Diceless

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Puppetland? There was a game, IIRC where you played people in a nightmarish asylym, and picked colored marbles from a bag. Can't remember the name.
No, that's not Puppetland. Though you now remind me that it is another diceless game that I own and have played.

Puppetland is the one in which you play classic puppets and marionettes in a rather sinster fairytale world. You are meant to always decscribe your actions in the third person, like in a children's TV programme and the adventure is meant to reset each hour of real play. It's quite unique and if I remember correctly predates much of the more experimental games that since the Forge movement kicked off.
 
It's important to make a distinction between diceless action resolution mechanisms and non random mechanisms.

There's also a weird situation, now that I think about it, where the start of a mechanism is non random, but the outcome is random. Rochambeau is one of these. Each player knows exactly what they're going to do, but the outcome is uncertain.

Based on my digging, almost all diceless mechanisms are resource-based or artsy question-based and generally involve some sort of value comparison.

I was finishing up my 2000AD homage and got a bit of inspiration for a zero randomness storytelling mechanism. Plays just as fast as you can talk. No tactical down time. Critical for good action scenes, IMO.

So how I have to toss out an entire set of rules in favor of the new set. Good times...not.
 
I was finishing up my 2000AD homage and got a bit of inspiration for a zero randomness storytelling mechanism. Plays just as fast as you can talk. No tactical down time. Critical for good action scenes, IMO.
...where's the catch:devil:?

So how I have to toss out an entire set of rules in favor of the new set. Good times...not.
Just one advice: save the old rules. Copy them and change the new copy instead.
It's never good to discard entirely so much work. If nothing else, you might decide you like the old rules better at some point...:shade:
 
You, rumble rumble and Gringnr Gringnr are mentioning marbles. Please tell me more:grin:!

It might have been marbles, for all we know...it's not like I can remember much else (I also remember that it was a game which pretended that "this is how hunter-gatherers would have played, sitting around a campfire", or something to that effect:thumbsup:).
 
There was some game set in an asylum, I saw it during the 90s, that had players pull colored marbles from a bag.

E: found it

Since one of the few things I remember about it was that it was about the hunter-gatherers, no, it's not it. So more than one game has used this concept:shock:!
 
No, that's not Puppetland. Though you now remind me that it is another diceless game that I own and have played.

Puppetland is the one in which you play classic puppets and marionettes in a rather sinster fairytale world. You are meant to always decscribe your actions in the third person, like in a children's TV programme and the adventure is meant to reset each hour of real play. It's quite unique and if I remember correctly predates much of the more experimental games that since the Forge movement kicked off.

It was part of Hogshead's "Newstyle" games, along with Baron Munchausen. I remember it was published as a flipbook with another game.

Hogshead is a company I miss.
 
It was part of Hogshead's "Newstyle" games, along with Baron Munchausen. I remember it was published as a flipbook with another game.

Hogshead is a company I miss.

Yeah. If I remember correctly it was, like you say, "newstyle" before newstyle got fashionable.
 
There is this on KS



It looks interesting to say the least.
 
...where's the catch:devil:?
I ran my ideas by one of my regulars.
The main catch is you have to be willing to give up randomness. You have to be willing to choose bad outcomes. It's still gaming, but it starts moving more in the direction of collaborative storytelling.

Think about it this way.
In most fiction and film, there are plenty of cool scenes. If you don't read spoilers and go in cold to Game of Thrones for example, you'd be crushed by some of the character writeouts. Even with the loss, they're exciting. Or anticlimactic. They run the gamut. It's not just "you reach zero hit points and die."
Did those writeouts happen because GeoRRge decided to roll the dice to see who won or lost? Doubt it. He had a plan, or thought through logical outcomes, or at least considered what he wanted to do in the future. It never about a random outcome in the moment.

In the same sense, this is why so many RPG experiences fail. Speaking personally, I can't tell you how many times the dice mechanism of a game has failed me. Whispering Vault, Feng Shui, Godlike, the list goes on. Great in theory, but every time I roll the dice, my awesome character build just fails. It's. Not. Fun.

Would it be any more or less fun if you could dictate exactly what is going to happen? Dunno, but you have to be into that; it's a different kind of game. And there have to be real rules around what's going to happen so it doesn't become a whole handwavy event. The hardest part is keeping those rules simple. I'm trying to get them down to one page. An index card would be better, but maybe I can drop it to an A5-ish size.
 
I ran my ideas by one of my regulars.
The main catch is you have to be willing to give up randomness. You have to be willing to choose bad outcomes. It's still gaming, but it starts moving more in the direction of collaborative storytelling.
...OK, then scratch that. The diceless systems I'm familiar with (Stalker, Amber, Active Exploits 2e and to a degree, Nobilis...not to mention lots and lots of freeform both offline and online) aren't "collaborative storytelling". At least not the way we played them.
Instead, they were about coming up with a plan that made the best possible use of the in-game situation and your own abilities, and managing your forces (whatever they were named) to last until you can rest and recover. Which is pretty realistic in my book, and not at all what I'd expect from storytelling - collaborative or not.
If anything, in most storytelling that is NOT an account of real events, a lot of the stuff we care about in RPGs wouldn't matter. Unless the storyteller was into it, and he thought the audience would appreciate it as well:tongue:.

Think about it this way.
In most fiction and film, there are plenty of cool scenes. If you don't read spoilers and go in cold to Game of Thrones for example, you'd be crushed by some of the character writeouts.
...I read GoT when there were no spoilers other than "it's gritty and it's bloody, visceral and even important characters die a lot".
Crushed, however, I wasn't.

Even with the loss, they're exciting. Or anticlimactic. They run the gamut. It's not just "you reach zero hit points and die."
No, it's "your Fatigue Points end, and you are now at a penalty, while the other guy is still fresh, and now he's trying to take you off-balance to finish you on the ground". Which is literally both the first single fight with Bron's participation and what happened to me tonight while rolling in a BJJ gym...well, except I survived and might have been ahead on points before we finished (depending on whether you count that last pass that happened shortly before the time elapsed:thumbsup:).

Did those writeouts happen because GeoRRge decided to roll the dice to see who won or lost? Doubt it.
While I strongly suspect it. He is a GURPS player/Referee, after all!

He had a plan, or thought through logical outcomes, or at least considered what he wanted to do in the future. It never about a random outcome in the moment.
Or he knew what the characters were planning, and was confident in his ability to tie loose ends regardless of the outcome. Since he is, you know, a published author, it would seem such confidence would be well-placed...
What you want simply isn't what RPGs are doing. Story games are, however, exactly about that - and I mean it as a recommendation.
So my conclusion would be that you'd be best served if you could talk your group into playing more narrative games, like HotB.

In the same sense, this is why so many RPG experiences fail. Speaking personally, I can't tell you how many times the dice mechanism of a game has failed me. Whispering Vault, Feng Shui, Godlike, the list goes on. Great in theory, but every time I roll the dice, my awesome character build just fails. It's. Not. Fun.
And the above is also why neither Feng Shui nor ORE have ever failed me (never played WV). Because I'm ready to accept whatever outcome is rolled, and work with whatever happened. Sure, I'm not GRRM...but I tend to manage it well enough for my groups' tastes:shade:.

Would it be any more or less fun if you could dictate exactly what is going to happen? Dunno, but you have to be into that; it's a different kind of game.
I am. I have written collaborative stories with other people where the only rule was "make it a good story". Doesn't get any more "collaborative storytelling than that".
I just don't call it an RPG, even to the extent that "normal freeform" is an RPG. It's a different mindset, and that's what makes the whole difference compared to "normal freeform".
Granted, a story game could serve for this, but honestly, I fail to see why I'd saddle myself with dice when doing that. (A Tarot deck or an I Ching reading are both vastly superior when I'm wondering what would be best next, IME).

And there have to be real rules around what's going to happen so it doesn't become a whole handwavy event. The hardest part is keeping those rules simple. I'm trying to get them down to one page. An index card would be better, but maybe I can drop it to an A5-ish size.
Sounds like you have a plan. Just stick to it!
 
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