, however.

Has anyone mentioned "JAGS Dice?" It is 4d6 but 6=0, so the spread is 0-20 centered on 10, nice bell curve.

speaking of Bell curves the system I've been weighting for the past 3 years. Roll a dice pool of D12s and figure out how far from average you are. All nat 1s and 12s is a critical success. Average is a critical failure. The better you're character is the less dice they roll.

I'm not a LARPer but I was told that very mechanic was how skill checks were resolved in large group Vampire sessions. I could be wrong but it was maybe 'Mind's Eye Theater'...?