NON-RANDOM RANDOMNESS

1. I like to determine events in a way where if the player does something in the beginning, they either can or can't do something later in the game. If you open a chest hidden in an area that the player shouldn't be in, such as a castle where you are trespassing, then you can't get an awesome weapon/armor later in the game. For randomness, to prevent players from erasing hurricanes, you could set up the game to determine weather a week or a month at a time. You don't know what Friday's weather will be, and if you saved after the start of the week or month, then you can't stop it. Even if you restart from a save from the previous week, there's no way of knowing what the new weather is.

2. The whole ten days of rain, while unlikely, is possible, so to limit it you could have a variable counting the current consecutive days of weather, and if it starts to get to high, such as three or more consecutive days of rain/drought, it automatically prohibits that weather for at least two days.

Something I've considered is making my RNG not a real RNG at all. Give the RNG a constant seed and advance it (possibly multiple times) both as needed and during mundane actions, like simply moving around. This means that if one playthrough is given the exact same inputs as another both playthroughs will be identical. Part of it is a meek argument for player RNG manipulation and mostly because I like determinism. Maybe it'll work and be fun, need to make a functional game and see how this works.


I did something similar in Demon's Gate. Most chest's contents are random and each one had a designated variable to use when determining its contents. These variables are seeded with a random number when starting a new game. So whenever the player opens the chests the contents are predetermined... mostly. Most chests (if they didn't have anything really valuable like next tier gear) would check the player's capabilities of healing themselves. If it was found to be insufficient (aka healing score vs hard coded value that would increase over the course of the game, or having means of healing certain statuses) the chest would forgo its usual contents and give some healing items instead.


Also because I sperg the chances of the chest having the Zodiac Spear is 1% (10% of being a weapon, 10% of that weapon being the spear). The 0.1% is because there's a 10% chance of the chest spawning.

Randomness should be there to make the game more challenging, exciting, or otherwise enjoyable to play. Too much unfairness in your randomness will cause your players to quit, but just the right amount can be intriguing - randomness is almost the entire reason the roguelike genre works at all.

Harvest Moon, however, is different than a roguelike because the games are meant to last a long time. If your game rolls a devastating effect like a hurricane, it will tarnish a playthrough that players have put a lot of time into, unlike most roguelikes, which have very short time investments (to counteract the pain of bad rolls). That's not to say a random hurricane in Harvest Moon would be terrible. It could add a lot of excitement, as long as you limit its power to add just the right amount of stress to the player, and limit how frequently it can occur so a freak fluke doesn't kick the player while they're down (two hurricanes in a row would probably feel like that). Also, Harvest Moon games are usually kind enough to warn you of the next day's weather on TV, keeping the random feeling but giving the smart player time to react.

Another really great way to use randomization in this situation is with parallels or sidegrades, i.e. have the result of the roll be similar in gain or loss to the player, but in a different way. If a day is going to be a "bad weather day" you could roll between heat wave and rain. A heat wave requires your crops to be watered more, and makes you tire more quickly, but can be counteracted by swimming. A rainy day means you don't have to water your crops, but you tire more quickly and might get sick. In addition, both have their own related sub-events (like gnomes or fairies appearing or NPCs swimming on the beach, whatever). This can increase the excitement of a dice roll while minimizing the pain of it.

To answer the OP's questions:
1) Pre-determining the sequence of events is acceptable but reduces randomness. This might hamper replyability... but in Harvest Moon the player has a lot of different approaches they can take, so the randomness may not be necessary in the first place.

2) Influencing the RNG to limit the more devastating possibilities of fluke randomness is absolutely a-okay in my book, especially in a game like Harvest Moon. Three hurricanes in a row will probably never be fun for the player, even if they realize they're just subject to nature's whims. However, in a shorter roguelike, I'd say leave that possibility in because people expect wacky flukes of nature (and won't be as upset since the game is shorter).

i'm gonna just write that article now