The Dice Deck Designed Role Playing Game has a couple of interesting mechanics. To resolve an action, you roll 2d10, multiply by 10 and add the result of 1d10. If you roll a 10, you roll again, making the result somewhat open ended. You compare this score to attributes which range from 2 to 200 points.
The other interesting mechanic is the use of “culture cards”, which define the various races, and groups in the game.
Dirty 30s is a sourcebook for role playing games set in the 1930s. It has a timeline and notes on fashion, slang, prices, jazz, Natiz, Commies, the Mafia, wars, Airships, weapons, cars, ships trains, art, architecture and more.
The Dick Tracy RPG brings the classic comic book detective to life. When I was a kid, my dentist had a couple of books with Chester Gould’s complete Dick Tracy strips, and I used to look forward to going to the dentist twice a year so I could read them.
In this RPG system you create characters eight attributes, skills and advantages / disadvantages. Action is resolved with a 2d6+attribute+skill versus difficulty system. Tasks are rated according to a five point difficulty level. The system also has stats for characters such as BB Eyes, Breathless Mahoney, Flattop, and of course, Dick Tracy.
I’ve often thought that these wonderful characters would make great miniatures.
Phobos is an RPG of the “Wonders and Terrors of Technology and Magic.” There doesn’t appear to be any real background, but the system is geared toward a modern setting with magic. It uses an open-ended d20 system (in which you roll again if you score a 20).
Vaporoare is a role playing game, but as is the case with such, it’s full of ideas for skirmish type miniatures games. The author writes:
Vaporoare is a role-playing game of weird science and mad magi in Victorian-era Europe. It imagines a world where Jules Verne wrote technical manuals for ether machines instead of fiction; Mary Shelley penned the autobiography of Dr. Frankenstein, and H. P. Lovecraft didn’t know what he was getting into. It is the world described by Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Dunsany and J. R. R. Tolkien. Europe is alive with races of fiction: elves dwarves and gnomes. These people have lived together since the beginning of time, and now they face their greatest challenge: the Industrial Revolution. Magick is dying, and technology is on the rampage.