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IDLE HANDS...

We've rolled dice for as long as we can remember. Playing our beloved games and hoping for that great roll. Sometimes fate shines upon us and sometimes it leaves us in a dark cave. The element of chance is incredibly exciting. How could we live without it? Some game developers have said you can. I'll enter one contestant. Marvel Universe Role-playing Game. I use this example because I have experience with it. In the game you start off with points to put in to your character to flesh out abilities, skills, powers, etc. Pretty standard. Once that is all done, one of your abilities will determine how much energy you have to spend each round or page. Marvel Universe Role-playing Game does not use the standard round but panels and pages like in a comic book. The goal was to give the feel of being in the comic book that you write as you play. Back to the energy pool. The Game-master explains the situation to you. Say you have arrived at an abandoned chemical factory and you are searching for clues to a villain. If you have a power or skill that would allow you to do that then this is the time for energy allocation. Let us say you have 10 energy. You have a 4 in Infra-vision and a 6 in Force Field. You can allocate your points to max out those two powers so if you find something and it triggers and attack, you will be prepared. However, you have no points in movement. Moving will not be something you can do this page. This is just a small example. It seems like it gives you a new experience with great freedom and control. The time I ran it, it seemed clunky and slow. This was years ago. I am considering giving it another chance. The questions is, what do you guys think? Is a dice-less game possible? Are we too rooted in the roll? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Sure. There have been a few RPGs that use it that are not just pure storytelling with no game.

Most I have glanced at use a point system combined with either storytelling or a more straightforward RPG style play. Actions are described and points spent to beat whatever challenge comes along.

One of the earliest I saw was one where the players had a finite amount of points to spend to get to the end of an adventure. They could chose to take damage or some other sort of failure in order to conserve those points for later and likely harder threats.

Active Exploits used a simmilar system with an added fatigue style element where the more effort you put into beating a task, the more worn out you got.

There are several others free or not. I think Nobilis is diceless?

Active Exploits and Marvel Universe seemed to me to get it backward: the point should be to make it less of an accounting exercise, not more. Amber Diceless made more sense in light of that opinion.

Active Exploits spent alot of pages saying very little. The fatigue system was neet. But the book is cluttered for something that is supposed to be easier.

I dislike the concept of diceless, because at that point it often becomes an arguing match (IN MY EXPERIENCE) because there's no unbiased arbitrator in the form of a randomizer.

Also, my personal experience with Amber was very negative, simply because the GM clearly favoured other players so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Of course you can achieve a roleplaying game structure without dice. The only difficulty in a diceless system is having a solid framework to manage player expectations, so no one feels that the behaviour and responses of the game are arbitrary. Dice are the easiest and most versatile way to do that, but they're not the only way.

And I'm not just talking about your fru-fru storygames, here. I'd like to paraphrase Erick Wujcik to say: all RPGs are diceless. Some of them intrude on that structure by having you roll a dice sometimes.

//Panjumanju

Yeah, diceless games are entirely possible. I'm playing in an online PbP Amber game now and it's going fine. True, they seem to often boil down into story telling exercises but then that just moves the emphasis to role-playing instead of dice and figure playing. Recently I bought JD's Lords of Gossamer and Shadow and it's pretty good. It's about 85% a reworking of Amber but has improvements too, in some ways I like it better than the Amber rules. Pick up a copy and see for yourself.

I commiserate with you about too much dice. I'm playing in a Pathfinder game with my local buddies and it seems like half of what goes on is dictated by the dice. My GM loves random encounter tables and the smoothness of every battle is rattled by critical hits and failures. Last night two swords were fumbled and stuck into the same tree for the duration of one battle. (And we always seem to roll more fumbles than crit hits.) It can be annoying but also surprising as a supposed "easy encounter" suddenly results in a death. Then there was the day when a random encounter was a Phase Spider which stole away two PCs which resulted in a long trek as the two attempted to get back to their home plane/world.

There is diceless system in Stalker (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/100243/STALKER--The-SciFi-Roleplaying-Game), a RPG set in the world of Strugatsky Brothers' Roadside Picnic. "Challenges" boil down to a target number that you have to exceed by idea (rated 1-5) multiplied by roleplaying (rated 1-5).

Long-time Amber Diceless GM, here.  Also, ran Lords of Olympus and Lords of Gossamer & Shadow a bit last year.

I prefer a diceless game.  I don't have anything against dice (they're fun to roll), and I don't have any sort of ideological like or dislike regarding dice mechanics.  If it works, I'm fine with it, and in my experience, diceless can and does work quite well.  I just prefer diceless because it moves the flow of the game along much faster and smoother.  Obviously, if you don't have to slow down to reach for a physical randomizer, then the action is going to move faster.

It takes some practice, through.  :)

No dice? I declare abomination! Abomination I say!

Actually, I've always wanted to try Amber but every con I've been to that's had an Amber game sadly was booked solid or during a slot I was GMing.

I am particularly interested in Lords of Olympus because of my love for Mazes & Minotaurs and the Greek myths, but my hope is to actually try diceless at a convention in the near-ish future.

I started with diceless RPGs.

Well, actually, my first game was Paranoia, but as a player so much of that was behind the GM screen that it might as well have all been GM fiat. And I was fine with that.

The hard part for diceless is giving the players a way to figure out what their actions will do. In a dice based RPG, you have numbers to quantify chances of success, that sort of thing. In a diceless one, you have to make sure you're on the same page, or a player might walk into a trap thinking it was super easy to pass through while at the same time you're thinking it's an extremely lethal one. (And not because of player incompetence, but just because you didn't clarify it enough.)

Quote from: noman;855677It takes some practice, through.  :)

And this is key, and in my experience, there are very limited people who can make it work, even with practice.

I've played and GM'd plenty of MURPG (Marvel Universe RPG) campaigns and the main problem I found over the years was the whole 'blowing your load' then being nigh on helpless for the rest of the fight/time.

A possible solution might have been to multiply the stat/action (skill or power) by spending energy, so Hercules (Strength 10)  would spend only 5 energy to match Spiderman (5 Strength) in an arm wrestling contest (5x5=25 obviously) or 6 points to push his arm over, obviously whilst quaffing a beer as Spiderman is using two hands and a foot against the table and still losing.

Or have energy recovery determined randomly with a cap of carrying energy over of 3 dice worth.

e.g. Spiderman (recovery 2D6 take best die discard other) is up against Venom (D8). Spidey is ultimately not as powerful as Venom but chances are he can hold his own because of the roll & keep thing.

Yeah I get that it no longer makes it diceless, but losing a randomiser makes fights predictable I found. Make it a resource management game instead of being completely diceless and I think it spices stuff up.

Another Marvel game, Marvel Super Hero Adventure Game, was diceless but had the randomiser (drawing cards) which made it interesting.

Still had the curse of the Marvel license though. Aside from the original game every Marvel game since (Saga, Diceless, Heroic) has lasted about a year before being dumped.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;855446I dislike the concept of diceless, because at that point it often becomes an arguing match (IN MY EXPERIENCE) because there's no unbiased arbitrator in the form of a randomizer.

I like solid rules for just that reason: I can get pretty capricious as a GM depending on my mood, my ambient pain level and how much sleep I had the night before.  The less that's dependent on me having a good day, the better.

I've run Amber Diceless for years and I think that it's a great system, but it requires the right kind of players and the right kind of GM.

(1) ADRP eliminates most "rules lawyer" stuff since the GM makes the final ruling on issues. It also tends to balance characters (i.e. less "power gaming") if it is adjudicated correctly.

(2) GM's need to learn a whole new style. My "go to" for most RPGs when I get stuck on the plotline is the random encounter, but htis doesn't work for ADRP because there aren't dice to run the encounter for you.

(3) Both the players and GM have to have a sense of trust that the other will "play fair" along the way. This may seem odd in Amber, since the "goal" is often to screw with others, but without trust for a fair game the diceless concept often fails.

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.

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.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;859800Again, 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.

Then why have even level descriptor stats then by that reasoning?

From the sounds of it. What they are describing is that you can try to outmaneuver someone with any level of skill disparity. But. The levels of those stills inform as to how likely it is to have succeeded?

IE: I have a 10. They have a 50. Im going to have to do some heavy work to match that. Whereas outplanning a 20 would not be so hard.

It's not like you can just pull any old thing out of your ass. It means you have to arrange the situation in your favor in some way for each rank above you that you want to beat.

Quote from: Simlasa;859802Over 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.

That's the sort of thing that worries me about Diceless games. I never studied martial arts, but I've had friends who did and who played games. They could describe all sorts of fancy moves they learned: "I block his X with my Y, then bring my left leg up and around and connect with his weak spot Z..." "The moves he's attempting to make is impossible because of balance and the leg muscles... blah blah blah." "In the real world Style X always defeats Style Y." "No it doesn't!" (Then we get into a long argument comparing style dick sizes.) In a descriptive game one can't compete against such stuff. It takes a very good GM to ignore such florid prose and get on with the game.

In a way it makes me think of the stuff you see in the Marvel comic books and movies. The characters and their powers often come out as a giant array of rock-paper-scissors. Character A can defeat almost anyone, unless confronted by Character Z. etc. Then you can get into those endless argument about "Can this superhero ever defeat that superhero/villain?" "He's smart, he'll find a way to neutralize this advantage..." Just saying it all comes down to comparing two broadly defined numbers seems, I dunno, not right, or cheap, just merely a good place to start.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;859811It's not like you can just pull any old thing out of your ass. It means you have to arrange the situation in your favor in some way for each rank above you that you want to beat.

That is what I was guessing.

Quote from: Doughdee222;859840In a descriptive game one can't compete against such stuff. It takes a very good GM to ignore such florid prose and get on with the game.

None of the guys in our game were drawing from actual technical knowledge of combat... more like referencing tropes from action movies and wuxia films. I think the GM was pretty good... I trust his decisions were fair... I'm just not sure I want to listen to dueling adjectives every time there is conflict... or have things happen because they fit someone's idea of dramatic narrative (non-random).

I read through most of Marvel Universe Role-playing Game and played it once at a convention. It left me feeling very underwhelmed. It took me a while to figure out why. It just felt too meta.
The "resource" management took me out of character and instead made me feel more like someone contributing to the overall story then doing what would make sense for the character. It was also annoying when you saved "energy" to defend yourself or something and you didn't get attacked.
This actually moved the game on par with some "story games" where you play characters at a far more 'meta' level -- the trade off that these have that Marvel Universe Role-playing Game didn't is that you have more overall narrative influence.
This might have worked better if you had "base" abilities that are always at a certain level, but you can push beyond your standard "strength rating" with energy. (I admit I may be miss-remembering mechanics here.)

I feel like there is a continuum of character immersion here (for myself at least).

character immersion
meta/resource management -> heavy dice and minis -> light dice -> Amber style diceless

Character immersion isn't the only kind of immersion of course. I also consider Story/narrative immersion and tactical immersion.
(For the last one, just give me a good boardgame and I'm happiest.)

I ran a game of Amber DRPG about 8 months ago, and it was great. Course it helps that I've probably read all those books like a dozen times.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;859800Which completely invalidates the point of the numbers.

What planet are you from? You seem never to have played the games we play on Earth!

The "valid point" of the numbers is to provide a context for strategy, not to reduce strategy to irrelevance. That's how it has been since before RPGs came along, and how it is in every RPG I've ever seen.