Player Control and Randomness

As we've been testing prototypes of board games, one specific topic has been on my mind.  For each of the prototypes, dice rolls handled all the player actions and events.  Dice systems takes a lot of power out of the player's hands.  Players still feel a shadow of control in rolling the dice, but that's superstition-driven.  Players cup them in their hands, roll them even longer than necessary, or even pray to them (or dance and sing to them in a "Guys and Dolls" kind of way).  In the end, their actions have no effect on the randomness of the dice.

This does not matter in a simple board game for passing the time, but if you want your players to think more about their actions, it is not the best choice.  Dice themselves do not lend much for strategy (unless you are teaching your players about probability).  Dice work as a tool for randomization, but if your player actions are randomized, they might as well not be playing -- you are treating them like blobs of meat pushing around the pieces of your game.

The above flaw (treating your players like meat) was most prevalent in my prototype.  Tile placement was random, card pickup was random, and attack rolls were random.  All the choices in the game were illusory.  The most interesting parts of the game were out of the reach of players, and their only choice was which direction they were moving.  To remedy this, I've started redesigning the combat system in the game.  Instead of attacking being based on dice, players now have a limited selection of cards to use during their attack.  These cards cycle through as a deck, and the players have more of a choice of when they use certain abilities.  They have to plan now, strategize, and optimize their deck.  There will still be random elements in the deck and game, but at least players can plan on how to engage those elements and pick the tools they need.

Those types of choices add depth to games and make them replayable, because players will have room to experience your game in more meaningful ways -- ways they influence and ways that give them feedback they can use.

Thought Exercise: Create a small game where everything is controlled by dice except player actions, which are completely controlled by the player.