Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;858353The "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.

So it's like 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'?

My daughter used to be an avid reader of the Warriors series of books (about clans of wild cats fighting it out) and there's a free PDF of a diceless roleplaying game up on their site, which is nice and simple.

http://www.warriorcats.com/games/adventure/data/downloads/adventure/WarriorsGame_gamerules.pdf

In short, you get a number of chips to spend for each attribute. Then when you want to accomplish something, you spend chips. Other players can also help.

It makes it kind of a resource management game.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;858353The "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.

No, actually you do know.  They will use their best abilities, because that's what you should be doing.  That's it.  And if it's higher than yours, you lose.  And if it's lower than your best ability, they lose.  Because if they don't use the best they got, they're dead.  And no one goes into a fight hoping to die, except the suicidal.

It's Binary.  Yes, No.  Win, Lose.  No chance for, well, chance.  Planning doesn't change any of it, because the higher stat implies they've already thought of a way to counter it, by using their higher stat.  It's a bigger number for a reason.

If Amber had some sort of perhaps resource management or something, it might work out better, but as I read it, I can't do it.  It's just too one sided, and rarely on the players side.

What I don't get is that there's no real risk, not challenge, not even the stacking of advantages to change the outcome, simply because there's nothing left to chance.

Quote from: Simlasa;858357So it's like 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'?

Quote from: Christopher Brady;858575No, actually you do know.  They will use their best abilities, because that's what you should be doing.  That's it.  And if it's higher than yours, you lose.  And if it's lower than your best ability, they lose.  Because if they don't use the best they got, they're dead.  And no one goes into a fight hoping to die, except the suicidal.

It's Binary.  Yes, No.  Win, Lose.  No chance for, well, chance.  Planning doesn't change any of it, because the higher stat implies they've already thought of a way to counter it, by using their higher stat.  It's a bigger number for a reason.

If Amber had some sort of perhaps resource management or something, it might work out better, but as I read it, I can't do it.  It's just too one sided, and rarely on the players side.

What I don't get is that there's no real risk, not challenge, not even the stacking of advantages to change the outcome, simply because there's nothing left to chance.

Amber isn't the kind of game where the mechanics play for you. It's all 100% you.

For an example, suppose you're planning a casino heist. Success doesn't so much depend on certain skills but whether you game out the scenario sufficiently well. But then halfway into the heist, you find out something you didn't predict happened, something you aren't as well prepared to face. Well now there's uncertainty. And there was uncertainty when you were planning as well, just like there's uncertainty when you roll the dice.

I think the Amber Diceless text itself makes quite plain that
(a)  different situations can indeed make a difference in who wins; all else being unequal, make your own 'luck' by playing dirtty
and
(b)  the player may not know the outcome until it manifests.

As in Wizards or Indiana Jones, pulling a gun might work if it's not expected.

Tunnels & Trolls veers widely from no chance -- since 1979, basically the only way a figure (especially a Warrior) in even light armor gets hurt in standard melee -- to decisive chance (a high-stat marksman being "save or die" for that same Warrior).

In old D&D, a fair part of the game is strategies that obviate risky dice tosses.

Quote from: Phillip;858660I think the Amber Diceless text itself makes quite plain that
(a)  different situations can indeed make a difference in who wins; all else being unequal, make your own 'luck' by playing dirtty
and
(b)  the player may not know the outcome until it manifests.

But then that invalidates the point of the stats.  The reason they're high is because the person owning them have already thought and countered those very same tricks.

Depending on the stat, if it's higher, they can out think, out plan, out cunning or simply out last any stunt or trick, simply by choosing their best stat, again, assuming it's higher.  There's nothing the opponent can do to counter, because the higher stat should win.  If it doesn't then it means that the stats aren't even accurate.

So which is it?  Do the numbers mean anything or not?

Quote from: Simlasa;858357So it's like 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'?

Or Chess or the old Yaquinto game Battle, or Battleship or Stratego. Or like the miniatures games from which D&D spun off, in which dice rolls are part of it but maneuvers count for more.

Getting down to the sub-tactical level, it can indeed be done in rock-paper-scissors fashion as with jousting in Chainmail or fencing in En Garde.

With shooting, it's not so easy to identify 'moves'. Marksmanship is mainly a matter of trained intuition that doesn't translate into words. We can use the player's own eye and hand (as with the toy cannon in H.G. Wells's Little Wars), but that makes for a different kind of game. The player's skill of course may be superior or inferior to an imagined character's.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;858664But then that invalidates the point of the stats.  The reason they're high is because the person owning them have already thought and countered those very same tricks.

Depending on the stat, if it's higher, they can out think, out plan, out cunning or simply out last any stunt or trick, simply by choosing their best stat, again, assuming it's higher.  There's nothing the opponent can do to counter, because the higher stat should win.  If it doesn't then it means that the stats aren't even accurate.

So which is it?  Do the numbers mean anything or not?

They mean SOMETHING, but not EVERYTHING. They mean that all else being equal, you don't stand a chance; so your chance is to make sure all else you can is unequal in your favor.

"I want to show you a trick mother showed me when you weren't around, to use on special occasions like this. ..."

We make choices important because the choices are what interest us. They're where the game is, and where the drama is.

Ideally, if we're going diceless then the minor actions should not even need to be questions of success or failure. However they interact with opposing forces, the consequences should be interesting (and uncertain without complete knowledge in advance of every element). Even the final choice in a conflict should be between tough trade-offs, a live choice rather than a no-brainer non-choice.

As I have already observed, this doesn't work very well for shooting when we're concerned with discrete shots and the fates of individual figures. If we're going to make it a "one false move and you're down" setup, then we should have a bigger picture of consequences, a context for pulling the trigger.

In any case, it sure as hell makes a difference what you bring to a gun fight! A main battle tank is close enough to invulnerable to small arms, but proper munitions can tip that scale the other way.

There's a bomb you'll see if you look in a bag, and won't if you don't. If you see it, or if it explodes, there's a new situation presenting the fundamental question in role-playing:

"What will you do now?"

And that's what it's all about.

The title of The Guns of Avalon refers to Corwin's introduction of an element his opponent did not expect ever to encounter on that battlefield.

It's notable, though, that the Princes of Amber tend not to shoot at each other but rather to fence, whether with blades or words.

Likewise, it's for good reason that the "sword & sorcery" genre features swordsmen rather than gunmen. The personal interaction is more interesting than death or dismemberment from chance bullets.

Quote from: Phillip;858882The title of The Guns of Avalon refers to Corwin's introduction of an element his opponent did not expect ever to encounter on that battlefield.

It's notable, though, that the Princes of Amber tend not to shoot at each other but rather to fence, whether with blades or words.

Likewise, it's for good reason that the "sword & sorcery" genre features swordsmen rather than gunmen. The personal interaction is more interesting than death or dismemberment from chance bullets.

The problem is that it's also written in the unreliable narrator voice, so using it as a 'reference' is inaccurate at best, and completely invalidates the stats in the game, because we cannot trust the sources of the information.

Uh, whatever. You're on a track running perhaps parallel, but not in meaningful conversation.

Quote from: quozl;858511My daughter used to be an avid reader of the Warriors series of books (about clans of wild cats fighting it out) and there's a free PDF of a diceless roleplaying game up on their site, which is nice and simple.

http://www.warriorcats.com/games/adventure/data/downloads/adventure/WarriorsGame_gamerules.pdf

In short, you get a number of chips to spend for each attribute. Then when you want to accomplish something, you spend chips. Other players can also help.

It makes it kind of a resource management game.

Hey, welcome to theRPGsite!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;858575No, actually you do know.  They will use their best abilities, because that's what you should be doing.  That's it.  And if it's higher than yours, you lose.  And if it's lower than your best ability, they lose.  Because if they don't use the best they got, they're dead.  And no one goes into a fight hoping to die, except the suicidal.

It's Binary.  Yes, No.  Win, Lose.  No chance for, well, chance.  Planning doesn't change any of it, because the higher stat implies they've already thought of a way to counter it, by using their higher stat.  It's a bigger number for a reason.

If Amber had some sort of perhaps resource management or something, it might work out better, but as I read it, I can't do it.  It's just too one sided, and rarely on the players side.

What I don't get is that there's no real risk, not challenge, not even the stacking of advantages to change the outcome, simply because there's nothing left to chance.

This just isn't true. There's all kinds of conditions and ways in which ranks can shift and someone who is theoretically better than you at something can be beaten if you are smart about it.

In Amber, a lot of this was explained more in the examples than in the rules.  One of the things I did in Lords of Olympus was put it more into the rules themselves; if you were to check it out you'd see that there are all kinds of things that can affect the game.  And the way gameplay goes, the players are never talking about things mechanically, they're dealing with things descriptively.  This makes combats particularly awesome, because it's all about what moves you make, how you try to shift the field, how you use the environment around you, how you judge your opponent, etc.

Quote from: RPGPundit;859798This just isn't true. There's all kinds of conditions and ways in which ranks can shift and someone who is theoretically better than you at something can be beaten if you are smart about it.

Which completely invalidates the point of the numbers.  If they can change so easily, and wildly, and frankly, having a high number means nothing if players can just think up of a 'reason' as to why they should win, what's the point of the whole bidding for stats?

Quote from: RPGPundit;859798In Amber, a lot of this was explained more in the examples than in the rules.  One of the things I did in Lords of Olympus was put it more into the rules themselves; if you were to check it out you'd see that there are all kinds of things that can affect the game.  And the way gameplay goes, the players are never talking about things mechanically, they're dealing with things descriptively.  This makes combats particularly awesome, because it's all about what moves you make, how you try to shift the field, how you use the environment around you, how you judge your opponent, etc.

Again, then what's the point of the 'numbers'?  Why not just do what Fudge/FATE does and give a word ranking, Legendary, Great, Good, Mediocre, Fair, Terrible or whatever, and leave it at that.  By using numbers, you're adding a level of detail and precision that frankly, from what I'm being told, is pointless.

It won't matter if someone has a 32 or 132 in a stat and the opponent has a 31 or 1 in whatever stat that's being used to counter, if they can push little levers around to get an advantage to the point of winning.

And again, gaming a system to get a win removes all elements of risk.  Some people want the two Gods in question to work out like the 16 year old with a gun vs. a Navy SEAL (and I mean both opponents being the same 'species' level, so human vs. human or Godling vs. Godling), in which the SEAL has a great chance of winning, but there's that edge of do you really want to see if this kid will be the lucky one this time?  Diceless, or rather non-randomized systems, take that edge out.  It makes it rather boring to me.

Over the weekend I got the chance to play in a game of Stalker... based on the Russian scifi story Roadside Picnic. It's a diceless game, I think the first of that type I'd ever played. Conflicts seemed to be decided by the GM based on a combination of PC attributes, GM narrative-judgement and how well the Player describes/roleplays the action.
All in all though I can't say the end result was any more or less satisfying then if we'd used dice/cards/jenga. All but one of the PCs died... two in PVP... and I've got no gripes.
The only thing I didn't care for was that descriptions by Players effected results of actions... this led to some Players going full-thespian and got pretty silly in a PVP situation where two of them were attempting to outdo each other with florid descriptions. At that point I really wished they'd just roll some dice and be done with it.