Lords of Gossamer and Shadow is a diceless RPG created by Jason Durall and published by Rite Publishing. It is based on the Amber Diceless Role-Playing for the Chronicles of Amber series. By based on I mean it's almost the exact same system, same stats, same starting auction, a starting character is still a demi-god, I think the magic is different. My point is that Lords of Gossamer and Shadow is to Amber what Pathfinder is to Dungeons and Dragons. Now I hear some of you thinking to yourselves "how role play when no dice?" and the answer may surprise you. See characters in the Chronicles of Amber series have ordinal stats where some characters are just better than others at certain tasks. In normal RPGs this is still true but in a stochastic dice mediated fashion. In Amber the better person just wins every time and the characters know it. All of this assumes a fair fight. If you tilt the playing field you could change the ordering. But how do you decide what constitutes a sufficient tilt? Game Master fiat. Also for any task not pitting characters against others it's just more fiat. Yes, yes, that's too much power for any one person, but really, is it that different from the typical ego tripping of a power mad dungeon master? No. Diceless requires (and book says it explicitly) a GM who won't play favorites which should be the default anyway.
Core mechanics or lack there of aside, it's hard to explain anything else without explaining the setting. You play as a lord or lady of the gossamer worlds and walk upon the Grand Stair. The worlds are your standard multiverse where anything and everything can and is happening. The Grand Stair is a collection of stairways, landings, and doors that lead to some of the worlds. People who wander on to the stair sometimes find themselves growing, changing, and exceeding human limits. Returning to the worlds they discover that the realities are little more than gossamer thin layers covering unreal shadow. The worlds are merely the half real expression of the interplay of two primordial forces. The Eidolon is the force of preservation and perfection and the Umbra is change, entropy, and dissolution. Some Lords and Ladies learn to wield one or the other of these most fundamental of forces and change the world and themselves as they see fit. What do these awesome beings do with their powers? Anything and everything, though exploring the multiverse is probably the most popular option. Scheming and jockeying for position, secrets, the occasional super cool magic doodad are also popular. In the distant past the Grand Stair was invaded by an evil race of beings called the Dwimmerlaik but they haven't been seen in centuries and definitely aren't about to make a terrifying return.
In general the setting is whatever you want it to be connected together by the Grand Stair which is populated by a diverse cast of extremely high level characters from every role playing setting ever created. Vegeta and Drizzt shopping for scuba gear would be a normal day in the Agora. Nobody would bat an eye at a cyborg or a foot ball player with glowing tattoos. About half of the Gossomer Lords has some item that completely clashes with their aesthetic. Random ass bracer over a power suit, augmented reality glasses on the orc barbarian, hobo with a shot gun. The game is almost daring you to create a Mary Sue. Of course all of the other players may do the same. This brings us to the topic of character creation. Character stats are decided by auction. If you bid a number then you pay that, that number is your ability score, and that decides who is better and worse than you in conflicts using that stat. You can also buy Eidonlon or Umbra Mastery, status as a warden or master of the grand stair for navigational purposes, Wrighting to make icons that act as magical and psychic foci for whatever they depict, Cantrips, Sorcery, and Invocation. Want a dragon to ride? Want your own private universe where you're a god king? Want a sword that cuts through anything? All of these things and more can be yours for surprisingly few points. Seriously the private universes are practically free.
So you have your characters and a general sense of how the setting works. How does it actually play. I haven't actually played it yet but I have a couple of suspicions about how to get the most out of this system. One, more players is better. This game should be played with as large a group as possible. I honestly think minimum five with the ideal being ten. Gossamer and Shadow wants the player to have a hard time remembering who they are better than at what. Two, player versus player should be almost as common as cooperative play. It sets a bad president for immortals to constantly murder each other but conniving, showing off, and petty squabbles over who gets to carry the MacGuffin on the trip back are absolutely on brand both mechanically and thematically. Third, this system is one of the few that I don't think would suffer horribly from being done as a play by post on some internet forum. It's almost all role playing and rulings from a game master with the most basic rules around how players stack up to one another.
If you've played much in the way of table top role playing games Lords of Gossamer and Shadow is likely to feel off. If you haven't your experience is going to be almost entirely dependent on your group and how much you commit to role playing. I bought this game's core book in print as well as PDF on a whim because I got a bunch of gift cards from my blood donor rewards program and I wanted to spend them on frivolous indulgences. I got several other books that I wanted more and this was kind of just because I wanted to buy as many print books as I could at once to save on shipping. I was surprised to discover that this was actually my best purchase. I expected something different but it's also pretty good. I'll add that the art is really good with scenes that just scream crazy awesome adventures await. If you want something cool, different, and outlandish you could do much worse than Lords of Gossamer and Shadow. Available in print and PDF here.
IRON NODER XVI: MORE STUBBORN-HARD THAN HAMMER'D IRON