Help needed

[Hialmar]

I don't like this agency theory because, you see, I am a GM at Amber Diceless Role-Playing and we don't have any dice we only have storytelling to power the game.
The game is still played a lot (there is even a yearly convention called AmberCon).

RPGs > Wargames because of this storytelling thing.

Oh and by the way, if you read french you can read my current campaign here:
http://www.cerbere.org/forum/index.php?board=364.0
And if you speak/type french you can even play (I lost 1 and maybe 2 players).

[kid]

I don't like this agency theory because, you see, I am a GM at Amber Diceless Role-Playing and we don't have any dice we only have storytelling to power the game.
The game is still played a lot (there is even a yearly convention called AmberCon).

RPGs > Wargames because of this storytelling thing.

Oh and by the way, if you read french you can read my current campaign here:
http://www.cerbere.org/forum/index.php?board=364.0
And if you speak/type french you can even play (I lost 1 and maybe 2 players).

The lack of dice does not revoke the theory. It just replaces it with good stroytelling.
Meaning there's still a differance in the ways Jonny the town drunk with the broken arm, and Jonny the budy builder super cup would impact the game. Just cause you don't roll stuff does not mean you are playing amorphic forms.
As long as you all use your collective sense it doesn't really matter if there's a dice or not.

Unless if by diceless you actualy mean predetermined story that must move along in one certain way, which i don't think you do, do you?

[Hialmar]

Nope I don't do predefined stories.

However, the fact that it is diceless means that if I create a bad guy which I know has a better warfare than any of my PCs I'm sure it won't be beaten through combat. It can still be beaten through magic, poisoning, black mail... but it will require my players to think of something else than just saying "I swing my sword and chop off its head".

In dice using RPGs there is always the odd chance that your big villain will get hacked down by a critical on the first encounter. So either you cheat to keep it or create a duplicate of it but both are against this agency theory as I understand it.

[Veilan]

All you did is replace one reality simulator (probability checks through dice rolls) with another (your "common sense"). While that might favour a narrativist approach, the choice is still yours to make - it is not predetermined through the lack of dice. Just like you can run a hugely narrativist game even while using (or ostensibly using) dice rolls.

Tangent, The One Ring actually has some very interesting mechanics that makes simulation appear to be narration. If narrativism vs. simulation is a topic of interest to you, I suggest checking out that gaming system for some additional inspiration, too.

[Hialmar]

I will check it thanks.

[puny]

http://www.medievalists.net/

[Twin Axes]

agency is so important to fun

Thanks, sounds promising! Without having read the article, this sentence formulates succinctly why it is so problematic to mix higher and lower levels in a group. Enjoyment decreases in direct proportion to your PC's redundancy.

See, I think you should turn this around on its head: "A mix of higher and lower levels can be quite enjoyable as long as the group and its participants all have a sense of agency."

But I'm quite sure my pocket existentialism may not be everybody's cup of tea.

Cheers,

True, it does happen (just last night actually in my own case) but the opposite has been an overwhelmingly more frequent experience for me.

[Twin Axes]

http://www.medievalists.net/

Cool, thanks!

Not exactly rpg or history, but imho, worth recommending.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Her drawing style is more childish (deliberately so) but her writing and humour are excellent. Be careful not to laugh out at work too much.

Heh, cute.