Why I like diceless systems
First of all, I must confess: I’m not exactly a prolific roleplayer. There are so many systems out there that I would love to play but could never get a group together for. Likewise, pretty much all of my gaming experience has been with dice, so everybody will have to forgive me for delving into theory.
That said, I just prefer thinking seriously about games without dice, since they just strike me as more fun. Rather than asking the player to decide how beneficial something is to him versus how likely he is to succeed, the player can simply decide what he would like to do. It’s basically taking chance out of the equation, like a collectible card game with everybody’s entire deck starting in their hand right from the beginning (a concept which will sound familiar to you if you have ever been to Tony’s ProductionKey.com).
Of course, diceless does not strike me as being ideal for classic combat-based systems, which is just fine because I’m not all that interested in writing those to begin with (though I do have one I’m still toying with). For the most part, Tony (who is, by the way, the other half of Eroth Productions, which is the company that we use to both sell anime merchandise and hope to release our roleplaying games under) is content to write combat-driven systems, while I come out with the more story-driven systems.
Even diceless combat-based systems can work out nicely, because they eliminate annoying randomness (”Come on, anything but a one, and I’ll win! Oh… a one.”) and replace it with a somewhat lesser evil of building your character around sustainable cycles (”Activate shield, take four damage. Kill one enemy, take three damage, shield breaks. Activate shield, take three damage. Kill one enemy…”). It’s a tradeoff, and I can’t come out and say that I think that diceless games are absolutely superior to dice-based games.
And after talking in a bit of a circle, I come back to why I like diceless systems: they are just more well-suited, in my eyes, to systems where the players take the ball and run with it wherever they please. When you get away from combat, dice just become unnecessary. He’s your character, shouldn’t you be the one to decide whether he accepts redemption or continues down his path of self-destruction?