It occurred to me, after attending the workshop, that the PocketMod form factor was so convenient and so simple that it would be the perfect distribution method for a dice replacement. The result is a booklet small enough to fit into your wallet. Whatever the name, it's a very simple way to turn one US Letter or A4 sheet of paper into an 8-page booklet requiring no staples or binding. ChapBooks and PocketModsĪs chance would have it, I was at a Zine workshop at a local art gallery, where I learned a cool paper folding trick used to produce something called a ChapBook, which the Internet tells me is now better known as the PocketMod. Most of these methods are very good and very usable, but I wanted something as convenient, efficent, and as simple as dice. There are some interesting mathematical tricks, like a self-seeding modulo progression, or the idea of using a standard deck of Poker cards (draw a card, get a number), a wheel of fortune, and so on. If you look for it, the Internet does propose alternatives to dice. I wanted something that could produce numbers with the illusion of randomness and could fit in my wallet or in the folds of a book. Even if you're not on a plane, you might not happen to have dice on your person every time you need it maybe you're killing time at a cafe, or you're waiting for an appointment, or you have a few moments at the bus stop.Īnother scenario that became all-too real on 14 November of this year was evacuating my home after a 7.5 earthquake whilst waiting for the tsunami warnings to fizzle out, I found myself with plenty of time to play a game, but no die.Īs a result of the potential social awkwardness of dice and the fact that dice don't typically fit into your wallet, I decided that an alternative was required. Even when I do, I'm self-conscious about dropping dice into my empty coffee cup and rattling them up every three minutes while I play a game. I could bring dice along on a plane ride, but I never think to. Plane rides are unpleasant enough without a weirdo sitting next to you compulsively rolling a cup of dice. In order to determine where in a solo RPG or dungeon crawler I go next, a series of die rolls determine the outcome of combat or dexterity (if attempting to avoid a sudden trap, for instance). On the 14-hour plane ride from New Zealand to the US (and the following 6 hour flight to the East coast), I often keep myself occupied with solo RPG adventures a sort of "choose your own adventure" book with the additional dimension of skill points, combat levels, and other statistical variables. Specifically, I run into this problem on airplanes. The trouble with dice, for me, is that you don't always necessarily have dice available, and you don't always have a place to throw the dice. The problem with a dieĪnalogue gaming solved the problem of getting random numbers long ago, most notably with dice. Some games don't really have AI at all and depend entirely on the roll of the dice for conflict. The question of random number generation is very pertinent to gaming, because no matter what kind of artificial intelligence (AI) you're up against, it just feels more realistic if there's a degree of randomness thrown in. But if you're asked to "generate" a new random number every minute, you start to falter you develop a bias for a certain range or pattern of numbers, and even if you don't, your brain finds patterns in what you come up with so you doubt your randomness. As with non-crypto processes in computers, "mostly random" is good enough. If you just need one random number, you can reach into your thoughts and pull out whatever number you find floating around (did you say 3, 7, 23, or 42?). You don't realize it until you're asked to come up with a random number, consistently. Many Linux users have some awareness of the /dev/random and /dev/urandom devices, and most have some awareness that technically, the numbers generated there are not truly, scientifically random. And yet it's hard to get a computer to be random. It sometimes surprises people that random number generation is a classically famous problem in computer science, because it seems like it should be so easy just pick a number.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |