Random Without Dice: How Other Players Create the Surprise
You know the cards.
You've played enough games of Monsters, Magic & Mayhem that you recognize the characters and monsters. You know their Strengths. You remember their effects. You know which cards can cause serious problems and which combinations you really don't want to see sitting across from you.
Better still, you know some of the cards your opponent can't possibly have. They're in your hand.
A few others have already been played.
You look at the cards that remain hidden and start narrowing down the possibilities.
You know this game. You know this deck.
And you are almost certain you know what your opponent just did.
The cards are revealed. You were completely wrong. We love that moment.
We Didn't Want Dice
When we first started designing Monsters, Magic & Mayhem, one of the requirements was simple: no dice.
MMM was supposed to be quick, compact, and easy to play almost anywhere. Dice meant another component to carry, another thing that needed space, and another object looking for an opportunity to escape from the table.
Anyone who has rolled dice in a crowded gaming space knows they occasionally develop ambitions. A die rolls off the table. Everyone stops. Someone looks underneath. Somebody moves a chair. The die has somehow traveled a distance that appears to violate several known laws of physics.
At home, that's amusing. On an airplane, we'd rather not find out how far a d6 can travel under the seats. So MMM wasn't going to use dice.
That created another question. Where would the uncertainty come from?
Games Need the Unexpected
Imagine a game where you know exactly what will happen every time you make a choice.
You play a Strength 5 card. Your opponent has a Strength 4.
You win.
If you know those numbers before making the choice, there isn't much tension. You're not taking a risk. You're completing a calculation.
Uncertainty changes that. You might know the odds. You might have a good plan. You might even have the better position. But you don't know exactly what's about to happen.
Dice are extremely good at providing that uncertainty. Pick them up, roll them, and suddenly nobody at the table knows what comes next. A weak character might get lucky. A brilliant plan might fail. The impossible shot might work.
Dice create stories precisely because they're beyond anyone's control. But they're not the only thing at a gaming table that's beyond your control.
There's another one sitting directly across from you. The other player.
People Are Terrible Dice
A die doesn't think.
It doesn't remember what you did last game.
It doesn't know you always protect your strongest character.
It doesn't notice that you've used the same opening three times tonight.
It doesn't deliberately make a bad move because it suspects you're expecting the good one.
People do.
That's what makes another player such an interesting source of uncertainty.
Your opponent isn't random in the mathematical sense. They're making decisions for reasons. The problem is that you don't necessarily know what those reasons are.
You can try to predict them. That's where the fun begins.
What's in the Room?
MMM uses hidden information to create much of its uncertainty. You make choices about where your characters, monsters, or other cards will go without knowing exactly what your opponent is doing.
They do the same. Then those decisions meet.
Maybe you committed heavily to a room because you expected your opponent to do the same. They didn't.
Maybe you left another room weak because you thought they wouldn't care about it.
They did.
Maybe you saved a particular card because you were certain you knew what was coming.
You didn't.
The surprise doesn't come from rolling a number. It comes from discovering a decision somebody else already made. That creates a very different kind of uncertainty.
You Can Try to Figure It Out
This is where Blog #4's small deck becomes important.
If MMM contained hundreds of possible cards, the hidden information would be almost completely unknowable. Your opponent could have almost anything.
That's certainly unpredictable. But it doesn't necessarily give you much to think about.
With a smaller deck, you can learn what's possible.
You know the cards in your hand aren't in your opponent's.
You know which cards have already appeared.
As you become more familiar with the deck, you can begin narrowing down what remains. Maybe only three cards could cause the problem you're worried about.
You're holding one. Another has already been played. Now there's only one.
Does your opponent have it? You don't know.
But suddenly that hidden card isn't completely random. It's a question. And you have some of the clues.
Then Your Opponent Starts Thinking About You
Unfortunately, you're not solving the puzzle alone. Your opponent knows the deck too.
They know which cards they have. They know what you've already played. They've also been watching you. Perhaps you've developed a habit.
You like putting your strongest character into the first important room.
Your opponent has noticed. So this time they prepare for it.
But perhaps you've noticed that they've noticed. So you don't do it.
Except maybe they expect you to change.
So perhaps the clever move is to do exactly what you normally do.
At some point this stops being card counting and starts becoming something much more entertaining. You're trying to get inside another person's head. They're trying to get inside yours. And both of you know it.
The Bad Move That Becomes a Good Move
This creates situations dice can't create in quite the same way.
Suppose there's an obviously strong play available. Mathematically, it might be the best choice. But your opponent knows it's the best choice too. If they're preparing specifically to counter it, the “best” move may suddenly become a terrible one.
Now an otherwise weaker choice becomes useful precisely because it isn't what the other person expects. You might intentionally undercommit to a room.
You might use an effect earlier than usual. You might place a powerful card somewhere that seems unimportant. You might make something look like a mistake.
Maybe it actually is a mistake.
If you look confident enough, perhaps they'll spend the next few minutes trying to figure out your brilliant plan. We're not saying we've ever done that. We're also not saying we haven't.
Surprise Without Luck
There's an important distinction here. MMM still contains uncertainty, but much of it isn't luck. If you reveal a room and discover that your opponent outplayed you, you can't really glare at the dice. There aren't any.
Someone made a choice.
Maybe they anticipated what you were going to do.
Maybe you anticipated them and overthought it.
Maybe they took a risk. Maybe you missed a clue.
Or maybe they made a completely ridiculous decision that happened to work perfectly.
That's possible too. Whatever happened, the surprise came from the interaction between two players.
We like what that does to the game.
The result feels less like something that happened to both players and more like something the players did to each other.
New Players and Experienced Players See Different Games
The interesting part is how this changes as you learn MMM. A new player looks at an unrevealed room and thinks: “I have no idea what's in there.” After a few games, that begins to change. “I know what could be in there.” Later: “I know what could be in there, but two of those cards are already gone.” And eventually: “I know exactly what you're trying to do.”
That's usually the moment your opponent smiles. Because maybe you don't.
Learning the deck removes one kind of uncertainty while creating another. At first, you're uncertain because you don't know the game. Later, you're uncertain because you do know the game—and you know the person across from you knows it too.
That's a much more interesting place for uncertainty to live.
The Reveal
And then everything comes back to that moment. Cards have been placed. You've watched what your opponent has done.
You've considered what's in your hand and what's already been played. You've remembered what happened last game. You've tried to decide whether that strange choice they made was meaningful or whether you're imagining things.
You've made your prediction. Maybe you're confident. Maybe you're worried.
Maybe you're trying very hard to look confident because you're worried.
Then the cards are revealed.
Sometimes you were right.
Sometimes your opponent did exactly what you expected and you feel like a genius.
Sometimes they saw through everything you were trying to do. And sometimes both players stare at the table because neither one can quite believe what just happened.
No dice were required.
Because the most unpredictable thing we could put into Monsters, Magic & Mayhem was already sitting at the table. You.
Next from the Engine Room
Knowing what the cards do is easy.
Knowing when to use them is something else entirely.
A card that looks weak in your first game may become one of your favorites later. An effect you barely noticed may completely change another card. And sometimes the strongest card in your hand is exactly the wrong card to play.
That's where a simple game starts developing depth.