Randomness and fun - old/new school

I just revisited some old bookmarks and found two interesting ones I wanted to share.

Compare Zachary Houghton and Vincent Baker.

RPG Blog II

anyway

Zach very aptly put the focus on what is fun. Memorable gaming is fun because of the wonder of the unexpected.

Compare that to this.

Vincent very aptly shows us how aligning player expectations using the game system to share the benefits of the effects on the characters from some action.

In one case you accept before the fact that the random effect will be endured, because it is the shared benefit will be a cool story. You have the expectations aligned beforehand

In the other case you do that which will be a cool story, because the game system helps you to align player expectations, in play.

Look at the end result. You have a cool story where some suffer and some gain, and you have agreed that this is cool, and there are ways to broker the pain.

I like how this converge.