Wyrd Games’s Through the Breech uses a deck of standard playing cards with modified suits. You can use normal playing cards with their suit cheat sheet.

It is based on their table top skirmish game Malifaux. Set in a magical world connected to our own through the Breech. It is a Victorian Steampunk horror setting.

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.

Well, Sea Dracula is pretty unique. Players settle conflicts by having a dance-off.

Amber Diceless which compares stats with GM fiet based on the situation.

Everway which also compares stats but if things are close has the GM interpret a picture card.

DramaSystem which is designed for PvP play and trades tokens for conceding a scene (and multiple tokens can be spent to force another player to conced).

Fiasco which does use dice, but not (as random number generators) to determine outcomes. A player, on their turn, can choose to establish a scene or hand that responsibility off to the rest of the group. Whoever doesn’t do that picks if the outcome of the scene is good or bad for that player’s character (subject to the availability of good or bad tokens in the pool). Second editor ditches the dice entirely and adds cards instead, I haven’t played that version.

For the Queen isn’t a traditional RPG. It provides a card deck that asks questions about characters. Figuring out the answers lets everyone learn about all the characters (including their own).

“His majesty the worm” uses a deck of tarot cards, minor arcana for players and major arcana for the GM. Combat plays as a sort of “poker game”

Nobody talked about Castle Falkenstein which used playing cards instead of dices.

An interesting stuff is that you know your hand, and choose which card to play. So let’s say you have an Easy success, A success if you have a good-skill and a guaranteed failure for the scene. How do you manage-it ? It has interesting game-play consequence both tactically and narratively but it stayed pretty uncommon

I imagine you could make Fate diceless without too much trouble. Maybe increase the starting pool of Fate points so people have more say in what checks matter. You could also do simultaneous commits if you want more tension (ie: everyone put some number of fate points, even 0, in their closed hand. Reveal at the same time)

…they’re publishing a fifth-edition D+D conversion this year, but the native mechanical system for legends of avallen uses a standard deck of playing cards, nothing more…

oh man I had a blast with a group at a con doing amber diceless long back.

I mean minds eye uses paper scissor rock but thats still random outside of the win tie rules and such.

In my mind, it very quickly went from something implausible (how would that system work well) to one of my favorites after playing. Still lucky enough to be in a long Amber campaign with an awesome group.

it plays like diplomacy. a lot of guessing. how does it work long term. do the ranking change each session or something?

Sorry for the long reply

Running Amber DRPG as a diplomacy focused story is certainly an option, especially if you’re doing a throne war campaign. There are certainly other setups beyond this (we started immediately following book 5 as grandchildren of Oberon). While every PC and NPC certainly has their own motivations and schemes, there is no requirements as to how political you need to be (Gerard notoriously hated the petty scheming of his siblings; Benedict doesn’t care as long as Amber remains stable).

As for advancement (which I think is what you’re alluding to with ranking change): if you’re following the book’s rules as written, the #1 in each rank for each generation cannot change (Benedict will always lead in warfare). Advancement is also blind, so you will no longer know your stats.

As for why it has run a long time: thankfully, I have a great GM that has crafted a compelling story and wonderful players that agree on the tone of the game and are reliable. It also helps that we started as 100pt characters, so there has been room for growth and development.

ok so the #1 is always npc’s then? Sorry the diplomacy comment was from the european ww1esque strategy game dipomacy. Its diceless and now that I think of it its not really similar its just the way it plays feel is similar. In amber you guessing peoples relative ranks while in diplomacy your guessing who is going to ally with who. Allies tend to be public for bluff and bluster and secret to mislead. basically you win by having larger forces and forces have to be surrounded to be eliminated and come back based on resources but the way it works you have to leave things alone so people try to get enemies to undercommit or hit them with overwelming force in an area. anyway its hard to explain but the backstabbing and secrecy make it feel similar to me.