34 / wfmag.cc
Look up the ‘Monte Carlo fallacy’ to
see what happens when people fail
to understand how true randomness
works. (Image by Af Ralf Roletschek.) Games Workshop’s Blood Bowl uses relatively few
dice rolls, causing ‘spiky’ gameplay where most of
your choices revolve around mitigating risk.SMOOTH
EMBRACE
This article can only explore
the elements of chance that
can be built into a game’s
systems, but of course, any
game you play against another
human automatically includes
luck. At a base level, your
opponent might be better or
worse than you, but they may
also be distracted or on top of
their game, all of which can be
lucky or unlucky for you. As a
designer, your job is to work out
whether to mitigate and try to
smooth out the randomness of
other players (Street Fighter) or
embrace it (Smash Bros.).
RANDOM AND RANDOM
I find this easiest to break down using real-world
examples: dice versus cards.
Dice are ‘true random’, in that no matter
how many times you roll a die, the last roll has
absolutely no effect on the next roll. If you roll
a six, you haven’t changed the odds of your
next roll also being a six (or any other number).
However, humans don’t tend to think like this,
and our instinct is to assume that a die will
balance itself – that is, if you roll an unlucky one,
you now have a higher chance of rolling the
other numbers. While this may be true over the
lifespan of the universe, it’s not guaranteed in
any particular game. It’s possible – albeit unlikely- to keep rolling a die and have it come up with
a one every single time.
mission depends on this single shot landing?
You still have that same chance of the shot
hitting, but suddenly there’s something at stake,
and now we have palm-sweating, should-I-or-
shouldn’t-I risk. With such a lot at stake, you
might start thinking about ways you can increase
the chances of the shot hitting, or whether you
should move other troops up in case it misses,
and so on.
As you can see, using risk effectively can
transform a game’s decisions by giving them
real weight. However, there are some things
to consider:-^ Do you expose the chance numbers to
players, helping them clearly evaluate
whether to take that risk, or keep the
game’s pace up by forcing them to rely on
quick guesses?
-^ If the reward is too low, then players won’t
get invested in the decision because there’s
nothing at stake.
-^ And if the probability of success is too high,
then players will automatically take it. In
which case, why bother making it a random
chance at all?
-^ The higher the reward, the more players^
will want to take the risk, but they’re going
to look for ways to increase the odds in
their favour. Giving players those options
will lower frustration from missed shots, but
could slow the pace of the gameplay down.
-^ Finally, the higher the reward, the more
frustration players will feel if the ‘roll’
doesn’t go in their favour, but that leads
us on to our next subject: fixed versus
true randomness.
Skill versus chance: using luck in gamesToolbox