Fun RNG vs. Annoying RNG in speedruns

[20-04-2025]

"Ugh, I'm so sick of this annoying RNG. I can't wait until I'm finally done with this so I can go back and do the fun RNG"

Everyone that watched my speedrun streams knows that I love a bit of a grind. While many speedrunners, understandably, prefer runs with no RNG, that are predictable and entirely down to your own execution, I love a bit of randomness in my runs. I can often get really caught up in my own head if my own mistakes are the only thing to blame for failing runs and I find the unpredictability makes it extra exciting once you do get past the odds and have a seriously good run going. That doesn't mean I find any element of randomness enjoyable, though.

The most obvious reason why some RNG is enjoyable while other RNG isn't may be of course if it adds gameplay. My trademark speedrun category has for a long time been Knuckles' story in Sonic Adventure DX, and even before that, back when I was really into Sonic Adventure 2, I eventually started to gravitate heavily towards Knuckles' treasure hunting gameplay. Knuckles' gameplay revolves around finding three emerald pieces that are spawned in three random locations (some rules apply) throughout the level, so getting a good time very much depends on how lucky you get with the pieces spawning in favourable locations. However, making use of the level layouts and the piece spawning rules the game operates on, you can, with lots of knowledge and practice, learn various strategies on how to find these pieces most efficiently. While, ultimately, the success of a run attempt still depends on RNG, there is a lot you can do to counteract bad RNG and still come out on top. This requires a lot of thinking on your feet, resulting in very dynamic speedruns where no two runs are gonna be the same. This adds a lot of excitement to the gameplay, even if it sometimes gets very grindy and tedious when the luck is not on your side. However, this can't be the whole story, because I have also been deeply invested in other luck dependent runs where this is not the case. The best example here would the 100% category in Sonic R, a run with very interesting routing and tight movement execution, but that also depends on getting highly inconsistent clipouts that entirely dictate how well your run is going, for no obvious gameplay benefit (The clips aren't actual RNG, that being, developer intended randomness, but they're still in practice random, so this is a suitable example for this). You wedge yourself in a corner and hope you clip out, that's it, there's no challenge or gameplay here. Still, for a long while I was obsessed with this run.

The actual reason that determines whether I like a RNG speedrun I think is the range of expected outcomes. Let's take another category in Sonic Adventure DX as an example: Amy's story. Amy's story is a very intense, highly technical speedrun, full of some of the hardest, most satisfying tricks and tightest movements the game has to offer. It is entirely down to your own ability to execute, all the way until nearly the very end, where you are faced with a choice: Five doors, one of them is the correct path forward, and you don't know which one. All you can do is pick one, follow through, and hope the game lets you continue. If you picked wrong, depending on how optimized your PB is, your run is most likely dead. As a result, any run that you do, no matter how good, only has a 20% chance of making it to the end. And that's what you aim for, these 20%, that's what determines a successful run. Any other outcome, your run is dead. Because there are only 5 equally distributed outcomes, you naturally want the best one. 80% of your runs dying is frustrating, but a success is not so statistically unlikely that it's unreasonable to expect in a PB run, so you do. The 20%, the best possible outcome, is now your standard, the baseline. This is what's required for a run to be successful, any other outcome is bad. Now, what you've done to yourself, psychologically, is that you defined good luck out of existence. Instead of assuming the baseline would be average RNG, which would be a third try door, your baseline is the best possible outcome. It's not possible to get a better outcome than your baseline, the best possible outcome is that you're not disappointed, while every other outcome, even if it may be statistically average, is now considered bad. This means that in this example, RNG only exists to screw you over.

The difference to Knuckles' RNG is that his gameplay has a very wide range in outcome. Just looking at one single level in SADX, there are 216 different outcomes, as far as all possible combinations for emerald piece locations go. Of course, if you were really determined, you could reset until you get the optimal one out of the 216 spawns, but that's not very reasonable, cause no one wants to do 216 resets to get one start of a run, and that's just one out of four luck dependent levels. Also, there's lots of other sets that are also pretty good and would set you up with a reasonable PBable pace. So instead of the single best outcome, what you aim for is the top 20% of best possible outcomes. That's, compared to the Amy's story RNG, the same chance for resetting, but with the difference that there's potential wiggle room upwards here to get excited about. You aim for a top 10% RNG, maybe you get RNG that just barely makes it into the top 20% threshold and you reluctantly continue your run, but you can also get a set that's in the top 5%, or even one of the absolute best sets in the top 1%, something you would never expect as a standard, and that's where the excitement comes from. Sure, resetting an average half a dozen times to get a single attempt even just started may be tedious to some, but also the chance that every single one of these attempts may start out with winning the lottery is exciting, that's worth continuing for. While the really exciting, lottery winning runs are certainly rare to come by, the fact that they can happen every once in a while is what keeps the resetting fresh and exciting for me. Do I have a gambling addiction? Maybe, but at least it's restricted to speedruns.

tl;dr If the range of possible RNG outcomes provides enough wiggle room that it can give you occasional exceptional results, as opposed to merely meeting the expected standard, the excitement this possibility generates can outweigh the frustration from having to rely on luck to get a good run going.