Quote from: Ronin;289059An interesting way to randomize things I suppose. But who the hell has a roulette wheel handy?

Yes, that may be why I've never checked it out. Mind you, I would like to have a real roulette wheel.

Quote from: droog;289063Yes, that may be why I've never checked it out. Mind you, I would like to have a real roulette wheel.

I thought there was some deal where they sold for like $100 but I may be misremembering that. I just remember that I thought a roulette wheel would not fit in my dice bag.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;289060Amber Mechanics: The Players are encouraged to compete in four Attributes using Ranks, determined by points spent during Auction.

So, there is a bidding of points that then determines ranks in Attributes? I am not sure I am following you here.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;289060For instance, Rank 1 is better than Rank 2, etc. Amber Rank (0 points spent) is better than Chaos Rank (which grants you an additional ten points to spend elsewhere, a.k.a. -10), which is better than Human Rank (a.k.a. -25).
Special circumstances and player creativity apply.

Wow, I did not follow that at all. You seem to be speaking English...

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;289060Sometimes Ranks are completely ignored and the amount of points spent determines the gap between players in terms of Attributes.

Are you talking about character creation?

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;289060The system is very subjective and the feel can change from GM to GM, based on their own ideas of what Chaos Rank and Amber Rank can accomplish in each of the Attributes.

O.k. Now this I suspect is the case with many diceless games. I have no proof but it would seem to follow that a GM would have a great deal of influence over the flow and feel of a game without randomizers.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;289060The simplicity of the system allows the Players and GMs to focus on the setting and the character interaction.

Again, I have found this to be so with the diceless games I have played.

Quote from: Nihilistic Mind;289060There is another Diceless system that I will share, but it's getting late, so maybe tomorrow, unless this thread has been moved or closed B)

Take your time.

Thanks!

Quote from: HinterWelt;289045Wow, really? I would not have guessed Marvel anything would be diceless. All I know of Marvel was some game int he 80s. I do not think it was diceless.

Do you know who produced these games?

The old Marvel game and SAGA were both by TSR.

Marvel SAGA was using the same core system as Dragonlance SAGA, only adapted for supers.

The last one, Marvel Universe, was published by Marvel but designed outside of the company by a smaller company that was weird. I can't remember the game but they disappeared afterwards. The wikipedia entry details mechanics a bit.

Quote from: HinterWelt;289045That seems more a card game but I see what you mean. Everway did not do so well in the market right?

It flopped. Everway was when WotC were enjoying the immense success of Magic: The Gathering and allowing themselves to wildly experiment. The game goes through great length to explain to total newbies how to play yet some parts are fairly abstract. They tried to push Everway in LGS by forcing them to stock it if they wanted Magic cards! It came in a huge box set with amazing production values but a new-agey vibe that turned off many, I suspect.

The Karma-Drama-Fortune concepts were really neat and well-explained, especially for the time. It is my favorite RPG of all time so I am not qualified to give an objective assessment

I don't know much about it but another diceless/randomless game is Nobilis.

And here are links to free diceless RPGs on the net:

ARC

Destiny

Divus Ex

Diceless

Dread (quickstart)

In Space

System DL

I can't recommend any of those above. (I looked at system DL years ago and don't remember it) however, those two below are interesting, if maybe too esoteric for many:

Formless

Epitome

Quote from: CavScout;289021Not according to Garry.

I have no idea who this "Garry" you speak of is, you ignorant cunt.

RPGPundit

Greg Stolze wrote a system called Token Effort which is resourced based. The uncertainy comes from the fact that if an action is contested you have a secret auction. It comes with a Futurama style setting called "In Spaaace" and its free to download here http://www.gregstolze.com/downloads.html

I played it a few times, it's not bad at all.

Quote from: HinterWelt;289056Castle Falkenstein? How does it work?

Hopefully someone else can explain how it works, Bill. I'm lousy at describing rules stuff and think it would just be a confused mess:o

QuoteOh, David, how do you put someone on ignore with ffvb? Hadn't you mentioned using that once?

kyle mentioned it actually. He will be around shortly to remind people how to use it.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;288994GrimGent should be around any minute now....

You rang?

...

Anyway, Nobilis by Rebecca Borgstrom (now Jenna Moran) runs on what essentially amounts to a roll-over system that happens to replace dice with simple resource management. There are no classes and no levels: it's actually one of the most "splatless" games I know.

(Hmm... Didn't I just do this somewhere else? I might as well cut and paste a little...)

So, let's look at the basic task resolution system in a nutshell. Each character in Nob may take up to two actions per turn: one mundane, one miraculous.

Mundane actions cover all those little things in life that anyone at all could be capable of, from walking across the street to cooking spaghetti for dinner. Everything that ordinary human beings do is by definition mundane. These are typically not worth resolving mechanically, and the GM could even arbitrarily decide by sheer fiat that they fail. And while during a particularly tense situation you can, say, dodge or fire a gun or aim a kung-fu kick at an opponent as a mundane action, that's even more likely to fail because the meat of the actual mechanics lies with...

Miraculous actions, and frankly any activity that's directly based on one of the four attributes in the game is called a miracle. Much as with any roll-over system, the GM assigns these with a difficulty level (which typically ranges between 0 and 9) which the players then try to overcome through the abilities of their characters (which are capped at 5 for the likes of the PCs), only with resource management taking the place of random chance. As long as the difficulty level of the attempted feat doesn't exceed the relevant attribute rating, it's considered simple enough to succeed effortlessly, costing nothing more than the action for the turn. If the difficulty does exceed the attribute but by no more than up to four, the action may still succeed if the difference is covered up with miracle points, of which each attribute has its own limited pool (starting at 5). If the difficulty exceeds the attribute by more than four but never by more than eight, the action is possible only by uttering a Word of Command which always costs eight MPs and inflicts on its speaker a Deadly Wound that cannot be healed through magic or medicine since the Word tears away some of the miracle-worker's own essence to fuel the effect. And if the difficulty lies beyond even that, or the character lacks sufficient MPs... it cannot be done. In this manner, the basic MP cost for any miracle will always be 0, 1, 2, 4, or 8 (plus that Deadly Wound).

If necessary, any imaginable mundane action can also be performed as miraculous instead, and miracles never fail unless they are opposed by an equal or greater force. In a straight-forward conflict between two miracles, the one with the higher level will overwhelm the other, while a tie cancels them both out. Note that no attributes are ever compared directly and the mechanics never reveal what going through some effort costs a given character. What you compare instead is the power and efficiency of individual actions as indicated by their levels. Just because someone throws a level 4 punch at you doesn't mean that the same will happen again during the next turn even if he keeps pummelling at you. All that you know is that right here and now he somehow managed to pull off such a punch, but the power for it might have come from a last desperate attempt to scare you away, a magical trinket that he's wearing, or even divine intervention by your opponent's dark master. You can only be certain of your own stats, and those let you know with perfect clarity what should be possible for you... unless something unexpected happens.

Oh, and it's also possible to sustain a single miracle indefinitely, in addition to those two actions. But during that time further MPs cannot then be spent on anything else, which limits new and spontaneous actions to what the attributes alone make simple.

For a more concrete example, running at the speed of sound can be done as a level 6 miracle of Aspect, the attribute which measures the excellence of the body and the mind, and governs all physical, mental and social actions even when exaggerated to epic proportions (from holding your own in a drinking contest at the local pub to holding your own in a drinking contest against an alien giant that's swallowing entire oceans). Aspect is, well, the general baseline stat. However, it cannot achieve anything that's not an embellished version of what ordinary human beings are capable of. Since a mortal athlete can leap over a hurdle, a Noble can hop over a mountain range; but as mortals cannot truly fly, neither can Nobles through their Aspect, even if they can hurtle across continents or even between planets by putting enough effort into it. That's merely a matter of scale.

So suppose that your Duke of Fire (let's say with Aspect 5, and as a Duke he'll have Domain 4: Fire) is dodging an assassin's assaults at that sustained supersonic speed and wishes to conjure a fireball at the enemy while maintaining the same pace. Since Lesser Creations are level 4 miracles of Domain (specifically of Fire in this case), his rank is high enough to bring an automatic success (although the opponent may still counter the flames in some fashion). Should someone with Domain 3 or lower wind up in the same situation, on the other hand, they would have to either slow down or come up with another and less exhausting tactic.

Of course, in that situation rushing towards the opposition at that velocity might in itself be a more lethal attack... unless the adversary possesses a special power to make themselves unmoveable, perhaps along with a vulnerability to fire. It all depends on the circumstances. Note that supernatural beings are also frequently protected by the Auctoritas, a personal miracle-extinguishing zone equal in strength to their Spirit attribute, which must then be pierced by spending more MPs in the form of Penetration that doesn't increase the effective level of the action itself.

Incidentally, those MPs only refresh automatically between stories; not scenes, not even sessions. However, there are a number of ways to recover them during play, although they always remain too precious for squandering away carelessly unless you know without a shadow of a doubt that you can afford to exhaust yourself. The three most common methods for gaining additional points are facing adversity (when a character's Handicaps cause actual trouble), living up to your ideals (performing something particularly noteworthy according to your Code), or ruining the lives of your rivals and enemies (stealing MPs from them through the Nettle Rite which involves destroying or corrupting something that they care about). More uncommon methods include channeling power from the godlike Imperator that you serve or eating hearts of miraculous creatures.

Now GrimGent, I don't suppose you could do the same for Castle Falkenstein ? (or link to some helpful posts....)

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;289101Now GrimGent, I don't suppose you could do the same for Castle Falkenstein ? (or link to some helpful posts....)

Sorry, the only card-based RPG I've played (excluding some of my own pet projects) is Nine Worlds.

Hmm. I neglected to mention that there are no skills as such in Nobilis. Instead, any special ability or power can be designed and bought with Character Points (think XP) as a Gift, which in practice acts like a regular miracle with a specific fixed effect. For example, even a character without any other influence over flames could have a relatively cheap "Gift of Fire-Breathing" that allows him to cough up a fireball on every turn without ever growing tired.

Hmm, I'm sure someone will come around and describe the Castle system. Reading about Nob always reminds me that I have a Sapphire & Steel -like campaign to prep.

Edit: And another diecless game Active Exploits Take2 :

http://www.pigames.net/store/default.php?cPath=21

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David R;289103reminds me that I have a Sapphire & Steel -like campaign to prep.

Regards,
David R

Sounds interesting. Are you going for the full-on gonzo stuff or just using it as inspiration?

S&S has always been one of my main sources of inspiration for Nobilis scenarios. Superhuman and somehow elemental agents investigating sinister breakdowns in reality? Yah, that's a natural fit.

Looking back, I explained Penetration a bit poorly, especially considering how significant it is in conflicts between Nobles and their peers. Here's how it works:

Each point of Penetration that you wish to put into a miracle increases its difficulty level by one without raising its effective power level. In other words, that fireball might have a miracle level 4 plus Penetration 4 for the total difficulty of 8, but it would still in all other respects be regarded as just like any other level 4 miracle, except that now it can actually hit an opponent with Spirit 4 or less. Without this Penetration, the fireball would simply fizzle out as soon as it comes within about five feet of the target. As you can see, this quickly leads to a massive MP drain just for a chance of a successful attack, rendering miraculous battles somewhat ineffective and exhausting.

Also note that you don't know the strength of anyone's Auctoritas at a glance, or even whether they have one. As usual, the mechanics don't reveal stats directly. So if the fireball with Penetration 4 is still snuffed out, it only suggests that the target's Spirit is higher than that. (Either that, or he's under some other similar protection.)

There's a diceless, randomless T-R Subsystem for StarCluster called StarKarma. It uses skill comparison plus resource (called chits) allocation. I haven't yet used it in any of my published games, and I need to fiddle with the number of chits and refresh rate. It probably should vary by game and/or group, so I need to set up guidelines rather than something rigid.

-clash

Quote from: RPGPundit;289079I have no idea who this "Garry" you speak of is, you ignorant cunt.

Did one extra letter fuck you up that bad or is this a self-defense reaction to protect your non-RPG love affair with Amber?