Random Chance in Lifeship or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Chaos

Chaos is inevitable, both in real life, and in board games. The universe forever descends into its lowest energy state through entropy. In a board game, entropy is represented by dice, by cards, by choices made by opponents, by tile placements, and randomized resource selection. Some games completely eschew entropy by placing every lever of control at the players fingertips. Low entropy games look like Chess. A series of limited options and opportunities arbitrated by the player's skill and ability to see farther ahead. For a less historic game, look to Dominion. Ostensibly a deck-builder card game but every option is known from the beginning. The chaos comes from how your deck is randomized. This is one step further into chaos than chess but it still lies on that side. On the other side, we have games that are completely chance based. I remember playing WAR as a kid. If you never bothered, here is a quick synopsis, each player gets half a deck. Then you flip the top card and the highest card takes the other. If there is a tie, you lay three face down cards followed by another face up until there is a winner. Zero skill is involved. You are 100% at the mercy of RNG^esus.

Our job as designers isn't to eliminate entropy. I am not here to make the next GO, or Chess. I believe we should be limiting entropy, chance, whatever you like, when it is not meaningful, when it doesn't serve the players or the story. However, the flip side of that statement is that we should EMBRACE the chaos when it does serve the player, when it creates great moments, when it provides an avenue for customization.

Lifeship players start with one of 100 unique Characters (Depending on what you have unlocked already). Each character comes with two unique cards that are special to them. Once you have a character, you select a class from 20 different options (Again, depending on what you have unlocked). The class comes with 5 basic cards and can be upgraded to have access to more card choices. However, you will always take 5 class cards. You are then given access to the armory, where you can select up to 2 pieces of equipment to add to your deck. Finally, you are given a Super Team uniform to make a nice round 10 cards. There is no minimum or maximum deck size, but you must take your Unique character cards, and your class cards. Each turn, you will draw up to 5 cards, and choose some to play. Smaller decks are more consistent but less robust when the enemies destroy your gear. Larger decks are less consistent, but much more able to carry salvage and survive losing some equipment.

So each step you take to get to your 10 card deck is controllable. You choose our character, you choose our class, and your equipment. What is out of your control is exactly which of those cards you see each turn. This means holding onto an important piece of armor in case you get hit is a factor in your decision making. It provides players with opportunities to embrace chaos, or try to control it.

Enemies in Lifeship have a behavior deck of ~8 cards. This is shuffled at the beginning of the mission and a card is revealed each turn. While the order of their action cards is different every time you face them, the cards are the same. So if you have fought Xeno-Spiders before, as the mission progresses, you will have a reasonable idea of what they might do on the next turn. In this way, Lifeship IS random, but it is a randomness that you can learn and use to your advantage. When players or enemies make attacks, they pull a card from a 20 card modifier deck. This deck only has 3 misses in it. If the first 3 cards you pull are misses (Unlucky), your next 17 attacks will hit. Once again, there is chaos, randomness, but you can count cards, you can use the available info to your advantage. There is no reshuffling the deck when you get a miss or a crit. You even get the opportunity to improve your modifier deck by achieving character goals.

Lifeship is a game of chaos. When you decide which cards to add to your initiative queue, you don't have perfect information. The enemy's actions are yet to be revealed. So you make a "Best guess" about how you see the round going. Then you see what the enemy is doing. Suddenly, your plan has gone to crap because you are boxed in. In a lot of games, this would be the end of your character. You made a bad choice and now you're done. Not in Lifeship. All of your character cards, and class cards can be used to do basic actions instead of their main ability. So if you HAD planned to break an obstacle but suddenly need to move before you get killed, you can make that choice. Once again, the game IS Chaos...it is entropy...it wants to murder the characters. But you still have some control, even when things are at their worst.

I will probably write more about how enemies behave in Lifeship in a later blog poost. Suffice to say, we have done a lot of work to make the enemies feel REAL, to make them dangerous. Until then, enjoy the Chaos in your life, control what you can, and accept what you can't.

-Chris