Champions Diceless Role-playing

[Haven Walkur]

Diceless roleplaying games can be an astonishingly rich and satisfying experience for both players and GMs. Probably the best-known commercial diceless game is Amber Diceless Role-playing*, based on the writings of Roger Zelazny. I've never played a game that equalled our old Amber games for excitement and narrative sweep -- and Dr. Anomaly was at the pinnacle of his performance as an Amber GM.

 

SO what I'm wondering is:

 

1) Could Champions be converted to a diceless RPG modeled on the Amber system,

 

AND

 

2) how would you do it? What would the basic Attributes be, how many would you use and how would you deal with superpowers in terms of Powers?

 

*If you'd like more info on the Amber diceless system, please PM me

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I don't know about Amber, but I once read an article that just stripped all the die rolling out of HERO using charts.

 

If your OCV was high enough, you not only hit, but did more damage. If it was low enough, you got a glancing hit. Too low, and you miss.

 

Never tried it though. Maybe I should have...

 

Anyone know where to find it?

[MisterBaldy]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I don't know about Amber, but I once read an article that just stripped all the die rolling out of HERO using charts.

 

If your OCV was high enough, you not only hit, but did more damage. If it was low enough, you got a glancing hit. Too low, and you miss.

 

Never tried it though. Maybe I should have...

 

Anyone know where to find it?

Although I am not familiar with AMBER, the major problem with a dicelees system is the inevitable gravitation toward PC Stat Min/Maxing.

[Zed-F]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

And we don't have min-maxing in Hero already?

 

I actually liked Theatrix better than Amber, but that's mainly because I hate the political backstabbing and PC-vs-PC dynamic that's built directly into the Amber character advancement system. Bleh. While it's fine to read about it in Amber, I certainly don't want to play that sort of game.

 

Basically Theatrix was all about describing your characters at start of play, and then storytelling during play. Each character had a given set of stats that described what they were good at and how good they were at it, and in play would tend to succeed at things they would normally be capable of succeeding at according to their character descriptions. If you wanted to try something extra-special, there were mechanisms to handle that as well. But ultimately how combat went was pretty much explicitly up to the GM; there's no simulation involved, it's pure narration.

 

For Hero, I'd be tempted to just build characters as normal -- we already have a fairly good descriptive language for noting our characters' strengths and weaknesses. What happens from that point on depends on how the storytelling goes. The players can describe their actions and the GM can assign results based on what they describe and on what's dramatically appropriate. Combat becomes more of a puzzle to solve and less of a simulation -- you probably won't have an exact idea of how your character rates relative to the bad guy or how much Stun you have left, but you'll know if you can take another hit, or if he's faster than you. I'd be most concerned to have a mechanism by which players can attempt special actions: something like a fate point or chit mechanism that allow a player to affect opponents they normally wouldn't be able to affect, either because they are too tough or too fast, etc. With a dice-based game you can just roll dem bones and hope to get lucky; here you'll need another mechanism.

[Blue]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I've never played a diceless system and tend to, as a result, think that a "good" diceless system is like a bigfoot sighting.

 

But if I were going to give such a thing a try, I suppose it would take an incredible amount of faith by my players that I was going to be fair in my very arbitrary decisions, and a lot of "plot tokens" or other means of allowing players to alter the moment.

 

Players would have more control or gain a more favorable GM ruling based on their ability to describe what they are attempting and their originality.

 

But ultimately I like dice too much to forsake them.

[Korvar]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I'd nominate "Nobilis" as a good diceless system.

[Zed-F]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

Here's a link describing Theatrix. I get the impression that it's no longer in print, but I'm sure it's possible to get ahold of a copy on Ebay or something.

 

http://www.amadan.org/Theatrix/Theatrix-summary.html

[CourtFool]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

Digital Hero #1 has a system for Diceless Hero including combat, skill rolls and hit locations if I am not mistaken.

[teh bunneh]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I once ran a "blind" Fantasy HERO game that lasted over 2 years. We used dice, but the players never had access to their character sheets. If they wanted to do something, I'd tell them to roll and then tell them if they succeeded or not. So when the player with the woodsman character wanted to track someone, he never had any idea of how good he was at it, nor how good the person he was tracking was, nor what the penalties for weather or time elapsed were.

 

It was a lot of fun telling the character with Psych Lim: Overconfident (V.Com Strong), "Sure, you can jump that chasm -- easy" and then watching his face as he failed miserably.

 

The players wrote up the backgrounds and I created the characters for them, based on what they wrote. The game was a lot of fun. It involved a ton of number-crunching in my head, but the players seemed to have a blast.

[Tenzil Kim]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

The mArvel universe Roleplaying game (MURG0 was good but need a lot more playtesting and polish. It didnt use dice but a point allocation system (A lot like Nobilis).

 

It was a fun game to play and characters had a much larger scope than in normal dice RPGs

[Chuckg]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

Man, that Theatrix looks good. Pity that the webpage isn't complete, though...

 

And God only knows where to buy it.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

Diceless Champions? Let me get this straight -- you want to throw out the combat system and the characteristics rolls, then figure out how to make the rest of it work? Hmmm. I think it might be easier doing that with Fuzion rules, actually, since most of that system is "let's just make stuff up" when it comes to superheroic role-play in the first place.

 

I've played other systems where they tried to go diceless, but there was either another system for randomization (Castle Faulkenstein) or there was a point pool where one player could outbid another (but I forget which one that was) or all of the players had to establish a pecking order before the game ever started (Amber). Some people love that sort of thing, and more power to them, but I don't think that Champions lends itself to that sort of makeover without being made into something that is completely unrecognizable. And if that's the case, you might as well go with something a little less systems-intensive like BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth) which I think has the moniker "Tri-Stat System" these days.

 

I'm not trying to be caustic here, just save yourself some work and go with something far simpler to convert if that's the way you want to go.

 

Matt "Still-lovin'-that-handfuls-of-dice-chucking-action" Frisbee

[hooligan x]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

You'll take my dice when you pry them from my cold dead cheetos stained hands.

[incrdbil]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

Having done a lot of diceless on line roleplay in the past, for a long time..I can say, with certainty, that I never want to spend a second of my free time ever again in my life on any diceless system where any type of challenge, conflict, or situation outside of pure character interaction occurs.

[Hermit]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I've gone "Cinematic" before, typically when the heroes are MEANT to outclass their foes and we're in a root beer and pizza mood with the reason for the scene being PC and PC interaction rather than combat, mystery, or what have you.

[pinecone]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I've been sore temped by Amber but never played...I think you'd be better off adapting Amber to supers rather than trying to de-dice Hero...and think of all the way cool arguments you can have!..."Dude...Captain America can So have a higher tactics ability than Benedict!..." "Not...."..

[ghost-angel]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I once ran a "blind" Fantasy HERO game that lasted over 2 years. We used dice, but the players never had access to their character sheets. If they wanted to do something, I'd tell them to roll and then tell them if they succeeded or not. So when the player with the woodsman character wanted to track someone, he never had any idea of how good he was at it, nor how good the person he was tracking was, nor what the penalties for weather or time elapsed were.

 

It was a lot of fun telling the character with Psych Lim: Overconfident (V.Com Strong), "Sure, you can jump that chasm -- easy" and then watching his face as he failed miserably.

 

The players wrote up the backgrounds and I created the characters for them, based on what they wrote. The game was a lot of fun. It involved a ton of number-crunching in my head, but the players seemed to have a blast.

I'd kill to play in a game like that...

 

As for making HERO Diceless, here's a suggestion:

 

Have each player pick an archetype of some nature, and allow them to play the ultimate or near ultimate of that archetype. It doesn't mean they can't lose - but it does mean that they are the de facto standard of that field. Then go cinematic as with Amber (some of my best RPing was done in an Amber game) and work from there. I would forgo stats altogether and not worry about "powers" only "effects described."

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

Diceless Champions? Let me get this straight -- you want to throw out the combat system and the characteristics rolls, then figure out how to make the rest of it work? Hmmm. I think it might be easier doing that with Fuzion rules, actually, since most of that system is "let's just make stuff up" when it comes to superheroic role-play in the first place.

 

I've played other systems where they tried to go diceless, but there was either another system for randomization (Castle Faulkenstein) or there was a point pool where one player could outbid another (but I forget which one that was) or all of the players had to establish a pecking order before the game ever started (Amber). Some people love that sort of thing, and more power to them, but I don't think that Champions lends itself to that sort of makeover without being made into something that is completely unrecognizable. And if that's the case, you might as well go with something a little less systems-intensive like BESM (Big Eyes, Small Mouth) which I think has the moniker "Tri-Stat System" these days.

 

I'm not trying to be caustic here, just save yourself some work and go with something far simpler to convert if that's the way you want to go.

 

Matt "Still-lovin'-that-handfuls-of-dice-chucking-action" Frisbee

 

Well, as I said, I've seen it done. The degree of effectiveness was determined by how much you made the roll _by_, assuming a roll of 11.

 

So if an 11 hit by like 6 (more?), you did maximum damage, if it hit exactly you did minimum damage, stuff like that.

 

It's the full Champions deal, it's just there's no 'getting lucky', unless that IS your power - there's just situational modifiers.

[Zed-F]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I once ran a "blind" Fantasy HERO game that lasted over 2 years. We used dice' date=' but the players never had access to their character sheets. If they wanted to do something, I'd tell them to roll and then tell them if they succeeded or not. So when the player with the woodsman character wanted to track someone, he never had any idea of how good he was at it, nor how good the person he was tracking was, nor what the penalties for weather or time elapsed were.[/quote']

That would bug the heck out of me! I expect a character to have at least a reasonable idea of their capabilities and how good they are at something. They might not know exactly how good they are, but they should have a good idea of whether any given action looks like it should be feasible or not, and where they stand in ability relative to other people that they know that have similar skills. Similarly, unless he's completely incompetent at tracking, the woodsman in the above example ought to have a rough idea of what penalties apply and to what degree; he might not know the specifics, but he should be able to tell the difference between tracks that are a few hours old and ones that are weeks old.

[sinanju]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

I spent the first thirteen years of my gaming experience mostly playing a "diceless" system. We used dice, but only the GM rolled them. The players had fully-statted character sheets, but ALL the dice rolling was done by the GM behind a screen. Players described what they wanted to attempt and the GM described the results.

 

It was a long while before I realized how unusual this approach was--but it worked for us. It's STILL working for that gaming group, I'm just not living in Virginia any longer. But I've had people I described this approach to react as if I'd confessed to being a serial killer. "They'll take my dice when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers" is a very real attitude, apparently.

 

It did have one big advantage--newbie players didn't need to know anything about the rules. They just described what they wanted to try and the GM handled all the mechanics.

[teh bunneh]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

That would bug the heck out of me! I expect a character to have at least a reasonable idea of their capabilities and how good they are at something. They might not know exactly how good they are' date=' but they should have a good idea of whether any given action looks like it should be feasible or not, and where they stand in ability relative to other people that they know that have similar skills. Similarly, unless he's completely incompetent at tracking, the woodsman in the above example ought to have a rough idea of what penalties apply and to what degree; he might not know the specifics, but he should be able to tell the difference between tracks that are a few hours old and ones that are weeks old.[/quote']

 

Generally? Sure, the players knew their characters' capabilities. Heck, the players wrote their characters -- if someone wrote in their background that they were a top-notch tracker, then I made the character sheet reflect that. So if it was something they could expect to be reasonable at (the woodsman at tracking, f'rinstance), they knew that a 14- should succeed. When it didn't succeed, they knew that this was a particularly difficult task, or that someone/something was working against them. The tracker had a pretty good idea of his capabilities, but I never told him "You'll take a -4 penalty due to the age of the tracks." I told him, "These tracks look pretty old to you, and you don't know if you'll be able to follow them very far."

 

This helped the Overconfident character really get into the role. "Fight a dozen elite guards by myself? No problem! Jump off the balcony onto my horse? Of course I can! Woo the duke's wife? Child's play!" He never looked at a character sheet and said, "Well, my Seduction skill is only 8-, and the duke's wife is pretty frigid which is at least a -2 to the roll, so I'm not going to bother."

 

I'll readily admit it takes a whole different mindset to play in a blind system, though. You have to have a good group of roleplayers and a GM that they trust.

[CourtFool]

Dice are for gamers

 

The gamists are coming out of the woodwork.

[Zed-F]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

Generally? Sure, the players knew their characters' capabilities. Heck, the players wrote their characters -- if someone wrote in their background that they were a top-notch tracker, then I made the character sheet reflect that. So if it was something they could expect to be reasonable at (the woodsman at tracking, f'rinstance), they knew that a 14- should succeed. When it didn't succeed, they knew that this was a particularly difficult task, or that someone/something was working against them. The tracker had a pretty good idea of his capabilities, but I never told him "You'll take a -4 penalty due to the age of the tracks." I told him, "These tracks look pretty old to you, and you don't know if you'll be able to follow them very far."

Ok, that sounds much more reasonable than what you described earlier. I got the impression the tracker in the above example was given NO information about the conditions surrounding the attempt, or what he was capable of doing. It looked like all decisions were being made based purely on trial-and-error.

 

The gamists are coming out of the woodwork.

Is that in reaction to my comment? I don't see how you figure.

[Haven Walkur]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

He doesn't figure...he's a llama!

[ghost-angel]

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing

 

Thought some more on this ... it stuck in my head, what can I say, and came up with some more bits to keep it Hero while removing those dice.

 

Walking along the Archetype Role, and the Archetype's can be pretty wide open here, have the character work with a list of Power Types, pick a base SFX the use (if a Supers or similar game) and the move onto stats and skills.

 

For stats, choose an Effective Maximum for the game (like say 50) and have the Players prioritize the stats in a "Max/High/Med/Normal" spread. Where you decrease down each step to an effective of something like 50/35/25/15. Each player can take say 2 at Max, 3 at High, 3 Med and 3 Normal. [Personally, recommend adding SPEED as a stat with a 12/9/6/3 breakdown. The rest of the figured are merely Dramatic Tools at this point.]

 

Do something similar with skills, nothing immediately useful is coming into my brain as a good way to model this. Perhaps have the character come up with Skills they believe they should have and set the to a primary/secondary/tertiary role for effectiveness.

 

this way you still have a Hero System Character sheet but the Dice and Points (which are less useful when dice are no longer a factor) have less importance than Character Archetype being implemented. Players good enough to make Diceless viable should also be good enough to not step across other peoples toes. Min/Maxers rarely do well in something like Amber.