Diceless Universal

 I feel that I buried the lead a little bit with the Diceless Travail Saga post from the other day ( https://lizardmandiaries.blogspot.com/2022/12/diceless-travail-saga.html ), as there is a nice little universal diceless system in there that is somewhat obscured by the Travail Saga tables/wordage!

You can take the ideas here and apply them to any list of attributes/skills you have laying around/are stolen from another game/setting you like the vibe of.  The attribute and skill list of a gameworld implies a lot of the setting so getting your hands on a good/making one is a boon!  

Making a Player Character. 

Players control a player character (PC). PCs  are composed of Attributes and Skills.

The level that PC attributes/skills begin the game at, and how they progress is the purview of the referee! Each incremental number on the Attribute/Skill descriptor table provides a description of that Attribute/Skill that applies to that PC, the referee uses this description when making judgement about what happens in the game! 

Attribute Descriptor Table: 

1. Severely weak 
2. Very weak 
3. Weak 
4. Somewhat weak 
5. Somewhat strong 
6. Strong 
7. Very strong 
8. Severely strong 
9. Awesomely strong 
10. Impossibly strong 

Skill Descriptor Table: 

1. Severely inept 
2. Very inept 
3. Inept 
4. Somewhat inept 
5. Somewhat competent 
6. Competent 
7. Very competent 
8. Severely competent 
9. Severely competent and somewhat skilled 
10. Skilled 
11. Very skilled 
12. Severely skilled 
13. Severely skilled  and somewhat masterful 
14. Masterful 
15. Very masterful
16. Severely Masterful 
17. Severely masterful and somewhat godlike 
18. Godlike 
19. Awesomely godlike 
20. Impossibly godlike 

The levelling up process is also the purview of the referee. Here is a suggested table of what is required for a PC to increase in level. What progress in Attributes and Skills is accompanied by a level up is the purview of the referee. The referee may choose to abandon an abstracted levelling process and just have attributes and skills descriptors improve organically through gameplay! 

Leveling: To level up a PC: 

0, To get to next level, do something mildly interesting 
1, To get to next level, do something interesting 
2, To get to next level, do something that changes a small group 
3, To get to next level, do something that changes a large group 
4, To get to next level, do something that changes a whole building/structure 
5, To get to next level, do something that changes a town/settlement 
6, To get to next level, do something that changes a whole biome/environment  
7, To get to next level, do something that changes a whole continent
8, To get to next level, do something that changes the whole world 
9, To get to next level, do something that changes reality 

Playing the game: 

• The referee presents a shared imaginary world to the players. 
• The players tell the referee what they want their PC's to do (perhaps explaining why they may be successful in such an endeavor). 
• The referee tells them what happens. 
• If a Non Player Character/The Environment, etc is taking an action that involved a PC, the PC can tell the referee how they attempt to react (Say, if the NPC was swinging a sword at them for example!) 
• (How much agency and the attribute/skills descriptors applied to NPCs is of course the purview of the referee!) 
• (Suggestion: PC's cant attempt a skill without 1 level in it! They shall have do do broad and inferior simulacrum of such a feat using their attributes!) 
• (If you really need to roll a dice attribute checks would be a d10 attribute level number or below, and skill checks would be d20 skill level number or below) 

If you have any good skills/attribute lists, share them below!