When to be random
I waited a bit too long to roll my post for Prismatic Wasteland's Randomness Blogwagon, so when the d20 came up 6, it put me in a bit of a bind! Thankfully I rolled 7 on 2d6, allowing me to make this post as short or as long as I want, but I was a bit stumped when I drew the 7 of Hearts and I now have to work tenfootpole into this thing. Talking about randomness on blogs is pretty firmly tied to theoryposting in my brain, so working out how to do this with a review will be interesting!
Let's take it as read that it's a bad idea to turn to the dice if some of the potential outcomes aren't acceptable for the table. One of the things I like to do, which I picked up from Burning Wheel, is to state what will happen on success or failure before the dice hit the table. That way if there's a disconnect or miscommunication between players and GM, it can be hashed out prior to the situation escalating and hurt feelings because someone is trying to weasel out of a bad result.
On the other hand, randomness is also useful. While scrolling through tenfootpole's archive, I came across this review. This one sounds like a real doozy, an adventure I would not enjoy. It lacks interactivity, which is the number one thing that I'm looking for when I sit down to play a game. I want to make decisions! Though it may not precisely be random in the mathematical sense, interacting with other players who decisions differently than you would is one of the best ways to move a session in an unexpected direction. That's the same reason I use dice and randomness; it's why random tables are so well-liked in the OSR.
What's important is to calibrate your preferences for randomness, picking, hacking, or constructing a system that provides unexpected results that take your play in new directions at the point where that provides the most value to you. Randomness isn't helpful if it's not going to potentially move play in a new direction. Keep that in mind when you turn to the dice and you'll see the results in your play.