Roll+tags mechanics -- awesome narrative power or prone to fall apart?

Hi everyone,

I just published a post about the roll+tags mechanics I am using in my street-level super-powers and investigation hack, City of Myst:

http://cityofmyst.com/2016/02/introducing-rolltags-mechanics-that-boost-your-narrative-gameplay/

Do you agree on the benefits mentioned? What do you think might be the possible breaking points of this system? Does anyone know about other AE games or creators using a roll+tags system that I can consult with?

Sure, that can work.

The main issue with this kind of system is that it's open to interpretation and:

1) Can turn a game into a "Hey, don't I get this one, too?" kind of exercise.
2) Will generally lead to higher numbers being rolled.

AW works well in a very narrow range, and should stay there (for the way most moves are constructed, anyway).

For instance: in your example, why isn't the player also using Huge, and maybe "Extra Limbs" and "Rapid Healing"? Arguably they're both pretty helpful in a fight. (Healing sounds like a stretch, but consider that a creature that can heal really fast can safely hit a lot HARDER than a creature that doesn't want to, say, break its own arm by smashing it against a target.)

So my opinion is that you have design carefully to avoid those pitfalls.

There is a Dungeon World supplement, I think, that works the same way. "Roll 2d6: +1 if you X, +1 if you Y, +1 if you Z" or something.

It also seems really similar to aspect-only Fate variations.

So it works. You'll need to playtest to see if it's the effect you want. I find these sorts of things tend to get gonzo as people try to make the case for even tangential abilities.

Thanks Aaron and Paul for the feedback.

We've been playtesting this mechanics quite intensively in the last few months. Definitely the points you made are present, here's how I tried to handle them:

Players trying to use tangential tags
I've been able to easily control the use of tangential tags in all the games I ran with a kind of a straight forward approach that I tried to descibe in the "You as a referee" part of the MC sheets http://cityofmyst.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/City-of-Myst-MC-principles-moves-demo-version.pdf. The one time it got out of hand was when Mitosis got into a fight with a group and all his tags became relevant at once, granting him +5. I still need to work out how to handle that, if at all, because it IS where he is supposed to be the most useful.

Too big a bonus, breaking AE
The second problem, too great a bonus, is managed with:

• Statuses, which are conditions that grant a penalty to all rolls related to them.
• Weakness tags that the player or MC invoke to reduce the bonus (players get XP for that).

So all in all, it ends up being a much more loose range of numbers with more factors affecting it, but the end result almost always stays within the AE range. There is another factor that mitigates the effect:
3. The moves have nastier 7-9 effects so that even high bonuses do not save a character from taking some kind of Status.

Another suggestion
A suggestion made by the players was to set a limit of 3 tags per action (they can still get a greater bonus using positive Statuses). This way, there is not so much a rush for relevant tags, just a quick scan to see if you have 0, 1, 2, or 3 tags. On the other hand, knowing that the max is 3 can drive players to try to max it every time, only increasing the tangential tags issue.

What do you think?

Did you find any other aids for keeping tags from breaking the odds? Do you have a ceiling on tags, for example, in your current version of the game?