Good diceless RPGs

By Dice-less, I mean that the game has no randomization elements whatsoever.

I heard that this is a thing but I don't know any.

Has anyone of you played one of these dice-less RPGs and enjoyed it ?

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>I mean that the game has no randomization elements whatsoever.
sounds lame as shit

Doesn't Shadows(chronicles?) of Amber not have dice?

Yeah I've not played it myself but talked to a few folks who really dig them.
Amber Diceless is the granddaddy of them all. It's supposed to be pretty good but you really have to know the books to get the full experience.

Lords of Gossamer and Shadow is a sort of clone that strips out all the novel-specific stuff so your group doesn't have to all know Amber. It also fixes and improves a few things, I hear.

Lords of Olympus is another one, inspired by Amber Diceless, but in that one you all play Greek gods.

Consider that there's no randomization involved in playing chess, but that doesn't mean there's no strategy or excitement. On the contrary, to some folks it makes it more exciting, because you really can't luck your way to victory; instead it's more of a straight duel of minds.
For some settings and games, this is really appropriate.

>Has anyone of you played one of these dice-less RPGs and enjoyed it ?
Yeah, my buddies and I were sitting around a campfire bullshitting and making things up. It was pretty fun but I wouldn't call it an RPG, since it removed the G.

Came here to say this.

Unless you mean totally without any random elements at all, in which case you're just playing pretend.

Forgot my pic.

See >Consider that there's no randomization involved in playing chess, but that doesn't mean there's no strategy or excitement. On the contrary, to some folks it makes it more exciting, because you really can't luck your way to victory; instead it's more of a straight duel of minds.
>For some settings and games, this is really appropriate.

Ignore everyone who call deterministic RPGs boring or just "playing pretend" - as already pointed out, many of the best games are ones that do not randomize moves, which increases the amount of skill involved in playing.

Amber Diceless is a major example. Nobilis is the other biggest names - everything is based on expending points from your divine power pool. Less known is Active Exploits, in which each character is essentially a set of expendable point pools that refresh in different ways.

Also I am working on one myself, but that is not particularly useful to you. I have playtested it, and the biggest hurdle was the deeply ingrained expectation of players that taking actions involved rolling dice.

this

As little kids, many peoples' first experiences with RPGs are impromptu, improvised "DnD" with no rules and GM autocracy. Strategy is making a reasonable or clever move, assuming you have a reasonable or clever DM

>many of the best games are ones that do not randomize moves, which increases the amount of skill involved in playing.
See when you say "game" I think you mean something else. You want a TTG, this is an RPG it's about making an interesting narrative for everyone involved.

>each character is essentially a set of expendable point pools that refresh in different ways.
See I try to make my characters characters with motivations and emotions. You seem to want to defeat the GM, which is fair, but why spend the money when you could just make up your own story with characters that have their own motivations and let the players react to them.

LARPing, you want to LARP. There are probably a group or two in your area. Some resolve stuff with rock, paper, scissors, which is a game of strategy. Some involve bashing each other with blunted weapons, which I suppose has an element of randomness but is more skill based.

If you really want to go extreme, there's freeform but honestly it requires a lot of management and self-control, for you and over other users. It's more character/story driven but the thing is if you have a shit GM or userbase it all becomes power playing BS. Sometimes dice gets involved for some interactions, but it'll be rare. People also don't have to interact with you so you might also be ignored, so even if you get approved you might not even get to play. Just search up any setting and I 100% guarantee that you will find one.

>See I try to make my characters characters with motivations and emotions.
Ah yes, I forgot that random chance is required for that. Golly d&d characters especially those made to suit some particular build are just the most compelling and interesting people in all of fiction.

Multiple RPGs with devoted fanbases have already been mentioned that do not involve randomization. Whether or not a game has random aspects has nothing whatsoever to do with its narrative potential.

>You want a TTG, this is an RPG it's about making an interesting narrative for everyone involved.

You don't understand the diceless RPG.

It's exactly like a regular RPG, except that the players will know what the outcome of a hypothetical fight is going to be before it's fought. There's no uncertainty, just like in chess, you don't roll a die to see if your queen can take the pawn, it just happens.

In a similar way, character in Amber or LoGaS will not go into a fight /hoping/ to win it. They will attempt to maneuver out of a fight that they can't win, and attempt to maneuver, manipulate, and force other players into fighting losing battles. Along the way they may have to fight some losing battles of their own, but a smart player will try to choose which ones to lose so as to keep their overall strategy alive.

GURPS Pyramid put out an article where basically you assume every roll is an 11 (a rounded-up average roll on a 3d6). This shifts the focus on manipulating chance with positive modifiers, to ensuring a success (or critical success) with positive modifiers.

Neat

>Diceless rules for GURPS

God Fucking dammit is there anything Gurps hasn't done ?

OP here, LARP is too much of a bother for me to actually get invested in DMing larp games.

Costumes, Sets and all that shit. Not for me

Be a decent system?

...

your bait gets me soaking

The subject-matter is pretty childish, but Golden Sky Stories has kind of a cool system.

Instead of rolling dice, you have static stats that you improve temporarily by anteing up tokens you earn through play. There are two types of tokens: tokens from being a supernatural creature and tokens that you get from helping people. If you did a refluffing of the system you could change how you get those to whatever you wanted.

The bidding of tokens to surpass a DC is the main part. You can do secret bidding for PvP.

Microscope is my go-to for impromptu one-shots and team worldbuilding, and breaking in brand-new players. Asking that from it, it's been a 100% success rate.

But, and this is a big but, it's best played as a one-shot. Even when I'm doing larger worldbuilding projects I start each session with a fresh deck and treat it as a more focused but brand new session. There's something about it that just causes each session to lose all its momentum once its' over even if the group stays hype for the game.

As long as you don't mind a fresh start each time, though, 100% recommend from me.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen!
It's a game of grandiose tales, clever lies, and one-upmanship, with a small gambling mechanic.
And, whoever wins buys the next round of drinks for the group.

I've heard STALKER is decent, though limited entirely to the STALKER setting.

I played Active Exploits and it was garbage.

For more traditional diceless rpgs they usually involve your character having god like powers like Amber Diceless, Sufficiently Advanced, Nobilis, and Marvel Universe.

For the past year I have been GMing a Stalker game and it has been great fun. The rules are definitely not confined to the Stalker universe.

bump

>biohazardgamespublishing.com/upwind
Have fun OP.

1- There is a rpg game
2-Instead of dice rows, you have a ultra quick and fast minigame. Higher chance means gm get handcapped, less chance means you get handcapped

forgot the important part
3-If you win the minigame, you "roll" was a sucess

Have a link to the Stalker RPG by any chance? I cannot get the one in Da Archive to download.

Simple instead of randomness you have rock paper scizors.
50% to happen = 1 rock paper scizors, you have to win
75% = 2 rock paper cizors, you have to win once
25% = 2 rock paper cizors, you have to win two
87.5%= 3 rock paper scizors, if you win one you win
12.5%= 3 rock paper scizors, you must LOSE all 3 to WIN

Why not RPS with:

12.5% - Win 3/3
25% - Win 2/2
33% - Match 1/1
50% - Win 1/1
66% - Don't Match 1/1
75% - Win 1/2
87.5% - Win 1/3

It seems like the obvious basics are to play rock / paper / scissors as normal, but...
33% lose on tie
50% redo ties until somebody wins
67% win on tie

You can get fancier from there if you want, but that seems like the obvious core.

If you want to get all mind-fucky with tactics, you can have certain throws lose or win on ties...
50% - redo ties until somebody wins
56% - win on rock tie, otherwise redo
61% - win on rock or paper tie, otherwise redo
67% - win on tie

Which, of course, means...
44% - enemy wins on rock tie, otherwise redo
39% - enemy wins on rock or paper tie, otherwise redo
33% - enemy wins on tie

pdf?

I'm paranoid about my personal Mega being blasted. What's a good single-serve file share these days?

I went with sendspace.
/file/0pj83t
(and remember to buy a copy if you enjoy it, FFG put it back in print)

zippyshare is popular over on /co/. I like it well enough, but it tends to crap on me a lot during uploads, forcing me to do it over and over. So I use uploadmb.com instead, which works fine for me. On the plus side, things put there stay up a long time. Like this one, which has been up for many months now despite its reputation for quick removal:

/dw.php?id=1499467787

cool

I recommend GURPS diceless.

you're doing the lords work user

How the fuck do these even work?
You keep saying it's like chess but what does that mean?
It just sounds like hyper railroading.

If the analogy isn't working for you, maybe you should just read one and see:

mega (dot) nz

/#!0B9TzJYa!zDtS0yg_GIdhnuFOxmcLQ7Xau11ca6eG5qNlGP0CCVI

Imagine you are playing d20 (or whatever, it is just for the sake of demonstration). But instead of rolling a d20 and adding it to checks, you just Take 10 on all checks by default. That would be a diceless game. It emphasizes cleverness because if someone is more powerful than you, you cannot just throw yourself at them at have a chance of winning anyways - you stack as many circumstantial modifiers as you can and alter the situation to your favor. This is something Amber Diceless pushes very hard in its advice sections.

>it's about making an interesting narrative
A pure-strain Forge-fag. I thought they were all bred out of existence during the furry invasion surrounding 4e. I must document this in my Livejournal

>6.84MB
Veeky Forums file limit is 8

Yeah, but if enough people share illicit PDFs that would eventually put the system at risk. Publishers are actively targeting shares and troves on Veeky Forums now, and even broken-apart and obfuscated links are getting hit with DMCA take downs. Better safe than sorry, I say.

In addition to what the other guy just said, posting copyrighted PDFs is a bannable offense. The mods have to cover Veeky Forums's own ass.