I’m very impressed and inspired to hear Alex Jaffe talk about using a randomiser to assist when playing the Like a Dragon games.
Which games would be well served to let the player request a random pick? What would it mean for a game to be built around such a randomiser?
I’d love a game where different NPCs could suggest a next objective and fulfilling it is one way to establish or maintain a social link. It might require some sort of meta layer where they refer to quests. ‘I dreamt that you did the business management bit for 5 hours’.
I think the enduring quality of the Nuzlocke run of Pokemon games (where, for the uninitiated, you commit to catching the first Pokemon you encounter in each distinct new area, and also play the game with permadeath rules, meaning any Pokemon that faints must be released and permanently removed from your team) says something about this. It's a hardcore way to play the game but it reveals a hidden undercurrent of strategy and intensity that has been sanded down to a mirror shine in the standard playstyle.
There are also those Metroid-like randomizer mods for some of the more popular of those games that randomizes the power ups and traversal tools and thus creates a unique patching through the game. It's on the tip of my tongue but isn't there a semi recent Metroid-like that had a randomizer built in?
Shypox and Super Shypox in the Draconian Quest options in _Dragon Quest XI_ make every combat command by the Hero and also the rest of the party respectively have an I think 25% chance to be replaced with a wasted turn (so statistically speaking you're dealing with at least one action per round failing for no reason lol). Basically turns your whole party into the Gadabout in _Dragon Quest III._ This is hardcore but also really fun if that's what you're looking for. You have to operate on a totally different strategic level to incorporate so much of your intentions in combat to fail because you gave your whole party debilitating anxiety for shits and giggles.
@“Mnemogenic”#p152816 mod that randomly assigns each Elixir a best before date within a certain range, and until you drink it you won't know if an Elixir will work as intended, or restore less than 100%, or give you the dreaded status effect of Sore Tummy (which ofc kills the party member permanently)
A Mario game where a small radioactive source, a Geiger counter, and a poison canister are placed along with the Princess. When the Geiger counter detects radioactive decay, then the poison canister shatters and the Princess and Bowser both die. From the very start, the result of Mario‘s journey is in superposition; the Princess, Bowser, and World 8 remain in two possible states unless they are observed by Mario and the player. They may already be dead, but they don’t have to be. I call this the quantum randomizer.
Also I only just now listened to the part of the recent episode of the podcast that details Alex Jaffe‘s method here, so I didn’t really understand the question until now.
I have nothing further to add beyond to observe that, wow, it's crazy how Alex Jaffe is so good at playing videogames
I've been playing through Persona 3 Reload lately, and I think The Jaffe Method has potential here. Every non-main-quest-story day, the player is given a choice between a few categories of things to do with their days and evenings, and then within those categories there are a few choices of which specific activity to do:
Flip a coin: go hangout with a social link, or go do "daily life" stuff
If social link: roll a random number to determine which of the available people to hang out with
If daily life: roll a random number to determine which venue to go do whatever they offer at.
I think perhaps the initial coin-flip may need to actually be weighted, a 50-50 split between social links and daily life probably isn't reasonable. Perhaps the power of _The Jaffe Method_ can invent the three sided coin, and we allow 2:1 odds on social vs activities.
Compared to Mother 1, earthbound is more like a linear road trip. I’ve enjoyed earthbound randomizers in the past because these areas are usually much more spread apart, often many hours apart in the game.
For the Jaffe method, going one town at a time, earthbound could feel more like a yakuza or persona game if there were added objectives.
@“rejj”#p152906 Perhaps the power of The Jaffe Method can invent the three sided coin,
The orthodox Jaffe Method requires the usage of Random.org- and, frequently, tables. (See: my Big Game Hunger episode with Jenna Stoeber.) I do not trust physical coins or dice as indicators of true randomness.
One way I frequently apply the Jaffe Method is to Achievement Hunting. If there’s a list of non-secret achievements available in a video game, I use a randomizer to choose my next goal.
If a game had an ‘in game randomiser’, would you use it? Would you trust it?
I remember Rhythm Tengoku would often show a random ‘bonus’ on a task that you haven’t done in a while. It was seemingly presented as a way to make players try other content, especially abandoned challenges.
In honor of this thread I started a randomized ironman blind draft of Fire Emblem 7: The Blazing Blade Hector Hard Mode. This means I will be using the [Universal FE Randomizer](https://github.com/lushen124/Universal-FE-Randomizer) to randomize:
- Recruitment Order
- Classes
- Boss Classes
- Affinities
- Rewards
- Enemy Drops
- Seed: _my mom liked this episode :)_
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BUT THERE'S A TWIST
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In addition I am flipping 3 cards 🃏🃏🃏 on random.org every time I see a new character to determine if I'm allowed to recruit them or not. If I pull the right card, then they are on the team. If not they're going on the bench, meaning I'll probably only end up with 13.6 of the 41 recruitable characters during the entire game. I am playing with permadeath so there's lower odds if the recruiting character dies or if it prevents me from getting into a Gaiden chapter. I'm flying blind so won't know who is coming or what class or what their bases/growths are going to be, so there's no planning ahead.
I can post some after action reports if anyone's interested....
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As you can see I‘ve drawn my lords:
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- ♧ Geitz, the existentialist Wanderer, will be a Cavalier, and play the roguish lout Hector. He is the Ace of Clubs so that will be the card I need to draw from Random.org
>!
- ♤ Hawkeye, the desert Berserker, will be an Archer, and play Roy’s Father and noble Marquess Pherae, Eliwood.
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- Jaffar, the Angel of Death from the villainous band of assassins knowns as Black Fang, will be an Axe Lord, playing the role of the girl from the sands, Lady Lyndis
>! >!
There's a chance I'll soft lock or completely fail, but let's leave it up to chance! 🎲
Jaffar, the Angel of Death from the villainous band of assassins knowns as Black Fang, will be an Axe Lord, playing the role of the girl from the sands, Lady Lyndis