Karma and the Die Roll: Why we Blame our Dice
Monday, May 26, 2008 at 12:03PM I once rolled five natural ones in a row, the odds of which are 3,200,00 to 1, so, I'll probably never do it again without developing force powers overnight... I have been eating a lot of tzatiziki lately, however, which I'm told is laced with potent midi-chlorians.
There's a player I game with who consistently throws his dice away because they don't roll well. I've seen players arrange their sets in front of them before play so that all the best possibilities are sitting face-up, as if the dice will get used to that position. I've seen the opposite, as well, with players believing that you can only see a poor result for so long before their RPG karma kicks in. There are probably as many gamers warming up their dice as there are athletes wearing filthy socks game after game for fear the God Malchance wll turn her eyes upon them.
The D&D players I know are all rational, basically good, and responsible for ther own actions--they understand that the individual die has nothing to do with their roll. Yet they switch them out when their characters fail, throw them out, or blame the result on how poorly the die ricocheted. So, what does this say about us as people? I think we're willing to believe something, however irrational, as long as the payoff for that belief is worth it. In these cases, we get a sense of well-being when our illogical rituals pay off with success.
More than that, though, I think we have something to shift the blame to when our powerful 10th-level monk can't effing throw himself out a window because he has "butterfingers."
I'm off to the game shop to buy some replacement dice.
Reader Comments (2)
If the dice aren't on my side what good are they? There was a time where it seemed that *every* clutch roll would result in epic failure. ("I just need to roll above a "3" not to get disintegrated") That happens a couple of times with a certain D20 and one gets the feeling that it may have picked up some bad ju-ju.
If the dice aren't on my side what good are they? There was a time where it seemed that *every* clutch roll would result in epic failure. ("I just need to roll above a "3" not to get disintegrated") That happens a couple of times with a certain D20 and one gets the feeling that it may have picked up some bad ju-ju.