Imagine you are playing Pokémon Red Version. After dozens of hours of traveling through the Kanto Region to gain the eight gym badges, you finally are up against your childhood rival, Gary. Its down to your Charizard against his Blastoise. Charizard is in low health, while Blastoise is sitting at around half. You know that this next turn will be the deciding factor in the outcome of the match. You know that your Fire Blast will not be enough to take the Blastoise down, but it is the only move that has any PP left. Out of any other options, you choose the move and await the Game Over screen. Charizard moves first, sending his Fire Blast off to in an almost vain attempt. But then, Blastoise’s health does not stop dropping where you expected it. His health drops lower and lower, until his health is entirely gone! The text at the bottom of the screen reads, “Critical Hit!”
The game randomly chose this Fire Blast to deal a critical hit to Blastoise, causing you to ultimately beat the game. Looking at this outcome from an unbiased, logical standpoint, it seems kind of a cheap way to win. If you only end up defeating the final boss because the game essentially just gave you the victory, wouldn’t that make the victory less fulfilling? I would argue that it ends up causing quite the opposite reaction.
When a situation like this one happens to me in any turn-based system that incorporates randomness, it makes the victory MORE fulfilling to me. This is because I view this event not as the game giving me a critical hit, but as Charizard itself dealing the critical hit for me. It is as if Charizard gave this final attack his all to end up giving us this triumphant victory. This becomes a moment in my playthrough that I will most likely never forget. It makes this series of pixels on my Gameboy screen feel like something more. That is MY Charizard, and he overcame an overwhelming disadvantage to end up scoring us the title of Champion of the Kanto Region.
In a sense, I feel like random events in this style of combat allows for unique moments that ultimately bring you as a player closer to the characters in the game. Randomness can bring you moments that I have dubbed, “OH SHIT!” moments. Charizard getting that critical hit when all seemed lost? That is certainly an “OH SHIT!” moment. It brings excitement to the otherwise repetitive gameplay loop. These moments immediately get you to be more engaged in the game, as something unexpected was caused by one of the units in combat. Whichever unit the game decided to let cause this unexpected action is now responsible for that action in the player’s eyes. It gives more unique moments to these units, making them feel like they have some agency in what is happening in the game. These events make the characters feel alive to me, in a sense. This is all exaggerated in a turn-based setting because there is more focus on each character’s individual actions as opposed to a real-time action gameplay loops. The game focuses on each character as they are doing an action, thus making the “OH SHIT!” moments more pronounced.
This idea of the benefits of randomness came from watching Game Maker’s Toolkit’s “The Two Types of Random in Game Design” (shown above). I highly recommend watching this video, as it can explain Randomness in games much better than I am able to. In short, there are two major types of randomness in game design. These two are Input Randomness and Output Randomness.
Input Randomness is when random events occur before player input, and then the players need to react to this randomness. In a turn-based setting, an example can be what enemies a player encounters in a random encounter. The game decides what the player will fight, and then the player decides how to react best to get through the battle.
Output Randomness, on the other hand, is when the game takes over after a player action to decide the outcome. An easy example for output randomness in turn-based combat is hit chance. You as the player decide to attack, and the game decides if you will hit or not.
Obviously, the type of randomness that I am talking about that gives you the “OH SHIT!” moments are from output randomness. The video previously mentioned goes into how output randomness can be used successfully in games, but they look it at from mostly a mechanical standpoint. One example they give is that output randomness can give players a good simulation of mistakes, and forces players to think about risk management when selecting their actions. In a sense, output randomness in one turn of battle in a turn-based setting becomes input randomness for the next turn for players to react to. Therefore, players will need to constantly react to events that happen in battle to properly set themselves up for victory.
What I want to add to the idea of output randomness is more about the narrative impact of output randomness opposed to the mechanical impact. Like I said previously, I feel like output randomness gives characters a feeling of agency that makes them seem real to me. Moments where characters pull an immaculate victory in a seemingly hopeless situation becomes a personal moment between myself and that in-game character.
I also want to add that I do not think these moments of personality through randomness ends with only beneficial randomness. I think that characters who happen to miss attacks can also lead to some (possibly bittersweet) memories for players. Having that one character who somehow constantly gets unlucky misses for you can lead you to add this whole new “clumsy” or “reckless” personality trait on them that is nonexistent in their actual character background. I think that enemy encounters who either dodge constantly or deal several critical hits can also lead to entertaining moments for players in their playthrough as well.
For example, what if there is this tiny, timid creature that has a low chance of appearing for players? They can be taken out with relative ease by almost every party. However, critical hits made by them are an insta-kill on any character. This would lead to this enemy creating so many funny moments for players who may grow to fear the little guy (any Final Fantasy VII fans should recognize an enemy similar to this). No narrative background needs to be written for this enemy to stick in players heads, as the “narrative” has been created by the randomness in its structure.
It should go without saying that designers need to be careful with how much negative randomness is put in their game, as very few (possibly masochistic) players will have fun if they constantly lose because of bad luck. Negative Output Randomness needs to be handled with great care to find a balance between exciting spontaneity and unfairness. In any case, I think that randomness can bring a lot of character to both player units and enemies in turn-based combat. I think that this randomness is a big reason why I find myself more attached to characters in turn-based RPGs over their action counterparts.