[Design] Fw: relative strength of randomness and skill

[David Cake]

At 12:04 PM +1000 17/10/05, Kyle Schuant wrote:
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:kyle3054 at iprimus.com.au>Kyle Schuant
>To: <mailto:lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au>Lev Lafayette
>Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 11:51 AM
>Subject: relative strength of randomness and skill
>
>From: <mailto:lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au>Lev Lafayette
>
>OK, the idea is pretty simple. The basic principle is
>the degree of randomness varies according to the
>action performed.
>...
>Depending on the type of activity or their relative
>importance of the incident to the story, different
>skills will have a different influence of randomness
>in determining the Trait Effect.
>****
>
>OH NO, NARRATIVISM!
>
>Okay, so that's, "if it's important to the story, randomness will be 
>important, too. If it's not important to the story, not so much."
>     That's what we miight call a "Narrative" approach. Or 
>"storytelling" or whatever. I'd call it a "dramatic" approach. 
>Problem with these words is that they all come from movies... and in 
>movies, we have the opposite effect. The more important a task is, 
>the LESS likely a PC is to do really well or badly. The less 
>important the task, the more random the result! So Jackie Chan may 
>fumble making a cup of tea, or may make the most delicious dinner 
>ever. But he will almost never fail when sliding down a large ribbon 
>through the middle of a multi-storey mall, and landing on a foe and 
>knocking him out.
>     In rpg design, we keep aiming for the opposite of movies, 
>whereas players keep hoping for action movies... I think this is 
>perhaps a reason for trouble in many game groups!

	Well, the hard core simulationists aim for 'realism', 
whatever that is, but it is probably the opposite of movies, the 
genre simulationist games (like James Bond, the original Star Wars, 
Pendragon) aim for something very like particular sorts of movies, 
the narrativists are really aiming for something new -- they are 
aiming for a satisfying story, but a satisfying story with multiple 
independent central characters. To achieve that, you have to aim 
squarely at that goal, rather than aiming for 'like real life' or 
'like movies', both of which are different.
	So, I'd call this approach something other than narrativist, 
because its not really what people mean when they talk about 
narrativist games.

>     In rpg design, we shie away from the idea of making ridiculous 
>tasks easier than simple tasks, because we feel that players would 
>do ridiculous tasks all the time, then, and the game would become... 
>ridiculous. Many systems solve this by having a basic system of, the 
>more difficult the task, the greater the degree or need for 
>randomness (ie, "you need a good roll to succeed"), and balance it 
>for the "movie" feel with some system of Hero Points, allowing you 
>to buy successes or rerolls.
>

	Yep. And for the genre simulationist stuff, it works pretty well.

>
>HELP, EVEN WORSE, GAMISM!
>
>     Then there's the approach of simulating reality. My view is that 
>as you become more skilled in an area, random chance plays a smaller 
>part. So for example there's the 100m sprint. I have no skill in it, 
>I may run it in 14.50 sec today and 12.50 sec tomorrow. My 
>performance will vary by +/-1 second, or +/-1 7%, roughly. But your 
>Carl Lewis will run it at 10.01 sec today, and 9.92 sec tomorrow. 
>His performance varies by 0.09 seconds, or +/-0.05%. His higher 
>skill doesn't just make him faster, it makes his performances more 
>consistent, too.

	To some extent, this is about the nature of the task rather 
than skill. For some tasks, higher skill may introduce more variance 
(but a higher lower bound).
	Lets talk about playing scrabble. A better scrabble player is 
likely not only to consistently do fairly well, but also to more 
often make huge high scoring words --- their variance in final score 
may actually be higher, as well as their mean score being higher.

>     In most games, however, the randomness of the dice rolls is very 
>great compared to the skill/attributes involved, so that in say 10% 
>of contests, I could outrun Carl Lewis.

	Of course, in real life, this may be realistic... if you 
aren't running over an empty, straight course. If you are running, 
say, though a relatively crowded mall, or a somewhere full of 
obstacles like a junkyard or a swamp, its quite realistic that you 
might beat Carl Lewis 10% of the time or more.
	This factor, of the degree of variance, seldom gets put into 
RPGs. It would probably solve a lot of nitpicking simulationist 
issues if it was. But would it aid playability and fun?

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