(wind blowing)
Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver, the podcast
where I pick up my audio recorder as
I step off the train and deliver an episode
to you while I walk home.
I'm Brendan Riley.
(upbeat music)
Well, good afternoon listeners.
It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago.
I'm enjoying my walk home with the temperature
in the mid 50s, which is very nice.
Not wearing my jacket.
Ha ha.
Well, I was thinking about what I would talk about
with you today.
And I think this might be a thing I'll do
moving forward just because I'm lazy and it's useful.
I don't know if you recall a couple of weeks ago.
I did an episode stealing a topic
from the podcast Cardboard Philosophy.
Well, today I'm swiping another episode, another topic.
This is from the most recent episode
of the Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast.
Their special topic of discussion was
Determinism versus Randomness.
Now this is something I've certainly talked about
on the podcast before.
If you go to the show page for this episode,
over at rattleboxgames.com,
you'll find a series of links to other episodes
where I've talked about these issues,
but I thought it would be helpful
to talk about this issue with you here and explore it.
So essentially what they talked about
on the Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast was
the viewer wrote in and said that they really liked
the conversations they've had about randomness
and about determinism on the Secret Cabal.
And they asked the founders to discuss
their absolute favorite games that do the most randomness,
the most determinism.
And if there are any games that exist in the butter zone
exactly between the two extremes.
And that's what the group talked about.
Now the founders did elucidate one essential difference
that the person making inquiry
didn't really connect with,
which was the topic of randomness being,
what sort of I'm looking for,
that randomness functions in two ways in games,
the randomness functions as a set up mechanism
or as an outcome mechanism.
Now what's interesting is if you listen to the podcast,
they get these terms backwards,
at least I'm about 95% sure they did.
I looked it up, I definitely know that I'm using them correctly,
but from what I heard, it sounded like
they were using them incorrectly.
So I'm gonna define a couple terms first.
In game design, there is a phrase,
there are two phrases, two terms, input randomness
and output randomness.
The input and output have to do with when the random items,
when the randomness of the game manifests
in relationship to the decisions the players make.
The part that the,
the part that the secret cabal got wrong is,
which one means what?
As far as I've been able to tell,
input randomness is where the game produces the randomness,
it inputs it before you make your decision.
The game includes the randomness, it comes in,
you make your decision.
Output randomness is you make your decision
and then the randomness comes out of that.
That's the way I've always remembered it
and that is the way according to my research,
the terms are meant to be used.
If you listen to the secret cabal podcast,
I think they got it backwards.
That said, if you just understand
that they got the terms backwards,
they had a really interesting conversation about this.
So I wanted to put in my two cents.
So to answer the original question
of the person who posed it,
what is the most random game
and what is the most deterministic game?
And I think a secondary element is,
what is the most random input randomness game?
What is the most random output randomness game?
And what is the most deterministic game?
And then is there a game that gets that mix just right?
So a lot of different options here.
So I thought at first I would talk about
games that involve input randomness.
Now most Euro games that have some level of randomness at all
have input randomness.
The example they brought up on the secret cabal
was Castles of Burgundy.
In that game you roll dice
and then you can spend those dice
to do a variety of different things
because you roll the dice before you take your action
that is input randomness.
Though that idea also perpetuates
through a number of other elements
of Castles of Burgundy.
It determines which tiles come out into the depots.
It determines which tiles come out into the market to purchase.
And those three things together
set up different situations in which you have to react
tactically and somewhat strategically
to the randomness that the game creates for you.
So in terms of pointing to a game
that has a fair amount of input randomness,
I think Castles of Burgundy is a great call.
The couple other games I would point to
that have a similar thing.
Deck Builders that use a line,
a river of cards to purchase
like Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle
is involves input randomness in two ways.
One, there is a river of cards that you're buying.
Two, actually three ways I guess.
One, there is, okay,
Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle
involves input randomness in three different venues.
One, it has the river of cards that you can purchase from.
Two, it has the villains that come out.
You don't ever know what order they're gonna come out
except that Voldemort will be last.
And three, the cards coming out of your deck
that you have shuffled.
So all three of those things,
they all happen before you take your turn.
They're all input randomness
and then you respond to those situations
with your decisions.
So I would point to most deck builders
as having a very high degree of randomness
that's input randomness.
That said, most of these games people don't think of
when they think of like a really random game.
You often don't talk about those games.
I would say perhaps the highest version
of input randomness that I can think of
is Karl Chudyk's Mottainai.
Now in Mottainai you have a wide variety
of different things you can do with your cards
and the cards have a variety of different things
that they can do.
But you never know which cards you're gonna get and when.
There are a number of different ways to draw cards
but when you get them, you never know
quite what they're gonna be
and since each one has a different power on it,
it's extremely, you're acting extremely reactive
to the cards that you draw.
I would accept and without too much vigor argue
that Innovation has a similar level of randomness
as part of its construction
because that game is also full of cards
that have a variety of different figures on them.
So for input randomness, there we go.
I think the extreme would be Mottainai or Innovation.
With regard to output randomness,
output randomness are games where the result
has to is determined by the randomness.
Now one way to do this would be to focus on games
that are entirely about output randomness,
that perhaps the most output random game I think
you'd think of is Strike.
And Strike you are rolling dice into a bowl
and you're seeing if your dice match.
If the dice match in pairs or triples or whatever,
if you ever have more than one dice that matches,
you get to pick it up.
If the dice don't match, then you leave them in there
or if you roll the X, the dice,
the die is removed from the bowl
and you're allowed to keep rolling into the bowl
as long as you want, but if you run out of dice,
you lose the game.
It is an entirely random game with almost no control.
The only decision you get to make is
do you throw a die or dice into the bowl or not?
So very, very random.
That might be the most random game I could point to,
but it's also barely a game because of that randomness.
If you wanted to find a couple more games
that were a little more gamey that I really enjoy
that work on this output randomness,
often push your luck games depend on output randomness
because part of what you're trying to do
is decide how long do I keep relying on randomness
to keep the game going.
So a game like Quacks of Quedlinburg or Incan Gold,
these are output randomness games
and I think very successful in it.
The other kind of game that I like that has output randomness
are the Ameritrash games, particularly those
from Flying Frog Productions,
which focus on a classic style of playing a game
that has a variety of results that you're trying to achieve
and they all happen via die rolls.
So I really like in Last Night on Earth
or in the A Touch of Evil how you're gonna roll a die
and that die will determine what happens
in the outcome of your play.
You get some things to mitigate the result,
but not very many,
and often just a bad roll as a bad roll as a bad roll.
So I would point to if I'm gonna say a game
that uses output randomness the most,
it's gonna be Last Night on Earth or A Touch of Evil.
As my favorite game that has tons of output randomness.
I was thinking a little bit about deterministic games.
On one hand, there are games that are absolutely deterministic
but not very interesting for this conversation,
particularly Chess and Go and Checkers,
but that's not really what I wanna talk about
those in this context.
So it does beg the question,
what would be my top deterministic games?
And I can think of three that I wanna suggest.
The first is one that they did mention on The Secret Cabal
and that is Small World.
Now Steve brought that game up in the context of output randomness
or input randomness I guess because the factions
that you're choosing are determined randomly.
So when you are choosing your faction,
there's this line of factions that have been put out
and which pairings are in that line is random.
That said, that aspect is determined
well before you make your choice.
So at best it's input randomness.
But that's a very small part of the game.
The main thing of the game is where do you choose to go,
what do you choose to do?
The entire context of the game is presented in fullness
and you know what's gonna happen.
You can make choices based on the pieces you have.
You know exactly how the battles are gonna go out
before you do them.
This is the epitome of determinism
and I think it works really well.
So one of my favorite deterministic games would be Small World.
There are two other games that I would point to
that are not chess or checkers,
but also feel deterministic.
Okay, there's a few more games I would point to
that feel deterministic.
One of them is the game.
And this one, this is interesting
because the uncertainty comes from the other players
which is true of like chess.
Wow, this is the game, Strife.
Now if you're a long time listener of the podcast,
you know I mention this game once a year.
It is a card game where you're choosing your cards
and playing them against your opponent
and all the cards interact in specific ways.
So you know what your card is gonna do.
You know what their card is going to do.
The uncertainty comes from you not knowing
which card they're going to pick,
but it is a perfect information game.
You know exactly which cards they have
because you have those same cards.
You can always see all the cards they've played.
So it's a perfect information game.
Even if it's not perfect certainty.
I can't remember what term Tony used in the podcast.
But Strife would be an example of another game
that has no randomness,
but nonetheless feels like it has some.
Then you have three games that are sort of
from the model of Chess or Checkers,
but are in fact new hobby games.
And those would be Onitama,
Cairn and to That Time You Killed Me.
Now Onitama you could argue has a little bit
of uncertainty in it
because the cards that you have at the beginning of the game
are secret from your opponents.
And they don't know which card you have
until after you've played it.
So that tiny piece of Onitama is uncertain,
but not random.
Every player has, one of the players has access to it
and gets to control it.
And then you get two other games that are much more abstract,
but fully pull it perfect information.
And that is Cairn and That Time You Killed Me.
Both Cairn and That Time You Killed Me,
are games where you know exactly what the opponent can do
and you're just trying to anticipate and outplay them.
These are games that feel most like
Chess or Checkers or other games of similar ilk,
even if they have their own uniquenesses.
And those would be games that are the epitome of determinism.
Well that brings me to the end of my walk.
I did not come up with an answer
for the buttery smooth middle game.
So I leave it to you listeners,
pickers-up and deliverers, PUDders.
I don't know what we're calling you.
I don't, did we decide that?
Contribute to that conversation or to the question
of which game falls right in the middle
by heading to boardgamegeek guild 3269
and sharing your thoughts over there.
Thanks for joining me on my walk today.
I hope your next walk
is as pleasant as mine was.
Bye-bye.
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