Where NO DICE came from:

I have been enjoying fairly regular game sessions with a group of friends for many years now. Our games have made use of one particular system during that time, and though I’ve been the predominant Game Master of our group, I never fully embraced that system. I found it useful, with a wide range of possibilities and potential because it had rules for anything that might occur… but I also found it slow, complicated, and confusing. Other game systems were occasionally introduced and played with, but we always seemed to go back to that one system. It’s what we were used to.

Then one of our group brought in a new system she wanted to try. It was her first attempt a being a GM, and she began a premade game module to introduce us to a new way to play an RPG. The game style was… loose. The system was designed to be more collaborative, actually having game mechanics to enable players to contribute to the story. Our rookie GM also ran the game with an open and inviting style that added a great deal of fun to the entire experience. I played a very simple character with no extra-human abilities of any kind, and I think I had more fun playing that game than any other. I was not only playing the game, I became a fan of the story we were all writing as if it were an ongoing television show. I wanted to join the online chat groups for this nonexistent show, I wanted to give my fan ideas and learn other people’s theories about where the story was going. I loved my character, I loved my character’s relationships with the other player characters, and I loved playing that game so much that I started recording those game nights with my friends, and would listen to them again in my spare time.

I was inspired. When that campaign ended I brought in a different game system I had been researching. It was another, less strict system (This style of game seemed to be the popular new thing.), and I found a new way to run a game. I ran a game that was flexible and allowed the players to contribute to the world being created. I had an idea for what the overarching story could be and would start off each game session with a short improvisational “Cold Open” where no one rolled any dice but instead, they just played with a set goal in mind. I used these to get each session started and to convey things that were happening outside the player characters’ view. I did not write anything beyond what was being played each game session, I had players tell me what they thought certain NPCs should be like, had them decide who the mystery person that just walked in the door would be, and I let them just improvise certain scenes how they wanted.

With the recordings, I could keep track of everything they said, and fit it into the story continuity. This is easier to do early on in the game. As early ideas are cemented into place that means later ideas may have less room to fit, and may have to be rejected or adjusted. But it worked, the entire game group was contributing to the story. They created characters they enjoyed playing, speculated about what was going to happen, and even made plans when I wasn’t around.

It was the best game I had ever run, but the system I was using needed adjustments. During gameplay, it became clear that this new game system was far from perfect. It was a narrow system that was set up for a specific kind of story. There were glaring issues that it did not address in the game I was running, so I had to make adjustments. Then I would find a new problem and have to make more adjustments, and after a while, the game system was very different than how it began. Then I re-listened to the recordings of these game sessions and noticed something important. My players were having the most fun during the “Cold Openings”.

I was already reworking a system into something new, and now I found an aspect I wanted to incorporate into that new system. I wanted to bring the fun of those dice-free parts of the game into the whole game system. The players enjoyed the control it provided. They had the ability to just decide to be a badass when they wanted, and then they would decide to make mistakes at other times just because it made for a fun scene.

The system I wanted to create would have to incentivize the player choosing to fail at tasks in order to keep the game balanced. The best way I could come up with to do this was to have the player acquire points for failing and then spend those points when they wanted to succeed. It took a while to fine-tune the system, and… well, here it is. This was a multi-year labor of love made for my friends, with help from those same friends.

I hope you enjoy it.

Jon Lemerond