Quote from: DrewCops and robbers is a game, and I don't remember needing stat blocks for that.   ......

 However .....:



Here is the page for that one :

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/cops/


- Ed C.

Tournament scenarios used to ditch damage rolls in favor of averages.
Do this with the to hit roll, negotiate every skill use and voila!

Diceless, but still D&D.

It ain't D&D the RPG, it's D&D the collective talespinning. The dice and the rules matter a lot.

Quote from: James J SkachCan you claim to be playing D&D if you do not use any of the rules? No more so than I could be claiming to play Monopoly if I ignored the rules. In this way, they are similar.

I can claim whatever I want to, especially in a relatively consequence-free environment like this. Whether you agree with that claim or not is the issue. The point I was making is that D&D is FAR more than the ruleset employed at the table. Everyone has their own benchmark as to where the game diverges enough from the baseline to be no longer what it claims. For some it's this, for others it's everything published post 2e. There's no real objective scale to measure this kind of thing.

QuoteIs he playing something? Sure.  Is he playing a game? Well, by the definition of game he is.  Is he playing D&D? Nope.

Using my personal defintion of what the game is, then I'd classify his experience as a D&D-themed version "lets pretend." But if it suits his criteria for what a game of Dungeons & Dragons is then I don't have any problem with letting that definition stand. Also see my earlier post on abstraction and negotiation.  

QuoteIf he made the same post and replaced D&D with WoD, or even DitV, I'd be saying the same thing.

Fair enough.

Quote from: James J SkachFunny you bring up Monopoly.  Go ahead and make the same post as jrients refrenced - you're going to play Monopoly, but without the board, dice, properties, etc.  Would it still be Monopoly?

Hard question. But a fair one. I am honestly not sure. There still must be some rules otherwise it is not much of a game. Or yeah, there are games without rules, but just these proto-ones. But if somebody will resolute it to produce the outcome of Monopoly it might be Monopoly even without the board and dice.

IMHO he is creating a story with all the D&D fluff. Elves, dwarfs, longswords, Greyhawk what have you. But D&D is more than that to me. It is the rules too, be it 3.5, AD&d, AD&D 2nd, Basic, RC, or what have you. There are conflicts resolved dice. Paper, pencils, polyhedron dice these are intrinsically linked to a game of D&D to me. With out it its just writing a story. Which is fine. If thats his thing, hey go for it. Its just not D&D to me.

Great responses from everyone so far!  For me personally, I find the lack of dice damning.  I have nothing against diceless games, but if I can't roll dice then I'm not playing D&D.

However, I am tempted to sign up for this guy's game just to see what happens.

Thanx for the topic jrients, it really helps me open new questions for me.

Let's say I would be DM and pretend, that I use the D&D rules well enough, that the players would feel the same outcome as if I would actually use the rules. They would roll the dice a lot and I would describe them how the monster is wounded. Or I would pretend to roll the dice behind the screen and make up the amount of hit points they are wounded etc.

To put it simply, the outcome would be same but the method would be different. Is it D&D?

Quote from: jrientsHere's an event listing from a local con.

I could run a game like this.  I could set the game in a world of halflings and fireballs.  In my head the world could work like as close an approximation of D&D as I can muster.  But is it really Dungeons & Dragons?

It's not D&D. Not by a long shot. I'm not knocking it whatsoever.

It may be fun, it may tell a story, it may share common elements with D&D, but it is not D&D.

No dice, no rulebook, no races, classes, levels, to-hit rolls and other various things that have become associated with D&D over the years, then it's not playing D&D.

Again, it certainly may be cool, but I wouldn't consider it D&D in my estimation.

I'm honestly conflicted about this one. I could go either way, assuming he's got the setting/situations down right and assuming that the conflicts/adjudication met in play are engaging to the players in the right sort of way.

Quote from: AlnagThanx for the topic jrients, it really helps me open new questions for me.

Let's say I would be DM and pretend, that I use the D&D rules well enough, that the players would feel the same outcome as if I would actually use the rules. They would roll the dice a lot and I would describe them how the monster is wounded. Or I would pretend to roll the dice behind the screen and make up the amount of hit points they are wounded etc.

To put it simply, the outcome would be same but the method would be different. Is it D&D?

 I'm not buying that.

 Without dice involved - where is the chance of a surprising critical faulure or critical success?  The kind that makes smile or bummed out?

- Ed C.

QuoteThe GM turns the set of problems into a story.

Since I don't know what "turns into" involves precisely, I can't say. Could be like Mythic, or like James H's Formless RPG, which I wouldn't be averse to at all.

Settembrini's definition is the only one in which this could be D&D, though (it's only D&D if the D&D rules are valid and come into play in some fashion).

Thanks for posting GURPS Cops, Koltar.  I ran a campaign of that right after it came out.  It was pretty cool.

The more I read the ad...

QuoteInteraction: Role-playing with no books, no dice
Friday 7-11pm; Roleplaying; Dungeons and Dragons; 8 players; Alford, Joseph
All you really need to play Dungeons and Dragons is paper and pencil and pizza. In a pinch, you can skip the pencil and paper. No books, no dice. Each player brings a problem to the table. The GM turns the set of problems into a story. I've run this at GenCon every year since the mid-80's. Every game is different - play several times.

...the more I see why people are focused on the dice.  I didn't, and I was perplexed as to why others would.

The source of the quote does not claim D&D rules won't be used, he only implies it (no books). Nor is the claim that abilities, hit points, etc won't be used, it's only implied (no paper or pencil in a pinch) - who's to say the DM won't track it all. You could cast spells and have effects without paper and pencil and books - all from memory or the DM could have it all.

But dice...dice are the only explicit thing to which he refers that shows a clear break with D&D (of any WotC/TSR published version) - that is, the resolution through a randomizing input.

Without dice (or other randomizer), the closest you can claim is to be playing Diceless Dungeons & Dragons.  My suspicion is, solely on what's implied, is that you are playing a "version" that is much farther (further?) away form D&D than merely diceless. Beyond dice, each additional step you take away (no hit points, no abilities, no rounds, etc.) is a step away from playing D&D. Going merely on what's implied, I'd still say no.

This sure as hell isn't D&D RPG. In my book if it doesn't have a structured set of rules and some game pieces (dice, tokens, boards) it's not a game.