This article originally appeared in Pyramid #17
Throwing Stones
Review by Tom Lehmann
Roleplaying is in a state of transition these days, facing both commercial pressure from collectable card games (in terms of where adventure gaming dollars are spent) and an onslaught of new systems designed to broaden its appeal, such as Everway (roleplaying based on pictures) and various "diceless" systems including Amber (the pioneer) and newer ones such as Theatrix.
What many of these have in common is attempting to reduce the intrusiveness of game mechanics between players' imaginations and their characters to make the gaming experience more vivid, easier to get into and less rules encrusted.
Into this bubbling stew is now thrown yet another approach, the collectable dice game Throwing Stones, published by Gamesmiths. In it, specialized dice are used to represent your character. To act, you simply announce what you're attempting, roll your dice and see how you do. You don't have to total pips and compare them to numbers on your character sheet. Indeed, most of what people think of as a character sheet is absent. In Throwing Stones, you use one just to record your equipment, damage, current mana and experience; your specialized dice really are your character.
By removing the character sheet largely from play the game actually feels more "diceless" than some diceless systems — a really strange result from a system based on constantly rolling dice!
What Do I Get?
Throwing Stones is being marketed both as an "arena dueling game" and . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: January 1, 1996
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