IS RNG GOOD OR BAD?

Random can be fun, as it varies the player's experience. On the other hand, the more you vary the experience, the less control over it you have. It's harder to know what level the player will be, what damage they will do, how much gold they have, etc if all of these values have been affected with a large amount of random variables. And if you can't gauge theses things, it's harder to balance the gameplay.

In short, random is cool, but going overboard can alter the experience from player to player too much.

Randomness can be a very fun gameplay element, when used correctly. To me, these are the important things to keep in mind when using randomness in games:

• Critical thought should be used when adding randomness as a game element. Ask yourself, "How does random chance make this game more fun?" Look at other games with random chance and figure out how randomness makes them more or less fun.
• Randomness can be used to reduce player agency (the amount of control the player has over their fate). However, in the right design, randomness can be used to create a different kind of agency and skill altogether.
• Randomness can be used to create suspense, mystery and surprise. However, if the player doesn't realize an element is random, this effect is lost.

That's my short and sweet opinion, but I wrote a longer, detailed article on designing games with randomness in mind that sounds right up your alley!

EDIT: Oh, I guess to answer the question posed in the title quickly: It's very good if used well, and very bad if used poorly.

I feel that way about most individual elements of games - it's not about how good or bad they are, but how well they fit into the rest of the elements you're using.

Yes, randomness should NEVER have a negative impact.

I remember one of the Final Fantasies had a monster which could, at a very slim chance, cast a spell which instantly killed all your characters, giving you Game Over. How fun!

author=Dyhalto

author=Solitayre
My opinion is that the RNG should only ever help you.

author=Amy
Yes, randomness should NEVER have a negative impact.

This doesn't really jive. The caveat here is that a player may be expecting a result in the upper, positive range and will thus be affected negatively by anything lower.

What makes this difficult is that it's all psychology. It's impossible to have RNG without both positive and negative results. Having one automatically means you also have the other. The only difference is how good of a result the player was "expecting." But controlling players' expectations is really tricky. You don't expect to get a critical hit, but do you expect at least one in every ten attacks to be a critical hit? If you have a 20% crit chance and you base your strategy around assuming you'll crit at least one in a ten-round-battle, you have a 90% chance of succeeding; it's a very safe expectation, but it'll fail one in every ten battles.

Of course, if the game is easy enough that you can fail every roll and still succeed, then the RNG doesn't do anything but change how fast your battles end. But that's not interesting to me. I'd rather have ways to manipulate it. Give the enemies a chance to cast instant death, but give me a spell that always happens first on a round and makes my party immune to instant death. Give the enemies a 25% chance to drop a piece of equipment I need, but let me keep fighting until I get it if I want to, and maybe let me buy it later in the game for a hefty price if I don't get it.

If you have non-boss battles that the players has to fight many times, randomness can help make them different from each-other without you having to design thirty new enemies per dungeon. That's the biggest benefit of having randomness in combat, in my opinion. No one wants to experience the exact same battle over and over. Stuff has to happen a little differently for it to stay interesting.

Imo, Fire Emblem does NOT do RNG right. Instant permadeath through critical hit double attacks is not fun. I think Fire Emblem would be one of the games which would be a lot better if the RNG was removed (except maybe for AI decisions).

author=LockeZ
Random chance to survive when you messed up and deserve to fail

What I really like is the idea that one mistake doesn't usually mean failure, but several mistakes inevitably lead to failure - that way, any randomness associated with each mistake doesn't feel as cheap, because it wasn't any one dice roll - it was a culmination of them. And, if during this process you had some control over the dice, like how and when they were rolled, it makes you feel like you had enough agency to direct your fate and you chose poorly.

As an example, RPG boss battles should never come down to one dice roll (see: boss randomly used "Death", player loses). They're fun when, over the course of time, the dice results add up and you can react to each one individually. When a boss crits, you might heal instead of whatever you were planning. When you dodge an attack unexpectedly, you get a lucky break you can use to your advantage in many ways. It reduces the impact of bad dice and feels more like skill because you have a chance to react to each one.

author=slashphoenix
What I really like is the idea that one mistake doesn't usually mean failure, but several mistakes inevitably lead to failure - that way, any randomness associated with each mistake doesn't feel as cheap, because it wasn't any one dice roll - it was a culmination of them.

Yeah, that's a primary gauge of difficulty in a game. How many mistakes can you make and still keep going? Randomness can tie into this pretty well, as long as the player understands that X mistakes can mean a game over, and if he survived it was due to luck.

Fire Emblem is notoriously difficulty because even on the easy difficulty, the number of mistakes you're allowed to make is often just 1, unless you're lucky. It doesn't give you any more room for error on easy mode, it just adds more possible paths to victory. That's the other main way to gauge the difficulty of a game: how many of the options available to you are winning options? On easy mode it's like 30% of the available options, while on hard mode it's more like 3%.

Well if you put it that way Fire Emblem is simply too hard. But I always felt RNG is the main cause of it. They could just remove critical hits and double attacks completely (for the enemy AND you) and I would have found it a lot more enjoyable (and easier).

I kind of feel like some amount of RNG is part and parcel of RPGs because of their origin in dice-rolling tabletop games. If I wanted a game that relies solely on my skill, I'd play a platformer or something.

Of course, all random numbers all the time is probably not a fun way to do a game.* However, I tend to enjoy a level of luck and gambling in my games; it feels a little more "real" and exciting to me.

*I suppose there's a way to make it fun if it's The Gimmick, but that'd be beyond my designing skills.