Is high randomness good for an RPG?

Is high randomness good for an RPG?

  • Yes

    Votes: 29 28.2%
  • No

    Votes: 50 48.5%
  • Other

    Votes: 24 23.3%

Bullgrit

Adventurer
Is high randomness, convoluted randomness, random randomness good design for an RPG system? Does high randomness make an RPG more fun?

For instance, instead of a set 10% chance for something, is it better to roll 1d20 to see what the percentage chance is (and then roll the d%)?

Is it good to have a series of charts where rolling on one determines the next chart to roll on?

Is it fun to have a system where a result can be from fantastic to terrible (like "character gains a level" to "character dies") -- like drawing from a deck of many things?

If rolling randomly (straight, no drops or rerolls) for ability scores and hit points is good, is rolling for starting level even better?

Is a randomly generated dungeon -- random rooms, corridors, monsters, treasure -- more fun than one put together with a plan?

Bullgrit
 

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I voted yes but will qualify that vote with a " depends on the RPG" statement.

All RPG's are not suited for the same level of randomness, and those that are great for a high randomness factor ( like D&D) have quite a bit of scalability for the exact amount of this factor the participants desire.

For a D&D type game, I say yes. If I were playing/running a historical GURPS game then I would expect less randomness.
 

I think you are rolling way too many things into a single concept/question, Bullgrit. Your examples are significantly different from each other, and it muddies the meaning of what you're asking.

"High randomness" as you call it can be great in some circumstances and horrible at others. Sometimes drawing from a Deck of Many Cards or generating encounters and dungeon rooms randomly can be great fun. Sometimes it just isn't. It depends on the players involved, the goal of the game session, the type of entertainment one wants to achieve at the game table, the convenience of the moment... if anything, it truly depends on the gaming style of everyone involved.
 

For my tastes:

For instance, instead of a set 10% chance for something, is it better to roll 1d20 to see what the percentage chance is (and then roll the d%)?
No.

Is it good to have a series of charts where rolling on one determines the next chart to roll on?
Yes.

Is it fun to have a system where a result can be from fantastic to terrible (like "character gains a level" to "character dies") -- like drawing from a deck of many things?
Yes.

If rolling randomly (straight, no drops or rerolls) for ability scores and hit points is good, is rolling for starting level even better?
No.

Is a randomly generated dungeon -- random rooms, corridors, monsters, treasure -- more fun than one put together with a plan?
No.

Obviously, my poll answer is "Other". And what The Highway Man said - too many different things rolled into one question.
 

I'd say "no". Take an extremely simple random determiner -- a coin flip. Let's say that the DM decides if the players are going to "win" or "lose" in the session tonight by a coin flip. Would that make for a good game? I'd argue no, because your PC could die in that game by the result of ONE coin flip -- not so hot. I can't remember the name of the study, but one study touted on human psychology and success rates showed that human beings needed to succeed something like 70% of the time in a game to feel competent at it (or to feel like they "accomplished something." (Someone may know the study I'm referring to). That's a pretty high success rate for a random determination to be used. At a certain point of randomness, average people feel frustrated with a given game, and feel like it can't be mastered; while the game might not be any less viable, most people will likely not stick with it for any length of time. I know I wouldn't stick with a game that I felt frustrated at 90% of the time.
 

Ummmm...

Wow. Errr...

First of all, this is forked thread. I think it would be much clearer what you are talking about if you made that clearer.

Secondly, you are bundling all sorts of concepts together and forcing the poll taker to treat disparate concepts as if they were some unified idea.

Thirdly, I'm sorry you got burned by a DM that didn't understand probabilities, but that one experience shouldn't color how you see randomness.

"For instance, instead of a set 10% chance for something, is it better to roll 1d20 to see what the percentage chance is (and then roll the d%)?"

No, that would be stupid. But I don't think the particular example from the 1st edition DMG you are claiming is of this nature actually is of this nature.

Take the example of having an entry for Fighter on a table, and then having resolved that there is a fighter you roll 1d6+4 to determine the level of the fighter. This is not at all the same has having an entry for a Fighter that is always of 7th level. Level is an attribute of the fighter, and it makes a very big difference whether the fighter is 5th level or 10th.

In the particular example you are complaining about, I think Gygax considers 'knows information' to be the most relevant attribute of a beggar, and that it matters whether it is a beggar of type '1% chance to know things' or a beggar of type '8% chance to know things'. In particular, I think that the beggar is persistant in the environment. So that a beggar with the attribute '8% chance to know useful stuff', stays around and in effect, by aquisition of these relationship a PC is advancing (or not) the 1st edition equivalent of a 'gather information' skill. In that sense, it vary much matters whether you know 5 beggars with an 8% chance to know useful stuff, or 5 beggars with a 1% chance to know useful stuff, just as it matters whether you own a +5 sword or a +1 sword or know a fighter who is 5th level or a fighter who is 10th level.

Is it good to have a series of charts where rolling on one determines the next chart to roll on?

Potentially, "Yes". In several fashions. For one thing, small tables are much easier to create than big ones and to plug into existing generation systems. Sure, I could concievably have a d10000 table that generated all the possible results (and I've seen such a thing), but often it is easier to have X number of d100 tables. For another thing, when you group things by superclass, you have rules that are specific to the particular superclass. That is, each subtable can work differently than other subtables in the tree and have its own separate list of notes rules and if necessary subtables. It's often alot easier to do this than give one big d10000 table crossreferenced with 200 notes at the bottom.

Is it fun to have a system where a result can be from fantastic to terrible (like "character gains a level" to "character dies") -- like drawing from a deck of many things?

I've never enjoyed the concept because it doesn't appeal to my idea of 'skillful play', but I've known players that did enjoy that sort of thing. I've never risked a draw from a deck of many things, but I was in a party where two players did choose to draw from a deck we found. Nothing particularly special happened (I don't remember the exact draws), but after pressing there luck once they stopped. I'm sure that there are parties that drew interesting cards and they still have good stories to tell because of it.

Is a randomly generated dungeon -- random rooms, corridors, monsters, treasure -- more fun than one put together with a plan?

Depends on whose plan it is. I'll say this. A decent random dungeon generator (such as the one in the back of the 1st edition DMG) will generate a much better dungeon than most dungeons produced by novice DMs. I generated random dungeons or semi-random dungeons that are better than the dungeons I've experienced from 50% of the DM's I've played under. There are alot of DM's with poor mapping skills, who lack of creativity in their encounter design, and who generate linear repetetive play where nothing unexpected happens who would greatly benefit from experimenting with the random dungeon generator in the 1st edition DMG.
 


I'd say "no". Take an extremely simple random determiner -- a coin flip. Let's say that the DM decides if the players are going to "win" or "lose" in the session tonight by a coin flip. Would that make for a good game? I'd argue no, because your PC could die in that game by the result of ONE coin flip -- not so hot. I can't remember the name of the study, but one study touted on human psychology and success rates showed that human beings needed to succeed something like 70% of the time in a game to feel competent at it (or to feel like they "accomplished something." (Someone may know the study I'm referring to). That's a pretty high success rate for a random determination to be used. At a certain point of randomness, average people feel frustrated with a given game, and feel like it can't be mastered; while the game might not be any less viable, most people will likely not stick with it for any length of time. I know I wouldn't stick with a game that I felt frustrated at 90% of the time.

I understand your reasoning, but the definition of "success" is a bit too murky to make things simple. Does success = win? If so, by what margin?

As an example, lets take GURPS combat and look at success rates.

A character has a weapon skill of 14 or 15, which is fairly skilled. This character will succeed on a "to hit" roll 90-95% of the time. The character will rarely miss unless going for a difficult hit location or is suffering from other penalties.

This high success rate isn't a guarantee of any gain at all since the target gets to defend, but psychologically the attacker feels good about the high percentage of solid hits.

I feel that a combination of success rate and actual impact of that success are whats important. With a higher random factor, the ability to dramatically impact game events (for better or worse) is improved.

A more balanced system will make the failures feel a bit less harsh, but the successes will feel constrained and "capped" to ensure that a single success has a limited effect on things.

This makes the overall impact of a given action more narrowly defined which I find to be less fun. I like earth shaking effects in my games and accept the risks of failure that come with them. YMMV of course.:)
 

Your question is very broad. I voted "no," but I'm sure that what I see in your question is influenced by my own opinions and tastes.

I am an unabashed problem solver in games. I like to come up with ideas and to make strategic decisions in order to accomplish goals. Randomness, particularly in combat, can make this more interesting for me as long as the randomness isn't too extreme. By making combat involve many small decisions, and then randomizing the success of most of them, it gives me the opportunity to make tactical decisions and adapt to the success or failure of my previous efforts.

Meanwhile, I loathe high degrees of randomness. I am an elitist on this issue, and I won't apologize for it. Not only does it frequently stop me from effectively planning or making strategic decisions, but its... mindless. I get no particular pleasure from rolling a 20, and no feeling of failure from rolling a 1. The odds of those things occuring were the same both before and after I actually rolled the dice.

Some people like to talk about the drama of sudden success or tragic failure that is generated by "swingy" combat. I don't experience that drama. To me, its like talking about the drama of a lottery ticket or the game Deal or No Deal. There is no drama. Its purely mechanical. No one has any right to be proud of their success or to rue their failure.

This isn't to say that no RPG should have high degrees of randomness. Some RPGs aren't about problem solving in the first place, or, they put the problem solving somewhere other than where they put the randomness. For example, Paranoia involves plenty of problem solving, the problems you solve are more about how to fast talk Friend Computer while screwing over your allies, and that's not randomized. Og: Unearthed involves problem solving, but its all about language and communication, so the highly random combat doesn't affect it. And Feng Shui really isn't about problem solving, its about badass combat description. So randomness is fine by me in those contexts.

But in D&D where a big part of the game, at least for me, is "how can I and my team defeat the orcs that just attacked us?" I want random factors to spice things up, not negate the "how" in that sentence and turn everything into a mechanistic dice fest.
For instance, instead of a set 10% chance for something, is it better to roll 1d20 to see what the percentage chance is (and then roll the d%)?
That sounds mathematically pointless. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if you have a randomized list of random chances, you can just multiply through and come up with the REAL random distribution, and then assign dice as necessary to accomplish it in one roll.
Is it good to have a series of charts where rolling on one determines the next chart to roll on?
Gods no. I've played enough Battletech to know that this just makes things take longer without adding much. Again, any time you have one chart seeding you to another chart, you COULD just make one chart with all of the information. Or you could come up with a less chart based game, reducing the amount of time spent looking up data... that works too.
Is it fun to have a system where a result can be from fantastic to terrible (like "character gains a level" to "character dies") -- like drawing from a deck of many things?
Its not fun for me. I concede that many others seem to enjoy this. I don't understand why.
If rolling randomly (straight, no drops or rerolls) for ability scores and hit points is good, is rolling for starting level even better?
Rolling randomly ISN'T good. Its that sheer gambler's thrill that I look down upon as beneath me.
Is a randomly generated dungeon -- random rooms, corridors, monsters, treasure -- more fun than one put together with a plan?
Well, that's a little different question. Its probably less fun, particularly in an RPG context. But it has its place when you just want to take a character and trash a dungeon, and you don't have or want to spend prep time.
 

First of all, this is forked thread. I think it would be much clearer what you are talking about if you made that clearer.
No, this is not a forked thread. *I* am not bringing a discussion here from any other thread. However, you are are forcing another, unrelated, thread into this one.

Secondly, you are bundling all sorts of concepts together and forcing the poll taker to treat disparate concepts as if they were some unified idea.
This may be. Sorry. Break it out and respond to them separately if you need to.

Thirdly, I'm sorry you got burned by a DM that didn't understand probabilities, but that one experience shouldn't color how you see randomness.
Not only are you bringing information from another thread into this one, you are misrepresenting my comments in the other thread and applying feelings and thoughts to me that are not my own. This annoys me greatly. It is rude. Please stop. Geez.

Bullgrit
 

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