Nom
11-17-2003, 10:53 PM
There's another factor about stability: the longer your 'game' is stable, the more opportunity people have to optimise it. Changing the rules each time the game is played makes it harder for people to refine strategy. It also shifts play balance towards people who are better at 'winging it' rather than those who practice.
Controlled randomness in a game can have the same effect. Chess is a game that favours those who "learn" the game: without randomness, the diligent can build up predictable strategy. In contrast, lightweight minatures games (eg BattleTech, Mage Knight) can be a lot more fluid, partly because of randomness and partly because the games are "fuzzy" positionally. Moving a piece one square (hex) left in BattleTech usually means only a minor change in the balance of the game; moving a piece one square left in chess is often a completely different game state.
The trick with randomness is adding enough that it encourages "so crazy it just might work" schemes but not so much that one or two good/bad rolls can permanently affect the outcome.
Controlled randomness in a game can have the same effect. Chess is a game that favours those who "learn" the game: without randomness, the diligent can build up predictable strategy. In contrast, lightweight minatures games (eg BattleTech, Mage Knight) can be a lot more fluid, partly because of randomness and partly because the games are "fuzzy" positionally. Moving a piece one square (hex) left in BattleTech usually means only a minor change in the balance of the game; moving a piece one square left in chess is often a completely different game state.
The trick with randomness is adding enough that it encourages "so crazy it just might work" schemes but not so much that one or two good/bad rolls can permanently affect the outcome.