The Importance of Randomness

[JonWake]

I think it goes without saying that even though I welcome randomness, I'm not going to be a slave to it, nor will I use it unfairly. If I roll on the random encounter table that the PCs encounter a dragon, I'm not going to have the dragon drop into the middle of the PCs and start roflstomping them. I might imply that there is a dragon nearby, or have them hear a dragon's mating call, or have it fly overhead. That puts the onus on the players to act, rather than react. If they attack, run away, or ignore it, it's up to them.

Rule one of running a random game: avoid forcing the players on the defensive. Tip your hand, but hide the details.

What I'd really love would be a way to roll up Evil Schemes. When you're running a sandbox game with a dozen factions, and the PCs are kicking hornets nests left and right, it's pretty easy to fall into a pattern of retaliation. Maybe something like Fiasco's setups: Randomly roll up resources, needs, staging ground and degrees of separation to quickly come up with a plot in progress.

 

[Mallus]

Two thoughts...

#1 - I've been rediscovering the joys of randomness over the past few months too (giant ant attack! dinosaur attack! run-in with a fighter lord and her retinue!). I've been running AD&D, and using a fair amount of OSR materials. But randomness is still more a tool than an ethos, and I wouldn't want to overly-romanticize it.

#2 - You can use randomness in both 3e and 4e. The thing those systems really discourage, though, is frequent --or in my case, any-- random encounters. They're too time-consuming, either to create or run (or both).

 

[IanB]

I like the predictability and balance of 4e, but it means that rolling for character stats Just Doesn't Work - variability in attack stats just blows everything - and I think for that reason I'm willing to let all that go. I really, really missed rolling stats. A lot.

 

[jbear]

Two thoughts...

#1 - I've been rediscovering the joys of randomness over the past few months too (giant ant attack! dinosaur attack! run-in with a fighter lord and her retinue!). I've been running AD&D, and using a fair amount of OSR materials. But randomness is still more a tool than an ethos, and I wouldn't want to overly-romanticize it.

#2 - You can use randomness in both 3e and 4e. The thing those systems really discourage, though, is frequent --or in my case, any-- random encounters. They're too time-consuming, either to create or run (or both).

I can't really say it better than Mallus.

I added random elements to my 4e game at certain points of the campaign where it added something to the game.

The main reason for using this mechanic with criteria was exactly the reason Mallus gives: in 4e a random encounter could take 45mins to an hour to resolve. And it didn't move the game on any further.

It will be interesting to see how this differs in 5e where combat sounds very quick and fast and that DM is encouraged to vary formats of combat (eg with/without battlemap). This style means it would be much more practical to roll wandering monsters as the PCs walk down a dungeon corridor, as this even might take (guessing here) a few minutes to resolve and the action speeds on hand in hand with the feeling that anything could happen (and not always a full blown challenging tactical combat)

I like a certain amount of randomness, but I am not really a sandbox DM, so I would never run the entire game based on random results produced by dice rolls and random lists. I like there to be central themes, adventures and plots in my games. I like my players to freely wander off the track from those lines if they so choose. But I also like to be able to plan at least a short time ahead into the future.

 

[Tortoise]

I think it goes without saying that even though I welcome randomness, I'm not going to be a slave to it, nor will I use it unfairly. If I roll on the random encounter table that the PCs encounter a dragon, I'm not going to have the dragon drop into the middle of the PCs and start roflstomping them. I might imply that there is a dragon nearby, or have them hear a dragon's mating call, or have it fly overhead. That puts the onus on the players to act, rather than react. If they attack, run away, or ignore it, it's up to them.

Rule one of running a random game: avoid forcing the players on the defensive. Tip your hand, but hide the details.

What I'd really love would be a way to roll up Evil Schemes. When you're running a sandbox game with a dozen factions, and the PCs are kicking hornets nests left and right, it's pretty easy to fall into a pattern of retaliation. Maybe something like Fiasco's setups: Randomly roll up resources, needs, staging ground and degrees of separation to quickly come up with a plot in progress.

I agree on managing the random encounters.

The very first random encounter of my current campaign could have been either a werewolf or a group of halflings. The party being first level and having no magic weapons yet the obvious thing was halflings. Not a combat encounter, but happening upon a small annual festival at a crossroads. During that encounter I had the halflings mention off-handedly that someone got mauled by a werewolf recently.

Just because the dice say something doesn't mean the DM is obligated to attack the party with it. The dragon flyovers is a great example.

 

[JonWake]

And with a couple rolls on the appropriate tables, you've generated an entire story arc. If the players don't (ahem) bite, it's not a big deal; there are always more encounters. And you can have them catch word of a spreading lycanthropy plague in the halfling community later.

 

[FireLance]

A creature has an expected lifespan, an expected damage output, and an expected treasure parcel.

This is a minor quibble, and my statistics background is showing, but "expected" does not mean "pre-determined". The expected value of 1d20 is 10.5, but the actual result of each roll could be any one of 20 numbers.

That said, I do agree to a certain extent with the premise of the thread: randomness is important. However, the next, and perhaps more important question, is: how much randomness is desirable? In particular, what is the proper balance point between randomness and player decisions and desires?

That balance point may be different for different people. In character creation, for example, some players might be perfectly happy to run with whatever the dice decide, but others might want greater control over the character they are playing. Mind you, the latter does not mean that character creation needs to be totally non-random - it could have a mix of random elements and player choice.

Similarly, while unpredicatbility can add spice to a game, too much unpredictability reduces the impact of planning and player decison-making. Players with a tactical mindset do want their choices to matter, and if the randomness factor is so overwhelming that they might as well be playing Snakes and Ladders, then they would certainly want to move on to another game.

 

[FireLance]

I like the predictability and balance of 4e, but it means that rolling for character stats Just Doesn't Work - variability in attack stats just blows everything - and I think for that reason I'm willing to let all that go. I really, really missed rolling stats. A lot.

There is an excluded middle. I haven't played it myself, but I believe the Gamma World system allows you to pick one ability score to be 18, and you roll for the rest.

I've also been toying around with a character generation system which uses a standard array plus random rolls: assign (16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8) however you like, then roll 3d6 in order for each ability score. If the rolled score is higher than the assigned score, use that instead. This allows for quirky characters like fighters with an Intelligence 18 and Strength 16, while ensuring that all characters meet basic playability standards. If you want even more randomness, you could allow players to assign just one or two of the numbers (say, 16 and 14) before rolling 3d6 in order.

 

[LostSoul]

Here's an example of randomness from my last game:

I rolled up a random encounter. Two young bulettes. I didn't have any specific terrain determined so I rolled on my random wilderness features table. I ended up with a pool and two more random encounters - half-orcs and goblins.

I rolled to determine the reaction of the goblins, half-orcs, and bulettes; the goblins and half-orcs were "interested in dialogue" while the bulettes were "hostile, possible attack".

The situation that now stands: the PCs have just captured the ruler of the only peaceful settlement at the request of the half-orc death mage. They are supposedly taking her back to the death mage for sacrifice to Yurtrus. The half-orc death mage doesn't realize it but his neck is also on the block; the PCs are going to try to convince the other half-orcs to betray the death mage.

The goblins are working for the PCs in exchange for "shiny goods". When the fight with the local ruler went bad their morale broke (random roll) and the PCs are punishing them for this, forcing them to do extra work in order to get their share of loot.

 

[Sunseeker]

The Death of Randomness

If there's anything that can be said for sure about 4e, it's that random events are constrained to the combat board, and even then, the range of random events is highly reduced. A creature has an expected lifespan, an expected damage output, and an expected treasure parcel. Encounters are built to minimize the likelihood of a disaster or overwhelming victory, characters are built to withstand the vagaries of the dice, and character creation is more like engineering than hoping for a high STR roll. The general consensus with the New School D&D crowd is that this is a Good Thing.

For a certain play style of DnD, this is a good thing. Knowing what's in the box lets DM's build encounters and whole campaigns with a reasonable certainty and a minimum of chaos.

But for other styles of DnD, randomness is absolutely essential. Not just in combat, but in the whole of the world. Randomness frees the Dungeon Master to be an impartial referee. Take wandering monsters, for example. If you decide that in a dungeon there's a 20% chance of encountering a monster every 10 minutes (or hour, or day), you have set a danger level without coming off as a bad guy. Of course, it requires skill to set these danger levels at something the players feel is logical. Walking through a town shouldn't have an 80% chance of being attacked, and walking through sparsely populated woods shouldn't have the checks made every five minutes. When the DM uses random methods to propel the 'story', it frees the DM to describe the situation and watch what happens, and it frees the players from having to second-guess the DM's intentions.

The Function of Randomness in RPGs

Random events undermine metagaming. Metagaming requires treating the game world as a statistical analysis, or treating the DM's adventure as a predictable narrative. Humans can only make statistical predictions within very tight constraints, however. With multiple variables, predictions outside of the system become impossible. Instead of wondering why the DM isn't letting my amazing tracker shine, I know that within this town there's a chance that I simply won't encounter any badguys worth tracking. It stops becoming about an antagonism between the DM and the players and now the players have to deal with a new situation.

Unpredictability spurs creativity. If the DM doesn't know what is going to happen from moment to moment, plot creation involves finding links between events, strengthening some, pruning others and letting the players move through the world freely. It frees the DM to keep low investment in any one outcome, because a trick of the dice might undo all her hard work.

To some extent, your issue feels more like a bone to pick with lazy DMs who just want to run an "out of box" campaign. The problem you lay at 4e's feet isn't a problem if a DM takes the time to create their own adventure or at least puts a twist on an existing one.

And when you speak of randomness, I think of the real world, but the real world is ANYTHING by random. It's very, very predictable, that's why even in the most "unpredictable" environments such as the battlefield, people are still able to make educated guesses about what they're reasonably going to run into.

Wandering monsters is always something that has bothered me. Monsters don't "wander" for starters, they live in specific environments and only leave them for absolute necessities(or in the case of more intelligent creatures, boredom or mayhem). When wandering through the forest, the chance that you're going to run into anything more spectacular than a pack of wolves is fairly low. Giants, dragons, oozes, ect... these things live in specific places and are usually fairly keen on staying there.

It's far more likely for YOU to wander into their territory(which is often well marked by primitive signs or natural indications), and in such a case your more nature-savvy character should be able to give you a fair warning of where you should or shouldn't wander in the woods. Even the most unmapped forests are likely to have rumors and stories about them, which a party passing near said location is likely to pick up. It is even more unlikely to be walking down a well-used path and run into anything particularly monstrous, you're more likely to get robbed than attacked by a Hag or something.

Metagaming is such a silly term because it so much of it actually isn't, players are going to be genre savvy, if they're not, they're noobs(and that's fine), but they'll learn quickly. Anyone who's genre savvy or played the campaign for more than a few nights will quickly get a hang of how the DM likes to swing things and start checking for that.

In short: reality, which your randomness is trying to imitate, is anything but random(which is why we resort to fantasy in the first place!) Sure, you could have the players mapping an unknown forest in an isolated location with no surrounding civilization, but even then aside from breaking all the rules through hand-waving and saying "well it's magic, so there!" even a cursory glance at the forest will give them some expectation of what to find there. Are there fae? Is it swampy and dank? Is it tall and overgrown? It is cold and snowy? This will quickly give any savvy player a good idea of what they might run into, and a vague idea of even the wildest threats they might encounter.

Honestly, I don't favor a "random" world, I favor a predictable one. It's much more fun to watch the party prepare for the possibility of fighting the green dragon that supposedly lives in the forest and yet never come across it, but instead just get dicked around by the dragon's magic. I would rather my players prepare for a wide range of events that COULD happen, rather than be caught off guard by the Frost Wurm that's wandering through the desert because I rolled 99 on my table of random events.

Random is often no more fun than totally railroaded. Things should be fairly predictable in what DOES happen, but less so in what COULD happen.