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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Afrodyte" data-source="post: 917783" data-attributes="member: 8713">A number of LARP games are diceless, which is probably necessary given the play environment.  Paramount amongst these are White Wolf's Mind's Eye Theater games.  Some systems are diceless because of the design goals of the game.  In a game such as <a href="http://www.geocities.com/kathanaksaya/" target="_blank">mine</a>, introducing a random element like dice could undermine the ideas that form the basis of the game.  In a game that is literally about creating stories, having fortune-based mechanics often serve to undermine that purpose.  Dice in and of themselves have no bearing on the characters' nature, background, goals, or passions.  They are simply a random element used to determine success or failure in a given situation.  This is completely opposed to what I wanted to do with the game, which was empower the players to choose how their characters' stories unfold.  Free form roleplaying using a social contract wasn't what I had in mind either because from my experience, FFRP usually lacks the tension and conflict which makes for good stories.  Part of this is due to the nature of FFRP, which more or less prohibits characters who have confilcting natures and goals to confront each other and resolve whatever issues they have.  Since there are no mechanics which player can reference, everything is more or less done by player agreement.  While this is fine when players share the same ideas and goals, there needs to be a point of reference if disagreement occurs, or at least an objective way of deciding what the outcome should be.  In short, a dice-based mechanic undermines my goals because conflict resolution is arbitrated by fortune regardless of how much of the character is invested into the situation; free form games prevent me from achieving my goals because they lack a means of creating and resolving conflict between players as well as characters.  Of course, neither of these were on my mind when I created the system for my game, but in retrospect, those are the reasons why I'd play my system for a story-based game as opposed to a more generic diced or diceless game.  My initial goal was to create a game that put maximum focus on narrative elements (character, plot, setting, theme, etc) and rewards players for creating three-dimensional characters or at least an interesting variation of an archetype.  As the protagonists of the story (as opposed to the supporting cast), creating a means of assisting this process was vital.  Hence, Story Points and the bidding system.  I've playtested it about three times in a small group (2 or 3, including myself), and it worked well even without much preparation.  I am eager to do more playtesting with a slightly larger group.</blockquote>

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