Dice are pretty much synonymous with RPGs, but there are a few rare systems that forego them altogether, like Castle Falkenstein.
What are some other systems that don’t use dice? Are there any that completely remove luck/random chance on “important player actions”?
Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish Granting Engine is an amazing diceless game. It works by having a different view on success/failure. You use your own stats to set your Intention Level and then that get compared to an interpretative chart to determine how well your intention goes. The worst is essentially “you only make yourself happy” and it gets as good as “you satisfy everyone’s desires.” But, it’s worded differently and you can always choose a lower result than what you get if it fits your real goal better.
Eidolon: Become Your Best Self uses a Tarot deck made up of specific cards. Each one has a polarity that determines “full success,” “partial success” and “failure” (postive, neutral, and negative, respectively). You draw a number of cards from the deck equal to your relevant stat when making a move and pick your favorite for the scene. You pick two neutral cards to be special by picking them as like your “favorite” and “least favorite” and get a class specific effect when you choose them (and must always choose your least favorite if it comes up). Any unused cards are returned to the Tarot deck, which might sound tedious but the game is designed to not have a ton of checks.
Amber is a classic example that comes up in these discussions.
Intrepid uses playing cards instead of dice to resolve scenes and combat. For scenes, two people each narrate an outcome, and players vote on the version they prefer using red or black playing cards. A card is then selected and that outcome becomes the truth, so there is still an element of randomness.
In combat, each suit has a specific meaning for the ebb and flow of the battle, jokers change the scene, and the first person to draw the 4th ace wins the fight.
Most of Ben Robbins’ don’t have a random element at all and conflicts are resolved through procedure. Follow uses two coloured stones/poker chips/tokenswhich are drawn from a bag, similar to Intrepid. He also provides a “finger dice” system for getting dice-like results without using dice. On a signal, every player throws from 0 to 5 fingers, and groups of 5 fingers are eliminated. The remainder is roughly equivalent to a d6 roll.
