BREAK!! is this upcoming anime-inspired RPG with a ton of OSR pedigree. You can just feel that it drank deeply from the G+ days, and I found some pretty unique ideas in there stood out to me.
No spell lists! - This is a gutsy one, because the magic isn't open-ended like in the White Hack and others like it. Instead, every class has a couple feats, sorta like the foci from WWN. You start with a couple (3) and gain another of your choice on levels 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. The magic of the magic-user class (the Sage) comes from these feats.
In fact, your 3 starting abilities are: the Grand Grimoire, which allows the Sage to get clues from the DM as well as magically sketch stuff by describing it to the book and things like that; Sage's Staff, which allows you to push people and create light; and Prestidigitonium, which allows the Sage to animate an object (like enchanting a locked door to open or a medical kit to do surgery).
This also means that the Sage class operates under the exact same paradigms as every other class, they're all equally complex.
Mixing homeland with past profession - I'll oversimplify for the sake of brevity, but basically your Secondary Profession is tied to your Homeland. These give you 3 Purviews (which work exactly like the Secondary Profession), but they're more specific.
I quite like this, but this also necessitates a setting. For instance, for you to be a Knight Errant you need to come from the part of the world that has them, and they have certain unique skills (in thie example: Forthright communication; Knowledge of vanquished evils; Finding your courage). No one else has these skills, so it really paints a very specific aspect of each region of the world.
Another region might have, instead, "Holy Isle Samurai" with the purviews: Maintaining proper etiquette; Judging merit in another; Respecting ritual and tradition. So both characters can be fighters with a noble background, but the skill they have is different - it's almost like they have the same Secondary Profession but the cultural context changes its application.
The Allegiance mechanic - This one is very small but I enjoy it.
Remember how the "spells" are instead feats specific to certain classes? Some of these spells can also give you 'Dark' or 'Bright' allegiance points. Whenever you gain 3 of them, you gain a "gift", which is a change in your character's appearance.
Like, if you gain too many Dark points, you might earn horns, fangs, or a devil's tail; if you gain too many Bright points, you may find yourself with a halo, feathers, and prismatic hair.
These are mostly aesthetic, but I think it's cool! It lends a lot of personality.
Combat Zones - These aren't new in the broader RPG world, but I haven't seen many games in the OSR using them.
For those unfamiliar with it, instead of using a grid or pure theater of mind, you draw a couple "areas". Say, the east bank of the bog, the stepping stones that cross it, the bog itself, and the west bank of the bog. Melee attacks can be made to those in the same zone as you; ranged can be made to enemies in other zones. You have a Speed rating and can move as many zones as your speed. Areas can have specific conditions - those stepping stones might require a DEX check to not fall down when you cross them, the bog might damage you per turn, etc.
The rest of the fights remind me a lot of the GLOG actually, because you have a certain number of easily recoverable HP and once you drop to 0 you start earning injuries and fatal stuff that is harder to recover - exactly like the dismemberment tables from Goblin Punch, but these are ranked by how many times you roll.
The first roll has chill results - the worst that can happen is getting knocked out. The second roll is more desperate, the worst possible outcome is a fatal blow. And the third roll is the worst one yet, the worst possible outcome is getting completely mangled and your body turning to minced meat.
This zone business reminds me of... actually, let's make this its own point.
Colossal Combat - This is what motivated me to make this post.
So, to expand on speed: characters can be Slow, Average, Fast, or Very Fast. Slow characters can't move out of their zone; Average characters can go to a nearby zone; Fast or V. Fast characters can move up to 2 zones.
When you're fighting a huge critter, you separate its body into combat zones. Let's say you're fighting an elephant-like monster with a big tail, the zones would be: legs, torso, tail, tusk, and head. Each zone has some HP, and you attack them piecemeal. If you're fighting melee, you need to use your movement to climb the damn thing up to the zone you want to attack... but if you're fast enough, you can just JUMP at the thing's head!
Every colossus has a Core Point which kills the monster when it's destroyed, like the inverted scale on a dragon's neck if you're a Delicious in Dungeon fan, but the players usually either can't access it, may need to destroy other zones to get to it, or may need to open themselves to being targeted by an attack to hit it.
The colossus isn't defenceless either, it can make an attack that hits everyone in a certain zone - like swatting its tail relentlessly or stomping the ground and stampeding.
There's a table that says how much HP a monster has, colossi basically count as 1 monster with a bunch of different health bars. Your normal rank 7 monster has 5 HP; a colossus would have that in each of its body parts plus the core.
The combat uses auto-hit too, like Cairn et al, so it feels pretty modern.
Social Bonds - A teensy tiny mechanic.
The characters can take a week off as a Downtime Turn, where they can make different activities like healing from an injury, crafting, recruiting hirelings, etc.
One of these activities is "Socialising", where you gain +1 HP total until your next downtime (characters have much less HP, think Cairn). When you do that, or any time the players and the DM find appropriate, you can create a Social Bond. You choose the nature of it (friendly, romantic, professional, competitive, you name it) and you can +2 on all rolls where your bond provides extra motivation. Some abilities even require a Bond between the characters to work.
As I said, it's not much, but I like it, it gives personality. It's these little things that can make for a pretty memorable game.
So yeah, these were the mechanics I wanted to talk about. It's not a perfect game by any means, but I don't feel like lingering on the flaws because it has a lot of heart. You can really tell people put a lot into this. To me it feels like a lighter Errant, because it has quite a few simple "procedures", but they're very context-specific, unlike Errant which is more scattershot and toolboxy.
I can already tell I'll be stealing the colossus fighting thing lol though it does seem like it would only really work with the auto-hit thing and the small HP numbers.
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