I'm starting with the basic Over the Edge system: It's simple, it's elegant, it's pure roll-and-yell fun. So of course I'm going to have to go and fuck with it.
Quick rundown of OtE for those who haven't seen the light: Characters have traits like "Elf", "FBI Agent", "Vegetarian Chef" "Obsessed with Trains", with maybe a couple sentences explaining their limits. 3 is pretty skilled, 4 is professional level, 6 is ridiculous and 10 is HOLY JESUS WHAT. PCs have one main trait rated at 4 dice, two side traits at 3, and a flaw which gives them one less die on anything the flaw would cover. Any action not covered by a trait the player has gives them 2 dice, so an unskilled, flawed action only rolls one die. Characters roll against other characters or GM-set difficulties, derp de doo, you know how it goes.
Base Over the Edge uses six-sided dice, because you're likely to have a shitload of them. I'm changing that to ten-siders, because I'm such a dork I actually own more of those. There's another reason for this, which I'll get to in a minute.
In a roaring great break with tradition, I'm going to say the 0 on the die counts as an actual zero. This means that any die pool has the same bottom, which, along with the greater number of sides-per-die, means that larger die pools aren't quite as guaranteed to destroy smaller ones - there's always a chance they'll roll a lot of zeros. Of course, they may also completely ruin you, but that's to be expected. Rolling ALL 0's is, of course, wicked bad times.
To further complicate matters (and help out low rollers), I'll add in the OtE optional rule that if all your dice coming up the maximum (in this case, 9), you can roll another die. If that comes up 9 as well, you get another die, and so on into infinity.
Okay, so far so what, it's just OtE with different dice and a few new rules only serious math-huffers care about. The big change is a bit I shamelessly stole from Don't Rest Your Head* - the highest single roll. See, when you roll your dice pool, in addition to the total of your roll, you also note the highest die. So if you've got a 6,4,2,7, you have a total of 19 and a high of 7. Whichever side in a conflict gets the highest single die gets the Edge (if they both or all have the same high, nobody gets it). What this means is that you get a little something cool above and beyond what your mere total tells you - Even if you lost the conflict. The winner often has the Edge, so they get little flourishes like knocking enemies down as they hit them, finding out a clue in addition to what they were researching, and looking demure and innocent even as they ruin someone's reputation. But if the losing side has the Edge, then the victory is not total, and you can define some way that what they wanted didn't quite go off - Or what they didn't want, did. Basically, the total determines who succeeds - the Edge, who looks good doing it.
Mechanically, this means that that you can define some little extra bit of coolness that gives you the upper hand or penalizes them. Maybe the guy is bludgeoning you into submission, but you're able to manoeuvrer him into the path of an oncoming bike. One concept I'm gnawing on like a terrier is that of letting the Edge add a penalty die to the opponent's next roll. That is, when he rolls, he rolls one extra die, and then drops the highest die of all of them. It sucks for him. But, if we let the highest die be counted towards the Edge even as it's dropped (requires a touch of mental gymnastics, but I reckon we can manage), then the penalized character has a better chance of getting the Edge for himself next turn, creating (it's hoped) a nice little bit of back-and forth. In the same way, if a character uses the Edge to boost his next roll, he gets one extra die - But his second highest die is used to determine Edge. Easy to get, hard to keep.
Here's an example using the always mechanically awkward situation of several attackers fighting the same character. Zsolt the Bear has burst into the lab that created him, and is teaching the three scientists therein that you don't put a man's brain in a bear's body unless you have his permission. Zsolt's "Goddamn Bear" trait is 4, and the science boys have no relevant trait (they could have relevant flaws, but I'd say they're in enough trouble as is). Zsolt rolls 1, 5, 5, 7 for a total of 18 and a high of 7. The scientists would have to roll their maximum to have any chance of damaging him this round, so Zsolt's almost certainly going to cause some serious carnage. However, if one of the scientists manages to roll an 8 or 9, he can put Zsolt into a position where he (the scientist) has the upper hand, such as it is, giving the bear a penalty die. He'd better take advantage while he can, though, because Zsolt's probably going to have the Edge on the round after that.
* Yeah, I know DRYH uses six-sided dice. There's a detour here involving Ron Edwards' Sorcerer and some design babble, but the upshot is that using ten-siders makes ties for the Edge slightly less likely. At the moment, I like that, because it means the Edge rule gets used more - If its disruptive to keep handing off Edge, after playtest I might go back to d6s. I could also consider using DRYH's (and Sorcerer's, for that matter) mechanic of comparing the next-highest if the highest is tied, but in the mayhem of four players all doing different crazy shit, two numbers a pop is about my limit.
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