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I am sure we have discussed this before, but it has been a while and sometimes folks change views, so let's gp.
Where do you stand on random elements in RPG systems and play? What level of "swinginess" do you enjoy or are comfortable with? How much control do you, as a player or GM, want over the potential results of a die roll -- either by way of built in systems (stacking bonuses or whatever) or by way of meta-currency (rerolls or additive or whatever)?
Are there parts of an RPG you are more comfortable with leaning into random results than others? Character Generation? Combat? Adventure composition? XP? Treasure/loot/rewards?
Finally, what games give you the right level of randomness for your preferences, and what games are too random or not random enough?
As a GM I love randomness as a way for me to be surprised by the narrative instead of being always pulling the strings. If you've read The Art Of Game Design, you might have seen an astute possible definition of "fun = pleasure + surprises". If I want my GMing to be "fun" rather than simply pleasureable, there have to be surprises for me as well.
But randomness isn't only in rolling dice. What the players decide to do is unknown to me in advance and therefore it works as essentially randomness from my point of view. Picking up a published adventure instead of making my own also gives me a sort of randomness, which would be felt even more if I could read it as we play it instead of in advance (although for practical reasons I cannot really avoid reading it before). If I make up an adventure or part of it, I might use random tables to surprise myself but eventually I do it so rarely nowadays that when I do, it's because I am motivated by using an idea on my mind (or a new monster!) so I am probably not randomising.
That considered, I don't actually need that many dice rolls during the game for it to feel random enough. I generally favour rewarding players rather than characters, so I tend to resolve non-combat challenges more narratively, and leave rolling dice for when I am undecided on whether the players are doing a good thing or not. Think of it as the result of having grown up playing point-and-click adventures: I like problem solving, not gambling.
I keep combat rules as they are whatever game I run, primarily because I want to play combat as intended by designers of that particular game, no need to change the level of randomness. The main exception is character death, because it is a topic of its own. I let combat results unfold without fudging, but should a player character really die for good, I stop the game and decide together with the player if they want it to happen or would rather continue (with some penalty agreed together so that there is a consequence) and how to fit with the narrative. I adopted this habit long ago, having learned that some people have long term emotional investment in their characters and I intend to support them.
As a player I sometimes create my PC randomly in some of their details, especially spells so as not to be tempted to play again the same stock mage, and have even a few times done so completely down to all the details (even the name), it's fun for me and I never ended up with an "unplayable" character. During the game though, it can happen that if the GM make me roll too often, and I might get the feeling that my decisions don't matter much: that is when "pleasure" is removed from the equation, only "surprises" remain, and the result is not "fun" anymore.
As a GM I love randomness as a way for me to be surprised by the narrative instead of being always pulling the strings. If you've read The Art Of Game Design, you might have seen an astute possible definition of "fun = pleasure + surprises". If I want my GMing to be "fun" rather than simply pleasureable, there have to be surprises for me as well.
But randomness isn't only in rolling dice. What the players decide to do is unknown to me in advance and therefore it works as essentially randomness from my point of view. Picking up a published adventure instead of making my own also gives me a sort of randomness, which would be felt even more if I could read it as we play it instead of in advance (although for practical reasons I cannot really avoid reading it before). If I make up an adventure or part of it, I might use random tables to surprise myself but eventually I do it so rarely nowadays that when I do, it's because I am motivated by using an idea on my mind (or a new monster!) so I am probably not randomising.
That considered, I don't actually need that many dice rolls during the game for it to feel random enough. I generally favour rewarding players rather than characters, so I tend to resolve non-combat challenges more narratively, and leave rolling dice for when I am undecided on whether the players are doing a good thing or not. Think of it as the result of having grown up playing point-and-click adventures: I like problem solving, not gambling.
I keep combat rules as they are whatever game I run, primarily because I want to play combat as intended by designers of that particular game, no need to change the level of randomness. The main exception is character death, because it is a topic of its own. I let combat results unfold without fudging, but should a player character really die for good, I stop the game and decide together with the player if they want it to happen or would rather continue (with some penalty agreed together so that there is a consequence) and how to fit with the narrative. I adopted this habit long ago, having learned that some people have long term emotional investment in their characters and I intend to support them.
As a player I sometimes create my PC randomly in some of their details, especially spells so as not to be tempted to play again the same stock mage, and have even a few times done so completely down to all the details (even the name), it's fun for me and I never ended up with an "unplayable" character. During the game though, it can happen that if the GM make me roll too often, and I might get the feeling that my decisions don't matter much: that is when "pleasure" is removed from the equation, only "surprises" remain, and the result is not "fun" anymore.
Good post. I think the OP was referring to dice mechanics, but you're right that "randomness" can have a much broader meaning.
But since I do think the OP was asking about the use of dice, here's my take:
In combat I stick to the rules. Let the dice fall where they may.
Outside of combat, I prefer to let players solve challenges, and rely on dice as little as possible. I try to only use dice when the outcome of the action will have a meaningful impact on the game, and there's a clear cost to failure, and even then I try to lean on "fail forward". To use the oft-cited example of lockpicking, unless there is a narrative reason why the player should not be able to pick the lock, I will assume they succeed. Eventually. But I might ask for a roll if there is some other kind of stakes involved. Failure might mean you don't succeed before the guard arrives, or you can't avoid leaving signs of your passage, or you can't relock it behind you, etc. In fact I might give the player a choice on a failure: "You can choose between not opening the lock before the guard arrives, or succeeding but having to leave your pick stuck in the lock."
But I try to only use RNG to determine the success or failure of explicit actions, and to not use dice passively, e.g. to determine if a character notices something they aren't already looking for (traps, secret doors) or if they know something.
Take secret doors. Let's say there's a treasure room behind it, and normally a character would have a 40% chance of detecting it. I truly do not understand the logic of saying that, without any actions taken by the player, there's a 40% chance of getting the treasure, and a 60% chance of not getting it. If they fail the roll the door may as well not exist! Why is it even in the game? How is that fun for anybody?
So I'm either going to blatantly telegraph the existence of the secret door, in which case the challenge is opening it, or I'm going to leave hints elsewhere to it's existence, in which case if they follow the hints and look in the right place, they automatically find it. (I might have the party all roll to see which one of them actually finds it, but at that point it's not a question of 'if' but 'who'.)
When I ran Dragon Heist, I added a secret level below
the Inn that the players acquired
, and left hints in a couple different places. Eventually the players realized there had to be a secret door, and with some work figured it out, and the moment when they completed the last step and I said, "Click!" was probably...based on the reaction of the players...the highlight of the whole campaign.
Where do you stand on random elements in RPG systems and play? What level of "swinginess" do you enjoy or are comfortable with? How much control do you, as a player or GM, want over the potential results of a die roll -- either by way of built in systems (stacking bonuses or whatever) or by way of meta-currency (rerolls or additive or whatever)?
I love randomness in games. It keeps things interesting on either side of the screen. The more the merrier, really. I want to be able to, as a player, have some input on the stakes and through that the outcome, to a point. But I prefer games without metacurrency as they almost always exist to negate, replace, or subvert randomness. That said, a lot can be done with simply framing things in particular ways. No everything needs to be the same pass-fail check, for example.
Are there parts of an RPG you are more comfortable with leaning into random results than others? Character Generation? Combat? Adventure composition? XP? Treasure/loot/rewards?
I haven't read a game yet that's too random. For D&D-like games my preference is still Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. I love the warrior's random mighty deeds, the randomness of magic, and the randomness of combat. I especially love spellburn as it's a clear risk-reward system. I want more of that in gaming.
Imma PF1 guy so I like me some randomness. I like the crit ranges and multipliers. The never ending upward collection of +1s I could do without and like 5E's bounded accuracy, however.
I guess, in a lot of ways, it depends on what the randomness is for and how it's implemented.
A good implementation, I feel, is the way D&D 3e set up critical hits to roll dice multiple times rather than simply multiplying the end roll. This means that critical damage tends to cluster toward the mean result rather than skew out to extremes, both low and high. 5e improved the implementation by leaning heavier on multiplying the number of dice rolled, removing triple/quadruple damage, and curtailing and omitting the flat damage modifiers from being doubled.
A bad implementation was character gen in Recon. You rolled % and used the raw number for your stats, your base proficiency with weapon skills, etc. That meant that PC abilities could skew very widely. A hot set of rolls on a stat or two or a main weapon meant you were pretty unlikely to fail under normal circumstances, a poor set meant you REALLY sucked in play.
I generally like randomness but with opportunities to put a thumb on the scale with meta currency - whether it's hero points, legendary saves, rerolls, bardic inspiration, brownie points, force points, whatever. It gives players and DMs a better chance to have some control of the pace of the game or the events they feel are important.
I am also not doctrinaire about letting the dice fall where they may. If I overlook a modifier or ignore a critical hit because it would hose the pacing of what's going on right now, I'll do so with a perfectly clear conscience. Though, thanks to 5e's improvement over 3e crits, I haven't had to do that in a long time (particularly compared to 3e). But then, we have been playing over 10th level for the last few years. Tonight, we're starting a new campaign at 1st level - so I may be scrutinizing critical hits and how they'll affect the game's mood and pacing for a few levels. I'd rather character death come from a sequence of events rather than a lucky spike on my dice's part.
I am also not doctrinaire about letting the dice fall where they may. If I overlook a modifier or ignore a critical hit because it would hose the pacing of what's going on right now, I'll do so with a perfectly clear conscience. Though, thanks to 5e's improvement over 3e crits, I haven't had to do that in a long time (particularly compared to 3e). But then, we have been playing over 10th level for the last few years. Tonight, we're starting a new campaign at 1st level - so I may be scrutinizing critical hits and how they'll affect the game's mood and pacing for a few levels. I'd rather character death come from a sequence of events rather than a lucky spike on my dice's part.
I hear that. One of the reasons I use hero points in PF1 in the instances where a PC gets wiped out at no real cost of any of their actions besides being in a dangerous place to begin with.
For my part, I don't just like randomness in play, but as a GM I need it. I feel like it is way too easy to lean on old tropes and well used ideas, and random stuff -from swingy combat to random encounters to totally random dungeon generation a la Shadowdark -- brings out the most creativity in me. I also agree with putting player agency in the same category. i don't know if it is definitionally "random" but it serves the same purposes in that is forces me to roll with unexpected results.
I do not worry too much about critical hits creating problems, though. Nor am I concerned about bad dice rolls killing pacing -- you just don't have failures cause stoppage. Do something else with that failure (and only ask for a roll if you mean it in the first place).
One place where I am ambivalent about randomness is character generation. if the players prefer something more certain like point buy or array or whatever, i am fine with that. When I play, I like to roll stats (and other elements, sometimes) just so the dice can inform me a little about who my character might be.
Weirdly, I am not a huge fan of expansive critical hit and flaw charts. I don't think they add much to the game and do in fact slow it down, generally speaking. that is for D&D-likes where hit points are the main thing, though. if I am playing a game with more narrative damage effects, random wound charts might be of some use.
One place where I am ambivalent about randomness is character generation. if the players prefer something more certain like point buy or array or whatever, i am fine with that. When I play, I like to roll stats (and other elements, sometimes) just so the dice can inform me a little about who my character might be.
I dont mind random chargen, but I really need a system that can handle it. Traveller for example, allows for a lot of rolling with the punches and is pretty difficult to come out with a character that is useless. Many editions of D&D, however, can generate a lot of useless PCs. Folks tend to do two things then, either build in dozens of failsafes to prevent a useless character that appear to be random, or just run face first into every buzzsaw so you can try again. I dont really care for either of those options.
I dont mind random chargen, but I really need a system that can handle it. Traveller for example, allows for a lot of rolling with the punches and is pretty difficult to come out with a character that is useless. Many editions of D&D, however, can generate a lot of useless PCs. Folks tend to do two things then, either build in dozens of failsafes to prevent a useless character that appear to be random, or just run face first into every buzzsaw so you can try again. I dont really care for either of those options.
Yeah. For D&D-likes, the more important stats are, and how deeply they are integrated with other things, the more "dangerous" random rolling is. In Shadowdark or B/X, bad stats aren't going to destroy your fun generally. But in 3.x or 5E, some bad stats can really put you at a lower tier than other characters.
