With 7th edition rumors coming thick and fast a couple of comments have been made on randomness and queries have been raised regarding this so I thought we’d take a look at it.

Randomness is always going to be part of this game (and many others) – it’s part of what makes it fun; rolling dice. However, there is necessary randomness and then there’s being random for no reason (you can call it Forging the Narrative if you like, or It’s Cinematic! or bad rules design). Now I’m no games design expert, self-taught or otherwise, but this is a key point to any successful system.

Chess is the paragon here – the only randomness is who goes first which is based on who picks white. From there on in, everything is pre-determined in how the game unfolds outside of player movements. If you land on a space, you always destroy any opposing pieces there (no matter the power of your piece and comparative piece). Your movement is pre-determined. The end-goal is the same for each side. You are leaving everything up to the player. What piece to move. How to move it. When to move it. Etc.

Games like checkers are the same. There are set parameters and you cannot go outside of these. Very few of these games exist – far more games exist where some elements of randomness are a factor. Monopoly / Risk has dice, Poker card drawing, etc. yet most people would say these games are “competitive” games because individual players have a lot of impact upon what those random factors mean. Whether it’s property buying in Monopoly, utilising of units in Risk or simple bluffing in Poker, a player generally controls their own fate.

For the most part, 40k has been like this for several editions. No, it’s not the most tactical game out there and certainly not the best balanced but despite everyone bitching and moaning, the same people continued to do well across editions and armies because there was consistency across one major factor – movement. Dice are fickle but most players know this and good players would always look to setup scenarios where dice were rendered less important or there were back-ups so you could continue throwing dice until the desired result permeated.

From what we have seen, this won’t change with 7th edition but it does raise the question, when is randomness too much or more specifically, what randomness is necessary? Can you simply throw millions of random events around one solid enterprise and have the game still function to some degree?

Randomness isn’t necessary as we can see from chess but the difficulty of replicating that system with more than two factions is immense. Now stop and add in the character and flavour you see in the games we commonly talk about here and creating the perfect system would be overwhelming. Even RTS computer games with extreme amounts of funding and millions of games played constantly have patches and updates to keep things as even keeled as possible. This is never really going to be feasible with many of the systems we play be it 40k, Fantasy, Magic, Infinity, Flames of War, Warmahordes, X-Wing (though this has the most set parameters I’ve seen but again, it’s two factions and a really small number of [growing] units), etc. If you want to keep all that flavour, making that “perfect” system and removing randomness isn’t going to work and hell, I enjoy rolling dice as I’m sure many of you do.

They key however, is to make the dice rolling as much an extension of the player’s actions as possible; not the action.

We have a system in 40k that for most of 6th edition, was more random than anything we’ve seen at an organised level. Lots of this was removed in both casual and organised play – terrain was done as always for pick-ups and tournaments, many people did not use the Mysterious rules (terrain and objectives), alternate missions cropped up at a regular pace to account for some of the poor mission design, etc. but for the most part, things were left as is (and yes I acknowledge many people also played exactly as is). Challenges relying on at max, several dice, random charge length, tables (psychic, warlord, etc.) all changed the game but didn’t alter the core concept of what made good players good – using movement to create advantageous situations.

Despite this, a lot of that randomness is not necessary and the best example I can point to is the tables.

Warp Storm, Psychic, Warlord Chart, etc. are all examples of bad randomness. Warp Storm is at least on a 2D6 table but, none of these tables are balanced in the sense that each roll is equal to any other roll. This is certainly not the case and this is where significant issues can start to creep into games – I have no control, or limited control (i.e. I choose the Warlord Chart or Psychic Tables) over what that die roll does. If there was some balance to these tables (i.e. each option on a Warlord table was equal but situation dependent, all Psychic tables had a good power to swap to, etc.) would make these more in-tune with a system rewarding the player but even, would not be perfect (perfect would be having equally good options and allowing the player to choose thereby placing the choice in the player’s skillset).

That being said, some rolls like this are good and necessary such as Seize the Initiative as it impacts upon the way you need to deploy and prepare for first turn (banking on it happening or not happening are poor strategic decisions while planning for it to happen or not happen is stronger play; you may not have control of it but it’s something you can work into your strategy and ensures the first turn is not a given).

The best example of this being really poor is the Scouring or any odd numbered objective mission. When one player ends up with three objectives to two in their table half or a 4,3,3 objectives compared to 2,2,1; decisions have been made by the game without player input. There’s nothing wrong with these in the right setting – a narrative :O but in a strict gaming sense, they suck. Head down to your local for two hours and beat your head against the wall assuming evenly matched armies / opponents? Not fun and while you can probably go back and look at ways to actually win the game, there is a component of truth when you lay blame at the feet of the intended gaming system in such instances (but still – never blame the dice :)).

Again, when power is taken 100% from the player, the randomness is far more often than not, unnecessary – particularly if there is a “negative.” Instinctive Behaviour, Wraithsight, 5th edition Rage, Don’t Touch That!, etc. are all examples of this as individual rules and often impact upon use in-game (negatively).

Again, I’m not a games designer but 6th edition tipped the balance in favour of too much random; not to the point where skill wasn’t coming through to determine end-game results but enough that we began to see declining interest in use. Whether 7th edition continues, maintains or reverts will need to be seen…