Diceless RPG systems are obviously superior and a step in the right direction

>diceless RPG systems are obviously superior and a step in the right direction
>they will never replace d&d and co because normies love chucking plastic cubes

Fuck yourself. I love weird indie RPG's, and you're just being a cunt. Acting as though your preferred playstyle is inherently superior makes you just as bad as the grogs who dismiss anything that isn't D&D.

>diceless
>good
That said,
>dice
>good

What we need is more methods of physical randomization. Things like FFG's proprietary dice and using deck of cards for randomization are great, but we need something more.

I agree, really tired of people posting bait just so people will reply to their thread.

What do you mean diceless?

>proprietary dice... are great
McFucking kill yourself. Proprietary dice are a cash grab and nothing more.

>theater of the mind play style is obviously superior and allows for greater immersion
>normies keep slapping ugly miniatures and badly drawn maps on the table

>diceless RPG systems are obviously superior and a step in the right direction

Only someone who enjoyed American education thinks that. Aka a pleb who cant count.

...

But that's false. Although it's an aspect of what they are, they do also open up entirely new mechanical possibilities that don't really work without them. You don't like them, but that doesn't mean they aren't legitimately interesting in terms of opening up new design space.

>I am a faggot hipster, please let me choke on black dick

Why the fuck would you not want to roll dice?

Because he is a brainlet and cant into math. Thats it.

How the fuck does that work.

>how can I make decisions without a tiny cube telling me what to do

I agree with regards to most things but can you really have no random element at all?
>I shoot my bow at someone
>it always hits
at what point do you decide that youre shooting too far or in too specific a manner? Are great feats simply impossible or trivial? I get that if you have good players they may no abuse this but at that point youre basically writing a story together not playing a game.

>a tiny cube telling me what to do
>Dice tell you what to do
You sound like someone who has never actually played dice-based systems.

>okay so my wizard shoots a fire ball so hot it one shots the BBEG and 2 girls start sucking me off straight away

>i bluff that i am a pigeon
>*rolls a 20*
>the guards think you are a pigeon
xDdDDDDDdD

Stop posting pictures of yourself, and actually try to justify what you said, because claiming that the dice make the decision for your character is one of the dumbest things I've read on this board, and I've read some dumb shit.

if you think 20 means always pass and 1 means critical fail you are playing the game wrong

diceless games (or to generalise further; games with no random elements) generally handle conflict in one of two ways, there's a resource used to win conflicts against other characters, turning conflicts in a case of how much resources both parties are willing to sink, or the mechanics explicitly give another player the power to add a consequence or condition to a success.

So in the latter, you can just say 'I shoot the orc through the eye with my bow' but someone else at the table is allowed to attach a negative consequence to that. In the prior, you and the orc would both decide how much of your respective pools of points were worth investing into this conflict, and whoever was willing to pay more would win.

Come on, dude. You could have at least baited the hook a little. This is just a pity (You).

>Rolling dice is math
>Management of resources with no randomness isn't
You ever even look in the direction of a diceless game, user? I have the inkling that you might be describing yourself.

why would a party member fuck you over? and if the gm is deciding how much resource he is putting into the orc wouldn't he just be fudging it behind the scenes constantly?

Like with all conflict resolution mechanics, different tools for different jobs. Diceless fits certain worlds and stories better than others. It has its pros, but so do dice-based systems. One isn't "obviously superior" to the other.

That said, I think one of the main reasons that diceless hasn't caught on is because die-rolling is an easy way to create tension as players are unsure of the outcome of a given action. It makes the story inherently unpredictable, and a lot of people enjoy those sorts of twists. Not to say you can't achieve similar effects with diceless, it just takes more work and isn't immediately apparent.

Does a card system count as diceless?

I liked the card-based Dragonlance saga shit as a kid.

Diceless, not freeform, you brainlet.

>He literally doesn't understand that probability is math.
>This is who you all share the board about games that rely on dice with.

What about a system based around previous actions, and secret points (kind of a randomizer)? A simple to nod to realism without losing a bit of unpredictability
For example, a character that swung his sword for the last several turns, and missed the enemy both times, is now both exhausted and enraged by his failures. His physical and mental states are drained and affect his future actions. GM can take this and many other narrative factors when he resolves the next action. Additionally, GM may secretly award the players with something like heroism points for good roleplay (inspiration ripoff but mre fun than just a bonus) and use these points to help the players in dire scenarios. I mean, yes, that does sound like GM has too much control now, but on the flip side, the players can focus entirely on roleplay.

>why would a party member fuck you over?
either; that player is the GM, or you've all agreed to play that system, so everyone knows and expects to be screwing you over. Also, either way, if the rules say you have to attach a consequence, not much you can do about it
>and if the gm is deciding how much resource he is putting into the orc wouldn't he just be fudging it behind the scenes constantly?
If you're using dice how do you know the GM isn't fudging behind the scenes constantly?

Children less than 10 can understand dice. You must really think op is a brainlet if you think he doesnt understand having an x/20 chance to do something.

It depends on the game, user. There are diceless games where your goal is to fuck with the other players, or to introduce complications to make the story more interesting, or something like that. Those are mostly party games, though.

The diceless games that play like most RPGs usually just have a pool of "effort" you can spend on your own actions. Once you run out you're running on fumes and can't match anyone who spends their own resource pool to beat you.

>I need little plastic things hitting the table to get my math boner going
>I-i'm not a gambling addict I swear

>You must really think op is a brainlet
I'm coming to that conclusion, yes. The guy I just replied to thought the idea of rolling dice as math was ridiculous, ad it's literally one of the most common things they teach you about in entry-level statistics and probability courses.

Probabilities are math, sure, but so is resource management, you gibbering moron.

That's the worst goalpost moving I've ever read. This thread continues to raise the bar for stupid shit.

I didn't say it wasn't math, you retarded fucker. Read it again.

>Pointing out someone else's complete ignorance of probability is moronic
Think of a better insult, you've got no ground here.

Fuck you, I'll chuck all sorts of solids both platonic and non-platonic. Diceless games, much like your waifu are a shit. A. SHIT. The only thing that is worse is the shitty snowflake dice games that FFG shits out.

I'm not going to sit here and say diceless systems are actually superior. That's honestly not even something that could be gauged. What I can say is that the reason diceless games aren't more popular is that people who have never looked into one just assume shit about them. In this thread alone we have idiots saying these games don't use math, some equating them to freeform, and some thinking you can just fudge numbers because a die isn't involved, demonstrating a total lack of design knowledge.

So I do think diceless is an unfairly treated format. I don't know how to fix that.

Your implication was pretty clear, there's no reason to backtrack now.

Whose complete ignorance is that user? Why are you just assuming the guy doesn't know his probabilities? He was just telling you the games don't stop having math in them just because you take out the probability calculations. What even made you jump to the conclusion that they were saying something only you would be so stupid to say.

At least in my one experience of diceless (card based) it felt harder to fudge.

Each player had a hand, the size of which was based on their reputation (i.e. their level), they could play cards in it based on the expected difficulty of an action. That seems less easy to game than "oh the dice moved, sorry"

>Why are you just assuming the guy doesn't know his probabilities?
Why are you assuming anything? You're not even the guy who posted it?

I just don't see that anywhere in the post, user. The guy greentexted your implication that without the dice there was no math involved. He never said probability wasn't math.

I don't get how bidding wars are inherently more fun than taking risks with chance. Compare searching and hunting for every bonus so your major big climactic roll has only a 20% chance of failure with "I put 10 points towards winning > Well I put 15 > Fuck it, you win."

Also, I feel that adding a third neutral party in the mix of DM and players makes for a more interesting story that can go in ways neither party anticipated. Lastly, I can't help but feel that diceless bidding systems put forth a much stronger tone of GM vs. players. If the GM is 100% in control of everything including the outcomes of player actions... I don't know, that just seems wrong.

God, you are dumb.

Diceless is too broad to assume all of it is bidding wars. I know of at least one diceless system that focuses on buying up degrees of success, for example.

All of diceless is always getting lumped together as if it were all the same when it's obvious that you'd get more diversity of mechanics when it's not all based on probability curves.

Diceless IS freeform.

>Nobilis is freeform
No.

Then let's just have mechanics by consensus.

I legit like the clicking and clacking of dice, though. It's a guttural pleasure.

Diceless does not mean that there are no rules or structure to conflict resolution.

A shitty example would be imagining the d20 game of your choice, except everyone takes 10 for everything. Different attacks still do different amounts of damage, you still save versus some spells and not others, etc. It isn't entirely arbitrary, it's just that there is no randomness in the outcome. Games designed to be diceless of course are designed to capitalize on this.

This is what you do already.

>they do also open up entirely new mechanical possibilities that don't really work without them
Actually this is wrong, all proprietary dice mechanics are just obfuscations, the maths is identical.

No

The universe screws you over sometimes.

If the adventure is completely decided by the players and the GM that kinda pulls any investment I have in it out.

This thread gave me cancer.

The universe can still screw you over by being the kind of universe that screws you over. There doesn't need to be a random element to cause that. Internal consistency alone can dictate when things happen in a well-developed game.

>hipster
wut, Iin all my years of playing I've seen very few groups that play with miniatures, and I have lived in places where warhammer FANTASY was a hit.

Still not simulationist enough for my tastes.

This is about as narrative as you can get.

Correct. And one constant involved is that the number of suckers born every day is never less than one.

I like theatre of the mind as well. I say that as someone who likes skirmish wargames too. If I want my tactical minis fix then I'll play one of those. I find RPGs can only be a shitty imitation of that, and are much better if they play to their unique strengths.

Randomness and simulationism aren't synonyms. In fact, randomness is to some extent incompatible with true simulationism. Diceless would be better for it if a system where threats and the like were tracked by progressively increasing numbers, rather than odds.

Our universe literally runs on random probabilities. Other macro systems (like weather) might be more predictable if we could gather enough data and had powerful enough models, but for most purposes it's treated as having a random element.

I don't know who is more retarded here.

OP who thinks systems like Amber are the best possible way to game because they think moving out of the kiddy pool that is freeform forum RP into the shallow end is somehow something that makes them better than everyone else.

Or the newfags who keep asking "How do you roleplay without dice" as if the concept of recording numbers and then having everything be predetermined during a conflict by which number is higher is somehow not so dirt simple a four year old could figure it out.

Funniest thing, diceless rpgs are pretty rare even in the indie community, unless they're oneshot I guess.

Our perception of unknown factors runs on random probabilities but interactions on atomic-and-up scale are entirely built on physical interactions and probabilities have jackshit to do with it. If we had enough information, we could predict every event in the next second. Probabilities are how we deal with not having enough information.

>recording numbers and then having everything be predetermined during a conflict
Wew, sounds super fun guy.

>If we had enough information, we could predict every event in the next second
As I already mentioned in the example with weather. I really see no point in you saying things to me that I've already said.

If you somehow got the idea that that user likes diceless RPGs then you're stupid.

What if you're playing in a world/setting where the gaps between individual's abilities are so large that rolling just doesn't make sense? Amber Diceless is clearly what I'm thinking of here, where the main cast are all essentially demigods with widely varying skillsets. You simply know that if you try to fight X in a swordfight duel, you will lose. It's not simply a small chance, it just will not happen. As was said earlier, it fits better for certain settings/stories than others.

The point is there's nothing random about how much damage a sword blow does when you know the force that's being applied. Quantum mechanics don't come into it. RPGs use dice as a balancing and as a gaming tool, not for the sake of simulation.

Than you use the gurps system where dice use a bell curve and changes the critical successes and critical failures

If it's a foregone conclusion, why even bother rolling?

Have you ever played boardgames without randomizers? Like Puerto Rico? Because in that the universe screws you with just the players, trust me.

Because nothing is truely foregone.

Besides, gurps can reach 99% chances

DnD isn't stopping you from playing your "diceless" RPGs, you fucking sperglord.

In a story, things can be foregone. Harry is never going to beat Dumbledore in a magic duel. That's not a bad thing.

>Because nothing is truely forgone
If you're playing a realistic modern campaign and the players screwed up so badly that they caused someone to fire a nuclear weapon at them, landing right on top of them, you don't roll. There's no point, you already know what the result is. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you don't make players constantly roll Balance when walking across regular flat ground, because the result (them not randomly falling over) is already known. Rolls only make sense in cases in which the result is legitimately unknown, where it could actually go either way. It is possible for there to be a game in which the player characters are never in those situations, where the result of any single action isn't in question (even if the overall outcome based on a series of actions is).

>Besides, gurps can reach 99% chances
If the point is for something to be certain, why are you rolling?

Yea and?

If dumbledore has a 99% chance and a reroll (both obtainable) he will never lose a roll ever. Heck he will almost never lose ever with just the 99%

>be well trained professional fighter
>fight with orc shitter
>you roll 1, he rolls 20
>you die

Yea and?

There is no way to survive a nuke ever.

That’s like making a person roll to eat a sandwich.

Why would you ever roll?

It's worthless to stat him with numbers, so. Which is the point the other user was making.

The entire point is that some actions are forgone, like trying to survive a nuke. My statement was in response to the claim that nothing is forgone. It sounds like you agree with me then, that some actions ARE truely forgone?

You're completely missing the point and forgetting a bunch of core assumptions you should be making. Let's look at this instead:

Harry can never beat Snape in a magic duel. Snape can never beat Dumbledore in a magic duel.

If you give Snape a 99% chance of victory and a reroll just so he can't lose to Harry, you run out of space to represent the impossibility that is beating Dumbledore.

These people disagree.

You could have them roll to find a fridge.

You could. Where you call for a conflict resolution mechanic and how exactly that mechanic operates defines the sorts of conflicts the system supports. You could totally make a game based around playing a group of characters who have been cursed or something that could be killed by the butter knife they're trying to use to spread peanutbutter on their toast. That would be a very specific game, and that utilization of conflict resolution mechanics would clearly not be appropriate for all games.

How do you figure out whether an action with a chance of failure succeeds or fails though?

>I can't handle elements of chance in outcomes
>I need everything, even fate to be under my complete control

We can do this all day user.

Instead of looking at chances of failure, look at degrees of success. "This is how much it takes to look like you succeeded, this is how much it takes to make progress towards a success, this is how much it takes to fundamentally succeed and this is how much it takes to succeed spectacularly".

There's a new podcast that I love called Pretend Friends that is the ContinueShow guys playing a new non-dice game called Space Kings. Anyone interested should check it out, it is pretty funny

They probably weren't hammering samurai swords directly beneath the nuke when it went off either.

Except you literally can't do what FFG''s Star Wars dice do with regular dice without resorting to consulting tables and slowing down the game.

Do you mean like non-dice based randomization? I like how Castle Falkenstein and Through The Breach use playing cards instead of dice.

I forget the name, but there's a horror game that uses Jenga.

Dread. Kinda meh overall.

You can buy blank dice