[OPR] Uncertainty is not randomness

Foreword

I am on Substack from March 2023 however I officially kicked off my VI·VIII·X project in March 2022: I ran for one year an “ordinary” blog with “ordinary” posts and then I moved here… Since some old posts are worth to be read to fully understand my work and purpose, I decided to re-post the most relevant ones in a new series entitled OPR (Old Post Revisited) where I simply resume these old texts, rephrase them (an ideally keep within the 4-minute length threshold I set as a golden rule) and present again since I consider them “worth to be read”.

May the fun be always at your table!

I came across a very interesting post that gave me the opportunity to think about concepts that are often given for granted. This post is very simple, very clear and logically perfect! I refer to 'A True Test of Skill' by Dwiz: an action must have a random component (resulting from the roll of a die), but it must not be predominant!

I will take this as a starting point to talk about the mechanic I applied to VI·VIII·X KUP RPG. Let’s start from D&D: in D&D, the result of a check is 1d20 with a bonus, which is (approx) the PC's level and stat modifier; this means that you need either several levels of experience or superhuman stats to have less weight for the random part of the die than the bonus part. A low level character with an excellent stat could have a +5 on the die roll... it doesn't take a mathematical genius to realize that the weight of the bonus part is less than half of the random part (the average die roll).

In order to reward more the part related to the player's choices (and give less weight to randomness), the basic mechanic I set up in VI·VIII·X is opposed: the 'fixed' part is the sum of two scores (from 1 to 10) of the PC's stats, one known (the KS) and one unknown (the US), while the random part represents a third score (from -2 to +10, based on the die roll). Ultimately, the rule of thumb in my approach is 2/3 of fixed part against 1/3 of random part: the strategy in this case wins against luck! …this should not be meant as less uncertainty compared to D&D: uncertainty is a different concept than absence of randomness.

Thinking to Dwiz post, I had never fully realized that I had created a system that rewards strategic approach more than randomness. I will revisit this concept to try to convey to the reader what I have in mind with this reasoning: there is a duel, the player knows that he has an action, and so does his opponent (let's keep things simple and assume that each character has one action per turn). The player has to define his strategy: attack or defend? And to choose the option, what might be the expected result?

The base mechanic can be simplified to the extreme, as in the picture above: the result of the character used against the opponent is the sum of three addends. One known and fixed (KS, the 'Known stat' of the character), one unknown and fixed (US, the 'Unknown stat' to the player) and one variable depending on the result of the dice roll (based on the ES score).

The first reasoning then boils down to making an estimate of the US and what it might get from the die roll. And then comes the second reasoning: the player has to take into account that the three addends have (almost) the same weight, as each maximum value is 10. The part related to chance is that of the ES, while there is also the part related to the so-called 'uncertainty', that of the US. Thus, within the same mechanic, there are three elements, all of (almost) equal weight: the certain part (KS), the uncertain part (US) and the random part (ES).

The strategy will have to be much more refined, also due to the fact that in this context the order of the declarations also counts a lot in strategic terms (but let’s not consider the discussion about the sequence in the game in this circumstance!). The purpose of this explanation is to show the different components of the mechanical rule and how they should fit into the player's thinking!

One criticism of such a mathematical approach is that there is not enough room for a low-level PC to emerge victorious from a confrontation with, say, a dragon. This is absolutely true! This does not mean that the game cannot be fun or challenging for the players: in the rules, there is room to reward surrendering or fleeing characters in the face of an 'impossible' confrontation!

I'm more than convinced that many people don't like this mode because it takes away the epic aspect of the game... in VI·VIII·X, a PC like Frodo would never have succeeded in destroying the One Ring... in fact, that's not exactly true: Frodo often avoided forces greater than himself because he knew he wouldn't be able to defeat them!

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