RANDOMNESS

author=kentona
This is yet another topic that would benefit from some clear critical analysis and examples, with the end result being an article I can feature.

Oh man, I want to write the heck outta this article, I've been thinking about this a lot lately anyway and writing something might help me organize my thoughts... maybe I might. I think Craze nailed it though, transparency is the most important part. Someone described it to me once as randomness you can make an informed decision about.

Say you have a treasure chest in a roguelike. It's marked with a skull, so you know it's possibly booby-trapped, but you know it might actually contain huge amounts of gold. After you've opened a few of these chests you've learned there's about a 50/50 chance of either gold or trap. Rather than being unfair, this chest actually creates a good decision point for the player, especially if they have several ways to deal with it:

• Do you know how much damage the trap does? Can you afford to lose that much health?
• What if you have a potion? Can you afford to spare it?
• How badly do you need that gold? Is there a nearby shop with something important? Is it a limited-time offer?

You can create some pretty interesting decisions, as long as players know (or are capable of figuring out) how risky opening the chest is. Then it comes down to the player's personality and risk vs. rewards. (I stole this from a game I'm working on atm, so far it seems people will open the chest unless it's going to kill them).

EDIT: I totally wrote the article