Dice are Pareidolic Oracles

[mrteapot]

Gamers are weird about their dice. We all have seen this, right? Folks who insist that their dice hate them. The guy who won't let other people touch their dice, or only uses specific dice for specific purposes. Some folks even claim that a roleplaying game without dice isn't a roleplaying game at all

Comments

[lordrefa]

MOAR!

Also; I've noticed, when playing poker on multiple tables at once, that the same or similar cards seem to come up near to each other. And certain players seem to have the ability to predict when some improbable cards-to-come are on their way.

I figure this is mostly pareidolia, but I'd love to actually gather data on it... But I see no way of doing so. Because we all know that random numbers aren't random... But I have no clue how I'd go about gathering and analyzing it all.

Oh well.

I also feel like my dice superstitions are minimal, if at all existent. I like to think they don't exist, because I know they're silly to the max. I pick certain dice; but that's because I like the way they look. If you ever see me doing something strange with my dice -- especially since you sit next to me most sessions -- Call me on it. I want to know.

[andres_s_p_b]

My dice superstitions are limited to their lopsidedness. For instance, I have a d20 that I believe rolls a disproportionate number of 17s and 20s. This is a perfectly plausible thing for a die to do. However, it probably doesn't. It probably rolled a few 17s and 20s by chance at some point, and I noticed it. Since then, every 17 and 20 is clearly confirmation of its bias and every other number is just discarded as unimportant. I could sit down and roll it a whole bunch and run some chi-squared tests and know, but neither outcome is good. Either it's fair, and I'm just wrong, and it no longer feels like it's a superior die to use, or it really is noticeably biased, and then I'd feel like I was cheating if I kept using it for my characters. So, I'll just let it continue existing in an undetermined "rolls great" state.

[mrteapot]

I think Lou Zocchi's entire business model relies on these sorts of quandaries.

[mrteapot]

"I also feel like my dice superstitions are minimal, if at all existent. I like to think they don't exist, because I know they're silly to the max. I pick certain dice; but that's because I like the way they look. If you ever see me doing something strange with my dice -- especially since you sit next to me most sessions -- Call me on it. I want to know."

I feel exactly the same. Occasionally, I find myself acting superstitiously regarding dice, because these are thoroughly ingrained mental habits. But I try to avoid doing so, as they're nothing but bits of molded plastic.

The Book

[lordrefa]

Also; Will you be buying this book?
And can I borrow it? (You know you want to give me things I actually want to read about because you secretly want me to read far more than I do.)

Re: The Book

[mrteapot]

Did you know that the month of June includes no less than three separate and distinct events appropriate for the giving of gifts (to me, at least)?

I might pick up the book at Origins. It certainly sounds interesting. I'm slightly more interested in the predecessor book, Things We Think About Games. Somehow I read and am always fascinated by roleplaying and gaming theory, but rrely actually publish the printed books on the subject. I should fix that.

So, uh, "Maybe".

[scholarinexile]

Another thread woven into this is the degree to which we personify our characters, sometimes reflected in the dice. A lot of people I know use specific dice with specific characters for aesthetic reasons- fire opal dice with a character because fire opals were significant in her backstory, pure white dice for the cleric of healing, and so forth, and in some cases they literally do not feel right playing that character without those dice. It's another form of pattern generation, coupled with our tendency to attribute human qualities to objects...in this case, to a fictional character, which is also interesting when you consider that you're personifying a person.

[jtidball]

Great observations on dice as an agitator for the "recognitions" of patterns that aren't there until the creative act of observing them. Unless you mean to tell me that that isn't Jesus on my sandwich. In which case, pfft.

Thanks!