The Scarcity of DRPGs

[Croaker]

Well, problem is, we're actually talking about a competent surgeon there (which, in chaosium, he is!!!).

So we've got this guy, at an emergency hospital, who takes bullets everyday out of guys, every day of the year.
Then, your wounded PC comes in. This is important, so he must roll. But, mostly, either this is an easy operation, or a difficult one. Sure, there may have complications, and he may fail. But must the dice really take so great a part?

This is the problem I have with most dice-based systems. When a competent character throws 1d100 under 40 (typical chaosium character), 2d6+3 (don't remember, but I've seen it) or 1d20+5 (D20), everything can go wild, and luck is more of a factor than skill, especially as modifiers (if they exist) are often of lesser importance.

Compare this to, for exemple, GURPS, which:
- uses 3d6, which creates a bell curve (something few games have)
- has skill going from about 6 to 18.
When you're incompetent, you may sometimes succeed, surprising everyone, yourself included, like you can fail even when very competent, but these are very little probable occurencies.
Sadly, to me, this appears to be more the minority of RPGs than the majority. And yes, I think this is the "casino" effect: When someone succeed due to extreme luck, there's this rush of adrenaline, this "I DID IT!!!" which diminish when the outcome is less random. This, IMO, is sad: dice can very well reflect all the little elements that make a performance vary in quality. Instead, they often determine success, whatever your skill.

[Nicephorus]

This is the problem I have with most dice-based systems. When a competent character throws 1d100 under 40 (typical chaosium character), 2d6+3 (don't remember, but I've seen it) or 1d20+5 (D20), everything can go wild, and luck is more of a factor than skill, especially as modifiers (if they exist) are often of lesser importance.
 

Systems vary in their randomness. With Chaosium, every gm that I've played with uses but arithmetic and geometric modifiers in the game - the rules should state this as it corrects for much. For example, "Roll under twice your skill" would be typical for tasks that aren't completely mundane but which aren't heroic. This exagerates the expertise.
 
With D20, a skill of 5 is fairly low. A highly skilled NPC would have a modifier of 10 or more. You can also take 10 instead of rolling much of the time, which is a way of formalizing not rolling something easy for the character. Standard D20 also has a pecularity that the relative size of skill, ability, and luck vary quite a bit over experience levels.  It's also one of the few games to use the flat curve of a single die.

[flyingmice]

Systems vary in their randomness. With Chaosium, every gm that I've played with uses but arithmetic and geometric modifiers in the game - the rules should state this as it corrects for much. For example, "Roll under twice your skill" would be typical for tasks that aren't completely mundane but which aren't heroic. This exagerates the expertise.
 
With D20, a skill of 5 is fairly low. A highly skilled NPC would have a modifier of 10 or more. You can also take 10 instead of rolling much of the time, which is a way of formalizing not rolling something easy for the character. Standard D20 also has a pecularity that the relative size of skill, ability, and luck vary quite a bit over experience levels.  It's also one of the few games to use the flat curve of a single die.

What we have here - you and Croaker - is a conflict of RAW and RAP. That's a separate but related issue. The RAW for most games do not explicitly state that rolls should only be made when there is greater than normal difficulty, and at least partially because of this, the range of results is absurdly wide. I also agree that the RAP for most games can easily remedy this with modifiers or with dropping most calls for rolls.

-clash

[jibbajibba]

What we have here - you and Croaker - is a conflict of RAW and RAP. That's a separate but related issue. The RAW for most games do not explicitly state that rolls should only be made when there is greater than normal difficulty, and at least partially because of this, the range of results is absurdly wide. I also agree that the RAP for most games can easily remedy this with modifiers or with dropping most calls for rolls.

-clash

I agree with the RAW/RAP split. I think your 999/1000 line was just put in to rile me up though If I played in a dice based game but the DM only asked me to roll one of my skills 1 time in a thousand I might get a bit pissed off
Also we have been looking at the competant surgeon. the 1in a 1000 rule doesn' t cover the grap surgeon who only have 35% in the skill. The low randomness skill system I suggested above could see this guy with luck and perfect conditions (say a +10 benefit) completing a 55 ranked surgical operation (say removing a bullet from the abdomen,  but you wouldn't want him taking a chunk out of your brain (although ne might be fine at stitches...) .

I agree with croakers point that a 3d6 resolution creates a bell curve and evens out error.

[arminius]

Well, it doesn't really create a bell curve. It gives you a bell-shaped distribution on the dice, but the effect on play is a product of point costs and modifiers. Basically it scales well with expectations. In BRP if you wanted the same you could probably open skills at 50% or higher, or say that any skill use not under duress automatically gets a +100% (or thereabouts).

Also we have been looking at the competant surgeon. the 1in a 1000 rule doesn' t cover the grap surgeon who only have 35% in the skill. The low randomness skill system I suggested above could see this guy with luck and perfect conditions (say a +10 benefit) completing a 55 ranked surgical operation (say removing a bullet from the abdomen, but you wouldn't want him taking a chunk out of your brain (although ne might be fine at stitches...) .

I think you need to rejigger your scale here. If you only roll when under duress/performing an extraordinary task, then even a surgeon with 35% is competent.

Anyway, I agree that many games need better scaling of skill ranks, advice on when to roll, and possibly narrower ranges of results. But those are all critiques of diced games; they don't really address the difficulties with "emulative" DRPGs. I'm guessing that in Amber the PCs are so competent that they're really only taxed when facing each other; any other cases of failure are due to extraordinary external circumstances, so a diceless approach works well for emulation. Nobilis sounds similar.

Everway is not diceless since the Fortune deck, although vague in operation, is designed to introduce a random element to the game.

[Kyle Aaron]

I don't agree that people's general performances actually vary that much. Someone who is average is generally average >90% of the time. They might put in extra effort and do better than average on some occasions, and they might have an off day and do worse once in a while, but the reasons for that are usually external and not related to chance.

I don't get the distinction between reasons being "external" and reasons being "chance". "Chance" is simply the sum of all the external issues. If I do worse at work today, it may be because I only slept four hours last night, my spouse wouldn't have sex with me, the dog left a turd on the doorstep, my computer froze up and lost half my work, I got a parking ticket, the boss is annoying me, a co-worker said something stupid, I got distracted by a chain email about how if you click on this link it sends an African child a grain of rice, or whatever.

Who wants to account for all that bullshit? We account for one or two major things, the minor things are abstracted into a dice roll. Much easier.

At work and school, performances are usually broken down into five levels. The "average" performance is usually 2 on that scale. So it goes something like Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent, Outstanding. A dozen or so different skill areas are noted - more than a dozen, and people just get marked the same in everything, because HR and managers are too lazy to care (like gamers!)

And yes, people consistently get about the same in each area from one assessment to the next. But day-to-day, they do perform better or worse than that.

We tend to look at things a bit backwards as gamers. We say, "he is rated Good, therefore his performance will usually be good." In fact, his performance is usually good, and that's why he's rated as "Good". It's a subtle distinction but it makes sense of a lot of the discussions we have about game systems: in reality, we have the performance and then rate it, in games, we rate the performance and then have it.

It makes a difference whether you have the abstraction before or after the performance.

my point is that for a given task related to a skill, people have a tendancy to either do something or not, or alternatively they have a tendancy to do something to a given standard each time.

That's true, but that's usually below the level of resolution of a game system. As a chef, for example, I may be better at doing sauces than soups, or baking cakes than baking bread. But most game systems aren't that detailed, so they'll just call it "Chef 70%" or whatever.

That's still a pretty significant range of results, though. a roll of 2d6+1 can give a result between 3 and 13. The GM might be able to interpret that result and supply reasons why someone who typically might get an 8 is now only getting a 3, but it's a pretty unlikely scenario in itself.

Yes, but the 3 only comes up 1 time in 36. I think it's fair to say that for every 36 attempts at something, distinct individual attempts, something fucks up. For example, if I have to make 36 burgers, it's basically all the same thing, in a game system we'd make it one dice roll. But if I were a temp chef and went to 36 different restaurants, it's fair to say I'd fuck up completely at one of them.

So this really is not a system issue, but a GMing issue, when does the GM asks for dice rolls. My favourite example is the Stealth check. If you wanted to get across a street with traffic, pedestrians and parked cars, going from one building to another stealthily, some GMs might call for one dice roll, others for a roll from the building doorway to the dumpster, from the dumpster to the parked car, and so on.

Make enough dice rolls, and something will fuck up. I suspect that GMs calling for an excess of dice rolls is what motivates a dislike of systems with dice. You get tired of failing all the time. But as I said, this is not really a system issue but a GMing issue.

I'm not suggesting that there are only two outcomes - land or crash

I didn't say you'd said that. I simply said that it was a common reductio ad absurdum in many discussions of game systems, and in fact is a practice by some idiot GMs.

Better or worse performances tend to result from changes in circumstance which are better emulated through modifiers to fixed skill levels than by random rolls, even if those rolls are subject to modifiers.

Certainly it's good to bring in external circumstance modifiers, if only because we're roleplaying and want to feel the game world has some depth. But you can't account for everything, as I said - so we use dice instead.

But essentially you are right, people don't want accuracy, they want a little randomness which feeds back into a somewhat unpredictable story.

Bingo.

You want to emulate without dice? Then you need to track a lot more variables, many of which are hidden from the players.

Absolutely. And this is where Cheetoism comes in, putting people first - before system, setting, etc. Because -
   "I do so-and-so," says the player.
GM looks at their notes, scribbles some calculations, looks up. "You fail."
"What? Why?"
"Well there are a lot of factors, some of which I can't tell you..."
- you get a coup de jeue, the players chuck out the GM. But if those unknown factors are simply the roll of the dice, players accept that.

Once two players were arguing and each wanted to speak first. I tried to get one to shut up so the other could speak, but both yabbered on. "That's it!" I cried, "dice-off! Whoever rolls highest gets to speak." Actually I was just joking and hoping to relieve the tension, but they looked seriously down at their dice, agreed on a d20, and rolled... and the loser shut up while the winner spoke.

Yes, it makes no sense that players will accept the arbitrary, unpredictable random roll of the dice but will not accept the arbitrary unpredictable judgment of another person. But there it is. Gamers are crazy. You can complain about it or just roll with it.

[flyingmice]

Well, it doesn't really create a bell curve. It gives you a bell-shaped distribution on the dice, but the effect on play is a product of point costs and modifiers. Basically it scales well with expectations. In BRP if you wanted the same you could probably open skills at 50% or higher, or say that any skill use not under duress automatically gets a +100% (or thereabouts).

You may note the StarCluster percentile variant opens skills at around 50%, depending on stat bonus. What a stunning coincidence! And the rule that says do not roll dice unless a normally competent individual would have trouble - another eerie coincidence! It's almost as if the incompetent idiot knew what he was trying to do... Odd that!

-clash

[kregmosier]

As an aside, having always kinda wanted to at least check out a DRPG, can any of you point out a good example?   I've heard about Amber, but i'm not sure if i'd be down with the setting.   The Marvel one just looked plain ol' fruity, and supes are a hard sell for my group.   Any others?

thanks!

[Trevelyan]

Wow Trevelyan is right again  We should form The Amber Consensus...

That is not what I was doing. Maybe that's what you thought I was doing, but you are wrong. Here is what I am saying, in a nutshell: If the GM calls for a roll, it means unquantifiable external factors are potentially interfering with the usual, expected result. The factors are balled up and abstracted into the surgeon's roll. The roll is not "Is something going to go wrong" but "When the thing which is going to go wrong goes wrong, how well does the surgeon handle it?" If there are known factors which are easily quantified, the GM is free to apply situational modifiers as required.

First up, I agree that calling for a roll every time a skill is used is both excessive and a sure fire way to get even less likely results. That said, there are two situations in which games tend to suggest rolls should be made even when ackowledging that rolls should generally be less frequent. One is when there are unquantified external factors as you suggest, but perhaps more common is the argument that you should make a roll when the result matters, i.e. when success or failure would have significantly different consequences for the game.

For rolls where the shit has hit the fan, some skills are more appropriate than others. Personally, I don't see why anything but known, extreme circumstances would significantly limit a skilled surgeon to the point where success or failure was a matter of chance (save when that chance was heavily weighted one one side), but clearly something like a running gun battle could make every shot by even an experienced gunman somewhat hit and miss, while recognising that someone without that level of experience might not even get a roll.

But for cases where the potential for failure drives the drama, I don't see that a surgeon operating under fairly standard conditions (an operating theatre with full staff) would be particularly likely to fail a routine operation simply because the patient involved was more or less important to the story than the last half a dozen NPCs who went under his knife.

Perhaps what we need is a differentiated skill system, or greater GM consideration of when a skill is actually rolled and how much a given level of competence renders a PC immune to anything less than the most extensive negative conditions.

Everway is not diceless since the Fortune deck, although vague in operation, is designed to introduce a random element to the game.

It's a random element, but the interpretation of that element is entirely subjective on the part of the GM and potentially the players. Two identical characters undertaking the same action and faced with the same card drawn form the deck could still experience different results at the hands of different GMs. In practice, the deck is just a spur for the indecisive GM, and most GMs will interpret the card to fit in with how they expect events to progress. It's not that far from playing Amber but with a card to "justify" your calls.

I don't get the distinction between reasons being "external" and reasons being "chance". "Chance" is simply the sum of all the external issues. If I do worse at work today, it may be because I only slept four hours last night, my spouse wouldn't have sex with me, the dog left a turd on the doorstep, my computer froze up and lost half my work, I got a parking ticket, the boss is annoying me, a co-worker said something stupid, I got distracted by a chain email about how if you click on this link it sends an African child a grain of rice, or whatever.

You're essentially presupposing that all, or indeed any, such factors are possible influences on the roll. In practice a given player is likely to know what his PC has been up to for much of the time. What about the PC who we know had the morning off so slept in late after pulling a supermodel the night before, was chauffeur driven to work and so on? Does he still make the same random roll? And if not, if you allow for modifiers to the roll then you're essentially recognising that the roll itself, unmodified, might produce results seriously at odds with expectation. If the roll, with bonuses, still fails then the GM, or the player, is left trying to explain how a skilled surgeon managed to botch a routine operation. Better to avoid the roll entirely under most circumstances and only roll when known events might actually reduce the chance of success, but even then the operation is still only going to have a limited range where luck plays a role, and vast swathes of guaranteed success or guaranteed failure on ether side. Dice are ultimately used to add drama, to not to reflect the unspecified vaguaries of everyday life.

We tend to look at things a bit backwards as gamers. We say, "he is rated Good, therefore his performance will usually be good." In fact, his performance is usually good, and that's why he's rated as "Good".

That is very true. It's the fact that his performance will usually be good that undermines the need to roll for and then rate any specific performance.

That's true, but that's usually below the level of resolution of a game system. As a chef, for example, I may be better at doing sauces than soups, or baking cakes than baking bread. But most game systems aren't that detailed, so they'll just call it "Chef 70%" or whatever.

Absolutely. But with "Chef 70%" you'd be expecting someone to be pretty consistently good at cooking. You might have certain specialities and certain weaknesses, but no amount of pressure, or at least nothing short of extreme pressure, is going to make someone with "Chef 70%" burn the food or foul up a routine recipe.

Really, though, the idea of rolling against a skill like that seems strange to me in the first place. "Chef 70%" doesn't really indicate that 3 meals in every 10 cooked by that chef are inedible, but rather that on a scale from "can't boil an egg" to "3 Michelin stars", this guy probably cooks to a high standard and gets a lot of repeat custom. And he'll do that pretty consistently, his ranking isn't something that should really be rolled, but rather taken into account when assessing whether his customers liked his food or not.

Yes, but the 3 only comes up 1 time in 36. I think it's fair to say that for every 36 attempts at something, distinct individual attempts, something fucks up.

I can assure you that there is nothing I do where I suffer a critical failure one in every 36 times I try it, or even 1 in every 36 times I try it under pressure. In fact, there is nothing I do at which I ever really suffer a critical failure at all, but then I don't tend to experience critical successes that much either. I fence a little in my spare time and have a good idea where I fit in the hierarchy of my local club - I wouldn't expect to have a freak defeat to one of the newer members, but nor would I ever expereince victory against one of the much better members. I can cook a few dishes ("chef 40%", maybe) but they tend to come out the same and even when I improvise with a few ingredients there isn't a notable change in quality, and being a little low on ginger isn't enough to turn a regular recipe into a kitchen meltdown. I go to work on a daily basis and do a lot of the same sorts of things on a regular basis, and I've never done them either really badly or particularly well just because I got an extra hour or two in bed the night before. That's just not what life is like.

But then I don't play RPGs to emulate life, I play them to experience something a little more adventurous, and I'm perfectly happy to exaggerate the chances of success or failure at even routine tasks in the context of a game to make the experiences more enjoyable.

For example, if I have to make 36 burgers, it's basically all the same thing, in a game system we'd make it one dice roll. But if I were a temp chef and went to 36 different restaurants, it's fair to say I'd fuck up completely at one of them.

I just don't believe that for an instant. You might do marginally better in some places than others, and if this was your first time flipping burgers then earlier attempts might be worse as you have yet to learn the skill, but for an experience burger cheff one random restaurant isn't going to suffer from a critical burger failure.

Make enough dice rolls, and something will fuck up. I suspect that GMs calling for an excess of dice rolls is what motivates a dislike of systems with dice. You get tired of failing all the time. But as I said, this is not really a system issue but a GMing issue.

I think you're probably right, except I'm personally not complaining. Well, I would be if some GM pulled that trick, but still I'm not complaining in general. I just don't think that most diced games actually emulate life. And once you've reached the point where you minimise rolling to avoid the chance of failure at routine tasks, and even tasks where the odds are not sufficient to drive a skilled individual to failure, you might as well stick to diceless. Or use the dice but accept that they aren't really modelling reality but are fun to play with anyway.

Yes, it makes no sense that players will accept the arbitrary, unpredictable random roll of the dice but will not accept the arbitrary unpredictable judgment of another person. But there it is. Gamers are crazy. You can complain about it or just roll with it.

Hell yes.

[The Yann Waters]

I'm guessing that in Amber the PCs are so competent that that they're really only taxed when facing each other; any other cases of failure are due to extraordinary external circumstances, so a diceless approach works well for emulation. Nobilis sounds similar.

Well, an appropriately high difficulty level can certainly pose a challenge even to the Nobilis and other empowered characters of the same caliber. For example, someone with Aspect 0 and no applicable Domains or Gifts would have to spend a miracle point in order to complete even a mundane task which requires specific professional expertise (that is, a task with the difficulty level 1), and they couldn't succeed in the effort after exhausting all those available MPs.

However, Nobles (as well as Imperators and Excrucians) always remain perfectly aware of precisely how difficult something would be to them and what they should be capable of unless something extraordinary intervenes, since miraculous beings operate in absolute terms and have no doubts whatsoever about their own abilities. They can ignore at will the random little inconveniences which plague the lives of common mortals: any such creature can decide to, say, walk down a busy and icy street without stumbling, blessed with immaculate balance, and then they simply won't.

And that's why Nobilis is diceless.

[flyingmice]

First up, I agree that calling for a roll every time a skill is used is both excessive and a sure fire way to get even less likely results. That said, there are two situations in which games tend to suggest rolls should be made even when ackowledging that rolls should generally be less frequent. One is when there are unquantified external factors as you suggest, but perhaps more common is the argument that you should make a roll when the result matters, i.e. when success or failure would have significantly different consequences for the game.

OK, I am focusing entirely on the use of random factors in simulation, since it was stated that randomless is better than using random factors in simulation. I dispute that entirely. In real simulations - i.e. not game-oriented, but those run in laboratories - random factors are vital in properly modeling systems, objects, and interactions. No such simulation that I know of would be even attempted without random factors.  

In this frame of reference, I could care less about non-simulation reasons for randomness. "Because the result matters" is a story consideration, and worse than useless for simulation purposes. If we drop any such consideration, and properly model the random factor, results will be far closer to reality at any given simulation granularity.

Games usually have other considerations, and properly modeling reality is never the only factor, and in fact may be pretty much a non-factor. Emulation, playability, illusion of progress, story considerations, and other factors may be rated much higher on the designer's priority list. In this case, trying to judge whether a game properly models reality may be like asking whether an orange properly models a hunter gatherer society - in neither case is the use of the thing as a model germane to how it is actually used.

-clash

[Nicephorus]

OK, I am focusing entirely on the use of random factors in simulation, since it was stated that randomless is better than using random factors in simulation. I dispute that entirely. In real simulations - i.e. not game-oriented, but those run in laboratories - random factors are vital in properly modeling systems, objects, and interactions. No such simulation that I know of would be even attempted without random factors.

Ditto. Modeling of any human activity by scientists is done with stochastic systems. Without some variability, there would never be plane crashes, car accidents, or other incidents - simulations need to be able to estimate rates of unusual events and determistic models fail at that.
 
You can kibbitz on the most accurate use of dice/randomness but total lack of randomness is not a realistic model.

[Croaker]

Systems vary in their randomness. With Chaosium, every gm that I've played with uses but arithmetic and geometric modifiers in the game - the rules should state this as it corrects for much. For example, "Roll under twice your skill" would be typical for tasks that aren't completely mundane but which aren't heroic. This exagerates the expertise.

Well, this is a house rule, not BRP's raw. And, well, in my personnal experience, most GM just make you roll under your skill. Our mileage vary, but, then, even if I agree your house rule makes perfect sense, it is still an attempt to fix a problem: The too-great importance of luck vs skill in this system

With D20, a skill of 5 is fairly low. A highly skilled NPC would have a modifier of 10 or more.

Problem, I'm talking of average characters, not high-level ones. Save for PCs and important NPCs, you don't see much characters over lvl 5, especially, say, peasants or "average surgeon".
So yes, a skill of 5 is fairly low, but, in the "common populace", it is also fairly common.

Otherwise, I agree. This is even more visible in attacks: At low levels, it's your AC that saves you from blows. At high levels (save for 4th, I don't know it), your AC is mostly useless, and it's your HP that save you. You go from a very random system to an almost deterministic one.

Also we have been looking at the competant surgeon. the 1in a 1000 rule doesn' t cover the grap surgeon who only have 35% in the skill. The low randomness skill system I suggested above could see this guy with luck and perfect conditions (say a +10 benefit) completing a 55 ranked surgical operation (say removing a bullet from the abdomen,  but you wouldn't want him taking a chunk out of your brain (although ne might be fine at stitches...) .

And it gets worse with critical successes, even worse with exploding dies.

Take, for exemple, a rolemaster (exploding dice system) character with low agility, no competence, and a lame leg.
This guy competes against a olympic-level runner (high agility and skill).
The pro rolls an average result, and performs great for a human, running swiftly towards the goal.
And then, your lame character rolls a series of die that gives him, say, +1689, greatly enhancing his speed and actually running faster that your olympic runner.

This can happen even with non-exploding dices, if the random factor is high enough.
Having a lame character run faster than usual is perfectly OK to me, and dice can simulate this, as can the expenditure of "exertion points" or other ressource. But having him run faster than an olympic runner doing okay by olympic standards is, IMO, nonsense. I'm not lame, and there's no way I will ever run at that speed (even with training).

For example, if I have to make 36 burgers, it's basically all the same thing, in a game system we'd make it one dice roll. But if I were a temp chef and went to 36 different restaurants, it's fair to say I'd fuck up completely at one of them.

Excuse me, but this shocks me. A chef would completely fuck up one out of 36 burgers??? Even I wouldn't!!!

I've done a lot of... "dinde au curry". I've fucked some slightly because I confused curry with another spice, but it wasn't fucked up. I'd say I rolled low, but that's all.

Similarly, to me, some burgers would be worse, some would be better, and the dice perfectly reflects this variation, but, in standard conditions, he wouldn't fuck up one completely, no matter how many, while, in such a system, he would, consistently. Too random

This, IMO, is comparable to the tennis player exemple: Dice should affect the quality of your performance, not utterly determine its outcome: A pro tennis player playing against me will win without breaking a sweat (say, 1d6+10 vs 1d6+1), while, versus another pro player, the "random" factor will actually matter (1d6+10 vs 1d6+9, 10 or 11).

As an aside, having always kinda wanted to at least check out a DRPG, can any of you point out a good example?   I've heard about Amber, but i'm not sure if i'd be down with the setting.   The Marvel one just looked plain ol' fruity, and supes are a hard sell for my group.   Any others?
thanks!

Well, ever if there were problems, I've constantly enjoyed the various Marvel RPG games for their innovation.
Check out the list in page 1, there are a lot of free games there.

I fence a little in my spare time and have a good idea where I fit in the hierarchy of my local club - I wouldn't expect to have a freak defeat to one of the newer members, but nor would I ever expereince victory against one of the much better members.

This makes me think of the ELO system, used to rank chess players.

In very short, when you plays agaisnt a higher ranked opponent, you gain points, more if the difference is great. If you lose against a lower ranked opponent, the reverse applies.
Not surprisingly, this gives with time a very stable ranking, where experienced players have a more-or-less fixed place, and where games are very predictible, unless, or course, the players have a similar ELO. That, IMO, where the dice should play a role.

[jibbajibba]

So at last for once we have the answer to an OP.

There aren't many emulative DRPGs because a lot of people like to use dice to simulate events as its easier and more fun than trying to compute every little variable.

Diceless systems work well when the protagonists are generally judged in relation to each other and to similar exceptional beings as opposed to being judged agains the environment or other mundane challenges. In these games drama is driven by player interactions and 'narrative' and not by overcoming a series of obstacles through a mix of skill tactics and luck

[flyingmice]

So at last for once we have the answer to an OP.

There aren't many emulative DRPGs because a lot of people like to use dice to simulate events as its easier and more fun than trying to compute every little variable.

Diceless systems work well when the protagonists are generally judged in relation to each other and to similar exceptional beings as opposed to being judged agains the environment or other mundane challenges. In these games drama is driven by player interactions and 'narrative' and not by overcoming a series of obstacles through a mix of skill tactics and luck

Pretty much. I'll sign on to this.

-clash