Using Dice-And-Paper Rules in a Computer RPG

Partly to respond to the recent and controversial piece Sinister Design’s Craig Stern has written, in which he argued against the implementation of Dungeons & Dragons rules in cRPGs, Jay Barnson editorializes on the matter. Here’s a snippet:

Now onto the biggest subject: Randomness. Craig’s game doesn’t have randomness in combat resolution. There are many games that do not. They can be a lot of fun.

But for me, a lot of the fun (and skill) in RPGs comes from manipulating the system to get luck on your side. And the chance of failure no matter how carefully you’ve tried to work the odds keeps things exciting, and demands risk management. Sure, you may be 90% likely to kill the dragon before it gets the chance to attack again. but what happens if you don’t? Can you survive another onslaught of its fiery breath? Is it better to plan accordingly, sacrifice your chance of a quick kill to reduce your vulnerability?

Doing this does require an understanding of the rules one of those virtues listed above. Should the player use up a valuable spell point to cast bless at the beginning of the fight, or save it for a critical heal spell later in the fight? In a fully deterministic game, you may be able to predict the exact results in advance (if the AI is also predictable). In a game with randomness, you are playing the odds. For me, the latter feels more (realistic) and less like a board game we never understand all the variables going into a situation. A major reason I quit playing the Hero rules system in our dice-and-paper sessions in favor of 3rd Edition D&D was that the bell curve for Hero made things a little too deterministic for all but a narrow range of values. It got boring.

My most memorable and exciting game moments in RPGs are often when our group succeeded or failed via longshot odds. Like the time the party rogue managed to get really lucky on the first shot with an arrow of undead slaying against a powerful vampire wizard. Or when the monk, cornered by a large monster and unlikely to survive another round against it, shouted for the magic user to go ahead and fireball them both, because (he could take it.) A 20% chance of failure bit him, as well as a surprisingly high roll on 7d6 for fireball damage that took him down to exactly -10 hit points. Or there was the time when a series of brash decisions led me to the point where my survival depended on a 50/50 dice roll to see if I could jump to hyperspace out before the incoming missiles hit.

Sure, the failures due to random chance suck. But the awareness of the chance of failure is what makes success much more entertaining.