20190125.0430

Many years ago, when I was an undergraduate, I treated roleplaying games for coursework and a curricular requirement I still make tongue-in-cheek reference to from time to time ("I got into grad school off of D&D"). While doing the reading to do that work, I came across arkelias's "Dice Obedience School" on Gamegrene.com, a site that gets occasional updates but seems not to be terribly active anymore. It's a shame, because the piece itself is an interesting read, one I might return to for one of my more "teacherly" posts, in which I summarize and respond to article others have written. (I've had reasonably good luck doing so with "non-standard" pieces in the past. I can expect that I would again.) But that's not the point of things this time.
No, this post looks at a strange thing. As I've noted, I think, I'm taking part in two online roleplaying games. Both emulate tabletop games in that they are primarily narrative, using paper-and-pencil rules to adjudicate what needs "impartial" adjudication. Those rules call for dice rolls; the online games use electronic dice rollers. And those dice rollers appear to be immune to such prescriptions as arkelias and others make--and which, in my experience, have some value. That is, I've put them into practice with my own physical dice, and they have tended to roll better than average for me--and not for others whom I have allowed to use them. Electronic dice cannot be punished for their failure; they are bits and bytes stored on computers far removed from the rolling done, so they cannot be found by hammers for smashing, and they are not present to watch their fellows suffer. Nor can they be stored in comfort, not being things. Nor yet can they be kept with their preferred faces up, so that they get used to the position and seek to return to it for comfort and familiarity.
No, other methods must be found, and not to command the virtual dice, but to appease the mighty figures that are embodied in them. Pantslessness is recommended when approaching one roller affectionately referred to as the Fortune of Dung. Movements of Carmina Burana are played as audible and outward signs of veneration and the acceptance of fate's machinations and the randomness of outcomes in an attempt to persuade the randomness to greater favor. Ritual readings of Camus cannot be far behind, and I can see my way clear to pantsless incantations recited and set contrapuntally over Orff as the Fortune of Dung is appeased--or not, for the fickle fortune's false factota flail about freely, as they will or not, but never as we would have them who are subject to their power in the small and secluded spheres where we roll dice and tell lies online.
Pray for us sinners, now and in the hours of our characters' travails, and deliver us from the evils set against us, that we might enact others of our own choosing, for our amusement. Amen.