How I like My Roguelike Randomness
I am currently making a (two actually) traditional roguelike(s).
I'm at the point in the process where I need to make decisions about combat systems. This means I need to think about and decide how I want to handle randomness.
Randomness is one of the core features of roguelikes. But, when I play traditional roguelikes, I don't really like it. But I love it in nontraditional ones. Why?
After a little reflection, I realized I like randomness of decisions, not randomness of outcomes.
I'd rather make a decision with the random hand I drew from the deck I built or make decisions from the random shop inventory than have dice decide how much damage I'm going to do.
Making decisions is fun. Rolling a die isn't.
No. Rolling a die can be fun.
What's unfun is making decisions and then rolling a die to see if those decisions matter or not. That's unfun.
So, my game(s) will have deterministic combat. Mostly hidden and partially variable, but ultimately deterministic.
Instead of dice rolls for combat, the randomness of my roguelike(s) will come from random items and weapons stats. Instead of a dagger that hits for 0-4 damage randomly, you have a random chance of finding a dagger that always hits for 0, always hits for 1, always hits for 2, always hits for 3, or always hits for 4.
That being said, a little dodging and missing might keep things interesting. It also makes for more interesting decisions.
Do you keep the dagger that always hits 2 and is highly accurate, or do you use the dagger that hits for 4, misses a lot, but can crit often. Or. Do you get lucky and find the dagger that hits every time for 4 , never misses, and often crits.
Yeah, those decisions sound a lot more fun to me than rolling some dice.
Thanks for reading. This is a departure from what I normally write about. It's mostly here for me to come back to sometime. If roguelikes are your thing, let me know and I might share more of this current hyperfixation. Heck, I might even start a new blog around it.
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