Dev Log 10- Controlling randomness

When making a new game in today’s world, randomness is almost inevitable. In an ironic way, it’s almost a constant.  A given if you will.  A famous sociologist once said, “destiny is the sole artisan of victory, and where there is rivalry, what is meant is that the winner has been more favored by fortune than the loser.” (Roger Caillois in his book, Man, Play, and Games Published in 1961).  To that end, it now becomes a matter of not only how randomness is implemented into a new game, but also how to control the randomness in the game you are making.  One may initially think to limit, or minimize the randomness found in a game, but likely wouldn’t remove it in its entirety.  These days, randomness in a game is very normal.  From coin flips, to dice rolls, to a freshly shuffled deck of cards, and even random number generators (RNG) in a video game, it really is just about everywhere you can think to look.  Even in class, my group and I work hard at work to reduce and control randomness and limit its overall impact on gameplay.  During a recent playtest of a prototype, we quickly noticed that due to the way our prototype was designed, we had accidentally put ourselves at the mercy of a regular 6 sided dice.  Within less than 3 turns, we had collectively seen all that we had needed to see.  The dice ruled in favor of the fire every turn, with only one or two instances in which anyone else was able to do anything other than take damage over time.  We had all agreed that the dice was quickly becoming very oppressive with only 6 sides and a 1 in 6 chance of no player being able to have any impact on the fire.