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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5823502" data-attributes="member: 3424">This is a minor quibble, and my statistics background is showing, but &quot;expected&quot; does not mean &quot;pre-determined&quot;. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 5823502, member: 3424"] 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 [I]much[/I] 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. [/QUOTE]

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