Why do we care about Fortune mechanics? Why does it matter that randomness has an effect on our games?

What if it doesn't? For instance, Polaris has indeterminacy without randomness. It's unexpected because you don't know what the other players are going to do, not because you have a randomly effective action.

I have reasons for asking this question, but I'll leave them until I understand this assumption more.

Fortune is a scape-goat.  Basically, when two people disagree, and neither wants to say "Okay, but we're going it my way, because we need to make a decision," they flip a coin and blame the coin.

Yes, what Tony said seems to be reason number one. However, there are a few more (marginal) aspects to randomnes in games, at least in my oppinion.

One is the fact that dice (or cards or coins or whatever) are less predictable than people. This can be good and bad. For one it can highten the surprise (removing the "I knew you where gonna do that" aspect) but then it can also create quite some rubbish, since dice never take into account the actual circumstance in which they are rolled, don't have a feeling for drama and don't know which results the players would actually like and which they would be annoyed by.

Another aspect becomes obvious once you look at randomness outside of the resolution context. Randomness can be used to spark creativity or to get the game rolling again when it becomes scale. Prime examples are random encounter tables and things like that.

Oh yea, come to think of it: as a tangent of Tony's point, dice can also be opposition. In a game where there is no formal opposition amongst the players the dice can be the opposition. This really combines the aspects of scapegoat and the creativity spark of the random encounter tables. This is actually not too far from the game I'm currently working on.

Hope that helped a little.

TonyLB wrote:
Fortune is a scape-goat.  Basically, when two people disagree, and neither wants to say "Okay, but we're going it my way, because we need to make a decision," they flip a coin and blame the coin.

Sven wrote:
One is the fact that dice (or cards or coins or whatever) are less predictable than people. This can be good and bad. For one it can highten the surprise (removing the "I knew you where gonna do that" aspect) but then it can also create quite some rubbish, since dice never take into account the actual circumstance in which they are rolled, don't have a feeling for drama and don't know which results the players would actually like and which they would be annoyed by.

Another aspect becomes obvious once you look at randomness outside of the resolution context. Randomness can be used to spark creativity or to get the game rolling again when it becomes scale. Prime examples are random encounter tables and things like that.

Oh yea, come to think of it: as a tangent of Tony's point, dice can also be opposition. In a game where there is no formal opposition amongst the players the dice can be the opposition. This really combines the aspects of scapegoat and the creativity spark of the random encounter tables.

Well, yea. The points I added to Tony's are kind of weak but I still thought they deserved to be mentioned.

From a fiction-creation standpoint, why do you want something less predictable than people?

Randomness can just be flat-out fun. I mean, you could figure out how much you were going to spend at the casino, then run the odds and figure out how much you'd lose on average, and throw that money in the garbage, but there's no excitement to it. If I'm playing Blackjack, I don't want the dealer telling me what my cards are, even if they're doing it to "heighten the excitement."

Maybe you've all read this already, but it really needs to be in the conversation: Ron on "the Ball".

From a fiction-creation standpoint, why do you want something less predictable than people?

As someone who started out playing and running games without randomness, and later started playing with dice, I usually think of randomness as a tool to spur creative thinking: left to my own devices, it's too easy to just go along with the flow of events.  Having a random element stops me from falling into a rut, because every so often the dice do something unexpected, and the act of incorporating those results usually gives a more interesting result than the one I'd been going along with.

Andrew wrote:
Randomness can just be flat-out fun. I mean, you could figure out how much you were going to spend at the casino, then run the odds and figure out how much you'd lose on average, and throw that money in the garbage, but there's no excitement to it. If I'm playing Blackjack, I don't want the dealer telling me what my cards are, even if they're doing it to "heighten the excitement."

Here's my take on it, and it is definately related to Ron's ball that Vincent pointed out.  Games are fun cause of the bad shit that happens in them.  bad shit isn't as easy to come by if we are all agreeing and predeterimining shit cause we see it coming.  How fucking boring would everything be if we just chose it and it happened as we wanted or we knew what was going to happen in advance?  Very fucking boring, which is why we have fortune, cause the unknown and reacting to the unknown is more fun than sitting around telling each other how fucking awesome we are.

Keith

I still don't buy it, everyone. Go and Chess wouldn't be better games if you rolled dice. There are just so many interesting options in those games that they don't need it.

I think randomness is a short cut around some interesting territory.

Consider each character as a stack of resources that the player can use to deal with conflict. Each of those resources has an effect that comes at a cost. That means that a player will want to use resources at the most effective level. If that means it's always the same sequence, the game's broken, but that's not a tremendous issue, I don't think. The issue is having enough resources with enough creative applications that you have a Complex situation: little differences in input make big differences in output.

Vincent, I read that post a long time ago. My feelings in the matter remain unchanged. I agree that there has to be something that hops up the situation, but it doesn't have to be randomness.

Joshua:  When you say "I don't buy it," which are you saying?

• "That is a legitimate way to use Fortune as a tool, but I believe there are other, equally legitimate, answers and I'd like to explore those instead," or
• "That is not a legitimate way to use Fortune at all, you are completely wrong."

Because if you're saying the first then, cool.  I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

If you're saying the second ... well, then I'm not so much interested.

glyphmonkey wrote:
Vincent, I read that post a long time ago. My feelings in the matter remain unchanged. I agree that there has to be something that hops up the situation, but it doesn't have to be randomness.

Josh, I mean no attack or criticism when I say that your last post has a strong "one true wayism" vibe to it. Go and Chess were not designed to use dice, so of course they work better without dice. Craps was designed to use dice -- would it be better without them? Of course not, because then it wouldn't be Craps anymore.

glyp wrote: I think randomness is a short cut around some interesting territory.

Maybe it's because it's late and I'm tired but it would help me tremendously to actually know what we are trying to discuss here. Is it that we're trying to find out why randomness is fun? I don't think anyone here is arguing that randomness is the only and best way all the time. As to why it's fun I think we already got some good answers. The apprehension of an uncertain outcome, of gambling something that is at stakes, of dealing with a surprising outcome are all things that make randomness fun (at least to me and as it seems to some other people as well).
Josh, you talk about ressource management as an alternative. See, that is something I totally don't dig. When I play games (most of the time) I don't want to be accounting for ressources here and there, planning ahead on how to use them, develop strategies, etc. If I fail in that case it's my fault. I'm thinking "Great, if I just had done this instead of that things would be better now." I get to blame no one but myself, which - to me - is frustrating. If I roll dice instead it's not my fault any more. I see the result and say "Well, bad luck then. I guess I'll have to deal with it". Scapegoat again. And a matter of taste, big time. Does this help you any?

Also, what kind of randomness are we talking here? Strictly mechanical randomizers like dice or cards or coins? Or other more "human" randomizers as well, like gambling (the scene bidding in Universalis).

I think it would really help if you told us what you're actually trying to get at, Josh. What exactly makes randomness obsolete, in your mind? Maybe it's just me being unable to read between the lines, maybe it's because I'm not exactly a Forge veteran but I'm not really seeing the goal here (although I'm sure there is one).

P.S.: Sorry if this post seemed offensive at all, it wasn't meant to. It's late, I'm dead tired and my English isn't as good as it used to be...

I think that, in ideal circumstances, randomness increases the challenge of play.  Let's see if I can break this down coherently.

Potential outcomes are determined by the players, so randomness doesn't increase the number/quality of the outcomes available during resolution.  However, randomness will occassionally select the outcome that no one at the table really wanted to occur.  The challenge I'm talking about here is the ability to take that outcome and see the potential in it.  To make it even better than what you were thinking of before.

This has happened a number of times in my HeroQuest experience.  I'll be hoping to win some conflict, or to lose it.  I have a preference for outcome there.  But the dice just come up against me.  It is now to me to take the outcome I didn't prefer and run with it, to make it cool.  I'd say it's fair to say that every so often everyone at the table wants the same outcome, but that you roll anyway and that you all "lose".

Suddenly everyone has to switch gears and figure out how to make this new, unexpected thing cool.  And I think that in many cases, that's a lot of fun.

Thomas

Randomness also introduces an element of risk and temptation.  Why do you roll for Humanity in Sorcerer instead of just losing a point whenever you do something that warrants a roll?  Now, I hate to guess at what the reasons for certain design features are, but for me, it makes it more of a temptation.  If I knew I'd lose a point no matter what, I'd be much less likely to do it than now that I'm just risking it and could get away with it.

Andrew, I don't know where, precisely, this is, but randomness is a shortcut around interesting territory. I'm not saying it's useless. I'm saying there's more interesting stuff where randomness is used.

I'm not softening that statement one iota. I really think it's true.

However, I think you're misunderstanding me: I'm not saying that randomness is inherently a shortcut around interesting territory. It obviously has its uses. It obviously has its uses within the realm of RPGs. I also think there's interesting stuff to do that the dice take away.

I want to know why we assume fortune is a better idea than other stuff. So I want to know exactly what it is that randomness gives us so I can figure out other ways to get it, too.

Sven, Universalis' bidding mechanic isn't random. I don't know what's going to happen becuause I don't know what you want or I don't know how much you want it. That's interesting, it's nonrandom, and it's a clear alternative to dice or cards.

Also, Sven, your comment about scapegoating is interesting - it puts failure on the dice.

What I'm hearing here is that people like randomness - they like that its' no one's fault when something goes wrong (which I hate in games that I play, btw), or you get to point to the dice and say "the dice did it!"

There's also a realm in which randomness is used to give you something that no one expected or wanted and you all have to make up something new and unexpected because of an unlikely roll. I'm pretty sure this can be gotten without randomness, as well, but you can obviously use randomness to get it. I also know that in our PTA game, Epidemonology, all the unexpected stuff came from someone making up something really good. Whenever the cards came out, it was because either outcome was going to be good and we weren't sure which to do.

Ah, then there's the "doing something runs a risk" rather than "doing something produces an outcome". That's a very valid point, I think. That's when the game is about risk. Can a game be not about risk? I don't know.

!!! That, right there, is the crux of my post, it turns out! If a game is about risking something, it should use a Fortune mechanic. If it's about trading one thing for another, maybe it shouldn't. Hah, hm.

.... it occurs to me that I may be using the word "fortune" incorrectly. I'm assuming that it has to do with luck; that is, randomness, and not simply an unpredetermined factor like bidding. Have I run into a jargon jag?

Ye gods! I can't keep up with the posts here! Someone posts every time I write a sentence that addresses the post!

glyphmonkey wrote:
I also know that in our PTA game, Epidemonology, all the unexpected stuff came from someone making up something really good. Whenever the cards came out, it was because either outcome was going to be good and we weren't sure which to do.

Okay, Josh, let me restate your theory in my own words, to make sure I'm understanding you correctly -- fortune is always a "shortcut" around....something.  That "something" is sometimes more appropriate than the shortcut, but the "something" is always more interesting. Sound right? I'm not sure, because at one point you say "randomness is a shortcut around interesting territory" and in another you say "I'm not saying that randomness is inherently a shortcut around interesting territory." I'm not sure how to reconcile these two statements.

I believe I'm starting to get where Joshua is coming from here because it's something I've been debating with my own game, Dramatikos.  I deliberately avoid fortune mechanics because the point of the game is to facilitate interactive storytelling.  The point of the game is to think on your feet, keep things moving, and go into a direction that would be both interesting and meaningful.  A lot of my energy has been spent on coming up with ways to really achieve my design goals with the game, even though a fortune mechanic would make things a lot easier to arbitrate.  And there's the rub: I could easily come up with a unique dice mechanic, but I'm not sure that lies within the spirit of the game.

Do I have a problem with games that have fortune mechanics?  No.  However, sometimes I do feel that designers default to dice rather than exploring other options.  As for me, the main reason why I'm eschewing fortune mechanics in my game is because other games that share similar design goals already do it better.

Andrew wrote:
Okay, Josh, let me restate your theory in my own words, to make sure I'm understanding you correctly -- fortune is always a "shortcut" around....something.  That "something" is sometimes more appropriate than the shortcut, but the "something" is always more interesting. Sound right? I'm not sure, because at one point you say "randomness is a shortcut around interesting territory" and in another you say "I'm not saying that randomness is inherently a shortcut around interesting territory." I'm not sure how to reconcile these two statements.

Ah, I think I'm coming closer to understanding your mindset, Josh. You're saying the scene bidding in Universalis isn't random. See, to me it is. Viewed from the player's point of view, it doesn't matter whether the opponent rolled a dice or secretely picked up a certain number of coins. It's a (more or less) unpredictable outcome. I won't know what happens either way. This is where we run into difficulties of defining "random" or "fortune". Some definitions of random seem to assume that all results have an equal probablity of occuring, like the sides of a dice do. In my book it's simply that I don't know which element will come up. I can calculate probabilities or judge the psyche of the person how is picking up the coins but in the end I can't say for sure what comes up. This is random to me.
You are only refering to mechanical randomizers, with an equal probability for every result to come up.
There was a rant about this matter somewhere here but I can't seem to find it right now.

This might sound like hair-splitting but I think that this distinction is actually very important to the discussion (at least for me it is). Because if you're saying we need more of the Universalis scene bidding instead of the dice and I say we need some kind of randomizers in games than we're not actually arguing since to me the bidding is a randomizer (for I don't know the outcome when I set the stakes). From your posts I gather that "randomness" for you can only be achieved by mechanical means.

Are we on the same page now?

Now onto where we are heading. Are you actually trying to find Something Market or have you already found it and now try to find out why people keep going to Dice Street anyways? You're talking in very general terms which is making it hard for me to parse you and really nail down your intent, I'm sorry.

Plus wait a second, J - are you saying that Shock's not going to use dice anymore?

-Vincent
who's committing the forum equivalent of insider trading.

glyphmonkey wrote:
Just because Dice St. is a shortcut around Something Market doesn't mean there's not something interesting in Something market, but I might not want to go there right now. Maybe it's too time consuming, maybe there's something on Dice St. I want. But sometimes I want to go to Something market.

Jumpin' Jimminy.

1: Shock: usese a randomizer, but it comes waaaay at the beginning of the resolution process. The reason it's there is to make a random scale for the conflict. I wanted it random because the scale doesn't matter in the long run, so long as it has one, and it's not always the same. It bascially details how much struggle there will be about an issue.

2: Andrew, I wanted to know what it was that a design got from randomness, and I wanted to know which parts can be gotten by other means. That's all. Any proposal of Something Else is in the abstract because I don't know what it is, but it stands in for techniques that are nonrandom that share characteristics with randomness.

3: A non-secret bidding system isn't random. I don't know what's going to happen, of course, but I can figure out what you'll want and bid appropriately. Consider a mechanic like Poker where I bid one, you bid two, I bid three, you bid five... until eventually I don't have faith in my hand enough to bid more. Now consider changing that "faith" to "desire", the desire to win this conflict: the more I want my character to win the conflict, the more I'm willing to bid, the more I'm willing to spend. It's definitely not random. It's no more random than a move in a strategy game: I don't know what you're going to do next, but I have a pretty good idea, and when you do something else, everyone goes "ooOOooooo!"

glyphmonkey wrote:
1: Shock: usese a randomizer, but it comes waaaay at the beginning of the resolution process. The reason it's there is to make a random scale for the conflict. I wanted it random because the scale doesn't matter in the long run, so long as it has one, and it's not always the same. It bascially details how much struggle there will be about an issue.

lumpley wrote:
I think you might just be saying that Fortune at the End is suck.

One thing I really get out of randomness is using it as a sounding board for creativity. 

Example: the little smiley face dice.  I reach for them regularly in our rules-improv game because it helps me get some thing to work with in order to make up what I'm making it up.  For example, we ran a scene that was the aftermath of a battle with "little" dragon spawn.  Grogs were wounded & dead, townspeople had been killed & run away, our mages were damaged & had come into conflict.  Instead of going through them one by one and deciding cold what had happened to them--which we were completely capable of--we rolled a smily-frowny-neutral-faced die (six-sided with various expressions on them) and then interpreted the outcome to make up what happened to the character.  Of course we were still deciding it, we were not saying "the dice made us do it", we were completely using the cue of the die to help us make up something satisfying that we wanted to be true. 

Another example:  a friend of mine (Kip) made up a family tree for several generations of mages in a given world.  Randomly rolled, or arbitrarily created, I'm not sure which. They had no names, just lineages (ie M1, M2, etc)  Another friend, (Sarah) spent a winter making up who the mages were and what their lives were like based on those arbitrary trees.  It enhanced greatly her abilility to make stuff up because she had a framework to hang it on. 

best,
Emily

glyphmonkey wrote:
A non-secret bidding system isn't random. I don't know what's going to happen, of course, but I can figure out what you'll want and bid appropriately. Consider a mechanic like Poker where I bid one, you bid two, I bid three, you bid five... until eventually I don't have faith in my hand enough to bid more. Now consider changing that "faith" to "desire", the desire to win this conflict: the more I want my character to win the conflict, the more I'm willing to bid, the more I'm willing to spend. It's definitely not random. It's no more random than a move in a strategy game: I don't know what you're going to do next, but I have a pretty good idea, and when you do something else, everyone goes "ooOOooooo!"

glyphmonkey wrote:
3: A non-secret bidding system isn't random. I don't know what's going to happen, of course, but I can figure out what you'll want and bid appropriately. Consider a mechanic like Poker where I bid one, you bid two, I bid three, you bid five... until eventually I don't have faith in my hand enough to bid more. Now consider changing that "faith" to "desire", the desire to win this conflict: the more I want my character to win the conflict, the more I'm willing to bid, the more I'm willing to spend. It's definitely not random. It's no more random than a move in a strategy game: I don't know what you're going to do next, but I have a pretty good idea, and when you do something else, everyone goes "ooOOooooo!"

Yes, agreed, that's not random. What I was talking about was secret bidding. Bidding for a scene in Universalis is secret (to my understanding). Everyone picks a number of coins, holds them in their hands and they are all presented simultaniously. The one with the most coins frames the next scene. That's pretty random in my eyes.

Well, I'm certainly not looking at a mathematically precise term for randomness here. What I mean is "uncertainty" and that's probably what Josh is talking about as well (I hope). The point about the bidding is that I do not know in advance what the result will be. I can guess but I don't know. Same with dice. I can guess, based on the rules, what result the dice will yield but I don't know for sure. With the dice I guess based on probability calculations, with the bidding I guess based on mindgames. Doesn't matter to me. Whether I would rather do mindgames or calculations is totally a matter of preference. The point is that I can only guestimate the outcome.

You have to consider that even with the dice it's not just "pick a number and hope it gets rolled". You have rules telling you which sides are going to be which result and those usually vary based on the situation you're in. Therefore you can just as easily get a feel for a dice roll as you can for a person. Depending on who you're playing with it may actually be harder to estimate the bidding of the other person (good pokerface, never met that guy before, can't get into his/her head,  etc) than it might be to judge the dice. People tend to be more sponteaous and most of all more complex than dice. When we're in a secret bid I never really know how much that other person is really invested in the situation, what their agenda is, what mood they're in, etc. Sure, I can guess, but usually it's not much more than that. It's usually pretty easy to judge your chances when you see the dice that are being rolled and the rules associated with that roll.

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

Ah! The root of our miscommunication surfaces!

Sven wrote:
Well, I'm certainly not looking at a mathematically precise term for randomness here. What I mean is "uncertainty" and that's probably what Josh is talking about as well (I hope).

wrote: Fortune A method of resolution employing unpredictable non-behavioral elements, usually based on physical objects such as dice, cards, or similar. See also DFK and Resolution.

You have to consider that even with the dice it's not just "pick a number and hope it gets rolled". You have rules telling you which sides are going to be which result and those usually vary based on the situation you're in. Therefore you can just as easily get a feel for a dice roll as you can for a person. Depending on who you're playing with it may actually be harder to estimate the bidding of the other person (good pokerface, never met that guy before, can't get into his/her head,  etc) than it might be to judge the dice. People tend to be more sponteaous and most of all more complex than dice.

When we're in a secret bid I never really know how much that other person is really invested in the situation, what their agenda is, what mood they're in, etc. Sure, I can guess, but usually it's not much more than that.

Hello,

A friend pointed me to this site recently, and I've been devouring it.  I've felt as if I'm a bit out of my depth here, but this thread absolutly grabed my interest.  Bear with my if I've misunderstood what you're grasping at here.

glyphmonkey wrote: What I'm interested in here (this is gelling in my head as this thread goes on, and I thank everyone here for sticking with me while I hash it out) is how to get the uncertainty of dice without removing the human element and responsibility.

glyphmonkey wrote:
Near as I can tell, you want dice. Lest I've been unclear, I'll say it directly: Dice are cool! I have a lot of dice. I use them frequently. They have definite functions.

But I want to know what those functions are, and then figure out which ones come inherently from their randomness and which parts can come from other functions.

contracycle wrote: What dice DO is impose the uncaring universe upon the best laid plans of mice and men.

When two people cannot agree, and resort to a random decision, then they have recognised their mutual and implacable opposition, and the fact that there is no negotiable settlement, and accept the decision of the gods as a means of circumventing the impasse.  The imposed externality of dice thus obviates certain conflicts that would otherwise prevent play from proceeding.

This is why I feel the Lumpley Principle is wrong to claim that all diced decisions are a mask for the social contract.  Dice are rather a special clause in the social contract as to how to resolve the unresolvable.

Josh,

I'm not so sure.  I mean, clearly the dice are doing something special, but ultimately they are some sort of selection system.  The dice can't generate new ideas, they can only choose between ideas provided in a social context.

Now, the question can validly arise: Does that make dice a cop-out of some sort?  That is, are dice an excuse not to make a choice between two elements?  I think that in some cases that may be so, but that if you are using Fortune in the Middle then the dice guide, but don't absolve you of responsibility.  In HeroQuest for example you can change the dice-arbitrated outcome of a "marginal defeat" for a "minor victory" if you expend a Hero Point.  There's still a choice there, will you spend the point?

Or is that not what you're getting at at all?

Thomas

glyphmonkey wrote:
But that effect doesn't exist in fiction. Everything that happens is the result of a decision. So I'm not sure — that's not rhetoric; I'm really not sure — what benefit they confer.

You said yourself the key to why the LP is right about this: two people do not agree, they resort to a random decision, and they accept the results of the dice as direction. The important thing is their mutual acceptance. If they don't both accept it, at least grudgingly, it's just a number on a die.

contracycle wrote:
Nope, it doesn't have to have any form of direction - the number can just be a number, like "d6 gold coins" on a pick pocket table.  As soon as the die stops rolling, the number enters the SIS literally.  Try walking away from a craps game because you didn't like the number you rolled and see how significant the PRIOR agreement to abide by the dice can be.

xenopulse wrote:
Randomness also introduces an element of risk and temptation.  Why do you roll for Humanity in Sorcerer instead of just losing a point whenever you do something that warrants a roll?  Now, I hate to guess at what the reasons for certain design features are, but for me, it makes it more of a temptation.  If I knew I'd lose a point no matter what, I'd be much less likely to do it than now that I'm just risking it and could get away with it.

Andrew wrote:
I don't think that was the point. Sure, the dice came up with a number, and that number happens to be an actual number that's being accepted into the SIS, but that doesn't mean it's just a number on a die, with no effect on the SIS, which, I believe, was the concept Josh was putting forward.

  The number on the dice represents something -- the number of dice in the SIS. It's not just a number on the table.

A better example of "just a number on a die" would be if we were playing D&D, and in the middle of a battle, I decide that I should kill d6 enemies in one round, and I roll my d6. Yeah, a five! I klled five enemies. What do you mean, no I didn't? In this case, there's no agreement, and the die roll has no effect on the SIS. It's just a number on die on the table.

Craps has nothing to do with SIS, the Lumpley Principle, or  RPGs at all. It's a totally different animal.

contracycle wrote:
I'm not sure Josh was putting any proposition forward - he was asking what dice do.  IMo, the significance of dice is precisely that they are non-human.

contracycle wrote:
The numbers on the dice usually represent something.  However, they can be used literally.  There is no principled reason they cannot be read straight into the SIS as a literal value.  In fact, thinking about this over the weekend, I am quite struck by the fact that we use numbers-as-numbers so seldom.  None of this countradicts the general case that dice are almost always representative and therefore require interpretation and/or confirmation before anything enters the SIS.

[...]

No thats a bad example.  If I have a rule from the book saying something like: "Ranger special ability: kill 1d6 orcs per turn", and then I roll a 5, then I have killed five orcs.  And if you or anyone were to attempt to overule that, it would require a special plea on your part to impose your chosen vision of what the SIS should be onto the tacit perception we all have simply by observing the roll.

[...]

The example was bad because you inserted the condition "I decide".  Thats not relevant - I'm talking about rules systems external to human choice - the imposition of the impartial world.

contracycle wrote: All games have a social contract, and gambling games have an especially important social contract, so important that violating it can bring upon your head the same sorts for penalties as violating the social contract of the state: death or serious injury.

Andrew wrote:
Total disagreement here. There is no possibility of reading anything straight into the SIS. Anything that becomes part of the SIS must be agreed upon by the human participants. Even if the example were needing a random number  in the SIS between one and 20 and rolling a d20 to determine it, it would still need to be filtered through the agreement of the participants. This could either be a decision made on the fly ("Sounds good to me.") or it could be in the written rules ("Look, it says right here on page 385 that you roll a d20 to get a random number between one and 20." "Oh, okay."). Everything that enters the SIS requires validation by the participants. There's always a choice, even if it's the choice to abide by the written rules.

contracycle wrote:
Again, while I respect your opinion, I simply don't agree with it. It's just a matter of whether you consider this relevantly similar or not. Also, debating the similarity of gambling games to RPGs is a bit off-topic. If you want to take it to a new thread, I'd be happy to discuss it.

Hmm....okay, let me make sure we're talking about the same thing here. The d20 roll in the example is accepted by consent, because the players agreed (explicitly or implicitly) to abide by the rules as printed. That agreement continues for the course of the game, and covers all the individual incidents. It's not a matter of all the players agreeing whether or not to accept each die roll. Likewise, in the photo example, it's a matter of whether you have the authority to introduce character X's existence and appearance. If so, it's because the participants have agreed on it ("Sure, he's the GM, he can bring in characters and state what they look like.").

I'm not talking about mediation, just agreement and authority.

OK.  Well I have not disputed that some act of consent is required.  All I have suggested is that a clause in the explicit contract can say, up front, "we will accept the decision of of the dice without challenge".  Thats not necessarily, and is not dependant on, the printed rules.  Once that is done, the results of any given role do not necessarily require further consent.  Again, I am not claiming the dice have an authority of their own - but that they can be granted authority by the social contract.

contracycle wrote:
All I have suggested is that a clause in the explicit contract can say, up front, "we will accept the decision of of the dice without challenge".  Thats not necessarily, and is not dependant on, the printed rules.

As a long-time Amber player, and having discussed ADRPG online many times, much of this discussion is very familiar, but as ever with some interesting Forge twists.

As a historical observation, I think randomness in RPGs directly orriginates from it's growth out of diced wargames. The dice in a wargame are there to arbitrarte outcomes because wargames are direct competitions between players and are often played without a referee at all. While tactical board games don't have to use dice (e.g. chess) one advantage they offer is providing uncertainty, and a sliding scale of possible results, in each interaction between pieces. Contrast with Chess in which all interactions between pieces are entirely predictable and produce only binary results.

Roleplaying games are played in a completely different context. They are not streightforward direct competitions between different 'sides'. They have a referee for arbitrarting many conflicts and making decisions not covered by the rules. Therefore many of the reasons for using dice that orriginated in wargaming nolonger necesserily apply.

Most tabletop roleplaying games give the referee wide latitude to make arbitrary decisions without consulting dice, and the degree that they do this varies. In some games "Wandering Monster Tables" are an important element, while in other games it would never occur to anyone that any encounters should be randomly generated. It's just assumed that all encounters are decided by the GM.

Simon Hibbs

Boy, do I not agree with that, Simon.

First, Matt Mearls' comment to the contrary, an RPG in no way requires a "referee". Polaris doesn't, Shock: doesn't, Prime Time Adventures, Dogs in the Vineyard, Mountain Witch, and piles of others don't. That's because they rules cover the kinds of situations one will get into in those games. In fact, one kind of situation at which they're all particularly poor is competitive, wargaming-type conflicts.

The difference between a referee and a judge is important here, too. In many mainstream games (GURPS, D20, L5R, etc.), there is a judge. That's the person who decides whether to reward or punish player input. Like the judge in, say, figure skating, that person's job is to determine how much the players' actions conform to a predetermined chain of events. Sometimes, they just have to conform aesthetically to the GM's vision and sometimes they have to conform point by point. If they don't, they don't gain the resources they need to continue: XP, information, whatever.

A referee, on the other hand, is a person who determines if the players are playing by the clearly stated rules. If they are, the scoring is obvious and not subject to arbitration, as in the case of hockey. The referee's job is to have a clear, unbiased perspective from which they can make sure that they can arbitrate close calls and enforce rules.

Now, in Amber (with which I'm not familiar with beyond some quick research just now), I would wager that there is such a judge, because the effectiveness of a given action toward obtaining given stakes is decided on by the GM, same as, I dunno, D&D. This may just address the fact that the dice in D&D can be removed and the game still works, so long as you're not playing a competitive, wargaming-style scenario (aww, snap!). Since, in Amber, you're presumably setting up characters who want something, they're still in conflict (just like in a wargaming situation), so you still need righteous opposition. If that's done by the GM reliably setting up antagonists that seem like they can effectively oppose the protagonist, then maybe that works. I dunno.

So I disagree: wargaming is simply one form of conflict, but many of its requirements are the same. As stories are made out of conflict, removing what dice seem to give you — uncertainty, objectivity — without replacing them with another mechanic means that your conflicts lose punch. In the worst case, your conflicts lose meaning because their outcome is either predetermined or based in the unsatisfactory system of social discourse.

Now, Amber with a system that gained uncertainty in the form of other players throwing challenges in your way (á la Polaris or Shock:), with reliably challenging opposition (á la Dogs in the Vineyard), and a guaranteed objectivity of the GM (any functional RPG)... that's a different thing. It could still be "diceless" insofar as there are no random elements, but you get what dice give you without meaningless randomness polluting an environment where it's irrelevant.

J, I think you're ... well, I think you're hung up on "what randomness gives us," as though it were one thing or a list of things. In fact, what randomness gives us in a well-designed game depends precisely on its place in the overall design.

In Dogs, for instance, what the dice give us is context for the pressure to escalate. Take away the randomness just there, and you short circuit the game's escalation of conflict.

But you can't generalize to "in RPGs, randomness gives us context for the pressure to escalate." Most games don't even care about the pressure to escalate! Some games, like Polaris, use non-randomness to create context for the pressure to escalate, because they organize escalation differently than Dogs does.

"In RPGs, randomness gives us suspense," "In RPGs, randomness gives us inspiration," "In RPGs, randomness gives us irrelevant pollution" - those all seem just as nonsensical to me. Maybe in some individual RPGs randomness does those things, but we'd have to look at the RPGs case by case to really know.

In RPGs, randomness (when present) serves a particular function within an overall game design, widely variable from design to design.

If there are trends in what function randomness serves, families of functionality across game designs, then the place to start is with the designs not with the randomness. Don't say "what functions can randomness serve?" say "here's a game; in it, what function does randomness serve? Here's another..."

-Vincent

That's pretty much what I consider to be a fundamental truth of game design, Vincent.

Randomizers are just a design element like any other design element.  One could well ask the same question "what does a character sheet do for us", "what a DM screen do for us", "what does having to give our characters a name do for us"...etc.

If you have a design goal you can identify any of a number of paths to get you to that goal.  Those paths consist of a package of techiques assembled together in some fashion, one of which may well be some randomizing element.  If that randomizing element helps make that path work, and that path fulfills a design goal, then the randomizer is a good thing and what purpose it serves depends on how its used in that design.  If the randomizing element doesn't do these things...then its just not good design.

That's why so much of this thread boils down to what random elements CAN do, but no amount of discussion will derive what they DO do outside of the context of a specific application.

OK, so, great, what function does randomness serve in:

• Dogs in the Vineyard

• Trollbabe

• Shock: (I ask because I want your input, not because I don't have an answer)

• Prime Time Adventures

• The Mountain Witch

• D20

• GURPS

... and, since Ralph just joined the conversation, why are games like the following so unusual in their lack of randomness:

• Universalis

• Amber

I'm only comfortable talking about a couple of those games in these terms. You'll have to ask the experts!

I've already told you about Dogs.

In Primetime Adventures, the cards serve two functions I see. First, they make it so that the person whose decisions we abide by isn't always the person whose character gets her way - without randomness just there, you could base your investment in any given conflict on your foreknowlege of who would be making the decisions about the details of the outcome.

Second, they regulate the flow of resources from the producer's hand through the players' back to the producer's. This has important consequences in the pacing of the session, I think; without randomness just there, you could base your investment in any given conflict on your foreknowledge of how much episode is left.

Matt, correct me if I'm missing something or wrong.

Universalis is massively diced.

Add Capes, Breaking the Ice and My Life with Master to the list!

-Vincent

Ah, vis-á-vis Universalis, that wasn't what I meant. That just pooped out of my fingers because Ralph posted while I was writing that. I'll get back to you when I remember what I was thinking about.

Since I've read, but haven't played, Universalis, I'd like to, at some point to see how it works in action. Someone asked me once why there were dice when player control was so central and I don't think I can answer that until I play it.

In Universalis, the resources you have at your personal disposal are in constant high flux. Thus, the decision whether to invest heavily in this conflict or squirrel your coins away for a more important future conflict isn't too substantial - you can't count on that kind of prioritization to make it so that the person with the most resources won't always win. Randomness serves that purpose instead.

Correct me if I'm missing something or wrong too, Ralph! It's been too long since I played the game.

-Vincent

As I see it, in Trollbabe randomness is used to make you weigh out your choices for success by putting your own safety & that of your resources & characters' connections into risk.  If it wasn't random, you'd be choosing to torch your kit & kin with a known consequence to it or yourself, or none. 

In the Mountain Witch, the randomness of conflict resolution does several things: 1) makes the narration switch hands, giving a wider variety of input from the players, 2) weights the input of others in your conflict via their Trust and 3) (this gets at the inspiration thingee, too, J) creates a range of outcomes that give people a direction to point their narration, ie the degree of success creates a smaller pool of outcomes that you get to choose from among when deciding what happens.  That, I think, is actually a very important role of randomizers. 

And, of course, Ron & Tim know best what they intended and how it works out in play.

In BtI, the dice are there to make an incentive for you to narrate various things, while creating tension about the outcome.  The dice are also used specifically to make the players collaborate by how they are awarded, what dice are available & how they are stacked against you.  You could probably just as easily narrate all the bits for free, then flip a coin to see what happens, but you would probably get less investment in the final outcome because it hadn't been added to by the players in each succeeding bit.

This may or may not be a side issue, but something that nar rp eliminates--along with most randomness--is the ability for anything to be decided about one's character without the player's consent.  Randomness clusters around that in most tabletop rpg. 

yours,
Em

glyphmonkey wrote: OK, so, great, what function does randomness serve in... • GURPS

Crap, I forgot (because I never used):

• results of a failed Fear Check -- selective result

The use for randomness in Uni serves a couple of specific design purposes.

First they prevent Complications from devolving into pure auctions.  While I love auction mechanics and enjoy many auction based board games, there are certain behavior patterns prevelent with auction mechanics that I didn't want to see in Uni Complications.  So instead of a pure auction where high "bidder" wins the right to narrate, the bids translate into dice and the dice decide.  This makes players far more likely to "bid" up what they consider a reasonable amount and be satisfied with their total even if they're just close to their opponents rather than perpetually try.

Also, philosophically, Uni's design was based very much on an Adam Smith-esque economic model.  Complications are investments and in order to get investor like behavior from the players the return on your investment has to be predictable yet uncertain. For instance, its reasonable to say that over the long term stocks return 10% on average.  Over the short term, however, its anybody's guess.  Similarly in Uni I can say with some statistical certainty that over the long term Complications return 25% on average (i.e. a 10 die Complication should net you 12.5 Coins on average), but for any single Complication you could come out ahead or behind.

The payoff motivates players to start Complications which is a desired behavior...initiating Complications is a profitable activity.  But the uncertainty means that the player's behavior around Complications is much different than if that payoff were a guarenteed, known, non randomized event. 

Gnarly. Thanks, Ralph.

Joshua wrote:

glyphmonkey wrote: OK, so, great, what function does randomness serve in... • GURPS

First off, as an iterative artifact, GURPS does not use dice in a consistent way.  You can't simply say "GURPS uses dice to mirror the unpredictability of the real world" or whatever.  Dice have been added to the design of GURPS for a number of reasons through the years of its development, often for very different reasons.

talysman wrote: no, see, you're still looking at it wrong.

you're looking at all the specific ways dice show up in GURPS, but not abstracting them into general categories, then asking "if we removed dice at this point, what would GURPS lose?" this is the fundamental question that Vincent asked for each of the games he analyzed above.

#2 and #3 serve the same purpose: introduce unexpected effects... #4 essentially fulfills the same function, but also aide in determining when a conflict has been won.

Joshua wrote: Overall, I would say that GURPS uses dice to support the game part of roleplaying game -- it adds an element of chance that theoretically makes the experience at the table more enjoyable for the participants.

I think both Joshua and John are correct that GURPS uses dice for a variety of reasons. I'd state it a little differently, though. Fundamentally, they introduce risk and unpredictability into certain aspects of play, which emphasizes certain types of strategizing and discourages others. (I'm not sure I agree with John's description of the importance of the bell curve in GURPS, but that's a detail which isn't worth going into here.)

In many cases, the reason GURPS uses dice is due directly to its philosophical and stylistic heritage in wargaming, via its ancestor The Fantasy Trip. In wargames, diced resolution is typically used in an attempt to model events which would be outside the control or knowledge of the players-as-strategic-actors in the situation being simulated, within the level of abstraction used for both decisions and outcomes. The use of a random model for this purpose is partly philosophical and partly an abstraction in itself: when I say that the distribution of darts on a dart board "can be modeled" using a random function, that's not the same thing as saying that it's truly random in real life. While this may be a difficult concept to grasp, it's not much different from the fact that a model of the Earth of the might represent the globe as a sphere (which it isn't): the model still represents the factors of interest to the observer.

In other cases the simulative motive is minimal, but the philosophical perspective remains. E.g., there's no particular reason that a spell, once learned, can't be cast perfectly every time. Or that casting it successfully might somehow depend on what would be seen as "metaphysical" issues relative to the game world. (Such as, "How important is it to the plot?") However, the need to make a roll turns says that spellcasting is an activity similar to mundane physical tasks: subject to success or failure based on objective factors which aren't completely in our control.

I'm going to gloss over other instances, but I want to acknowledge that, yes, the rolls for enemies appearing and whatnot are based on a perspective that's rather different from using dice for task resolution. There's still the basic philosophical stance: an impersonal universe where things happen unpredictably and without pattern. However, the way that taking an enemy ties into character creation and point balancing means that the dice are being used to flavor a particular metagame priority ("character balance") and turn it into a sort of gamble. Without that, there's no reason the Enemy disadvantage couldn't be handled through a kind of exchange of tokens or expenditure of resources.

Joshua wrote:

talysman wrote: no, see, you're still looking at it wrong.

Still?  I just posted into this thread. o.O

What none of you've provided yet is the purely procedural function randomness serves in GURPS. You've listed a bunch of ways that randomness contributes to what happens in the game's fiction, but nothing about how randomness contributes to what the actual people actually do.

Personally, I'm not surprised. I blame GURPS, not your collective analysis of it. Probably randomness doesn't contribute to GURPS' pure procedure in any consistent or identifiable way, on account of how GURPS' pure procedure isn't consistent or identifiable.

-Vincent

Ralph wrote: The payoff motivates players to start Complications which is a desired behavior...initiating Complications is a profitable activity.  But the uncertainty means that the player's behavior around Complications is much different than if that payoff were a guarenteed, known, non randomized event. 

John wrote: if you lose randomness in task resolution, players will concentrate on making a few skills sure-fire and won't risk using other skills;
if you lose randomness in damage results, conflict resolution becomes more predictable -- you will always know after the first exchange who will accrue damage faster;
if you lose the other two kinds of randomness, all conflicts begin to look the same.

Isn't it GM's (or whoever takes most of responsibility) decision to choose if randomness will be used or not, anyway?
Is it really still a question - "what randomness gives us" or "how to use it"?

imho, using or not using dice etc is more about responsibility and making decisions in real situations - more of a feeling and intuition then system or rules.

jmac wrote:
Isn't it GM's (or whoever takes most of responsibility) decision to choose if randomness will be used or not, anyway?
Is it really still a question - "what randomness gives us" or "how to use it"?

imho, using or not using dice etc is more about responsibility and making decisions in real situations - more of a feeling and intuition then system or rules.

Welcome to the Forge, jmac! Do you have a real name we can call you by?

jmac wrote:
Isn't it GM's (or whoever takes most of responsibility) decision to choose if randomness will be used or not, anyway?

wrote: ]Is it really still a question - "what randomness gives us" or "how to use it"?

imho, using or not using dice etc is more about responsibility and making decisions in real situations - more of a feeling and intuition then system or rules.

talysman wrote: ... the dungeon is basically a flow chart that links together combat and problem-solving scenarios. play is driven by movement from room to room.
...the problem was: they removed the dungeon as the procedure governing play at high-level, but didn't know what to put in its place. all the games in this period did, at first, was add a skill system to the combat system and say "go forth and adventure"... when that was discovered to be too vague, they started applying the dungeon flowchart to the concept of plot, and you wound up with GM-designed choose-your-own-adventure, which of course lead mainly to Illusionist play or outright railroading.

this is why you see "metaplot" arising in this timeperiod. it's a "dungeon" on the conceptual level.

lumpley wrote:
What none of you've provided yet is the purely procedural function randomness serves in GURPS. You've listed a bunch of ways that randomness contributes to what happens in the game's fiction, but nothing about how randomness contributes to what the actual people actually do.
-Vincent

I think Elliot is right.  Randomness in GURPS isn't there to support play from a procedural sense.  Its there to support a specific design philosophy, one that stems directly from wargaming and was such an ingrained assumption of the hobby of wargaming that I doubt SJ actually felt the need to articulate the purpose of its use in GURPs.

Basically the philosophy goes like this:
1) Reality exists
2) The outcome of actions players take in a game should resemble the outcome those actions would have if players took them in reality
3) That outcome should occur as a result of the same inputs that exist in reality (i.e. they happened that way because the inputs led to that outcome, not because you skipped ahead and just chose to have it that way)
4) If every concievable input was known, could be measured, and its impact calculated by an algorithm then there would never be any reason for randomness.  That is afterall how reality works...all of the various inputs combine in deterministic fashion to produce an outcome which would be completely predictable and known if those inputs were measureable.
5) Since It is not possible (nor desireable from a time and resources contraint standpoint) to account for every input and combination of inputs directly, all of the unaccounted for inputs must be accounted for using probabilities of outcome.

All of the above is just basic rules of modeling, the most well known example perhaps being Monte Carlo simulations.

The game design philosophy at work here is that the rules of the game should create a model of the games reality and that means accounting for as many inputs as can be reasonably ascertained (why there are tables and tables of situational modifiers in GURPS and its ilk) and accounting for all other inputs (known, suspected, or a total mystery) by means of probability. 

The most common method of dealing with probabilities in a game environment is via dice mechanics.

Voila...GURPS must have randomized dice mechanics because the entire purpose of the design is to serve as a model for GURPS's reality and that's the way models are constructed.

The impact of these mechanics on play procedures are only ever considered in terms of handling time (aka the old playability vs. realism debate) and "breaking" the system due to a poorly constructed model.  Actually using mechanics for specific player behavioral purposes or to generate a specific play experience was not a part of the equation.

Now whether this is something to "blame" GURPS for or applaud it for depends entirely on your feelings of whether Monte Carlo style statistical models of reality are a valid purpose for a game design.

Valamir wrote:
I think Elliot is right.  Randomness in GURPS isn't there to support play from a procedural sense.  Its there to support a specific design philosophy, one that stems directly from wargaming and was such an ingrained assumption of the hobby of wargaming that I doubt SJ actually felt the need to articulate the purpose of its use in GURPs.

Now whether this is something to "blame" GURPS for or applaud it for depends entirely on your feelings of whether Monte Carlo style statistical models of reality are a valid purpose for a game design.

marco wrote:

I can tell you for certain that JAGS, which uses the same model as GURPS in terms of mechanics (design patterns, if you will) did have a strong component of non-reality based deisgn goals and, in fact, I made a number of non-realism-based game-design decisions that centered around levels of player empowerment and predictability rather than a monte carlo simulation of reality.

Specifically, while I was concerned about the game system producing results that caused a strong break in suspension of disbelief, I was far more concerned with how the player felt about being in control of the action (which is why I moved from 2d10 to 4d6-4 early on).

Now whether this is something to "blame" GURPS for or applaud it for depends entirely on your feelings of whether Monte Carlo style statistical models of reality are a valid purpose for a game design.

talysman wrote:
in a lot of older games, yes.
<skip>
oldschool RPGs didn't have a clear procedure of play. mostly, they just had a clear procedure for combat. the closest they come to a procedure for play in general is in dungeon-crawl-style; the dungeon is basically a flow chart that links together combat and problem-solving scenarios. play is driven by movement from room to room.

<I know very little about GURPS, so skip>
..choose-your-own-adventure, which of course lead mainly to Illusionist play or outright railroading.

glyphmonkey wrote:
Welcome to the Forge, jmac! Do you have a real name we can call you by?

Well, lots of games don't have a GM, often distributing the responsibilites of a GM across other players.

In all these games, the rules are never arbitrated by the GM.

For instance, in Dogs in the Vineyard, anyone can call for a conflict to get something they want: the GM is without recourse if the players want to throw down on something. The rules literally say, in the GMing section, "say yes or roll dice". That is, either everyone shares the vision of what's happening, so it happens; or players disagree about what should happen next; or, in most cases, the dice wound the characters, pour salt in them, and they come out changed in ways you wouldn't have expected. That's why Vincent says they drive escalation.

You'll note, though, there's no facility for saying "We're not gonna roll dice about this." If the GM doesn't want something to happen, she's got nothing to do but throw some NPCs in there to fight with the characters over something - and truthfully, in Dogs, that usually doesn't kill the Dogs, so they get stronger from it, in the unlikely event that the Dogs don't win the conflict.

How you use those dice ? what they do ? is built into the system, just like your relationships with the othere players is, just like the rule on page 17 about underwater combat is, just like everyone's agreement that they can't meet Abraham Lincoln in this story because it will invalidate the last story.

What specifically it is that dice do in a given game, that has to be consistent and it has to confirm what's supposed to happen in that specific game. The only reason the GM shouldn't want to roll the dice over something is if either a) the rules don't call for a roll there or b) the rules are broken.

jmac wrote:

talysman wrote:
in a lot of older games, yes.
<skip>
oldschool RPGs didn't have a clear procedure of play. mostly, they just had a clear procedure for combat. the closest they come to a procedure for play in general is in dungeon-crawl-style; the dungeon is basically a flow chart that links together combat and problem-solving scenarios. play is driven by movement from room to room.

<I know very little about GURPS, so skip>
..choose-your-own-adventure, which of course lead mainly to Illusionist play or outright railroading.

would someone please give me some links to definition if "Illusionist" is also a kind of term? %)

I'm not sure, that a clear procedure or strict rules and following them is what we need.

talysman wrote:
you might also want to read the article called "System Does Matter" that is also in the articles section of The Forge, because System Matters is a very popular fundamental belief here, but it looks like you don't agree with it. this is just an aside.

now, as for the point about clear procedures and strict rules: strict rules is not necessarily what we need, unless the game design calls for it, but we always need clear procedures. if there isn't one in the rules as written, the gaming group will either agree on a clear procedure or flounder helplessly (and not have fun.)

which is why we're discussing the roles dice mechanics or other randomness play procedurally. we're interested in how dice are used in specific games, and which games use randomness to drive the general procedure of play.

We're wandering afield due to overfocus on just one of the systems I mentioned. The question is not, "Why does this particular game use a particular dice mechanic", but "Why does this game use a dice mechanic at all, when it does, and not at other times?"

The games I want to discuss are:

• Trollbabe (I'd like to hear Ron's input on this)

• Prime Time Adventures (Matt? Where are you, man?)

• The Mountain Witch (Tim? Where you at?)

• D20 (Does anyone here play this system?)

• GURPS (I don't mind discussing this further in the larger context. Let's just not get stuck on it.)

• Amber (as a counterexample — folks are passionate about it, and some of those folks must be here.)

I'll take my moderator hat back off now. Don't make me put it back on.

Valamir wrote:
While I'm certain that "how the player felt about being in control of the action" was a design goal of yours for JAGS I'm not sure I buy the "far more concerned with" part.  I can see how moving from a wide dispursion die roll to a tight dispursion die roll is a nod in that direction...but if you were really "far more concerned" with players perceptions of controling the action there are many many other non GURPS-esque mechanics that accomplish that goal far better.  Clearly the monte carlo simulation aspect of that style of rules was important enough to you to make you not want to move away from it entirely.

I mean otherwise...using a design structure whose best feature is being a simplified-for pen-and-paper monte carlo simulator for you game would have been a really poor design choice, and I definitely don't buy that for a second.

Hi there.

    I'm new here, so I hope I can avoid blundering too terribly.  I've been reading around the various forums for a bit, getting a feel for the community.  I figured it was about time I contributed something, so I decided to start with something I know.

    Amber does not make any use of dice or any other Fortune mechanic.  I believe Ron himself cites ADRP as one of the examples of systems using Karma for task/conflict resolution in the glossary, so I'd guess that's fairly common knowledge.  (For those who aren't familiar with it, in short, there is an auction for Attributes wherein all participants bid for first rank - and first rank in a field can best others in that same field readily.  I can explain further if needed, but since it's off-topic...)  A given character's luck is effected by a Karmic mechanic as well, so even chance isn't a matter of chance.  There is a great deal of room and an equally great amount of pressure (mostly the good kind) to get creative about the approach to a conflict to mitigate or maintain the difference in ability, should the conflict fall back on rankings.  When the players are on their game, this can result in some entertaining and fun situations.  However, when the players are off or being rushed, it can be as mechanistic and dry as the dullest of dice-fests.  Where a more typical RPG inserts dice rolling, ADRP inserts rank comparisons.  Similarly, where there would be a situational modifier to a die roll, ADRP relies on the GM to adjudicate how significant those circumstances are to the parties involved in the conflict and modifies the resolution accordingly - with respect to rank but not based purely on it.

    I suppose the short version is: Where there would be randomness, ADRP relies a set of fixed numeric values compared and modified in accord with the creativity of the players (to garner situational modifiers) and judgement of the GM.

Garg

glyphmonkey wrote:
• D20 (Does anyone here play this system?)

jmac wrote: I totally agree - system matters.
It's not much a question for me if randomness factor should be used at all - it definitely should. So system is to "control" this randomness by setting procedures of dice rolling etc - thus adjusting interactions with environment etc to support genre and mood, for example.