I’ve gone round and round on my opinion of randomness recently. When I was first getting interested in modern board games, it didn’t take me long to realize I was not a fan of games with a high randomness factor.
For instance, I remember learning about RPGs. A friend was explaining to me how they work over a phone call. I kept waiting for him to get to the part where he explained the mechanics of the game. After a while I grew impatient, so I asked him directly.
“Ok, but what are the main mechanics?”
He was confused. “What do you mean?”
I answered his confusion with more confusion. “What do you mean ‘what do you mean’? How do the mechanics of the game work?”
“I already told you.”
I scraped my memory. “You mean…that part where I roll a die to see if I can do stuff?”
“Yeah,” he said, clearly reconsidering his opinion of my intelligence. I was definitely missing the point of RPGs. Still am, as far as I know.
Since then I’ve proven to have a fairly consistent distaste for skill checks, the purest form of output randomness I can think of. Oh you want to do a thing? Let’s cast lots to see if you get to it. Not my cup of tea.
And yet. Mini Rogue, one of my favorite little print and play games, relies heavily on skill checks. The fun is in trying to spec your character ahead of time to be ready for different challenges. Combat and event resolution are basically gear-driven, deterministic processes that come down to a few die rolls and in which you have zero agency.
But in this game–and many others–the randomness works. And I don’t just mean for some people. I mean for me.
Once I came to this realization, I had to investigate it. What are the redeeming qualities of randomness that are occasionally appealing to me? I came up with a few.
1. Strong Narrative
Depending on the game, even Euros can provide some narrative value. But certainly the feeling of creating a story is more prevalent in highly random adventure games. My plans can be interrupted at any moment, causing me to pivot and pursue a different strategy. Well, not strategy. But a different path certainly.
It all builds to having told a different story by the end of every game. With each play you are not simply growing your proficiency, you are creating unique stories.
2. Feeling Helpless
I went through a brief phase where I watched a lot of Texas hold ’em poker on TV. I loved the dynamic moments where someone would put in all their chips and go for broke on a single hand. Typically a player would only do this when they were trailing too far to catch up any other way.
The “all in” moments were great. The player would stand up from the table and pace around nervously. The whole room could see their hand and knew the cards they needed to pull it off. The good players (and those of us watching on TV) even knew the exact odds of it happening. So on the rare occasions the Hail Mary paid off, you had a magical moment of elation. Conversely, when the odds held true and the player was let down by the river, there was still this amazing moment of tension relief as the entire room released their breath at the same time.
Thinking about it now, what ended up being important–the thing that made the game fun–was not the fact that someone pulled off something big against the odds. The only thing that was necessary was the mere possibility an underdog could pull off an upset.
Lots of games (I’m thinking of solo/co-op games) are intentionally calibrated to be difficult. Winning a solo or co-op game 80% of the time is boring. Randomness can generate swingy levels of difficulty. A die roll or a card draw could present you with an enemy you are in no way prepared for. And this, when done properly, I consider an asset. Overcoming the odds is one of the greatest feelings games can produce. A devastating turn of events that leaves you feeling helpless might only give you a 5% chance of success. But oh, what a memory it creates when you overcome those odds.
3. Blaming Fate
You’ll hear this occasionally (from myself included). A player loses, or will inevitably lose given the current game state, and complains that they would have never had a chance. The game didn’t play fair. Randomness ruined their chances.
We generally think of this as a bad thing. It mostly is. But a different way to look at it is that randomness can spare egos the burden of taking the blame for a bad game. When I play a solo game, sometimes its nice to blame the dice. That unfortunate event or these scarce resources–there was nothing I could have done about that.
This leaves me thinking I can do better next time. If the game gives me even odds, or even slightly better odds, I’ll be all over it. Just give me that chance. A pure, open-information puzzle game that is simply too much for me to handle can leave me discouraged. But an adventure game with significant randomness? I can always make Fate my patsy and leave my ego unscathed.
4. Realism
Finely-tuned puzzle games exist in a vacuum. You generally face exactly the level of difficulty the designer intended. It can still be a very challenging game, but you have a good idea what you are signing up for in every play.
In a way, this detracts from thematic immersion. If I’m a mortal hero plunging sword-first into a dungeon–I mean, if this was real life, chances are if I run into a 30-foot dragon I’m going to be toast. (Assuming dragons are real. You don’t know). If I’m settling an island with no societal or industrial support structure–in real life, it might rain or it might not. I could get bitten by a venomous snake or eaten by a bear in the first 10 minutes. Introducing life-altering events or highly-variable resource inputs can help simulate real life, which is far from predictable, and make players feel more immersed in the theme.
5. Replayability
Surprise! This is actually a criticism of games we generally associate with lots of randomness. I often hear that one of the redeeming qualities of highly random games is replayability. I think what people are getting at when they say this is your inputs can change drastically from game to game, and wild, crazy events can happen that make every play feel very different. Who knows what’s going to happen next?
That’s fine on paper. In reality, I find games with high randomness tend to have less replay value. Event decks are only fun the first time you see the events. Swingy inputs can be fun but can get tiresome. Swingy outputs…let’s just not talk about those.
I think an even greater point here is that lack of strategic depth can kill a game’s replayability. I know a game is good when I get half way through and I start fantasizing about trying different strategies next time. How do I hack this game? Should I go heavy in wheat next time? Exploring these options are what keeps me coming back to games over and over. New characters and fresh factions are only fresh the first couple times. Event decks quickly degrade into repetitive resolve-and-move-on actions. But strategic options–that’s the variable on which replayability lives or dies.
Mythfield Games 