Thoughts on RND using a number wheel

I'm not a huge fan of RND based games because it pretty much encourages save scumming, but what are your thoughts on using a wheel similar to what Doom used.

Basically instead of using a random number generator Doom used a number wheel with 256 numbers randomly assigned to it. Whenever the game needed a number it would pull it from the wheel and advance it one space.

I'm not certain that would be a perfect answer for RPG games, but I think it was on a good track.

What if the player had such a wheel, and mobs shared their own.

When you hit one it pulls the number and moves it along one space. When you get hit it pulls the number and moves along three spaces.

Meanwhile the enemy is doing the same, one forward when attacking. Three when getting hit.

The enemy number is then subtracted from the player number giving a total of -256 to 256.

I could even go so far as saying that the player may even be allowed to set their own wheel so that their luck comes in waves, every other, or completely random.

What do you think?

 

This is a very common way for doing random number generation. I do it myself for many situations. I prefer everything to be deterministic. It makes testing easier.

For games, it also is beneficial to manipulate the RNG so that things feel better. For example, if I have a weapon that’ll misfire 10% of the time, I’d never expect it to misfire two times in a row during gameplay, even though it should happen one out of every hundred shots. Players would feel like the game is cheating.

 

I think either you're not explaining it well or it makes no sense to me.

This is the point to focus on.

I recommend googling "shuffle bag random" and presorting stacks of random numbers in a way that you can ensure that if a player does a 50+% hit chance attack twice in a row, one is guarantueed to hit.