Ava Jarvis: When are dice nice?

Dice can be nice in the right situations.  The “right situation” is different for everybody, though.  For me it tends to be along the lines of

* If there’s enough ways to manipulate the dice post-rolling, this is okay.
* If there’s enough ways to manipulate the dice pre-rolling, this is okay.
* If there are not enough ways to do either, or the ways to do it do not effectively hit Lady Luck in the right places, this is not okay.

For some games that do use the hated dice, they offer manipulation.  Usually this is in the form of bonuses from other sources, which you build up to.  There’s still an amount of luck, large or small depending on the manipulation available.  If it’s large enough, this can turn a dice into a much more controllable prospect, even sometimes to the extent of being the analog of cards.

The point of many people who “hate dice” is that, in games where this is used “less correctly”, you can have a real lack of control: think Settlers, with which a lot of gamers have problems with due to the dice rolls that can’t be changed, and which the manipulation pre-rolling (e.g. pick your spot next to the most probable numbers) cannot always be executed, especially in crowded games.

Many are fine with the luck in card games, where you have more control due to a hand of cards and maybe extra manipulation, but sometimes this is very similar to dice rolling with pre-roll manipulation.  The dice roll in this case has a smaller number of possibilities, just like the hand of cards mitigates to an extent bad luck.  You want to also want to have dice that have a more predictable probability curve (like two dice, rather than just one), and enough in the way of manipulation given to create a finer control over destiny.  For instance, Craps gives you none of this, and Yahtzee gives you some of this, Um Krone und Kragen gives you a lot of this.

But there’s another aspect, and that’s of increasing deterministic probability as the game wears on.  Card games can give you this, because as the deck or your opponent’s hand is drawn out, you have a much better sense of what’s left in deck or hand.  Dice games without this (like Yahtzee) never increase your control.  Games with this characteristic (like many RPGs, World of Warcraft, etc) are more satisfying to more people (though by no means to all).

There’s also the reset button to consider.  Cards games that have a high probability of turning the discard back into the draw deck effectively change your probability calculations and set back what was previously your increasing control.  Still, not all your control is wiped out, if you have a hand.  Dice that reset but keep the manipulation you had before are similarly more okay than a reset that wipes out your entire hand.  The problem is that dice reset more often than not, whereas cards usually reset much less often.  But consider the card battle systems in LotR: Confrontation and Game of Thrones, where there is some luck in what your opponent will play, which affects you in similar ways to having a bonus plus a known probability.  In these games there is a reset button, but the amount of probability after the reset is still much smaller than, say, with two d6.

Post-rolling manipulation of dice is rarer for reasons similar to why manipulation of cards post-drawing is rarer (though, I think, not to the same extent): depending on the game, this can give too much control of destiny for a game that focuses on risk management, whether from dice or from cards.  (Think Beowulf, although it’s not to everyone’s tastes, and there is still some sense of knowing what is left, though the deck is big enough to mitigate that knowledge.)

In the right game, however, post-roll or post-draw manipulation is the correct thing to do, or at least if you apply it in an appropriate manner.  CCGs and similar games are the epitome of manipulation post-draw, and if there was anything that showed that manipulation of dice post-rolling can be as powerful, it was “Yahtzee the Gathering”, Um Krone und Kragen.  Very aptly nick-named, for more reasons than the special power cards and the tapping thing (excuse me, the “activating” thing; thank you, WotC).  In either game, you have a very fine control of destiny---but not entirely.

Some people may still dislike Um Krone und Kragen, because there’s a lack of pre-manipulation before the game starts; you must always build up at the start of the game, and for the first few turns this is lucky, whereas a CCG deck is usually pre-known though with a probability space that can be as large or larger, or in the card battle systems where the deck is effectively just a hand and there is no draw probability to consider.

Some people are very fond of dice and games that offer manipulation, not because of the risks involved, but based on a love of mathematical probability and manipulation of it.  That’s why some love World of Warcraft while some people who you think would love that sort of thing do not.  The more obvious you make that manipulation, the more appeal the came can have.  Cards can give you build-up that feels controllable, because manipulation is very apparent; dice can do it too, if you are more comfortable with probability (well, actually, if you are VERY comfortable with probability) and/or there is more manipulation going on.

Dice without manipulation is just WRONG for many, many people---wargamers and Eurogamers alike.  Like the rolling of a single die with no bonuses, every single time.

Opinions about luck are all about

* amount of control at the start of the game
* whether that control increases, decreases, or stays the same
* if control changes, how much control you have for changing it
* if control changes, how much it changes and in what direction (increasing/decreasing)
* and probably other stuff

The choice of dice or cards is much less of a factor than those above.

© 2006 Ava Jarvis

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Comments:

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Excellent article, Ava, and one that does a very good job of summarizing my feelings about randomness, control, probability, cards, and dice.  For me, it IS about being able to manipulate the randomizers, either by playing to probabilities or by actively altering the results (or both, as in Um Krone und Kragen).  This is why I usually dislike the use of dice as confrontation resolvers, but love dice games like Can’t Stop, Pickomino, and Um Krone.  And cards ARE different; you can formulate your strategy based on what you draw and try to manage your hand to better control future events.  It’s comforting to see these same thoughts expressed in a well written, and well reasoned article.  Great job! Posted by Larry Levy on Apr 27, 2006 at 08:20 AM | #

My favorite phrase is:  Bad randomness controls the rudder.  Good randomness controls the wind. Posted by Thomas Pancoast on Apr 27, 2006 at 10:37 AM | #

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