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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostWormOnItsWayHome" data-source="post: 7766627" data-attributes="member: 6946187">I'm sort of in the middle of developing a deterministic (ie. non-random) tactical table top role-playing game. I say tactical, because a large emphasis of the mechanics and gameplay will be surrounding tactical combat encounters, similar to the way D&D and Pathfinder are generally constructed around combat encounters. I also intend to design non-combat systems with tactical decision-making in mind, in which each decision carries its own weight and incrementally leads toward success or failure.There are a number of factors that make the task difficult that spring to mind:1) Randomness provides a long list of potential mechanics to play with and dials to tweak. It opens up a LOT of design space. Off the top of my head: rerolls, die swapping, die storing, crits, randomness mitigators.2) I'm concerned that randomness is a necessary component to providing a 'fair' but reasonable chance of defeat. Combat encounters in D&D and Pathfinder are generally designed with the creatures being somewhat weaker than a group of PCs. This allows the PCs to overcome the encounter. Through poor decision making and/or bad rolls the PCs may be defeated by inferior opponents, so the threat of losing is always present. Further, the random aspect probably helps to obfuscate the natural superiority of the PCs and makes victories feel more earned. Without randomizers, the superiority of the PCs may be too apparent and the absence of poor rolling may lead to players seeing each encounter as a foregone conclusion. In which case, why bother?3) Lack of randomizers affects the 'feel' of certain aspects of characters. For example, a creature with lots of DR feels different from a creature with a high AC, even if, in a particular situation, their defenses work out to functionally have the same value. I have contemplated mechanics for a deterministic system that reflects the different feel of, say 25 damage with 50% accuracy vs 50 damage with 25% accuracy, but given my self-imposed design constraints I don't believe I have come to a wholly satisfying solution.</blockquote>

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