what's the craze? (stats and/or dice)

I have always been a fan of no-stat/dice rping, especially when it comes to fighting. If you're an arranged marriage type site, this is really the only time I could "justify" using a random number deal. Some sites say they are stat/dice because "they don't want their members to god mode". The simple solution to this is putting up an rp-school type area and specifically explaining the concepts of godmoding and powerplaying through good examples, bad examples, and giving a concrete-definition for it on your site.

So the question for this would be,
Are you a fan of dice/stat-type rping, why/why not?

I'm not for reason explained above, and I believe it's impossible to take character personality into account. Some characters have a higher pain tolerance then others, while some would just scream and fall.

We started using dice for various things on a Star Trek site we started and it's awesome. We use it for all sorts of fun stuff. My two other staff members created two redshirts and they rolled a die out of 100 and the number they got is the post in which the redshirt dies (they are not telling anyone what number they get, so it's very exciting!)

Another member created a shop that uses dice to help people create characters. You roll out of 20 or 10 or whatever for each option, such as race, division/job/rank, a piece of something you have to include in your backstory, etc. There's also a "roll for roleplay" thread my fellow staffer made which is basically the same as the character creator except it's a thread creator -- it uses dice to pick another character on board and the "theme" for the thread (like, "Someone has taken your pudding cup" or "a terminal near you explodes").

It's a lot of fun. It adds excitement to the roleplay since you don't know what's going to happen. I'm all about excitement.

Hmm... One site I had was entirely forum turn-base. Think, like an old school Final Fantasy game, but all the numbers and stuff were run by yours truly. The members liked that part, it was the actual RPing they never wanted to sit down and do.

Though I'll admit, they were a special group of people. I know not all people would like that sort of thing, hence I never planned on using it since. Though I noticed that even the most sensible people like to godmod on occasion, so I do find at least rating a character's attributes is almost required. It definitely helps make things easier to keep under control.

Oh, but I just realized I got too distracted there...

I liked them for the former, because...honestly, I just love the crap out of turn-based RPGs in general. I love the stats, the abilities, and the customization. Oh, the customization... I could seriously go on forever about how much I loved being able to create and execute so much, all to my very own whims. It was like...incredible. I got a little nuts over it, if you couldnt tell. XD

Plus, it certainly made things even. Abilities, skills, attacks, stats, and etc. They were all balanced off a certain table, but there was always a way to make your character unique, and have their own strengths, weaknesses, and entire movesets.

Gagh, I should stop before you wind up looking at a 5k word post about it. @_@

Stats and dice, when used properly, are fantastic for introducing suspense: contests between characters become far more exciting when you're not certain how they will resolve. For me, that's always been a failing of consensual RP. Yes, either party can introduce as many interesting and surprising elements as they'd like...but the result is nearly always dictated by the player who chooses to fold first.

It doesn't work for every RP, though. Social games don't need dice. I've been witness to some drama caused by players attempting to roll to win social contests against other players (attempting to influence their characters with persuasion, diplomacy, physical attractiveness, etc. without RPing it out first); it borders very heavily on telling someone how their character should act.

On the other hand, I'm not a fan of games that use stats without or with no effect on dice. Most of them are precise where it'd be best to keep vague. It ends up being a bunch of pointless number tracking. If you are going to introduce a game mechanic that requires more work on the part of the player, then it damn well better add something substantial to the RP.

I like dice, then again, I also like to create my own tabletops and such. I tend to refer to myself as a GM instead of an admin, too.
We use dice to determine the hit, whether it's a miss, or hit, and damage, graze, hit, or severe hit. Hopefully it leaves enough ambiguous that you can pretty much do whatever attack you want, it just sort of determines the effectiveness of it. My character got a severe hit dealt to her and after that thread she ended up with a scar from the encounter.
We also use one stat, but that's more for roleplaying purposes of how a Pokemon feels towards you. I like it because it makes people work to get a Pokemon to like you and it's gradual, but I understand that some people are turned off by the tracking. Fortunately, for dice rolls we have a built in code so you just type that you want a roll.

I don't know if I could handle tons of stats, and be writing out lengthy posts at the same time. But I vastly prefer forum RPs to the games mostly because of the creative aspect, I can feel like I'm actually unique instead of being the same main character as everyone else. I know there's a Naruto RP around that uses tons of stats and has a huge system and I was just blown away by the dedication and everything the admins had put into the site. I say more power to them. Maybe I'd try it out sometime.

We use dice/RNG sparingly for things like passing out cards............ that's pretty much it. XD Everything else is freeform. I've never been a huge fan of stats/dice roll sites if I'm the one who has to do all the figuring. I'm not math savvy enough and I get confused easily.

THIS!

For me stats & dice add chance and randomness, spicing up what otherwise might become stale over a period of time. I used to love doing a d100 table of random events in my table top games, and then turning them around so they became meaningful in the storyline. Keeps me on my toe as moderator. It also introduces moderator neutrality. No favourites. Dice. Sorry man, they don't lie. My sympathies.

At Age of Intrigue we use dice behind the scenes for specific things where we want chance to play a roll: horse races, duels, whether or not a lady falls pregnant (we use modifiers to reflect what players have done to promote or prevent the outcome). We have actually not used it for characterdeath, which is by nature sort of consensual in our game (no meteorites falling from the sky unexpectedly, and other random things you can't influence with your RP).

It is an acquired taste, but a habit hard to shake when you are used to it. We mainly don't bother our players with how we came to a decision at certain turning points in the story though, except when they ask (we have write ups in the wiki to explain it which we link them to).

We use dice and stats in a similar way that @Fluff does. It's only used for certain major combat threads to decide if a PC wins or loses, by how much and if they're injured/how badly. Then if a member wants a dice roll for some of their own stuff to add that random element they can't control I'll do it for them too. I use Invisible Castle and they can see the rolls there rather than just taking my word for it. My members are pretty good about fair combat, so I've never really used it because of that, it's just a fun way to shake things up.

I only really do this when putting people who want to do missions together so the people who work together are completely random and you can always rp with new people rather than clique cluster. I think in that instant it makes a board less cliquish but otherwise I don't see the point in it. I guess it's more a D&D thing.

I don't use dice, but I sometimes use stats. How I see stats is that they are a reflection of that character's capabilities given number form for easy comparison. (And just about every stat has a meaning to it. So they know that 5 strength means their character can lift 5 tons.) Since I give major enemies stats to so people can look and see more about that character (though sometimes if it's a really secretive or new enemy I won't hand out stats so people actually don't know and have to then make guesses and try figuring things out the old way). They can use the stats to help their characters come up with a strategy. This way they can decide how they want to approach a situation. Maybe they want to have their character try a contest of power but have them lose that and try something else. But I generally won't dictate how things play out, I usually let them have all that freedom and control. The only time I jump in is if there is some crazy stuff going on that they could not do. (Like juggling tanks or something.)

Though I should point out that generally go with a fairly loose interpretation of stats so it's never like 1 point difference means one always wins/loses. The only way it's an automatic loss is if there is a huge gap (like 5+ because for most stat systems I use we have total limit of 40 between 6-7 attributes. ) Though as we get towards later chapters enemies will start getting stronger and will break the 40 point limit so that players really do have to work together to win.

Though stats also give players the ability to know each other's character much better too. So this way they know that X character is stronger than them or faster than them. (Which if they're a team and have trained together, is something they would know.) Which means a character can say: "Hey <character>, you're faster than me... try to get around behind them and launch a surprise attack. I'll provide a distraction." without any planning before that thread was started.

Though this does limit creativity somewhat in that players can't just whip out new (super)moves whenever they want. There is no "Surprise, I have another transformation I didn't tell you about". ( Much like in animes where the hero finds themselves desperate then ends up pulling out an absurd new form at the last second. )

That stated, I don't use stats on every game. Some games don't really need them. Like a real life game probably wouldn't need stats for most things. Sure there are inherent stats ( like a character probably can't lift some things or can't run at a certain speed ) but they don't need to be established because they aren't going to come up all that often.

Having played a lot of table tops, I used to really like stats and dice-rolls -- probably because that was what I liked and was used to, and I thought it was a good system. While those who were familiar with these systems were pretty clue-y about it, those who weren't familiar with table-top systems really dragged their feet with it. I like them for random events, but in the past I got a lot of resistance for these things so I kind of left it. It was turning into a lot of extra work. I also found that characters with stats for different abilities had a habit of never writing to them, which grew increasingly frustrating -- though it really does put a spotlight on powergamers.

I swapped out stats for attributes in the character sheet for a merit/flaw system. Seems to be going very well. Merits and flaws have a 3/6/9 rank, with merits being positive and flaws negative -- you gotta equal zero. Members really get stuck into it.

Are you a fan of dice/stat-type rping, why/why not? Why not? I won't ever do it in my PBP Rping but I do it regularly off the computer *gogo Vampire the Masquerade anyone?* I honestly have a dice fetish. Have a collection of them and swoon when I get them as a gift but I prefer to write when I PBP RP, not worry about stats.

Everyone that does is their choice and I hope they have fun.

Are you a fan of dice/stat-type rping, why/why not?

Outside of literate RP - Yes, I enjoy a nice game every once in a while.

In literate RP - No absolutely not. I actually had to add a rule against it when a now former member tried to make me use it in a thread. We are no stat and I expect my RPers to be intelligent about the abilities and limitations of their characters. I also expect them to be imaginative enough to come up with their characters looks, personality, career and so forth on their own. Additionally I find places where most of the threads involve a fight to be boring. But then again I also find sites that would require me to play a pre-made (or dice-rolled) character to be boring. In my experience using dice in a literate role-play ruins it.

If my members want to privately, using PM's or what ever, do a dice roll session for a fight thread they are in together that's fine - as long as it's what both of them want. But I don't want them talking about their rolls in the CBox or other OOC areas of the site and I certainly don't want to see dice roll results mentioned in a thread unless the characters themselves are playing a game involving dice.

Some people just don't understand the difference between the words roll and role.

I don't mean it ruins it by making the players more or less literate. I mean it ruins it by limiting the 'roles' that can be played or the actions that can be taken in a post. Yes, I said limiting. Without dice the possibilities are infinite. With dice well you're stuck with what ever the dice roll 'represents'. Sure we may have rules about what kinds of characters you can play but those are there so the basics of a particular species don't vary from character to character, (Don't want to have one character who can't go out in sunlight because they're a vampire and another who goes out in sunlight all the time despite being a vampire), and in some cases it's more information than rules. In any case making my role-players roll a dice to determine their species, etc, etc, etc would just be cruel on my part - I think they'd lynch me if I tried it and I wouldn't blame them.

That's not a problem with dice. That's a problem with whatever system enforces rolling for completely banal things. Dice are only what people make of them; they're a tool that can make or break an RP depending on how well they're implemented.

I've never actually seen a system that encouraged rolling to determine things like species or character traits, what the heck.

e: Unless we're talking about FATAL, in which case, uh...