Variable Movement Speed

[Mr. Magniloquent]

In games, many things are left to the mercy of the RNG gods. One consistent exception is movement. You roll to hit, to damage, defend, dodge, save, but you will always move X distance. In a sea of probability, movement is invariably deterministic. Is this a good thing? Would there be some thrill involved if movement had the uncertainty of other actions? Would movement become more valued if you needed to invest in it as a variable, rather than rely on it being assured? What if instead of a movement speed of 10, you had a movement speed of 1d6 spaces? Conceivably this could be improved both in range and reliability with advancement like any other characteristic. Would this add nuance and depth, or would it be a chore? Why or why not?

 

[Cryomancer]

Levitation spell in morrowind is probably the unique case of "random" movement speed imo.

 

[deuxhero]

Morrowind also supports random ranges for bonus to speed, athletics and jump multiplier, though Levitation is the main one players will actually encounter due to the magic item that's involved in the main quest. I don't think anyone bothers with random power for any spell effects in the game for custom spells or their custom items though unless they're trying to exploit something (such as how variable power constant effect items are rolled each time they're equipped and thus trivial to optimize).

Savage Worlds has the bonus distance for running being random, but it's explicitly to capture theater of mind type stuff and would thus only make sense in tabletop.

 

[rojay]

Would this add nuance and depth, or would it be a chore? Why or why not?

Why would you want to add RNG to movement?

There are games in which movement is determined by things like race - a dwarf can't move as far in a "turn" as an elf, for example in D&D - and aren't there also games in which dexterity or a similar characteristic affects movement?

I think movement being standardized in that way makes sense, and I'm not sure how you explain why the distance you can travel in a turn is random. You can limit movement in any number of ways in addition to limits based on size/dexterity/quickness etc. Why would you make it random?

The examples you give for things that are determined by rolls are pretty much all "opposed" rolls, aren't they? You roll to hit against an AC; you roll to dodge because you're being targeted/trying to escape an AoE; your savings throw is against the chance you'll be detrimentally affected by whatever it is you're saving to avoid, etc. How far your character can move in a turn, absent something helping or hindering them, is very different.

 

[ind33d]

you just invented Monopoly

 

[Erebus]

Not a CRPG, but Hero Quest has random movement for heroes : monsters have a constant speed (10 for goblins, 8 for orcs, etc.), but heroes have to roll 2D6.

It's so random and unpredictable as to be a real pain in the ass. Rolling high will often be pointless anyway, because you don't want to get too far from the rest of the group (and you don't know how they will roll for movement if they act after you) ; rolling low will often prevent you from reaching a monster you really want to be attacking.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Random movements could make sense if there are random external factors that can influence it. Environmental hazards, a tornado...

But I think the more RND you add to your mechanics the more unfun an less strategic it becomes, because you cannot plan anything in advance. It is difficult to find the sweet spot for RND.

I would like to find a computer game in which you can fine-tune the variance of RND in an option panel, to switch from a completely deterministic system, to completely a unpredictable system.

 

[lukaszek]

oh so rng attack is fine but movement isnt?
One should also roll for breathing, 1 being random saliva choke

 

[ShiningSoldier]

Oh, please. We need to completely remove dices from RPGs, not adding new ones!

 

[Damned Registrations]

Various roguelikes have done this before. Though nothing so drastic as '1d6'. More like.... 100+1d6. Or 4% chance of extra movement per turn, as it works out.

The reason is simple: to make certain cheesy tactics involving kiting enemies forever less effective. Of course, it enables other cheesy tactics instead.

 

[Storyfag]

I think movement being standardized in that way makes sense, and I'm not sure how you explain why the distance you can travel in a turn is random. You can limit movement in any number of ways in addition to limits based on size/dexterity/quickness etc. Why would you make it random?

Terrain difficulty. It usually gets abstracted as halving your movement, but more realistically the effect should be random.

 

[ropetight]

RNG is used to simplify and conflate bunch of complicated rules and simulations in one variable for faster gameplay, especially in tabletops.
RNG movement, heck even pure RNG combat is frustrating - if you never seen Monopoly or Risk board flipped over in rage after series of bad dice rolls, you haven't really played it.


Things would get even worse if game has more complex, layered rules on top of RNG movement.
Tacticool where every turn player gets different amount of movement points or action points would basically discourage player to do risky maneuvers and just turtle behind covers and wait.

Changing movement speed based on terrain, environment, armor, encumbrance, spells and effects (poisoned, crippled, low on HP/stamina/endurance...) is established practice and gives plenty of tactical depth.
Uncertainity is still there, but is "simulated", better explained and more fair.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

I think we should add a d6 that will be rolling every second of a game. If we got 5 or 6, the character dies of heart attack, because it's realistic.

 

[Gargaune]

In games, many things are left to the mercy of the RNG gods. One consistent exception is movement. You roll to hit, to damage, defend, dodge, save, but you will always move X distance. In a sea of probability, movement is invariably deterministic. Is this a good thing? Would there be some thrill involved if movement had the uncertainty of other actions? Would movement become more valued if you needed to invest in it as a variable, rather than rely on it being assured? What if instead of a movement speed of 10, you had a movement speed of 1d6 spaces? Conceivably this could be improved both in range and reliability with advancement like any other characteristic. Would this add nuance and depth, or would it be a chore? Why or why not?

It's an interesting idea, though I think it'd be pushing things a little too much into the abstract. An attack roll models whether a character hits or hurts their enemy, which would indeed vary, but most people tend to have a specific and reliable "pace." Okay, maybe you're a little quicker or slower to "hop to it" from one moment to the other, but you'd expect that to be quite a small variance especially in the relatively close-quarters combat that RPGs typically deal with - if you're representing troop movements across a huge battlefield, a platoon randomly moving 100m more or less in a 10-minute turn could be significant, but your Paladin making it one more step in a bugbear's bedroom within 6 seconds is kinda splitting hairs.

RPGs are quite abstract by their very nature, but they're abstracting something concrete about how people or objects would behave in the fictional scenario, and when you start tacking on mechanical complication arbitrarily, just for the sake of complicating the numbers, it risks getting tedious and overly "gamey."

 

[mondblut]

oh so rng attack is fine but movement isnt?

When you move, the earth beneath your feet doesn't actively try to fight you.

Unless you're shitfaced, in which case random movement is entirely justified.

 

[lukaszek]

When you move, the earth beneath your feet doesn't actively try to fight you.

every surface is perfectly even now?

 

[Spukrian]

Random movement might sound fine on paper but it would probably be a pain to play. I mean, imagine if Fallout had random movement... except the movement is tied to Action Points, so you have 1d10 AP per round. Well, you're fucked if you roll a 1 several times in a row.

 

[ShiningSoldier]

Oh, I have another idea! Every time the character wakes up from the rest, there should be d20 roll, and if we get less than 10, the character had a bad night and his parameters decreased. For example, the mage in this case could not memorize the spells. I think it would be fair, because nights can be quite different.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

At each turn one could launch a 1D100000000. If he score 1, the a meteorite hits his head.

 

[mondblut]

When you move, the earth beneath your feet doesn't actively try to fight you.

every surface is perfectly even now?

That's what penalties for rough terrain are for.

 

[NecroLord]

In games, many things are left to the mercy of the RNG gods. One consistent exception is movement. You roll to hit, to damage, defend, dodge, save, but you will always move X distance. In a sea of probability, movement is invariably deterministic. Is this a good thing? Would there be some thrill involved if movement had the uncertainty of other actions? Would movement become more valued if you needed to invest in it as a variable, rather than rely on it being assured? What if instead of a movement speed of 10, you had a movement speed of 1d6 spaces? Conceivably this could be improved both in range and reliability with advancement like any other characteristic. Would this add nuance and depth, or would it be a chore? Why or why not?

Make it variable, dependent on whether or not the character has his legs still intact and not severed in combat, how encumbered he is, distance, potential environmental hazards which can hamper movement, and so on.
Walking up to the nearest enemy and decapitating him with your axe might be easy, but to reach that annoying far out archer all the way over there might require some effort on your part. You may need to waste all your actions on your round just to move to his position.

 

[NaturallyCarnivorousSheep]

Yes it's necessary. Throw 3d100 and square root divided by 4 multiplied by movement multiplier should be the movement distance, half of it in English inches half of it in American inches.
Do it before every movement.

 

[Iucounu]

The Long Dark has speed penalties for wind strenght, terrain steepness, inventory weight, clothing encumberance, fatigue and various afflictions. If Condition becomes critically low your character also starts to stagger in a randomized way, which may cause you to fall off cliffs, into fires, fail to easily grab objects and so on.

 

[anvi]

In games, many things are left to the mercy of the RNG gods. One consistent exception is movement. You roll to hit, to damage, defend, dodge, save, but you will always move X distance. In a sea of probability, movement is invariably deterministic. Is this a good thing? Would there be some thrill involved if movement had the uncertainty of other actions? Would movement become more valued if you needed to invest in it as a variable, rather than rely on it being assured? What if instead of a movement speed of 10, you had a movement speed of 1d6 spaces? Conceivably this could be improved both in range and reliability with advancement like any other characteristic. Would this add nuance and depth, or would it be a chore? Why or why not?

This is one of the things that fascinates me about EverQuest that I never get a chance to talk about because it's such minutae.

I never thought about movement in games until I played that. First off, the enemies in the game are very dangerous, you can easily die just trying to fight 1 creature even the same level or lower than you. It was that hard. (Players were supposed to team up). So people always get into trouble in fights, and when all their plan As and Bs have failed, they turn and try to run away. That's where EQ surprised me. The enemies in the game are the exact same speed as the player. So running away is a problem. If you stun the creature or something and then quickly run, you can get some distance and keep the distance and run all the way back to the guards or to the next zone. But if you are injured you slow down, and that means the creature catches you up and beats you to death from behind. It was such a merciless game. Amazing.. Running away also required running straight, if you tried taking a turn or a curve, the creature would catch up and kill you.

But things all change by around level 9 when people start getting spells like Snare and Root. Snare slows enemies down a lot, and Root holds enemies in place. (But it could break easily). I don't know if the term, "kiting" existed before EverQuest or not, but it became key to that game. People would snare an enemy then run around casting spells at it while keeping it at a distance. Later people figured out you could cast Fear which made enemies quickly run away in random directions, if you snare it first you can now just walk after it and kick its ass. The developers didn't know stuff like this was possible, this was, "Emergent Gameplay" that players had figured out. Some things got nerfed but mostly the developers let the players do what they figured out and worked with it.

At higher levels the Wizards and Druids could snare 4 enemies at once so "quad kiting" became the main way for them to solo. Necro had fear kiting. Later there were enemies that are immune to fear, so a Necro could 'aggro' kite them which meant sending your pet to hold it for a sec, then use some huge poison or something that makes the creature aggro at you and forget the pet. Then you run around and kite it, keep it snared.

Originally the game didn't allow root and snare to work together. You could do one or the other not both. Which meant if you Root a creature and start tormenting it with magic from a distance, once that root breaks it immediately runs at you at top speed. Root/Rot became another method where you Root a creature and root could break from direct damage. But if you used damage over time spells to 'rot' the creature to death, you could keep rooting it. All of these methods required you keep a good distance though and you had to run and move quickly to make that happen.

People might not understand what the game even is when they hear about there being dice rolls and things on combat actions. It had that too, but the whole thing was realtime and fast paced. So it required running and strafing like an FPS, if you played the game at that kind of level, trying to solo etc. Some players never did any of this because they were not good enough or didn't know you could do it. Some players took it to the extreme and pushed what was possible, going to places and soloing things that was amazing but complex and difficult.

A higher level guy told me a few tricks and places to go which motivated me to keep trying to push it. But I also figured out a great thing myself which worked well. There was a famous and popular enemy called the Ghoul Archmage which had a robe everyone wanted. He was a badass and took a group to kill or at least a few people. I figured out how to solo him, some say it was exploiting but I don't think it was. And nobody really cared at that point anyway because a new expansion was coming out with bigger stuff.

But basically this creature lived in a room with a front entrance and a back tunnel going in a loop in a big circle back to his front entrance. And there was a gap in the ground you could fall into with a ladder to get back out. The creature could follow you anywhere but wouldn't go in the gap, it would turn around and go the other way around the looop to reach you from the other way. So I would snare it and cast my biggest spells on it and just before it beats me to death I would jump over the gap. Then it would have to walk the long way to reach me at the other side of the gap. That gave me a few seconds to let the spells heal me and get ready for him coming from the other direction. Then I re-cast snare and more spells, and jump across the gap again. Repeat until it is dead. Even with that it was super dangerous. I died a lot trying to do it. It was an Archmage lol, so being snared only stopped it beating me up physically. It could still blast me almost to death with 1 spell. So I had to constantly use lifetaps the whole time I was fighting to keep myself alive. If it was punching me too I would have no chance, so the running around and jump over the gap was essential to survive. In the end I got hang of it and ended up with a backpack full of those robes. And a new Epic weapon they added to the game required that robe for the quest so I got to sell them all for top dolla :]

But yeah, movement is everything in that game. Enemies can kill you in seconds when they are on top of you. So it's all about keeping out of the way. You also can't exploit the pathing at all, despite what my trick might sound like. If you did something wacky like somehow got up a wall that the creature couldn't reach, it would just blink through the wall onto you. The game always made sure it could reach you no matter what. I remember when I first played it and was surprised by everything. But I was being chased by a huge Orc and thought whatever, it's just a game lol, whatever. I'll just jump in this river duh. So I jumped in the river thinking I was clever and then the Orc jumped right in and started swimming towards me. It had swimming animation and everything and looked super pissed off as I saw its face coming at me in the water. I nearly peed myself irl. I was so amazed by the tech too. This was not like a game, they were real monsters in a real world and they wanted to exterminate your entire species for ruining their lands.

 

[lukaszek]

When you move, the earth beneath your feet doesn't actively try to fight you.

every surface is perfectly even now?

That's what penalties for rough terrain are for.

undone shoe lace? cramp? boner?