Uncertainty in Games: Player Performance

A "hardcore" game might be described as one with only a single source of uncertainty: player performance. No random factors. Complete information. Only how well the player performs is in question. Whether that is dexterity, timing, coordination, strategy, tactics, or all of the above, performance uncertainty is often sought after as the "ultimate gamer's uncertainty".

Performance is driven by the player making the right, or best, decisions whenever a decision comes up. In theory, tic tac toe is still a game, because the players might make incorrect choices. In contrast, its very hard to determine exactly what "performance" means in a tabletop RPG. While it's clear that games like Mario or Dark Souls are solely dependent on the player's performance, a good tabletop RPG doesn't have a clear line of "winning" or "losing".

So we have to look at the actual goal of an RPG: to have fun. That might seem like the goal of most games, and it'd be nice if that were true, but the truth is that tabletop RPGs are specialized in having fun. There is no other goal, and no other way to "win". Therefor, a player's ability to perform well at an RPG is purely based on their ability to have fun at the table. We could even go as far as to say that outstanding performances even help other players have fun.

Ignoring all other systems and rules, our ability to have fun playing an RPG is certainly an uncertainty. But having fun at the table is a skill that you can be good at, you can work at, and you can become better over time!

Uncertainty In Games: Randomness

One of the most important uncertainties for role playing games is randomness. That might seem obvious, but randomness is only one of the eleven sources of uncertainties that we'll talk about in this series.

Randomness plays a key character: fate. It is generally used as an action resolution device, steering the story in one direction or another. The trick here is that it plays an impartial judge on the lives of the characters. If left purely to the players, who are generally rooting for their characters to succeed, the stories that are produced from the game may not have that classic rollercoaster of emotions that really make for memorable experiences. Instead, characters live and die by the unswayable third party of random.

There are two very distinct types of randomness: bias and unbiased. Each has a powerful effect on the style of game that is played. Bias random is where one outcome is simply "better" than another. For example, swinging a sword in combat can either hit or miss. A hit, obviously, is better than a miss. If one character hits, and another misses, but they've both spent the same resources (i.e. an action), and randomness was bias towards the character that hit. Unbiased random, on the other hand, is something that adds chaos to both sides of an equation, giving opportunity for either side to "deal with it better", rather than favoring one outcome or the other.

Bias random is usually shunned in "higher level" circles of game design. If used as an element of uncertainty in say, a strategy game, players can get annoyed that the random is favoring their opponents, regardless of who has the better strategy. Unbias random, on the other hand, is used to introduce variety and replay-ability into a game, making it the preferred choice for those styles of games.

Don't write off bias random completely though. One of the biggest early inspirations of gaming is gambling. When we as humans let go control of the game and roll a die or spin a wheel, we get a large shot of dopamine as we wait for the outcome. That moment is what RPGs are about. That moment is when we get to know whether our hero lives or dies.

Yes, RPGs are founded on bias random. But it's also not as biased as you might think. One of the best twists in gaming I think comes from the fact that the mechanics are bias between characters, but not between players. No roll is necessarily good or bad for the players of an RPG. After all, they are there to find out what happens, good or bad. You can't have a roller coaster without going down sometimes, and that's exactly what the randomness gives us.

This I think is where RPG combat usually falls short. A big complaint of combat is that it's completely random, and usually not influenced by strategy all that much. Some games do away with it completely, focusing on character relationships and/or world exploration. Perhaps we need to take a lesson out of the strategy game's design book, and realize that if combat is presented as a very different kind of game, it also needs different kinds of rules. Perhaps also, however, games need to realize that combat, just like everything in RPGs, is a resolution system best left up to fate.

Uncertainty In Games: A Mini-Series

The unknown, unsolved, and unpredictable nature of games is exactly what makes them intriguing. As soon as you know that tic-tac-toe or Candy Land are deterministic activities, they lose all sense of engagement. Uncertainty, therefor, is the key factor in making an activity, a game.

In his carefully thought out book, Uncertainty in Games, Greg Costikyan lays out eleven unique sources of uncertainty that actually apply to all forms of entertainment, not just "games", suggesting that it is the unknown nature of something that makes it "fun". Everything from a good book to the most complicated of MMORPGs has some unpredictable behavior that we the consumer interact with to find enjoyment.

Through the next twelve blog posts, I will explore each of these sources of uncertainty, and comment on how they apply the tabletop role playing games. It is my hope that through this exploration I can narrow in on exact aspects of our hobby, the ones that really make it tick, so that we can all better understand how they contribute to the tabletop experience.

If you are interested in board games, video games, puzzles, or really just how movies and books also have the same "uncertainty" as some games, I highly encourage you to pick up Uncertainty in Games!