"How Much Luck is Good?" Topic
11 Posts
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| Stalkey and Co | 01 Dec 2025 6:07 a.m. PST |
Been thinking about this a lot lately. Mostly because I have been playing a game with very very little dice action lately, The Complete Brigadier. I have – and write – games with a lot of luck in them sometimes. It's gamey but fun, a type of low-threat gambling amusement. How much luck do you like in your historical game mechanics?
- A LOT = wide possible results but there's an "average" center point, e.g. Units have 3 dice and hit on a 3+. Average should be 2 Hits. But always hitting three times, and always missing are both possibilities. - NONE = cross-reference how many figs are firing and you get the number of figs removed. My club's Napoleonic set is like that. - MEDIUM luck = mechanic results are deterministic with a modest possibility [say 20% or less] of more or less result. So at Range X, one gets 3 Hits, but on a '1' you get 2 and on a '6' you get 4; on a 2-5 it is still 3 hits. My club's AmRev rules use this on their fire chart. I'm keeping this with historicals, since sci-fi and fantasy don't really have any limits, far as I'm concerned. Do whatever you want! The Death Star can destroy a whole planet in one shot… |
 etotheipi  | 01 Dec 2025 8:15 a.m. PST |
Luck, none. Probabilistic risk management, a lot. Luck is passive. Risk management is not. As far as degree and type of stochastic depth, QILS doesn't have that in the rules. The rules allow that to be determined at the scenrio level. In historical scenarios, different events have different probability profiles, framed by what type of decision space is trying to be represented. Example: In the Battle of Puebla, the French commanders were faced with limited artillery supplies. (The logstic chain was broken before the battle.) At the command level they are not cannonball-counters. They know they are limited and how agreesive and when they are agrressive with artillery fires will dictate when they run out. There is also friction of war where the artillery battery chain of command may be told to "fire all guns full out at the cavalry", but they may hold back because they know they're running short. So, rather than an artillery shot accounting exercise, the French run out of ammo on a progressive stochastic risk schedule – the more individual guns fall out, the less likely the next one is to fall out. This balances the commander's intent through throttle and the artillerymen's close up view. Other aspects of probability like exchange ratios of different units in battle or the rate of reinforcements from civilians in Puebla, are handled differently. |
| martin goddard | 01 Dec 2025 9:48 a.m. PST |
Luck.
I like it to contribute 8% up or down toward the game result.
martin
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robert piepenbrink  | 01 Dec 2025 10:13 a.m. PST |
Surely, for historicals, it should depend on the real-world distribution? If something was a 90% sure thing historically, it should have a 10% chance of going wrong in the game. I would suggest that the size of units and length of time needs to be taken into account. One cannon ball might fail to hit a target for any number of reasons. ("The first shot for God, the second for the Devil and only the third for the King.") A battalion firing for 15 minutes or half an hour should only fail for reasons potentially knowable to the wargamer, like supply problems or an inability to observe the fall of shot. On the other hand, "activation rolls" or equivalent might be harder at the "I sent him a written order!" level than at the point at which you can shout "Column of fours to the right--march!" |
| Gamesman6 | 01 Dec 2025 10:18 a.m. PST |
It depends. Ive had an enjoyable time when theres been lots of luck.
What i don't like is when luck is used as the final arbiter of whether something succeeds or not. If despite our choices and how they interact, if success or Failure is decided by a dice roll, or whatever…. then id rather just roll dice. I dont mind randomising, but I rather that be at the beginning of the process that then player then uses to ingest with the opponent, that then produces a result. |
| pzivh43 | 01 Dec 2025 11:17 a.m. PST |
I like games that have a range of possible results. Hard to get it right, but more die rolls in a game helps even things out. Never liked Complete Brigadier since it has no variation in combat, etc. |
| Oberlindes Sol LIC | 01 Dec 2025 12:19 p.m. PST |
I like Etotheipi's analysis. |
 Parzival | 01 Dec 2025 12:25 p.m. PST |
No plan survives contact with the enemy. In a real battle, chance is very much a thing. Weather, wind, what the men were served for breakfast, what they had to drink the night before. If all battles could be decided definitively before hand, the generals would send each other notes, and one would retreat in shame over his bad math.
Risk occurs when you know the possibility of failure, but weigh it against the necessity (or strategic opportunity) of victory.
For me, dice allow for the odd twists of history that no one predicted, and yet somehow "happened" to turn the plans of the enemy upside down, or cracked through the unrealized chink in their armor. And that's the thematic and historical argument. For a game, luck/probabilities based on random processes put the general (the player) in the same spot of uncertainty real life commanders face. Real Life assures victory to no one, even the biggest battalions.
So, as I've said many times, "Roll dem bones!" |
| Andrew Walters | 01 Dec 2025 1:28 p.m. PST |
This is an aesthetic choice. Sometimes you want a rollicking game of unpredictable outcomes, sometimes you want to play Chess. It's okay to like games with a lot or very little luck. This is no different from wanting a simple fast game or an involved, detailed game, or wanting crazy green orks vs dark, sombre brown orcs. You want nordic dwarves or dwarves with airships and ironclads? You want to play cowboys or spacemen? It's just a choice. It's very good that you are conscious of what you are designing. Communicate that in the description of the game when you publish. But don't suppose there is a right/wrong answer, and base your design choices on what you want, not the responses of five people who felt like answering this question on this particular Monday. (Sorry if I sound crabby.) |
| Stalkey and Co | 01 Dec 2025 1:40 p.m. PST |
"In a real battle, chance is very much a thing. Weather, wind, what the men were served for breakfast, what they had to drink the night before. If all battles could be decided definitively before hand, the generals would send each other notes, and one would retreat in shame over his bad math." sure, but the larger the battle event, the less most of the things you mention matter, unless they are overwhelmingly impactful, e.g. "we were about to fight the Spanish / French at Trafalgar, but the storm showed up earlier than we thought. Now we can't even find our own ships, much less theirs." Part of what commanders do is manage enough factors to the positive so that the result they are trying to get is likely to happen. So you can't control the weather, but you CAN control how you plan for it. So some variable modifying outcomes is apparently what you like, but they belong in a mechanic where such variables are likely to commonly need to be managed. The question is "how much"? |
| rustymusket | 01 Dec 2025 2:03 p.m. PST |
medium. There has to be some. |
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