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I've seen some people post about hating randomness in GW games across different threads so rather than highjack those threads I thought I would start a new one. I enjoy the randomness for some things in wargames, such as charges but especially rolling on tables for special attacks or magic can be quite enjoyable for me. Not every single aspect of the games, but for characters like giants or ork magic it can be fun and gives personality or fluff to my gaming experience. I would at least expect to have some chaos in a Chaos army for any game.

So for those of you who feel strongly one way or another, go nuts. Any suggestions for improvements or new mechanics? I'm genuinely curious.

Both. I dislike it for some armies and like it for others. If you do go with it, I think there should be as much randomness as possible so it averages out.

The trick to randomness in a wargame is to have it almost never be entirely random. Pure randomness is to be avoided in any meaningful way. It's fine for setting up the terrain or determining the scenario (assuming the terrain and scenario aren't horribly unbalanced of course). But it should never be a large part of anything.

I'm firmly in the camp that many actions/attacks in wargames should be on the unlikely side. That few things should be expected to work as a single instance, but become more likely the more resources you devote to it. This becomes the core (to me anyway) of good tactics in wargaming- having to maneuver such that while nothing is certain, you've given yourself the best chance of success. This goes hand in hand with lacking the range such that it negates the necessity of that maneuvering of course- weapons that can hit anywhere are the antithesis of tactical skill (which isn't to say they're bad, but should be limited).

I do like the idea of some randomness in certain situations. The old ork rules and chaos mutations for example are very cool, but are probably a bad idea if they're so impactful they either win or lose you a game.

To see how precisely an artillery barrage lands, or how close an orbital teleport is to the mark? Fine.

To see how many bullets hit a target in a meaningful way? No problem.

As a substitute for balance, or as a method of representing the knowledge of ancient wizards or near immortal warriors? Nope.

As an alternative to any mechanism which might better serve the gameplay by including more player agency? Nope.

Depends on how it is implemented, Orks OK, hi tech Eldar, Necrons, Space marines not ok? Difficult terrain, throw some dices? why?

 Azreal13 wrote:


To see how precisely an artillery barrage lands, or how close an orbital teleport is to the mark? Fine.

To see how many bullets hit a target in a meaningful way? No problem.

As a substitute for balance, or as a method of representing the knowledge of ancient wizards or near immortal warriors? Nope.

As an alternative to any mechanism which might better serve the gameplay by including more player agency? Nope.

Give this man a round of applause. So dang true.

Rolling to hit = fine

Rolling charge range, when shooting has a guaranteed range that never changes, and charging can be as high as 12" or as low as 2"? = whoever came up with that should be fired.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Rolling for mission = fine

Rolling to see if the mission objective randomly explodes every turn = laughably bad

^ Give this man applause as well.

This question is sort of like asking 'Do you like cheese?'

Of course I do... in the right situations. I like cheese on toast. I like cheese on crackers. I'm not so keen on it slathered on my breakfast cereal, wedged in behind my couch cushions and hanging off my keyring...


Random mechanics aren't inherently any more 'good' or 'bad' than any other way of resolving game effects... it's all down to the specific execution and the game as a whole.

Azreal13 wrote:To see how precisely an artillery barrage lands, or how close an orbital teleport is to the mark? Fine.

To see how many bullets hit a target in a meaningful way? No problem.

As a substitute for balance, or as a method of representing the knowledge of ancient wizards or near immortal warriors? Nope.

As an alternative to any mechanism which might better serve the gameplay by including more player agency? Nope.

MrMoustaffa wrote:Rolling to hit = fine

Rolling charge range, when shooting has a guaranteed range that never changes, and charging can be as high as 12" or as low as 2"? = whoever came up with that should be fired.

Fantastically sum up my thoughts. It's getting to the point that it'd be easier to simply lay out your painted army for display and play a hot game of Yahtzee. Might be faster and more balanced, too.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Rolling for mission = fine

Rolling to see if the mission objective randomly explodes every turn = laughably bad

 Azreal13 wrote:
To see how precisely an artillery barrage lands, or how close an orbital teleport is to the mark? Fine.

To see how many bullets hit a target in a meaningful way? No problem.

As a substitute for balance, or as a method of representing the knowledge of ancient wizards or near immortal warriors? Nope.

As an alternative to any mechanism which might better serve the gameplay by including more player agency? Nope.

/thread

Randomness is kind of an equalizer for player skill. No randomness means that a better player will win 100% of the time. Total randomness means the better player with win 50% of the time. And weighted randomness will mean the better player only wins 80% of the time.

Total randomness kind of sucks because it feels like, why bother playing? Let's just roll a die to see who wins. And no randomness kind of sucks because the victor becomes apparent really early in a match (perhaps even at the list building stage) and playing the whole thing out seems like just going through the motions without any suspense or surprise. There's no adapting tactics to an ever changing battlefield. Also, with the difference in skill being so important, it greatly limits the pool of players you can have fun playing against.

Weighted randomness is best. I want there to be a chance of failure, but I'd like that chance to change based on my choices, making my choices have weight but not too much weight. I want hail mary plays where a new player has a slim chance of success, but a great dice roll gives then a long shot victory, making the game for them.

Randomness to a point. Randomness in resolving attacks, sure. Randomness in building your army, no.

My general rule is that a single die roll shouldn't have a dramatic impact on the outcome of the game. If I lose because of a single 'Explodes' result on vehicle damage, or I win because I rolled Invisibility, the game is reduced to 'did I roll the 6 at the right time?' and my presence at the table starts to feel pointless.

The reason I like random charges in Fantasy is simple: Fog Of War.

Clear terrain isn't always perfectly clear. There might be a slightly boggy area that will slow chargers down. There might be a small ditch, high grass, a patch of unfriendly vegetation (cacti and the like), or any number of things that could cause a unit not to charge the maximum possible distance.

And a different unit charging across the same general area might just have missed it.

When charging and maintaining tight ranks, all it takes is one person to trip and the whole unit comes to a screeching halt. So even something as trivial as a gopher hole can stop a huge horde in it's tracks.

Units generally charge in response to orders from the general. Sometimes messengers are delayed, meaning charges are started late. Sometimes units have to be prodded into charging by their commanders, meaning the charge is started late and done half-heartedly.

A thousand and one things can - and often do - happen to prevent a charge from being pushed to it's maximum. That's why random charges are actually MORE realistic than fixed charge distance.

Besides, from a gameplay standpoint I find it more satisfying. 7E and before, the vast majority of the games I played were six turns of dancing around the 'just barely out of charge range' line trying to get the other player to make a mistake. Boring as all get-out, in my opinion.

I can stomach most of the randomness, except for random warlord traits.

Nothing quite says "yay" like playing a ranged army and having your warlord end up with a trait that gives him an edge in melee, or giving you something he already has.

Part of the reason I play Solar Auxilia I suppose, my warlord can choose her trait.

 Vulcan wrote:
The reason I like random charges in Fantasy is simple: Fog Of War.

Clear terrain isn't always perfectly clear. There might be a slightly boggy area that will slow chargers down. There might be a small ditch, high grass, a patch of unfriendly vegetation (cacti and the like), or any number of things that could cause a unit not to charge the maximum possible distance.

And a different unit charging across the same general area might just have missed it.

When charging and maintaining tight ranks, all it takes is one person to trip and the whole unit comes to a screeching halt. So even something as trivial as a gopher hole can stop a huge horde in it's tracks.

Units generally charge in response to orders from the general. Sometimes messengers are delayed, meaning charges are started late. Sometimes units have to be prodded into charging by their commanders, meaning the charge is started late and done half-heartedly.

A thousand and one things can - and often do - happen to prevent a charge from being pushed to it's maximum. That's why random charges are actually MORE realistic than fixed charge distance.

Besides, from a gameplay standpoint I find it more satisfying. 7E and before, the vast majority of the games I played were six turns of dancing around the 'just barely out of charge range' line trying to get the other player to make a mistake. Boring as all get-out, in my opinion.

The flaw in this logic being that if I simply ordered them to move over that patch of ground in the movement phase they would have no problems whatsoever and would move a set distance, which is (talking about mechanics, not you) fething stupid. Then if they shoot, they have an exact range they shoot at, with no variance. I don't have to roll every turn to see how far I move unless it's difficult terrain, and I never have to roll for shooting range. So why does only assaulting have to deal with it? It just goes to hurt assaulting, especially due to the insane variance in ranges if it's like 40k's.

The biggest problem is that there's no way to mitigate this other than to get within 2" to ensure there's no way to fail. If charging was something like "D3+4 inches" far less people would complain because you can roughly predict that and prepare that. Itd also be fine to just give a standard 6" charge and change it to rolling when assaulting through terrain.

When youre trying to assault and you have a 10 INCH variable to deal with, thats ridiculous. Shooting doesn't go through that. I don't roll 2d6 to see my melta gun 's range every turn, or 4d6 for my plasma gun range. Why the heck does assault have to do it? Do you see the problem here? Randomness is there to give you a slight air of unpredictability, to enforce and reward planning ahead and having a backup plan. When you give your player such a wide range of issues to deal with that cannot really be mitigated (like having to be within 2" to ensure a charge, and overwatch could still screw you) its bad game design. You no longer feel like you ran the odds in your head and made the right call, you feel like you're in Vegas. I know I've never felt clever for stopping a charge in 6th/7th, I always feel like the dice stopped it. This isn't something like firing a plasma rifle, knowing I have a 2/3 chance to hit, 5/6 chance to wound, and a 2/3 chance the opponent fails his cover save, this is a "well I might get 7", 12", or 2", here's hoping the dice gods don't screw me, because even a half inch short and I'm stuck in the open as target practice."

Which is the hallmark of bad game design. When players can with a straight face objectively say "the dice are fighting me" you have a problem. Ask any assault minded player that in 40k and theyll say the same thing. They may not put it the same way but I've yet to see a single assault player who liked it.

In a way random charge distance is actually a buff to melee units. Once GW added the ability to measure range at any time* it became very easy to stay 0.0001" out of charge range at all times. There used to be a risk vs. reward balance where shooting units had a degree of randomness in range because you could never be exactly sure how far apart units were. If you had, say, a weapon with 12" range (such as rapid fire weapons after moving) you had to gamble on whether you wanted to try to stay just barely within 12" or move up to 10-11" (or even closer, if you weren't good at judging distance). If you tried to stay just barely within range and ended up a bit outside 12" you lost the ability to shoot unless you were lucky enough to have a second target nearby. If you moved in to a conservative range you made it very easy for the survivors of your target unit to charge you next turn, and the outcome of a shooting unit being charged by a melee unit was almost always certain death for the shooting unit.

So, the question is what to do now that you can keep your units at exactly 12.00001" and never risk getting charged. Increasing charge distance to a longer fixed distance pushes the safety bubble back out to a distance where most shooting units use a lot of firepower, but has the side effect of making turn 1-2 charges way too easy. When turn 1 charges are easy and turn 2 charges are almost guaranteed the game is reduced to "can I table my opponent in one turn before their whole army charges and ends the game" which isn't fun for anyone. Increasing potential charge distance but making it random means the potential threat range is 18" but you're not going to charge 18" with your whole army on turn 1-2. Shooting units have to decide how far into that 18" they're willing to risk going, and even 13-14" is a pretty big risk. The occasional missed charge at 3" is frustrating, but there isn't really an elegant way to have random charge distance without either increasing the average too far, having too small of a maximum threat range, or having a chance of failing very short charges.


*A very good change, especially since a lot of people cheated and/or exploited gray areas to measure range even when it wasn't allowed.

I wouldn't mind random charges if they weren't so random. As others have said, a 10 inches gap between one possible result and another is ridiculous. Games with a Movement stat (someone else at the 40k rules design should have been fired due to its removal as well) typically make random charges as M+1DX, which tends to work because there is a random element but it's kept under control. You know you won't be charging less than your base movement ability unless there are negative bonuses involved.

I don't think anyone would be complaining about random charges in 40k if they were 6+1D6''.

The "fog of war" argument becomes moot when you apply it only to charges. So there's fog of war when you want to charge at your enemy ten inches away, but not when you try to pinpoint their position in order to shoot at them twenty-four inches away? Please.

 Korinov wrote:
I don't think anyone would be complaining about random charges in 40k if they were 6+1D6''.

This would be bad for two reasons:

1) It fails the requirement that the new system have the same average as the old one to avoid shrinking the table and enabling alpha strike armies too much. Having 6+D6" charge range means that you're charging an average of 9.5" instead of 6", over 50% more average distance. And you gain 1" of minimum charge range too, since you can't roll below 1" for the random factor. To avoid this problem you'd have to make it 3+D6", but then the maximum threat range is only 9" instead of 12" and you still have the problem of failing a 4" charge.

2) It makes all charge distances equal in probability instead of having a bell curve. With a 2D6" charge range the average distances are far more likely than the extreme distances. You only have a 1/36 chance of rolling 2" or 12", compared to a 1/6 chance of rolling 7" or 12" with 6+D6". This makes the risk vs. reward calculation much less appropriate. Instead of having a "safe" region where the risk is small but relevant and you're tempted to take the risk you have an almost immediate increase in threat to "do not enter" and you stay 0.00001" outside of maximum charge range at all times.

As much as I dislike randomness, I'm with Perry on this one. His reasoning is solid.

Games with a Movement stat (someone else at the 40k rules design should have been fired due to its removal as well)

Also, going to have to disagree with this. A movement stat doesn't make much sense in 40k because there are essentially only two possible values for it. Almost everything moves 6", and a handful of units move 12". And of course vehicles have their own speed increment system that doesn't use a single movement stat (and if you did a multiple-value stat, it would be 0"/6"/12" for all non-flyers and 18"/36" for all flyers). You don't need to clutter up the basic stat line by repeating 6" over and over again, you just state that the standard movement distance is 6" and have unit type rules grant 12" movement distance.

You're right that if everything's movement is 6" then repeating it over and over again doesn't make much sense as it'd be redundant information, but I think what the poster was getting at was allowing different armies to have different movement rates.

Back in 2nd Ed most 'human' type units (Guard, Marines, Chaos Marines, Necrons) were 4" movement, Eldar were 5" and Tyranids rocked the house with 6" base movement. It also allows for better gradients of vehicle movement.

Of course all this depends on how complex you want your movement rules to be.

 Peregrine wrote:
2) It makes all charge distances equal in probability instead of having a bell curve. With a 2D6" charge range the average distances are far more likely than the extreme distances. You only have a 1/36 chance of rolling 2" or 12", compared to a 1/6 chance of rolling 7" or 12" with 6+D6". This makes the risk vs. reward calculation much less appropriate. Instead of having a "safe" region where the risk is small but relevant and you're tempted to take the risk you have an almost immediate increase in threat to "do not enter" and you stay 0.00001" outside of maximum charge range at all times.

If charge range is 6+D6 you still have your "semi-safe" region, it's just slightly altered. If you're 11-12" away from the enemy, you have 16.7% chance of being charged, 10-11" is 33% and so on.

Your "semi-safe" region for 2D6 is 2.8% at 11-12", 8.3% at 10-11", 16.7% at 9-10", 27.8% at 8-9", 41.7% at 7-9", 58% at 6-7" and so on.

The fact it's a bell curve PDF doesn't change a whole lot as you're interested in the CDF, if you just used a raw D12 rather than 2D6 it'd be 8.3% at 11-12", 16.7% at 10-11", 25% at 9-10", 33% at 8-9", 41.7% at 7-9", 50% at 6-7" and so on.

So it works the same way, you have a "completely safe" zone and a "semi-safe" zone, it's just your cumulative distributions are slightly different so that you trade a the more gradual ramp up in probability for having a narrower spread and I think a lot of people value a narrower spread more than they value the gradual ramp.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Games with a Movement stat (someone else at the 40k rules design should have been fired due to its removal as well)

Also, going to have to disagree with this. A movement stat doesn't make much sense in 40k because there are essentially only two possible values for it. Almost everything moves 6", and a handful of units move 12". And of course vehicles have their own speed increment system that doesn't use a single movement stat (and if you did a multiple-value stat, it would be 0"/6"/12" for all non-flyers and 18"/36" for all flyers). You don't need to clutter up the basic stat line by repeating 6" over and over again, you just state that the standard movement distance is 6" and have unit type rules grant 12" movement distance.

Yeah as HBMC said, you'd use the movement stat to make humans slower than eldar that are slower than nids and you get rid of a lot of the special rules that try to account for swifter units by simply including that stat in their profile.

When GW dropped the movement stat foing from 2nd to 3rd it only made sense in so much as they were simplifying the rules, making things more homogeneous, but edition after edition they've added to the rules to the point where it'd now be simpler just to go back to a raw movement stat like we had in 2nd.

if there were no randomness, the game would be far less epic and enjoyable. But too much kills it for you basically can't know what will your army allow you to do... And as far as i've heard 7th is filled with it. I never made the jump onto it but can certifiy that charge distances for exemple shouldn't work randomly.

 Peregrine wrote:
This would be bad for two reasons:

1) It fails the requirement that the new system have the same average as the old one to avoid shrinking the table and enabling alpha strike armies too much. Having 6+D6" charge range means that you're charging an average of 9.5" instead of 6", over 50% more average distance. And you gain 1" of minimum charge range too, since you can't roll below 1" for the random factor. To avoid this problem you'd have to make it 3+D6", but then the maximum threat range is only 9" instead of 12" and you still have the problem of failing a 4" charge.

2) It makes all charge distances equal in probability instead of having a bell curve. With a 2D6" charge range the average distances are far more likely than the extreme distances. You only have a 1/36 chance of rolling 2" or 12", compared to a 1/6 chance of rolling 7" or 12" with 6+D6". This makes the risk vs. reward calculation much less appropriate. Instead of having a "safe" region where the risk is small but relevant and you're tempted to take the risk you have an almost immediate increase in threat to "do not enter" and you stay 0.00001" outside of maximum charge range at all times.

Why the risk of failing a charge move must be high when shooting poses no risk, always works and there are plenty of shooting weapons in the game that can routinely wipe out entire squads or vehicles in a single shooting phase?

 Korinov wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
This would be bad for two reasons:

1) It fails the requirement that the new system have the same average as the old one to avoid shrinking the table and enabling alpha strike armies too much. Having 6+D6" charge range means that you're charging an average of 9.5" instead of 6", over 50% more average distance. And you gain 1" of minimum charge range too, since you can't roll below 1" for the random factor. To avoid this problem you'd have to make it 3+D6", but then the maximum threat range is only 9" instead of 12" and you still have the problem of failing a 4" charge.

2) It makes all charge distances equal in probability instead of having a bell curve. With a 2D6" charge range the average distances are far more likely than the extreme distances. You only have a 1/36 chance of rolling 2" or 12", compared to a 1/6 chance of rolling 7" or 12" with 6+D6". This makes the risk vs. reward calculation much less appropriate. Instead of having a "safe" region where the risk is small but relevant and you're tempted to take the risk you have an almost immediate increase in threat to "do not enter" and you stay 0.00001" outside of maximum charge range at all times.

Why the risk of failing a charge move must be high when shooting poses no risk, always works and there are plenty of shooting weapons in the game that can routinely wipe out entire squads or vehicles in a single shooting phase?

This is a very good point, especially when you throw in overwatch, difficult terrain penalties, and defensive grenade penalties. The assault unit is ALWAYS at a severe disadvantage throughout most of the game but typically costs more than the standard base level shooty units. Shooting has so many advantages over assaulting, it leads to watered-down, boring lists being used, and the game becomes a shooting gallery.

Consider this, for an assault unit to be even remotely useful, A) it must first traverse the battlefield in some manner (be it on foot, thus taking casualties, or via transport, thus incurring higher costs), then B) the unit must make a successful charge (difficult given the random range and overwatch fire), and THEN C) they have to win the fight in a convincing enough manner to force a break and/or wipe the enemy unit (again, difficult due to casualties and Initiative penalties incurred from steps A & B, and the wonky Assault To Hit table). Assault is the only combat phase where being exceptional in skill has little benefit (compared to shooting that allows high skill levels to reroll misses).

Games are all about decisions, so randomness goes sour for me when it makes decisions made irrelevant or makes meaningful decision making impossible.

If anyone wants to see games with random movement that actually works, check out YouTube videos for Chain of Command or Sharp Practice 2 (both by TooFatLardies). One of the reasons it works so well in those games and falls flat in GW's is the turn structure. Those games have very different turn/activation sequences from GW's IGOUGO approach.

Randomness which creates risk that you can manage is fine.

This is exactly what makes Blood Bowl so good.

Randomness that you have zero influence over (see many chaos tables) is pointless and annoying.

 Scott-S6 wrote:


Randomness that you have zero influence over (see many chaos tables) is pointless and annoying.

This is the crux of it - it needs to be a chance that you can manipulate in some way so that it increases or decreases based on battlefield scenarios.

Take the recent iterations of XCOM as an example for this - your Operative's aim, and therefore chance to hit, can increase the closer he is to his target, or decrease if the target is in low or high cover. It can increase if he can draw a flanking shot, and decrease if he has been hit with a flashbang. All of these factors are manipulated by the players and thus contribute to the amount of chance you have to take, which can sometimes be none at all.

If we could have a TT game like that, that'd be perfect. Hopefully the game I'm planning to replace 40k lives up to that ideal without being too complicated to manage.

G.A

Randomness can be good when it is a know risk, and it serves a purpose (determining sucess failure of an action for instance.).

Where randomness falls down for me is two fold.

Randomness for randomness sake- GW does this with things like the chaos tables which can have tons of game influence but are not something that can really be planned around because they are largely totally random.

Layering randomness-if you need to go through several random events to be successful it can become increasingly frustrating. I found this with GW in the later 40k editions where for assault you needed to randomly determine the length of the charge (success of assault move) which could be randomly changed by overwatch, then you needed to randomly roll to hit, and roll to wound, then your opponent makes saves. There are just too many layers where things can swing one way or another. Which ended up with too much risk in doing things, and the game becoming all about minimizing risk through use of super durable, super mobile units with tons of rerolls and what not.