In 2002, Wizards of the Coast put out Star Wars: The Trading Card Game designed by Richard Garfield.
As Richard modeled the game after a miniatures game, it made use of many six-sided dice. In combat, cards’ damage was designated by how many six-sided dice they rolled. Wizards chose to stop producing the game due to poor sales. One of the contributing factors given through market research was that gamers seem to dislike six-sided dice in their trading card game.
Here’s the kicker. When you dug deeper into the comments they equated dice with “lack of skill.” But the game rolled huge amounts of dice. That greatly increased the consistency. (What I mean by this is that if you rolled a million dice, your chance of averaging 3.5 is much higher than if you rolled ten.) Players, though, equated lots of dice rolling with the game being “more random” even though that contradicts the actual math.
Unless you’re rolling an impractical number of dice for every attack having your attacks do random damage (and not 22-24 like in MMORPGs but 1X-6X) is incredibly random. Even if you are rolling a ridiculous number of dice the game can still be decided by one roll leaving a creature on the board or killing it by one or two points of damage.
What maths says that rolling dice doesn’t make the game more random? Maybe he means the game is overall less random, but I don’t see any argument for that, or reference to evidence of that claim.
If the reason for the game’s failure was that people thought it lacked skill less additional randomness is not a decision to defend even if people were slightly overestimating the randomness.
Having to roll dice in a card game is kind of a slap in the face too. In other card games you draw your cards then make the most of them. There’s 0 randomness to worry about except right when you draw your card or your opponent draws theirs (but you are often happily ignorant of whether they play a card from their hand or that they drew except in certain circumstances.) You can count cards and play based on what is left in your deck, or you know is not in your deck anymore.
Also, unlike miniature games, card games pretty much never start pre-deployed. You start with nothing on the board. If your turn one card kills his turn one card because of a dice roll then he has nothing on the board and you have a creature, giving you some level of control over the board (depends on the game, often quite high) In a miniature game if you kill more of his guys on turn one because of dice rolls you still have an army, though smaller.
The more precise statement of “math says rolling more dice makes things less random” is that if you roll ten six-sided dice and add up the answer, the result will be less random (on its scale) than if you merely roll one six-sided die.
Even more precisely: the outcome of 10d6 is 68.7% likely to lie in the range [30,40], while the outcome of 1d6 is only 33.3% likely to lie in the corresponding range [3,4].
I think the quoted portion of the article addresses exactly this point: people were scared of rolling many dice because this meant lots of randomness, but the math says that the opposite effect occurs.
As to your other points (starting with “kind of a slap in the face”), that is addressed in the article, but not the quoted part. In summary: both rolling dice and drawing cards is random, but there’s a bunch of reasons why the randomness of drawing cards isn’t as frustrating. (It can be frustrating too, though.)
Rolling 10 dice instead of one makes the game less random. Rolling dice often instead of rarely makes the game more random. This game rolls dice for every attack and not that many. The dude said people complained about lots of dice rolling, not rolling lots of dice. Yeah, obviously if you roll 10 dice its less random than rolling one but what are the chances card game enthusiasts: people “geeky” enough to play star wars TCG don’t understand that basic part of probability? It’s far more likely that people were annoyed at lots of dice rolling, not the amount of dice you roll each time. Which matches the reported complaints of the players. Not that I’d expect an accurate report of the players positions when making excuses for why rolling dice in a card game is a bad idea.
Mark Rosewater, Kind Acts of Randomness
The chance of averaging exactly 3.5 would be a hell of a lot smaller. The chance of averaging between 3.45 and 3.55 would be larger, though.
Your chance of averaging 3.5 to two significant figures seems quite high indeed, though.
Unless you’re rolling an impractical number of dice for every attack having your attacks do random damage (and not 22-24 like in MMORPGs but 1X-6X) is incredibly random. Even if you are rolling a ridiculous number of dice the game can still be decided by one roll leaving a creature on the board or killing it by one or two points of damage.
What maths says that rolling dice doesn’t make the game more random? Maybe he means the game is overall less random, but I don’t see any argument for that, or reference to evidence of that claim.
If the reason for the game’s failure was that people thought it lacked skill less additional randomness is not a decision to defend even if people were slightly overestimating the randomness.
Having to roll dice in a card game is kind of a slap in the face too. In other card games you draw your cards then make the most of them. There’s 0 randomness to worry about except right when you draw your card or your opponent draws theirs (but you are often happily ignorant of whether they play a card from their hand or that they drew except in certain circumstances.) You can count cards and play based on what is left in your deck, or you know is not in your deck anymore.
Also, unlike miniature games, card games pretty much never start pre-deployed. You start with nothing on the board. If your turn one card kills his turn one card because of a dice roll then he has nothing on the board and you have a creature, giving you some level of control over the board (depends on the game, often quite high) In a miniature game if you kill more of his guys on turn one because of dice rolls you still have an army, though smaller.
Why is this quote upvoted?
The more precise statement of “math says rolling more dice makes things less random” is that if you roll ten six-sided dice and add up the answer, the result will be less random (on its scale) than if you merely roll one six-sided die.
Even more precisely: the outcome of 10d6 is 68.7% likely to lie in the range [30,40], while the outcome of 1d6 is only 33.3% likely to lie in the corresponding range [3,4].
I think the quoted portion of the article addresses exactly this point: people were scared of rolling many dice because this meant lots of randomness, but the math says that the opposite effect occurs.
As to your other points (starting with “kind of a slap in the face”), that is addressed in the article, but not the quoted part. In summary: both rolling dice and drawing cards is random, but there’s a bunch of reasons why the randomness of drawing cards isn’t as frustrating. (It can be frustrating too, though.)
Maybe because of this part:
Rolling 10 dice instead of one makes the game less random. Rolling dice often instead of rarely makes the game more random. This game rolls dice for every attack and not that many. The dude said people complained about lots of dice rolling, not rolling lots of dice. Yeah, obviously if you roll 10 dice its less random than rolling one but what are the chances card game enthusiasts: people “geeky” enough to play star wars TCG don’t understand that basic part of probability? It’s far more likely that people were annoyed at lots of dice rolling, not the amount of dice you roll each time. Which matches the reported complaints of the players. Not that I’d expect an accurate report of the players positions when making excuses for why rolling dice in a card game is a bad idea.