"How Much Luck is Good?" Topic

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…

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.

Luck.
I like it to contribute 8% up or down toward the game result.

martin

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!"

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.

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.

I like Etotheipi's analysis.

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!"

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.)

"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"?

medium. There has to be some.

As one of my pals who gets to do this stuff for a living noted, "Combat is a stochastic event". So yes, you do need D some randomness, that is why commanders keep reserves.

I find that solo games are far more tolerant of a wide range of outcomes, it helps the narrative. Face to face games, particularly multiplayer, benefit from a more predictable set of outcomes. That is more about the player experience than how good a simulation a game is.

So the answer is 'It depends'.

Some randomness aids credibility. The pieceing of an armour plate by a particular penetrator has some varitaion it's even plotted so is a guide. We use some random variation in some less predictable tarrain types, it seems better than 1/4 speed sthat allows on table syncronisity not seen in the real world.

We avoid "random events" in a simulationas, typcalty they happen too often and implusibly in some games, that for me makes it an uninteresting game.

Even with our "low" random system, weird things occationally happen, but they are rare and require no intervention the unlikely happens occastionsly, like a pools win, just not very often.

It is as Andrew Walters points out, an asctetic choice and also part of a designers choice on what he is attempting to achieve. But hopefully it should not be majorly influential on the outcome. In the hundreds of games of our rules I can only think of maybe 4 where extreems have seriously influenced the game. That is an acceptable level to me.

I play dominoes that have a far higher chance infuence than our rules. However its a soical game not a bitter battle of wits so is acceptable to me. A wargame with that leve of randon would be unplayable for me.

Another aspect for me with luck chance etc bing driven by dice cards erc is how the experience ends up being attributed to the randomise4. Battle reports a d AAR focusing a person's good or bad dice rolls. Which for me isn't why I play wargames… its why I play dice games.

If were generalising it down to….

The question is "how much"?

Then the answer is…

So the answer is 'It depends'.

Luck is a perception of how much someone benefits from apparently random events or benefits positively when other are impacted negatively.

In a wargame we commonly see this in the preception that someone has good rolls or bad rolls.

If by "luck" we mean randomness then again, for me it depends what the randomness represnts and where it sits in a resolution process. If regardless of my tactical choices if thr final determination of whether I hit or miss means I need a number a numbwr or numbers on a dice. Then ultimately its down to how "lucky" that person is when rolling dice.

In my current system the randomiser is in dice roled with the options of thjngs the unit can do. The number rolled is determined by the training/quality of the unit, experience allows re rolls, as do other factors orders, commander etc. The player then uses that "random" section to out fight the opponent. Is there luck there?

Thers an interesting documentary about a team developing an AI to play Go. It plays the world nimber 1 and wins several times..by playing in ways that experts and the #1 said made no sense. After loosing 3 times, iirc, the #1 changed his play and played in a way that made the AI basically fall apart.

Was either "lucky" there was certainly unexpctedness and unpredictability.

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.

Absolutely!

And let's not forget that some of the historical outcomes were, or heavily relied on those odd twists. Just because a battle turned out a specific way in history, doesn't mean that was the most likely outcome.

"Just because a battle turned out a specific way in history, doesn't mean that was the most likely outcome."

Interesting point – not quite on topic, but interesting.
Obviously, the professional military is heavily invested in this sort of examination of likely outcomes. The problem raised though is the limit of our predictions and what we percieve as a likely outcome may be totally wrong.

Was Bunker Hill predictable?

At the strategic level, if I'm playing a board game about the entire AmRev, some crappy militia will get a little fortification counter that says "2x" on it, and the British will roll a die to attack it. Then one of 6 things will happen.

At the tactical level, an AI may say that the best way to attack Breeds hill is through an infiltration strategy lead by a light infantry night assault.

So how do we predict the decisions of generals?

Multiple daylight frontal attacks is a bad idea.
Night assault is a good idea.
Both lead to outcomes that later become predictable during the war, so the British rarely make costly full frontal assaults, and outsmart the rebels using flank attacks, night attacks, et al.

Retrospective predicting is meaningless, right?

Luck: So when I roll high and I need a low number, I don't blame it on bad luck. I blame it on the game designer.

In the end it all comes out even. I like having my "bad" luck early in the game knowing that later it will become "good" luck. Play the odds. So when I have "bad" luck I just smile and nod at my opponent rather than bitch about it. It confuses them.

I use a modified binomial table to give variable, not necessarily random results using a single D20. This eliminates the unhistorical results that can occur when rolling a Yahtzee with a handful of dice.

I don't use random events but I do use SNAFUs that can occur 0-3 times in a game. The results are historical and mainly effect the timing of an order being executed and not a catastrophic game changing event.

Yes, UshCha, I know you don't use them because it interferes with your tactics. No discussion is needed <grin>.

Wolfhag

At this years Historicon I played "Carnage and Glory II" for the first time. I played in three games. Having never read the rules (are there rules?) and it didn't matter. I loved it. No rules charts or dice. I was enthralled that I didn't have to check charts ask questions or wait thirty minutes while some rules lawyer looked up every rule and all the errata, author emails etc. I didn't miss the dice.

In fact I didn't even realize until this Thanksgiving when someone said I hate them because they don't have dice. Oh yeah, it didn't have dice. I hadn't notice. I guess it randomizes the results or not. I will find out as we will start playing them shortly.

Carnage and Glory is about your tactical skill and knowledge of the period. Someone tell me if the software takes into account random out comes, I don't know but I suspect so. Before I played these I couldn't imagine not having dice.

I find that many players especially those who have played or are also playing fantasy have some mystic connection to their dice. A dice fetish as i call it. They often have their "special" dice that they bring with them to the game. Having a purely historical background I am always uneasy about them using their own "special" dice. Why are they special? I could just see the reaction of a casino if I brought my own dice. So those types naturally hate nondice games. The dice is suppose to have a randomizing effect on the outcomes. So these "special" dice tend to obscure that. Non-dice games eliminates that.

Others see the dice as their weapon to use against the enemy. They feel it allows them to take a more active part in the game. I find all this quite interesting.

@Old Contemptible
I don't know if C&G II uses randomization.
If it doesn't, then it is a lot like The Complete Brigadier where you have to use [obvious, historically based] tactics to keep the table modifiers in the plus zone while you try to outwit your opponent.

This reminds me a lot of the Army.

I do like a small amount of chance to be involved – I admit that at some point I will introduce small dice shifts potentials on the morale and combat mechanics. Mostly it will just provide a few % possible change and perhaps change the inevitable from next turn to this turn, or just barely won to just barely lost, but I don't see it happening much.

For history, I'm starting to prefer less dice, except perhaps with skirmish gaming which is definitely at a "more chaos" level of play.

For fun games, I'm fine with more or less dice.

"Obviously, the professional military is heavily invested in this sort of examination of likely outcomes."

They are, and spend a certain amount of time researching it.

Interestingly, the Defence Science Technology Labs CRT for force ratio:success outcomes still has a 10% chance of failure at odds of 10:1 for battalion level attacks.

I'm not sure many wargames would have any chance of failure at 10:1 odds (and those are adjusted for posture, terrain etc).

Carnage and Glory II randomizes outcomes. So, basically it "rolls dice" on your behalf. The core design idea was players would not see the specifics of the combat interaction rules, nor things like morale, damage, etc. but have to estimate those things for themselves.

link

I doubt people with their "special dice" would want to use them in QILS. The system also obfuscates (but doesn't preculde) direct probability calculation. You end up with a feel for the combat interaction. You can do a precise calculation, but most people don't bother – it's fairly complex and it doesn't really gain you a lot beyond your "gut feel" for the odds.

Didn't Napoleon allegedly say he would rather his generals were lucky than good?

I do like a bit of luck in games, but it should not outweigh skill.

Full luck is like the card game "War". Flip cards from the deck and match them against your opponent. No skill involved at all.

A better mix of skill and luck is Poker. Luck is what cards you are dealt, skill is what you do with them.

Our games very likely exaggerate the role of luck and chance. "Anything but a one…" provides suspense and excitement. But any given dice roll should not have a determining impact on the outcome of the game. If I lost because I scored a three on that die roll in turn two, that is too much luck. I'd rather lose because I commited my cavalry reserve too early.

@Dave Crowell
Yeah, funny I was thinking of the card game "war" also – no skill, just flip cards. It's more of a pastime than a game, really.

For a game, I want me and the players to get rewarded for skill, and that means luck can slowly have an effect on who wins, but not the determining effect.

My go-to ratio is that if a game is well designed, and both players are playing equally well [which could be excellent to badly, just equally well] then I am OK with the game coming down to a die roll or two.

But if the players do / are not playing equally well, then I want the more skillful player to win most of the time.

Otherwise, what's the motivation to try and master the game better?

Exactly. I want to lose because I was outplayed, not just because I was out rolled.

A key moment or two where things hang on the knife edge of a dice roll adds excitement, but those moments should arise from the actions and skill of the players. Those same moments of uncertainty that our historical counterparts faced.

How much luck is good? For me, it's just enough to create uncertainty — not enough to run the show.

A common misconception is that "more dice = less luck." In reality, it's variance per roll that determines how swingy a game feels.

If every roll is as a coin flip (50/50), throwing 100 dice doesn't make the game less luck-driven — it just adds noise.

I prefer games where you make your luck. if each roll is shaped by player decisions (positioning, suppression, timing, firepower), then even a small number of rolls produces stable, decision-driven outcomes.

I want luck that pressures your choices, not luck that overrides them.

I want enough randomness to keep tension and fog-of-war, but not so much that a couple of wild rolls rewrite the story.

Enough to not slow the game down beyond playability.

Rolling a die or dice and calculating a result takes time and assuming you have only so much time to complete a game then you need to avoid so many rolls in turn 1 that that's the end of it.

"Luck" is not a scientifically proven phenomenon with a physical form; it is an artificial human construct used to describe highly improbable, chance events that defy easy explanation.

While scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers widely agree that luck as a magical force does not exist, the concept serves a practical purpose in how humans perceive the world.

Apophenia and Confirmation Bias: People often notice and remember lucky events more than everyday occurrences (confirmation bias). The human tendency to see patterns in random data (apophenia) leads individuals to believe a pattern of luck exists when it does not.

Probability and Randomness: Events described as "lucky" are generally outliers within the laws of probability. A "lucky" person is simply someone who has experienced a series of rare, positive random events, while an "unlucky" person has experienced rare, negative random events. Over a large enough sample size, these outliers are expected to occur.

Mindset and Opportunity: Some research in psychology suggests that individuals who perceive themselves as lucky tend to be more optimistic, open to new experiences, and sociable. These traits mean they are more likely to put themselves in situations where favorable outcomes (opportunities) can occur, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of "luck".

I'm in my early 70s and I've survived growing up being unsupervised by my parents, rode a bike without a helmet, drank out of a garden hose and stream, did countless stupid things, jumped out of airplanes (once just as the engine quit and forced landed), and survived when complete strangers tried to harm me. I'm comfortably retired with wife and grandkids and a nice place in rural Tennessee outside of the tornado belt.

No matter what I roll on the dice and results in a game, in the real world I'm lucky, that's all that counts for me. So I just enjoy the game and let other people worry about the dice.

Besides, most games don't allow me to perform the tactics I was trained to do so it's the designers fault <grin>. They rely too much on luck and not enough on skill.

For me it all balances out. I don't mind "bad luck" in games which for me means good luck in things that count later on.

Wolfhag

As you say and I said earlier. Luck is something we attribute to events and people. Genrally after theh happen.

By adding a seen especially player operated randomisers, dice cards, chits etc. That can be perceived to be affected by luck and especially where it determines a result,

Id rather the "luck" at the front. I then use skill to produce and interact that with the opponents.

@ Mister H
Nice, virtually quotable! Pretty much how I feel about it.

@ Wolfhag
I appreciate the science. But it's hard to get around trends built over time. I have two friends who constantly roll low in games – I told them they need to pick games where rolling low is good. They said it wouldn't matter b/c then they'd roll high.

One guy in our club designed a game where the only significant die roll is morale, 2d6 added together, and low is better. He pretty much seems to average a '9' instead of a '7' with 2d6. Everyone thinks so and we've all noticed it. I asked him why he didn't design a game where you need to roll high for morale. He said he was inspired by Classic Squad Leader at the time, and never changed it, even though it doesn't work for him personally.

Another guy is always the guy that misfortune happens to with die rolls. Famous for it. If there's a small chance of your tank / ship / plane catching fire when hit, his ship(s) will catch fire against the odds, at the worst time possible. He says he doesn't play games to win, but to have fun, and it's funny to have his ships on fire.

Meanwhile, the rest of us just roll pretty unremarkably. No one comments on our rolling cuz no extraordinary trends are noticed.

I should add that this is over 20, 30, 40 years of guys playing in the same club.

Perception, or reality?

One guy I know was running a game and had those Chessex plastic cubes of dice. As I was playing French, I picked a blue set of dice. He said "don't use those". I asked why. He said they are notoriously unlucky dice. He was even thinking of throwing them away. I said I was fine either way and would try to break their streak. I can't say I rolled well, but I don't remember rolling really poorly, either. At one point I switched to yellow, and didn't notice any remarkable improvement, so I went back to the blue set – this was just for laughs.

So for me, I don't seem to have any strong rolling tendency. Is it perception, reality, or something else? 44 years of tabletop miniatures, I would say I have completely unremarkable dice rolling results.

Looking back, doing some ROM calculations our result is perhaps around 1 every 200 games is dominated by random rather than strategy. That to me is inevitable, but at odds that are acceptable. More frequently to me defeats the objective of playing.

This may not be ideal for some; like in chess the better players almost inevitably wins.

The random factor is there, in the data, armour penetration results are presented in startistical form so needs to be represented that way. The variability should not be a dominant factor, if it is then the game design/scenario desighn is seriously flawed.

Stalkey,
I appreciate the science. But it's hard to get around trends built over time. I have two friends who constantly roll low in games – I told them they need to pick games where rolling low is good. They said it wouldn't matter b/c then they'd roll high.

Yes, we have one in our club too. My only explanation is that randomness may be observed locally but there is actually a random universe where the results take place. Individually, we only experience part of it which may or may not be seen as random.

What I don't like is a poor die roll that results in a totally unrealistic result. Things like failing an activation multiple times. Also Yahtzee rolls. I use a modified binomial results table rolling a single D20. This results in more of a bell curve result eliminating the highs and lows.

In my system, when you want to do something or execute an order, it will happen, it just depends on how long it will take. That's different than having a % chance of succeeding each turn.

Your outcome is based more on your decisions and tactics than the die roll but SNAFUs can negatively impact the best intentions.

Wolfhag

Law of Large Numbers

For a d6, 95% confidence (reasonable game component manufacturing quality control) for 5% variance (enough to tell a d6 from a d4, but not quite enough a d6 from a d8), you require 213 rolls.

In an example (no such thing as 'typical') QILS game, we we will have about 20 rounds, averaging 5 die rolls per round (sometimes fewer, some times more), for convenience we will say two players, so 10 rolls per player per round (opposed rolls). 20x10 = 200. That's in the ballpark of 213.

But … you're not rolling the one same die each time. As an exemplar, a player might have five different dice, so that distributes paying attention to each die across roughly five games.

So, if you are tracking the exact rolls of each individual die across five games, you approach 95% confidence of 5% error.

You can substitue your own "example game" if you want.

@ Wolfhag
What's "a modified binomial results table rolling a single D20" in English for everyday people?
:)

It's interesting that this discussion has not talked anout distributions: in particular normal distributions.

If you take say height from a singal population the range of heights tends towards a normal distribution. Most folk are about the same height and the more extreeme the hight diffrence from the average, the rarer it is. This is a potentially optimun real world simulation technique but its quite hard to create a system that is easy to understand.

We have only used it at one specific point, the results of close combat. Traditional mechanisms seemed to us to result in far more extreeme cases than was either desireable of aligned with our interpretation of actaul first had accounts. So the result of a close combat which is a single role to keep play fast, is based on the expected result occouring most of the time and more extreem results, good or bad being progressively less lightly based on how far from the expected result. Basically, the best we thought could be achieved to a normal distribution given only a single D20 roll. Close combat in our games is a deciding factor, happens relatively infreqently so is as responce to the recopgnotion of high variablity in low number samples. This approach does not rul;e out "luck" but it dowes prevent it from likely influencing the outcome in an unrealistic way.

I would be interested if any body has taken this as a mechanism more widly addopted.

If you take say height from a singal population the range of heights tends towards a normal distribution.

This is only true if you define your "single population" in a way that constrains it to be normal.

Most folk are about the same height and the more extreeme the hight diffrence from the average, the rarer it is.

That is not what a normal distribution means, nor is it true about height. Height has about half a dozen multi-modal relative maxima.

This is a potentially optimun real world simulation technique

What technique? What do you mean by "optimal"?

quite hard to create a system that is easy to understand

If you mean a binomal approximation of a normal distribution is hard to implement, what do you think makes that hard?

Binomial probability definition:
The binomial distribution is a common probability distribution that models the probability of obtaining one of two outcomes under a given number of parameters. It summarizes the number of trials when each trial has the same chance of attaining one specific outcome.

Here is part of the modified binomial table:
I modified it from some detailed scientific tables. It's not 100% mathematically accurate, but it does get the results I'm looking for quickly with one die roll rather than a handful of dice.

It's an older one as I'm using a single D20 die rather than the 2xD10.

Here is how I work it:
The far left column shows how many shots/shooters are being taken or the number of targets (# caught by an HE burst). The column next to it is the number of successes. Across the top is the % chance of a success/hit.

Roll 2xD10 (1-100 result). With an 8% chance to hit 5 targets/shots, 1-66 is no hits, 67-94 is one hit, and 94-100 is 2 hits.

With a D20, 1-13 is no hits, 14-19 is one hit, and 20 is 2 hits.

For modifiers, I use % column +/- shifts, not a die roll modifier.

Theoretically, there is a minuscule chance of 5 hits if you want to use a calculator. With an 8% chance to hit, the chances of all 5 hitting are .000328% according to what I can find. However, from my experience and observation, it is more common than that in games rolling D6s.

This is etotheipi's area of expertise, so I'll go with his opinion or advice.

Wolfhag

This is etotheipi's area of expertise, so I'll go with his opinion or advice.

I suppose theft of your table format is the sincerest form of flattery, so … While I try to minimize tables, this is a really elegant solution!

The difference between percentile dice and a d20 is probably not worth the bother to futz, except your high end hits (00, 99-00, 98-00, 97-00). You could use a "spiker" die for that. Roll the die with your d20, and on a 20, the extra die (probably a d6 with hi/lo?) can distingush between a 20 for the 74-96% category or the 97-100% category.

You can always just roll the spiker when you need it, like an exploding die.

But with two dice, they rattle when you roll it, so, y'now :). Highly recommend a funky color for the spiker, if you use it.

For your miniscule chance, a d20 with a d20 spiker is not even close to granular enough to represent that probability. I would not mess with it, either.

etotheipi,
Thank you for those kind words.

The chart takes up most of an 8.5x11 page. The left column for shots/targets goes up to 5 because that's the limit for most of the uses. The rest of the chart is in 5% increments up to 95%.

So if there were 8 targets at 8% you'd roll 2x D20, one for the 5 row and one for the 3 row.

You can also scale it up to. Make the 5 row 50. So when you get one hit, it is actually up to 10 hits, so I roll a D10 to determine how many. For 2 hits, I roll a D20.

Wolfhag