In Defence Of Random Number Generation

I mentioned this in passing during my review of dice-in-space game Tharsis, but right now there's an awful lot of discussion about the worth or otherwise of random number generation in games. Really, it's a debate about whether the player has absolute control or the game does, and as with many public-facing game design discussions, I'm seeing a fair amount of absolutism. RNGs are good or RNGs are bad, end of discussion. I'm somewhere in the middle, and I'm going to let Arnold Rimmer tell you why.