From: batemanc@p4.cs.man.ac.uk (Mad Chris)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy
Subject: Re: Diceless or Senseless? Confession!
Date: 14 Aug 92 14:42:34 GMT

millerl@jeremiah.wharton.upenn.edu (Loren J. Miller) mumbles incoherently:

>Well, you got this part right. You were wandering along, saw what you
>thought was a problem but wasn't really because nobody here really
>thinks that dicey roleplaying games are going the way of the dinosaur,
>and thought you would raise a big stink about it. 

Oh very clever, Loren. Eat any good books lately? Since when was saying
'Doesn't anyone else agree with me?' raising a big stink. All I did
was make a post saying that I could not believe the way these 
reviewers were reacting, and then asked if anyone agreed with me that
diceless was not going to phase out diced, neither was it the 'wave of
the future' because diceless had been being used for ages - and there
HAS been a diceless system published before Amber, by the way.

And notice that the acusation that all diceless people want the death
of diced games is a misnomer, not perpetrated by me. And if that was all
this discussion was, do you think it would have generated this volume
of replies?

>Well, I take it back. You, Mad Chris the pseudo-Discordian pedant, are
>not a chimp. The exalted status of the chimp among the ape kingdom is
>far beyond your meager abilities. You are a baboon. 

Yes, I'm a pedant. Just watch. If you had read the Principia Dicordia,
you would know there could not possibly be a pseudo-Discordian. There
is Discordian, and there is the rest of the world.

>Listen, I hear your mother calling you... "Eep eep eep, Chris!"

Messages from beyond the grave, Loren? I never took you as a
supernaturalist.

>I never said that dicey roleplaying games were going away. Nobody here
>said that. That particular hallucination was yours. Nobody is going to
>lay claim to it so take it somewhere else.

But my original post, oh eristic one, was addressed at MAGAZINE REVIEWERS
who have been suggesting ( in places ) that diceless was the future of 
RPG's. Since then the debate has raged on mildly independent, but related
issues, and I've just watched. Until you, in your infinitesemal wisdom,
accused me of something I didn't do and don't believe.

>Diceless RPGs are not
>a new phenomenon

Correct.

>BUT Amber is the first published diceless game,
>because until now everybody in the industry thought that diceless rpgs
>would never sell.

Incorrect. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts ( which I sincerly 
doubt you ever read, all things considered ), there was a diceless system
( I forget what it was called ) published near the hobby's infancy. It
sank without a trace - not surprising. There wasn't the large body of people
who understand role-playing to support it then. Amber will survive purely
because there are enough people who already are most of the way toward the
utopia that Amber attempts to seduce people with.

>Now that they have been proved wrong, you should expect to see more
>diceless games

Oh I expect we'll see a flood of them: and I expect most of them to be 
pretty much worthless. The majority of publishers seem to have no idea
of how to make a good system: observe Cyberpunk, Shadowrun and Vampire,
all of which have some pretty dreadful - and even diabolical - rules 
in them.

>In this way the prediction that got you
>in such a tizzy is correct, though we agree there is no way that dice
>are going to go away completely. 

"Does anyone else here agree with me?" Gee, sounds like my heart was in
palpatations when I wrote that*. For Arioch's sake, Loren, all I did was 
get angry at some reviewer who said that in the perfect rpg the mechanics
would fade into the background and disappear completely. I said this was
little more that a silly dream, and not a dream I share anyway. I want
role-playing to be paramount, but I want to keep the Game aspect as well
( no, don't bother telling me that diceless is still a game, you know what
I'm refering to here ).

>>But to my surprise, three of the four play testing groups wrote back in their
>>first report saying: "This is all very well, and all very realistic. But we
>>like Fumbles! We like to screw up! Please put back in Fumbles, even if they
>>only apply to Player characters!".

>So change the envelope.

Hey! Guess what Loren! I have! Believe it or not, when my play testers
agree something is wrong, I change it. That's what play testing is for.

>Try to keep the feeling of screwups and
>critical success without ruining the plausibility of the game. How
>about saying that there are two kinds of encounter in any game.
>[Bits about pure Torg]

Yeah, one of my play testers is a pure Torg freak, and suggested the 
same thing. I have two sets of revised mechanics, and I'm waiting for
feedback from the play testing groups before I decide what to do.
What-do-you-know. Loren and I discussed something in a civilised fashion.

>Torg, BTW, is the greatest roleplaying game in the world, bar none.
>[more advocacy bait]

>>This is FACT.

>I'm glad you agree with my assessment of Torg.

>:-)

Wahay! Quote me out of context, will you. Two can play at this...
Loren, I understand you said you knew what I was talking about?

>Well, I take it back.

:-)

>I hope you enjoyed this little golden apple which I rolled back your
>way. "Kallisti"

Does this, in the context of your entire post, make me the Fairest Baboon...?

All Hail Discordia!

Mad Chris.

*Denotes sarcasm.