Theory 301 - Randomness in TCGs

[@goncaloferreira6429]

1- randomness is apart of every card game. 2- as a general rule, designed random elements make the game less more luck based and less skill based. some people love that. 3- in your face randomness elements that make your opponent win the game are much worse feeling than losing because of bad luck.

[@cassie5248]

What I find interesting is that, even at the competitive level, some amount of randomness can still be really exciting. Like in magic, there was a really memorable example of someone topdecking Lightning Helix, the perfect card to get out of the current situation and turning the game around. Dark Confidant is an example of a well-liked card *design* for competitive that's highly random; and part of that is that you can build around it to mitigate the randomness but it's also just interesting in its element of risk assessment that really benefits from randomness. I think my favorite example of a card making use of randomness in magic is Yusri, Fortune's favor. The fact that it lets you decide how many coins to flip is really interesting, and plays into the strengths of randomness. When you go for the gamble and it pays off you feel really good, but when it doesn't it doesn't necessarily feel like the game is fucking you over since you made the choice.

[@tcgacademia]

Knowing you have one out in your deck, playing to that out, then ripping it off the top at just the right moment is great.

[@petersmythe6462]

Consider a chess variant where the back row of each side are independently randomized? A version where it randomly chooses between roughly equal pieces, like a knight, a bishop, and a non-royal king, will be much more interesting than a version where it where it randomly chooses between totally unequal pieces, like a western chess queen and a Xiangqi elephant (moves exactly 2 squares diagonal and cannot jump). The ideal form of randomness creates minimum unfairness with maximum options. This is probably why of all chess variants that involve randomness, by far the most well known one played in tournaments is Bobby Fischer's Chess960, which is perfectly balanced as all things should be, but also increase the number of possible starting positions by a factor of nearly 1000.

[@petersmythe6462]

In short, randomness is better for limiting memorization and calculation than for eliminating the queen problem. Chess where anyone could just roll a queen at any time wouldn't be fun.

[@tcgacademia]

@@petersmythe6462 "Limiting memorization and calculation rather than eliminating the queen problem" is really well put! It moves the game from calculation to probabilities. I hadn't heard of random chess variants before, but given all the other variants out there, I'm not completely surprised.

[@lizardrain]

My thoughts are that there actually is a "best" objective way to approach this: - Every single RNG effect during gameplay is bad. - Except card draws. First thing's first; if you play casually (the Mario Kart kinda gamer, etc) then RNG is a good fun time for everyone. The problem occurs when you start taking the game seriously and are trying to improve your skill at the game. So we'll be going with that assumption. RNG feels bad when you have bad RNG and also feels bad when your opponent has good RNG. Coin flips (Pokemon TCG was infested with them), random damage, randomly discarding (yours or opponent), any RNG effects at all. You do NOT experience an equal amount of satisfaction VS negative feeling whether you succeed or fail at them. Why is that? Because you're wanting to improve at the game but you feel like the game keeps screwing you over - the game is getting in the way of your personal goals. But card draws are different, because a deck can be customized and every bad card can be swapped out for better ones. RNG feels bad when it's out of your control, but when you experience bad draw RNG you can tell yourself that it's your fault to some degree. Feeling like it's "your fault" is a good thing if your objective is to improve. So as long as you're not playing a perfect-meta-deck then you have an excuse for bad RNG - the excuse being that your deck isn't perfect yet and needs further customizing. "Next time my RNG will objectively be better because my deck will objectively be better". In other words, imagine if for coin-flips the coin was somehow customizable (sounds silly I know) or if you had some kinda influence over the coin then that kind of RNG would be acceptable. This is the distinguishing factor I'm making here, and this is why I believe all RNG is bad except card draws.

[@tcgacademia]

For competitive games I agree - the less randomness the better - shuffling already adds plenty. There are a lot of games out there that are trying to be less competitive and more casual, and some randomness does help there - I like your Mario Cart analogy. There's room for both, but RNG in a game you're trying to improve at and take seriously is a pretty bad time - it's important to feel like your decisions have weight in a competitive game.

[@trolleymouse]

When you mention coin flips being somewhat customizable, my mind goes straight to the mechanic from MTG's Lorwyn block, "Clash". You and your opponent revealed the top card of your library. Whoever's revealed card had the highest mana value won, and anyone else lost (so ties were losses for everyone). Then there'd be an effect tied to winning the clash, and players would either put the revealed card back on top or under their library. This meant you could stack the deck in your favour, quite literally, though it would come with the tradeoff of a high average MV deck. And importantly, it was never certain, because your deck would most likely still be ~1/3 lands, and lands always had an MV of 0.

[@RemoteIslandSyndrome]

'Customising your coin' is actually an idea that gets explored in Griftlands, a deck building roguelike. The character Rook has a coin flipping mechanic - one side of the coin is face up at any given time, and some cards will allow you to flip the coin to give you a chance to change the side. Furthermore, many of his cards will have better effects if you can match them to the relevant face of the coin. For instance, a card might do 5 damage normally, but 10 damage if the coin is tails up. This means that you know how much damage that card is going to do ahead of time, removing a lot of the feels bad moments of coin flipping. You can plan entire lines or play based on whether your coin lands heads or tails up, with either option being valid. Furthermore, there are mechanics to rig your next coin toss, allowing you to build a deck around only flipping tails, for instance. Finally - and this is where customising your coin comes in - at regular intervals, you're given the opportunity to swap your coin out for others. You see, your coins have a minor effect just for flipping them, depending on the side. You might get +1 shield for a head and deal 1 damage for a tails, for instance. This means that flipping coins is valuable in and of itself, but you might swap the coin for one that has say, heads on both sides, or draws a card on heads but has no effect on tails. The coin you pick is another part of your deck building decision-making process.

[@kono5933]

Idk if anyone played pokemon duel when that was a thing but it had an attack wheel with different attacks on it and it depends on the pokemon. Some part of the rng felt controllable in that because you could pick a different wheel. I don't remember if duel did this but choosing when to stop that type of spinner mechanic can make it feel slightly skill based too (edited typo)

[@solsystem1342]

(Quick note I forgot: it's valid to say "I don't like rng in tcgs" because it obviously won't appeal to everyone) Playing around RNG can be very fun. You see this a lot more in digital games obviously because it's less effort for the player to run the randomness. For example, in competative Mario cart the blue shell and the horn (the item that can protect you from the blue shell) make the game more interesting. The rubberbanding present in the game's items means that more of the players have a chance at the win for more of the race. If you removed the items it's quite likely that you'd lower the skill celling as players no longer need to play around them/utilize them to succeed. What you're referring to is bad implementations of randomness not that randomness in general is bad. Like, random discards and the like can be used as a great cost to powerful effects because the cost is giving up control which will sometimes be worth it and sometimes not. Tldr: randomness has its place in games. Trying to say that a mechanic is bad doesn't really work as a general example "this example is bad" not "every version of this everywhere is bad"

[@TamNguyen-vu7kd]

Most TCGs are games where not all information is available for every player. Randomness helps with you not knowing what your opponent has and thus facilitates play around hidden information like mindgames.

[@tcgacademia]

That's another good point. Like what Keatsta mentioned in another comment, randomness introduces this element of risk management that is less present in perfect information games. Which in turn also opens up plays like mind games and bluffing - you might broadly know what the opponent has access to in their deck, but you don't know what's in their hand in any given moment.

[@joe-wi8nj]

Indeed the opponents cards provide a great unknown quantity. And excellent design room for blind card mechanics

[@revimfadli4666]

Tbf hidden or simultaneous choices from perfectly known pools/possibilities can serve a similar purpose

[@AutisticBoardGamer]

There is good randomness and bad randomness. For example of bad randomness back in my MtG days, I would feel bad if I won a game due to the other player got too many or too few land cards. I wouldn't even count those games in my statistics.

[@tcgacademia]

Yeah - I think there's a big difference between "I made a lot of good decisions, and just lost to a few unlucky bits of randomness" and "I lost to randomness without being able to make any decisions at all."

[@thequarky1]

the contrast in the opening when you dropped the hololive mat was severe

[@tcgacademia]

It was a long set up for a dubious joke, but it still makes me chuckle. My sense of humor is definitely questionable, though XD

[@antynvejil6285]

Chess has randomness and I am so tired of everyone falsely saying it does not. Whoever goes first is at a complete advantage and this advantage is completely chosen at random at the start of the game and assuming perfect play on both sides it determines SO much

[@tcgacademia]

Even ignoring the first move, there's also other factors, like one player could be badly jet-lagged, while the other slept well. On the grand scale of games, though, it's still one of the least random out there.

[@Kindlesmith70]

2 years later and Magi Nation Duel resurfaces. 🤣

[@petersmythe6462]

Keep in mind that imperfect information is pseudo-random. Setting a card face down or having it in your hand are just as much unpredictable and chaotic as drawing a card, rolling a die, or flipping a coin.

[@tcgacademia]

Really good point!

[@revimfadli4666]

Although cards can satisfy "gambler's fallacy" by making next draws a little bit more predictable based on past ones, as long as you're playing the whole deck

[@keatsta2928]

Great video! Really well reasoned discussions and fun editing :) I found the idea of randomness as a source of metagame diversity especially interesting. One other randomness subject I'd be curious to hear you on is the sort of "risk management" of randomness. This is one I've talked about with my Pokemon (not TCG) playing friends. If you have a move that is guaranteed to hit for 75 power vs a move with 75% accuracy but 100 power, which do you run? It ultimately comes down to ideas of "how often will I be in situations where afford to miss with this vs situations where 75 power would suffice" which I think get really interesting, a new way of considering possible gamestates that's only possible with randomness. I think in card games you can find analogies with like... combo decks and such? "Can I afford to not hit this combo piece for n turns vs do I need to have this redundant piece?" sorta thinking? I dunno though, just a half thought.

[@tcgacademia]

Thank you! I'm glad you found the edits fun, I definitely had fun putting them together. The risk management angle is definitely interesting, and I think it's one of the most important skills that you can have in tcgs. A lot of the most impactful decisions players will make will come down to some amount of risk management, and you'll only find out if you've made the right decision several turns down the line. An example I came across in a recent (mtg) cube draft - you have a decent 4-cost card, a powerful 5-cost card, and a 2-cost card that taps for mana. You have 4 lands in play, and no lands in hand. Do you play the 2-cost card to guarantee you're able to play the 5-drop next turn? Or do you play the 4-drop and count on drawing a land to play the 5-drop? (Drafts in general give you a ton of these decisions in both deck construction and gameplay, which is one of the things I find most fun about draft.) One of the things I find most interesting in tcgs in general is that, as players, we try to minimize randomness as much as possible, when as games, tcgs are largely built around and defined by their randomness.

[@petersmythe6462]

In my view, the positive effect of randomness are that it widens the game tree without increasing the number of decisions, making deep calculation or opening theory difficult and encouraging a more intuitive playstyle. The negative effect is that it can end up making excellent or disastrous moves that take away player agency. So the ideal random element chooses between balanced options that aren't strictly better or worse than one another but are meaningfully distinct enough to make analysis difficult.

[@tcgacademia]

"Encouraging a more intuitive play-style" is a really good way of putting it!

[@revimfadli4666]

This is why backgammon got a AI far before chess; forced exploration

[@Terminator550]

You need to make a video that delves into the theories as to the reason(s) trading card games are not a popular game format in the world. Many in society accept those that enjoy playing video games, but if two adults start to play a TCG, they are looked down upon.

[@tcgacademia]

I'm not sure two adults playing a tcg would be any more looked down on than two adults playing on their nintendo Switch. That being said, tcgs are still pretty niche in comparison to video games. I might explore that in a video more in the future, but I think the two biggest elements are cost (tcgs are expensive!), and the fact that tcgs are very much still a physical game - there are online clients, but physical card games require a person nearby to play with - which means you ideally want to have a local scene to keep interest, when video games can have one person interested in the game in the middle of nowhere, and they can still find matches. Tcgs, despite their randomness, can also have a fairly high skill gap, which can discourage newer players. Hmm... maybe this is a good idea for a video, if I could bang out this much about it off the top of my head...

[@freddykrueger8076]

@@tcgacademia Truthfully it is 3 core issues Expensiveness, Learning Curve, and Dedication TCGs require are a significant money-sink, as you outlined in your recent video. They rely heavily on packs, which although ‘trading’ is in the name, most players tend to be cards directly. When decks can typically range from $50-$250 for most TCGs, that is the cost of 2-8 AAA Video Games. Then you have the Learning Curve, a prominent example being Yugioh, but many TCGs have a vast number of Cards, such as MTG with 20,000+ or a consistently roating pool. Then you have Dedication. You have to consistently play to get your moneys worth. At least once every week or other week if brick-and-mortar. The games themselves at stores can easily take an entire afternoon, whereas game virtually are extremely addictive. Not to mention that you have to constantly upgrade your decks due to power creep or set rotation, and constantly check the meta. For the expense side, between packs, tourney fees, and deck replacements, the cost could easily pass $1000+ *every year, for the AVERAGE player* That is a hard sell to any spouse, in addition to the time & dedication necessary. It just simply isn’t an optimal format to ‘draw in the general public’ as it were.

[@jmurray1110]

There’s also the fact gambling cards can be done if the hypest moments when weak as shit so the spectators can go wild when that time wizards sets you up for a victory as if you were joey wheeler

[@tcgacademia]

Even without actual gambling cards, this is still definitely a fun feature of randomness! Like if you know there's only one card left in your deck that will let you win from a situation, so you risk it all to set up your next turn for the tiny chance you draw exactly that card off the top. A lot of the time it won't work, but when it does it's a moment people remember for a long time.

[@jmurray1110]

@@tcgacademia yeah though I’m talking about artificial randomness or more accurately randomness the player adds for a potential play off and why adding those types of high reward high risk cards are also good for the game at a casual level Especially when competitive decks actively minimise randomness with things like using the smalllest possible deck or maximising the possible extenders

[@mmmbug]

I love your channel. Question: Could you please explain why you consider catchup mechanics to be random? Is it because the benefiting player didn't specifically choose to trigger the effect? (Or perhaps it's because the effect is triggered from a face-down, effectively random card. I'm not familiar with the games mentioned.)

[@tcgacademia]

It's basically your guess in brackets - these cards trigger from a hidden, randomized zone, and are often present in equal numbers in both players' decks. Life bursts in Wixoss trigger from your face-down life cards that are randomly dealt from your deck at the start of the game, and Climaxes in Weiss Schwarz and triggers in Vanguard (among others) trigger when revealed off the top of the deck. So the players have minimal control over when they happen, and the game can swing quite dramatically when one of these cards are revealed. Glad you're enjoying the channel!

[@ordinarytree4678]

Id love to hear your thoughts on Poker and Coup. I understand they arent tcgs but Poker would be interesting to examine from a randomness standpoint.

[@tcgacademia]

Randomness in games is such an interesting topic, since you only seem to notice it while playing when you get super-lucky or super-unlucky, which makes randomness seem like an opposite force to skill. But playing optimally in a random environment is a skill in itself, and a really interesting one. At first glance, poker seems almost entirely random, but this skill plays enough of a role that there's an entire professional scene around the game. I'm not quite sure where the balance between managing randomness and reading tells falls in Poker, so I don't feel quite confident enough to really go too deeply into it, but it could absolutely be a great case study. And Coup is great - it has a similar balance between randomness management and people reading as poker, but I enjoy the gameplay a lot more. I have a ton of ideas for future videos already lined up, but if I ever revisit randomness, I'll probably bring in Coup as a topic.

[@revimfadli4666]

@@tcgacademia interesting, thanks! What are your thoughts on games where the "randomness" comes purely from people's uncertain decisions+hidden information(stratego, skull, etc) as opposed to a randomizer?

[@tcgacademia]

@@revimfadli4666 There's still some randomness there, but a lot less - the more the game comes is set by human decisions, the more opportunities there are for skill to play a role in who wins. So those games are a bit more random than perfect information games like chess, but still less random than tcgs that involve a shuffle.

[@revimfadli4666]

@@tcgacademia I see, thanks Btw in addition to Coup I would suggest Love Letter and Oriflamme, for examples that lean more towards the mechanical strategy side than bluffing, especially the latter(though it still allows bluffs)

[@tcgacademia]

@@revimfadli4666 Love Letter is great, haven't tried Oriflamme. I'll give it a shot if I come across it!

[@jinxhijinx1768]

looking for tcg design videos and running into hacchama merch in a 2 year old video was not on my bingo card for 2024.

[@tcgacademia]

It's a little long for an intro, but I did have a lot of fun with it! Still a bit sad I haven't found any playmats that really capture Haachama's offbeat personality.

[@JFingle]

What do you think about a 1d20 roll system for combat?

[@tcgacademia]

It might be hard to make it work for a more competitive-focused game, but I think you absolutely could could make a good card game with a combat system built around d20 rolls.

[@admiralcasperr]

7:07 Or you're playing affinity for artifacts and the opponent needs a new pair of pants.

[@tcgacademia]

True!

[@WangerZ3291]

This guy really likes symphogear, a man of freaking culture

[@tcgacademia]

Symphogear is fantastic. FANTASTIC. I love that nonsense show.

[@sirvaniss]

Where are the Theory 100- and 200-level videos?

[@tcgacademia]

The early idea was How-to-play was 100 level, strategy was 200 level, and design theory and analysis was 300 level. I ended up dropping the scheme for a few reasons - mostly, everything I wanted to do was 300 level. Also, it was potentially confusing and it made the video titles longer and more complicated than they needed to be. I did like the idea, so thanks for mentioning it - I'm glad someone was curious about it, at least!

[@sirvaniss]

Thanks for the thorough explanation! Love the videos; you have a great way of explaining things and I really like the recaps coupled with the natural flow from one subject to the next. This series will be a primary guide as I start developing my own TCG!

[@tcgacademia]

@@sirvaniss Awesome - it means a lot to hear that! Good luck with your TCG!

[@joshuaperrine2019]

I don't think you mentioned how randomness can be fun

[@tcgacademia]

True! Not knowing what's happening next turn can create a lot of fun, exciting moments in gameplay.

[@joshuaperrine2019]

@@tcgacademia that and being on the oposite end of one of your complaints. You're about to lose and boom, victory out of nowhere.

[@vizjereigaucho6469]

ABC

[@goncaloferreira6429]

7:03 agrro decks are a thing. Not the best example here.

[@tcgacademia]

Even crazy aggro decks are going to struggle a bit getting mindtwisted for the whole hand on turn 3 (as long as our christmasland mindtwist player is also doing reasonable things like playing removal).

[@goncaloferreira6429]

@@tcgacademia hum, are you one of those youtubers that hasnt played mtg for a long time? i am always sceptical when card examples go so far as 1995. anyway, my point was by turn 3 an agrro deck as mostly used all his/her cards and the objective is to win as fast as possible.

[@tcgacademia]

@@goncaloferreira6429 mtg is actually a game I still play quite regularly (I'm admittedly more of a limited specialist). Some very fast decks, particularly in high-power formats like modern/legacy, definitely have some hands that can win fast enough it doesn't matter, but magic taken as a whole has relatively few decks than can shrug off that much discard, especially if the discard deck is still doing other things at the same time. Meanwhile, most Wixoss decks can shrug off that level of discard with comparatively little difficulty.

[@MrJigglebits]

Why is the intro a minute long???

[@tcgacademia]

For fun.

[@trevoreshleman9291]

Do you have a discord?

[@tcgacademia]

It's an idea I've considered for a while, but at the moment just uploading videos is taking me way too long, so I don't want to add more to my plate at the moment. It's something I'd love to create in the future, though, once things settle down a bit!

[@trevoreshleman9291]

@@tcgacademia would you be interested in trying the new tcg I made? I love your take on things and would love your opinion! If you're too busy I completely understand