Diceless Systems

[haiiro]

I've played my share of Amber, and loved every minute of it.

It definitely helps that Amber has a cool setting, strong characters and some nifty mechanics (particularly the attribute auction) -- as well as a great "primer" (the 10 Amber books, almost required reading IMO) and a fanbase that is generally very serious about playing and playing well.

A friend and I created a streamlined diceless system in high school, so I've played and run a bit of that as well.

Overall: my experiences with diceless gaming have been very positive.

 

[PA]

Amber DRPG

Some of my best games as a player, I owe to Amber DRPG. I do agree that it is not for everyone, though. Notably, you need a GM with enough authority... and one you can trust.

 

[Mercule]

*sigh*

I've had Amber on my shelf for years, unplayed. The groups I game with have always tended to be resistant to changing systems. Going diceless is too much of a stretch, I guess.

Heh. I owned Vampire for three or four years (I love vampires, so it was a required purchase) before I convinced a group to play it. That group only played it because 1) everyone had decided to dump 2E D&D for various reasons and 2) the other GM was having (college) grade-related burnout. Even then, it took three weeks of pressure from me and a flat statement that I wasn't GMing _anything_ until we played Vampire.

Funny thing is, after that, it was 5 years before they'd try anything else (except Hero, which was usually short-lived).

 

[Wayside]

You could chose when to use your most powerful cards and when to just let a "roll" fall by the Wayside.

Thaumaturge.

Should I take that personally?

Yeah, SAGA was an odd system. We only used it twice before going back to AD&D, and the concensus in general seems to be that it wasn't that great.

I've been meaning to try Amber, and Nobilis, which I didn't even realize was diceless. Thanks for the tip Assenpfeffer.

 

[Arravis]

I just want to hear about the erotic possabilities of diceless role-playing...

 

[RigaMortus2]

I had a friend trying to design a system around using playing cards (a 52 card deck). The players and the DM would flip over cards from their deck, add the appropriate skill points to it from the character sheet, and get the result.

The system was quick, but also quite bland. Then again, it would have been considered in it's "alpha" testing stage at that point. Ultimately he abandoned the idea, but I thought it might have had some potential if he worked on it some more.

 

[Mercule]

Something I've noticed is that there are two different categories of "diceless" games.

Games that use other randomizers (cards, etc.) are technically diceless, but it always annoys me to see the term applied to them. Games in this category are no more diceless than D20 is. After all, my group all have Palms with randomizer apps on them. No dice needed. OD&D used cardboard chits (which are, basically, really small cards), so it's "diceless", too.

True diceless games are like Amber that doesn't have any formal randomizers. No cards, no spinners, nothing.

There's also a middle category of games that do things like dealing the player some cards to start the game, but the player always chooses which card to play. I've never played it, but my understanding is that Castle Falkenstein fell into this category. These "semi-diceless" games try to take the better features of both.

Sorry, I guess that was something of a rant.

 

[Malin Genie]

Thanks for the replies, everyone - I may pry Morbidity's dice from her cold, dead fingers and take the group diceless when I next get to DM...

Here you go, Arravis

 

[Orias]

I'm more concerned with pantless role playing systems.

 

[Kesh]

I rather like the Mind's Eye Theater system used for the live-action White Wolf games (Vampire, Werewolf, etc.). It uses a combination of Rock-Paper-Scissors and a challenge system that seems to work really well.