Diceless D&D [Amber Diceless + D&D]

[Chambers]

Has anyone tried to play Dungeons & Dragons using the Amber Diceless RPG rules? A lot of the time for me D&D (3.5) gets bogged down with the mechanics, especially at high level play. I've never played the Amber Diceless system but it looks like it might work well.

Thoughts?

[Kurald Galain]

Whoa. No, I don't think that'll work, because the two are polar opposites. D&D emphasises physical combat and defeating monsters as the primary means of adventuring and leveling. ADRP emphasises political maneuvering and outwitting your family members, and doesn't really do leveling to begin with. I would recommend taking a middle road and picking a rules-light system actually written for the kind of campaign you're running.

[Chambers]

Hmmm. I don't think it wouldn't work at all. It wouldn't be your standard D&D game, that's for sure, but I think it would work well at high-levels, especially epic levels. At that point I'd hope the game is more than just kill the monster and take the treasure - it should be about conflicts that aren't resolved by simple fighting.

[Otherworld Odd]

But rolling dice is one of the best parts. =[

[WalkingTarget]

There is nothing that prevents you from using the Amber system to play a game in a D&D-style setting (as opposed to the canonical setting of Amber, Chaos, and Shadow).

It would not be a game that plays like D&D.

Part of the thing with Amber is that you have the attribute auction during character generation and, for the most part, stats are secret and there's a limited number of characters that matter in any real sense (since the idea of an auction is to rank the players, having NPCs that didn't have to take part in the auction and can assign their numbers however the GM likes subverts the system). The infighting/intrigue among the players is most of the appeal in my experience with Amber - very little in the way of external threats ever really came up.

A lot of the "D&D feel" for me is the idea of tactical simulation and problem solving - which Amber lacks the crunch to support.

Similarly, I suppose one could have people assign their numbers in ADRP without an auction, but that loses something from that game too, in my opinion.

That's not to say that you couldn't play that game if that's what works for your group, it'd just be a game pretty divergent from either of the ones it's based on.