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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 8841303" data-attributes="member: 8461">Asking "how much randomness" sort of feels to me like asking what genre of movies are best. Sometimes I'm in the mood for an action flick where everything gets blown up, other times I want a whodunnit-style thriller, and sometimes I just like a good jump scare movie. Which is to say, that I can see the appeal of a minimal-randomness system, but I also see the appeal of one where randomness plays a much stronger role.From what I can tell, the former is much more popular than the latter these days. Randomness isn't welcome in character generation when people sit down already knowing exactly what they want to play. An episodic style of campaign, where adventures are set pieces with no larger connections, and random encounters determine what the PCs meet in the wilderness and various dungeons, isn't going to lend itself to a sweeping, epic narrative. Treasures are placed according to what PCs want or need rather than being picked out at random for characters to either figure out or liquidate back in town.Personally, I think that D&D lends itself to randomness more when the game engine grants less options during character creation/advancement and has an overall lower level of power. I can see why randomness was eschewed in 3.X and 4E, because the sheer number of options available (including being able to craft customized magic items) and the massive scale in power strongly encouraged being particular with how your character was developed.Compare that to, say, BECMI, where the power level was much lower (even across thirty-six levels) and there were far fewer options for differentiating your character at the mechanical level (i.e. characters were defined more by what adventures they completed than by their build), and it's easy to see randomness having a much stronger hand. There's simply more room for it to operate, and less problems tend to be caused when a monkey wrench is thrown into how things are progressing in the campaign.So yeah, different styles for different editions (and different games, for that matter).</blockquote>

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