Article:
RPGs: The Diceless Revolution (or not, as the case may be)

Some time ago I introduced a writer and a good friend of mine to the world of tabletop role-playing games. I knew he'd take to the hobby like a duck to water, but I was unprepared for just how far his enthusiasm would eventually take him. Recently he published his own paper RPG called No Dice (which is available from his web site at www.nodicerpg.com).

The title stems (of course) from the fact that the game doesn't use dice: instead it uses playing cards (as inferred from the artwork on the cover). I can't help wondering though if this is something of a non-sequitur. If you've never role-played before, then why would you care whether or not the game uses dice or cards as a random factor? And if you're already a role-player then the likelihood is that you may have played (or at least heard) of any of the following games before:

Amber Diceless Roleplaying

Published by Guardians of Order in 1991, and based on Roger Zelazny's acclaimed series of novels, this game used a bidding process during character creation to decide who is better than who at everything. In play the outcome of any fair contest is effectively pre-determined, but uncertainty came from the devious ways in which players could turn every given situation to their advantage.

Everway

Published in turn by Wizards of the Coast, Rubicon Games and then Gaslight Press, this ground-breaking game used a deck of picture cards (similar but not identical to tarot cards) to govern the course of game encounters. Because each card was based on images and not numbers, the players and the GM together could jointly work out an interpretation which best suited the ongoing story.

SAGA

This was another card-based game published by Wizards of the Coast in two variants - as the second attempt at an official Marvel Superheros RPG, and as alternate system for playing in the fantasy world of Dragonlance. Each game played similarly - players would draw from the same communal deck of numerically-valued cards and then play cards from their hands to augment their core attributes. Each card was also colour-coded to key with certain elements of the game, and each card also included text significators and character protraits making them useful to the storytelling process in a myriad of ways.