I have to have dice.  Or, at least some form of randomizer (cards maybe) but dice are the preference.  It's the dice that really make for an "anything can happen" feeling in the game for me where you can't be sure of a given outcome.  The notion of assigning numbers to the quality of "roleplay" and "idea" to determine results makes me squirm honestly.  It just sounds so incredibly silly...like some weird exercise in amateur thespianism.  And the notion of having to have a lot of trust in each other to make the game work?  OK...why not just use dice and eliminate all that?  


But that's just me.  I really find efforts to remove the tactical, "wargamey" aspects of rpgs pretty much lose me ftmp.  I like that stuff.  The notion of a group of adults sitting around a room doing some sort of free-form fantasy story-telling exercise is totally not what I'm looking for...

Quote from: Zevious Zoquis;857873I have to have dice.  Or, at least some form of randomizer (cards maybe) but dice are the preference.  It's the dice that really make for an "anything can happen" feeling in the game for me where you can't be sure of a given outcome.  The notion of assigning numbers to the quality of "roleplay" and "idea" to determine results makes me squirm honestly.  It just sounds so incredibly silly...like some weird exercise in amateur thespianism.  And the notion of having to have a lot of trust in each other to make the game work?  OK...why not just use dice and eliminate all that?  


But that's just me.  I really find efforts to remove the tactical, "wargamey" aspects of rpgs pretty much lose me ftmp.  I like that stuff.  The notion of a group of adults sitting around a room doing some sort of free-form fantasy story-telling exercise is totally not what I'm looking for...

Yeah, this. I think I like the idea of diceless games more than the reality. A mostly-diceless game would be preferable. There are times when I see it as okay when random events occur.

In Amber and LoGaS and LoO the highest score almost always wins. But in real life this isn't the case. It is possible for a 16 year old punk to shoot and kill a navy SEAL. A couple of weeks ago I was reading about the battle of Hastings where the English king was killed by a random arrow shot into the sky.

I get that the characters in these games are superhero class beings and thus can survive an extraordinary amount of punishment and chance events. But still, just saying that "Benedict wins every fight no matter what you plan and set up" is too harsh for me. Of course the GM could say that the player wins the fight but Benedict escapes gravely injured and will start plotting his revenge. In the end that's probably more interesting to the campaign than outright killing him.

The issue with Amber is that the novels are written in the style of 'Unreliable Narrator', but the game takes everything in both series of novels as utter fact, which throws off everything anyway.

Personally, I'd've liked Amber more if you rolled a D20 and added it to your stat of choice.  And if I had another series of GMs for it.

You need trust for any RPG. Using dice isn't going to save your game if there's no trust.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;857933You need trust for any RPG. Using dice isn't going to save your game if there's no trust.

I trust my friends to be my friends, I don't believe that any single person can be completely unbiased, though.  And frankly, when you have differing points of view, like all human beings do, I'd rather have as neutral party -the die- be the ultimate factor in a game. Otherwise, it's just silly, pointless arguments.  Which slow the game down.

I love the "war-game-y" strategy and tactics -- but those have little or nothing to do with dice. Indeed, the fetish in RPGs for dice-rolling gimcracks über alles often serves mainly to obscure the real issues.

What's by far most important is interestingly live choices between one trade off of good stuff with collateral bad stuff versus another similarly mixed bag.

Dice stand in as abstraction of the myriad factors that von Clausewitz called 'friction', the practical unknowns that interfere with the best-laid plans. Since keeping track of all that is too much work for a GM as well, and since perfect predictability gives an aura of sterile unreality, some sort of randomization is often desirable. Reasonable military plausibility might support a plan to march so many miles per day, but a 100% guarantee of precision to the hour may very often be too much.

On the other hand, the random factor need not be decisive. A player might learn, say, that reinforcements have been delayed. There is a cause for this, and that cause can be addressed if the player chooses to deploy resources to that end.

Limited information often suffices to present adequate challenge. The game Diplomacy is perfectly deterministic, but there are cases in which the informed basis for choosing one move or another is no better than chance.

Quote from: Doughdee222;857899In Amber and LoGaS and LoO the highest score almost always wins. But in real life this isn't the case. It is possible for a 16 year old punk to shoot and kill a navy SEAL.

Sure, but a 16 year old mortal boy can't shoot and kill a God.

The part you're missing about those games is that it's set up for a situation where the PCs are all Gods, demi-gods, or being with god-like levels of power.

Yeah it's more like someone throwing a rock at Superman and expecting to get lucky once and hurt him.

Quote from: RPGPundit;858282Sure, but a 16 year old mortal boy can't shoot and kill a God.

The point you're missing is that both the SEAL and the kid are human, and both have the tools to kill each other.  In Amber, for example, that means that SEAL always wins, no argument.  Now extrapolate that with a nascent Godling and a full God, and you've got the same situation.  Both are actually Gods, and both have the tools to murder/harm the other, and the Godling will always have 0 chance to win, ever.  And if the PC are that Godling(s), guess what, logic, not even the extremes, says "TPK."

Amber isn't meant by that kind of game. The statistic, the fact that someone "always wins," is meant to represent the average over thousands and thousands of results.

In competition, you might get lucky and beat someone once, but that doesn't mean you're better. Being better means winning consistently.

Amber represents that kind of approach. It's not meant to be gritty and realistic but epic.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;858294Amber isn't meant by that kind of game. The statistic, the fact that someone "always wins," is meant to represent the average over thousands and thousands of results.

In competition, you might get lucky and beat someone once, but that doesn't mean you're better. Being better means winning consistently.

Amber represents that kind of approach. It's not meant to be gritty and realistic but epic.

However, because the PC's are often not that 'epic' to begin with, and never will be, due to the horrible misreading that Mr. Wujcik did of the original stories, they will always be that 16 year old kid against the Navy SEAL.  And according to Amber means they will always lose.  No exceptions, it's the rules.  Hence why I say it needs a randomizing agent to give the PC's a chance to really be epic in deed, not just words.

I tried diceless, ruleless, full improvisation freeform. This would have been late 1980s when this was quite in vogue with people I knew. It went astonishingly badly! The craze died a quick death.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;858298However, because the PC's are often not that 'epic' to begin with, and never will be, due to the horrible misreading that Mr. Wujcik did of the original stories, they will always be that 16 year old kid against the Navy SEAL.  And according to Amber means they will always lose.  No exceptions, it's the rules.  Hence why I say it needs a randomizing agent to give the PC's a chance to really be epic in deed, not just words.

You always lose if you just march up to them and challenge them to a fair fight on their terms. If you do that you should lose. You can still stack things in your favor.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;858311You always lose if you just march up to them and challenge them to a fair fight on their terms. If you do that you should lose. You can still stack things in your favor.

The issue is that no you can't.  Not by the rules as written, and in a fight, a good combatant will always favour their strongest ability.  Always fight when it's favourable, don't fight when it's not.  And if the opponent has a higher (for example) Endurance than the PC's highest stat (we'll say Psyche for the fun of it) the opponent wins, simply because there's no chance element to swing anything in the PC's favour.  The opponent will ALWAYS use their best stat, just like a Player should.

Most Diceless (or rather non-Randomized) game systems deal in absolute results.  Yes, no, black, white, win, lose.  There's nothing you can do to swing it in the Player's favour.  And yes, it also works in the player's favour when they have the highest stat.

There's no chance of failure, and to me, that's boring.

[Edit]OK, I've ranted enough on this.  And let me just say, that you fans of non-Randomized game play can make it work, great, keep at it, and more power to you.  But for ME, I can't wrap my head around it.  It's just not fun because there's no chance of either success or failure if things are or aren't in the character's favour.  In fact, it makes certain things pointless because there's no chance of success or failure, to me.

At the end of the day, though, if y'all have fun, keep at it.

The "randomization" comes from limited information. You have to plan ways to use your best ability, but you don't know what the enemy has also planned.