Of Randomisation and Responsibility

The following post is a contribution I did not expect to make to Prismatic Wasteland’s Random Blogwagon.¹

I have GMed one game of Mausritter. It was the first time I have ever used a random encounter table as a GM, and I have been GMing consistently for the last 6 years. I thought it was neat. I would do it again, and not just in Mausritter.

But I wouldn’t do it for everything. Take, for example, Mythic Bastionland. An incredible work, a game I really want to play, and also, the thought of making a Realm hex by rolling on a Spark Table makes me feel dismal. The rest of this blog reasons why.

Dan Davies, cybernetics influencer, has this concept of accountability sinks. To quote a review of his book², these are:

structures that absorb or obscure the consequences of a decision such that no one can be held directly accountable for it.

The sink functions by introducing a gulf between decisions and their consequences. In organisations you often see this manifest in the setting of KPIs. Leaders decide to make a particular metric the standard of employee success, and set rules to make employees pursue it. Employees follow those rules, and in doing so create negative consequences leaders did not foresee (or care about). But it is very hard for those impacted to try to change the system, because no one person decided to do the bad thing. Accountability gets lost down the sink.

Accountability sinks appear in organisations because they help defend the organisation from being sued or people from being fired. In TTRPGs establishing a gulf between decision and consequence creates the opportunity of tension. When a game calls for a roll it is because the designer wants to maintain the possibility of multiple outcomes in a context where players would be motivated to choose only one. Table agreement to pick an outcome by rolling for it creates an accountability sink, ensuring success or failure is no longer any one player’s responsibility. In return we get delicious uncertainty.

But, responsibility is not always ideal to give up.

Which brings me back to Spark Tables. The point of these is to aid creativity, getting over the blank canvas problem by providing a randomised prompt. And like, that’s a solid use case! Reader, if it works for you, all power to you. But, randomisation works its power here too. You get a starting point, but no responsibility for it. Same with the various Spark Tables assigned to each Myth, such as the one that provides symptoms and methods of transmission for The Plague. Roll for these, and the outcome is no longer your responsibility. And like…I want that responsibility!

I want to be accountable! As GM I want the setting, the event, the creatures my players face to be mine. Even if some are duds, better a dud I chose, than one I rolled randomly, because then I need to learn. And, I want to be present. I want what I add to the game to be personal to me, and the reason I want this is because I want my players to do this too. I want the game to be ours. And that means being careful about how often we roll the dice.