What are some good tabletop RPGs with no/limited randomness? I'm tired of my characters training for years with a sword so they can crit-fail their way through encounters T___T
In previous posts, I’ve discussed several games that limit randomness in various ways. For example, Dogs in the Vineyard uses dice only to generate resources, while actual conflict resolution takes the form of a bidding game, while both Golden Sky Stories and Chuubo’s Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine resolve tasks by using expendable resource pools to boost fixed skill ratings. However, if even that puts mechanically mediated uncertainty too close to the surface, strap yourselves in - now we’re going to get weird.
Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North
(Note: not to be confused with any of the other published tabletop RPGs also called Polaris - there are at least two that I know of.)
Polaris is a narrative adventure game set in an ancient, formerly utopian society at the North Pole. Your civilisation’s decadence and self-absorption has lead its rulers to dabble in forbidden sorceries, ultimately unleashing the Mistake, a monstrous sphere of blazing fire that hangs in the sky, blotting out the stars and and warping the minds of all who gaze upon it. (Modern readers may recognise that the Mistake is, in fact, our own Sun.) You play as a member of the Order of the Stars, the only remaining force that can resist the demonic armies of the Mistaken; sadly, your quest is impossible, and you’re fated to betray your people and die alone and forgotten.
Now, Polaris does have provisions for dice-based resolution, but before those rules can come into play, the outcome of the scene must be negotiated through a formalised narrative exchange involving various ritual phrases - “But It Was No Matter”, “But Only If…”, “It Shall Not Come to Pass”, and so forth. This negotiation occurs between the player and the GM - or GMs, I should say, as rather than having a single GM and multiple players, Polaris has a single player and multiple GMs!
The game is designed for exactly four participants (though it has optional rules for three or five), taking on the following roles:
The Heart: The traditional player role, responsible for directing whichever character is the focus of the current scene.
The Full Moon: Responsible for the social and hierarchical aspects of the story, including all NPCs the focus character has a primarily formal or societal relationship with, as well as all male minor NPCs.
The New Moon: Responsible for the interpersonal aspects of the story, including all NPCs the focus character has a primarily personal or emotional relationship with, as well as all female minor NPCs.
The Mistaken: The traditional GM role, responsible for directing the physical environment of the story and its antagonists.
The relationship between the Heart and the Mistaken is entirely adversarial, with the Mistaken assuming the persona of the evil bastard GM who wants player characters to suffer as much pain and humiliation as possible. In addition to their other responsibilities, the Moons function as referees and mediators between the Heart and the Mistaken, ensuring that the Mistaken plays fair when inflicting her torments. These roles can rotate from scene to scene, depending on which character is currently the focus, so you might take on all of them in the course of a single session.
The dice only hit the table when the Heart and the Mistaken reach an absolute impasse, with both making mutually exclusive narrative demands that neither is willing to compromise on, and when the Moons can find no middle ground between them. The upshot is that the potential for traditional randomised resolution is there, but it basically only ever comes into play when bizarre catastrophe is an appropriate outcome.
