On the Beauty of Dice

Sorry about the small text, this blog is being kinda weird again. Anyway, for this piece I'm mostly curious to find out whether or not it is understandable to non-gamers. I tried to explain most things, but please let me know if anything is unclear  I'm also slightly over the word limit, so recommendations for small cuts would be appreciated. Thanks!

What possessions does your family treasure?

Dice are cool. Most people don’t realize this, because they’ve never seen the full glory that is the polyhedral die. I had my eyes opened when I received my first d20, back when I was a lad of ten. Allow me to educate you. Many think dice are limited to the pipped cubes of Yahtzee and Monopoly, but those are just the beginning. There are six main types of dice used in role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, which are named for the number of sides they have: the d4 (tetrahedrons), d6 (hexahedron (or cube if you’re boring)), d8 (octahedron), d10 (pentagonal trapezohedron), d12 (dodecahedron), and the noble d20 (icosahedron). All of these dice save the d10 are Platonic solids, which are inherently beautiful in their regularity. Together they look like a handful of strangely-cut jewels. The d10 is awkward and I personally dislike it, but everyone has to deal with them. Maybe this explanation is just making dice sound even geekier to you, but hear me out. It gets cooler, I promise.

One of the neat thing about dice is that although there are only six main types, there’s an almost infinite variety of styles. Most dice are plastic, but they still come in all conceivable colors and patterns: from gold-flecked purple to bloody scarlet swirls across a black void. Sometimes the shape varies to yield knucklebone or crystal shapes, and the more outlandish designs include dice within dice or even spherical d6s. If you’re willing to pay some real money, your dice don’t have to be plastic either. It’s possible to obtain wood, bone, stone, iron, gold, obsidian, opal, jade, and mammoth tusk dice, all of which are beautiful in their own ways. Some dice light up, while others dent the tables you play on if you roll too vigorously. This variety makes dice individually lovable and infinitely collectable.

Still not convinced that dice are worth loving? If we don’t care about their usefulness (which we don’t), there are plenty of bizarre alternative dice out there. There’s the d3, which allows you to play rock-paper-scissors without playing rock-paper-scissors. There’s the irregularly shaped d5 and d7, which look like they can’t possibly roll fairly yet somehow do. There’s the d14, d16, d24, and d30, which have no redeeming qualities aside from their quirkiness. There’s the d100, which looks like a numbered golf ball and rattles when rolled. And there’s the d1, a Möbius strip wrought from metal for when you need to make a choice with only one option. It has been conclusively proven by many a gamer (myself included), that one can never have too many dice. I have jars of them.

         There are few things more fun than building up an admirable dice collection. As you go, each die accumlates stories and a reputation of its own. There’s the d100 bought on a rainy day from a game store tucked behind the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, the d6 that never fails to deny you healing in times of need, and the striker d20 that always manages to roll high enough to hit tough bosses. You laugh with your friends about the time you collapsed the ceiling of a cave upon yourself with a critical hit from your light-up die in the name of Science, then remind them of when they bluffed their way through the guards by summoning the Holy Baritone of the Great Quartet with a few lucky rolls from a famously lucky die. Some dice have to be pointed towards true magnetic north to roll well, while others can only function when rolled with at least four other dice and others must be shaken for exactly five seconds before release. Every die has its place in the set, ready to be used in an hour of need. When you gaze upon your collection, you don’t just see dice. You see jewels, each with stories waiting to be remembered, a lifetime of gaming.

The Middle Child

1.        What’s your role in your family?

I’m the middle child. According to pop psychology, I am neglected, resentful, unmotivated, social, a great leader, a justice seeker, and an avoider of conflict. Pop psychology is bogus. I have never felt neglected or resentful of my siblings. I think that I’m highly motivated, somewhat introverted, and not a very good leader. I do attempt to avoid conflict, but I suppose even a broken clock is right twice a day. So, what role do I play in my family?

Well, I’m the middle child. In most notable qualities, I am in between brother and sister, mother and father. I don’t test as well as my brother, but math comes more easily to me than to my sister. I have more trouble making friends and keeping sociable than my sister, but I still understand people more easily than my brother. I enjoy learning physics from my talented father, but also writing and art from my talented mother. I don’t get overwhelmed as easily as some of my family members, but I’m still more sensitive to noise and crowds than others.

All of these things come about partly because I am the middle child. I don’t believe that this leads to the neglect pop psychology loves to dwell on, but it does have some important effects. I am closer age-wise to my siblings than they are to each other. As a result, my daily experiences are somewhat closer to theirs and I can communicate with them more easily. For example, I can understand the mathematics Daniel gets so excited about, but have also taken geometry recently enough to be able to effectively explain the subject to Sarah. In doing this, I learn a lot from and am heavily influenced by both of them. My brother has taught me to love academia in all its forms through his ridiculously ambitious projects and late-night ramblings. From his animated explanations of bivectors to convincing me to finally read the GEB, I have learned to see the world more vividly. My sister has taught me to work hard, and care deeply about others through her own caring and incredible focus on the things she’s passionate about. From her practically continuous flute playing to convincing me to audition for the spring musical, I have learned to unleash my creativity.

This essay makes it sound like there’s no downside to being a middle child. That’s certainly not true, there are plenty of bad things too. It’s just that the good parts vastly outnumber the bad. On one hand, I almost never get to be the first to experience something, but on the other hand, I almost never have to be the first to experience something. I have the opportunity to learn from my brother’s journey, but I also get the benefit of teaching the same things to my sister. I know most of my teachers before I meet them, and despite that I am not defined by what Daniel has done in school. I’ve joined different clubs, tried new things, while enjoying the knowledge of what worked for him. Sarah looks up to me as her older sibling, and as a result I never feel overshadowed by Daniel. I’m the moderate in the family, which means I often have to cast the deciding vote on things. I don’t generally enjoy that responsibility, but I don’t have as strong of opinions on most matters as my siblings do, so I can more easily be happy with whatever is decided.

If you look up anything about middle child online, you’ll find people who disagree with me. According to Gigi Engle writing for Elite Daily, “…the middle child gets the sh*t end of the stick in literally everything…We got nothing easily. We never got away with sh*t, and crying wasn’t going to keep us from being grounded.” Clearly, she has had an experience rather different from mine. In her article, Engle focuses on how middle children are the best because they have the hardest childhood, forcing them to grow up tougher than their siblings. I think she is making a fundamental mistake. It’s true that a middle child isn’t unique by their birth position, but they are also insulated from a lot of hardship by their older and younger siblings. When all’s said and done, it’s a good place to be.

Is Time Travel Worth It?

      Do you wish you could return to a moment from your past? 

Yes. But do I really? Let’s consider what this means for a moment. Returning to a moment in my past means that I’d get a chance to travel through time, which is awesome. I could use my knowledge of the future to help humanity as a whole, in addition to myself. Could I really change the course of human events?

There are two dominant theories of time travel in literature: the branching and single timeline interpretations. The latter, which is famously used in Harry Potter, says that time travel cannot change ‘present’ events, as any changes made have already happened. This doesn’t mean that time travel is useless, but it does mean that a return to the past will not change the course of events I am already familiar with. The branching timeline interpretation disagrees with this, maintaining that any changes in the past resonate through the future, changing history through the creation of an ‘alternate timeline’. Under this theory, time travel can be devastating and may only be undertaken with the greatest care. In Ray Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder, a man accidentally stepping on a butterfly in the past drastically changes the results of an American presidential election millions of years later.

Whether I go back to my past or not depends entirely on which theory we operate under. In a single timeline universe, I’d go back to my greatest mistakes and attempt to remedy them as well as warn a few people about upcoming disasters. Even though I know I cannot change things from how they went in my memory, it is possible that I can prevent things from having been worse. In a branching timeline universe, I most definitely would stay home. It’s simply too risky. The chances are too high that I’d ruin everything for myself or even humanity as a whole by accidentally changing something. Things have worked out okay overall without time traveling interference (I think). It seems foolish to risk that in an attempt to fix things, although it is very tempting.

           This decision does lead to an interesting moral question, however. Is it better to be responsible for deaths caused in an attempt to save others, or to be responsible for deaths caused by not attempting to save them in the first place? As with most interesting moral questions, I believe it depends entirely on context. In the case of this time travel, I have no way of knowing the odds of success or failure. It is almost certain that most changes would have both positive and negative consequences, but I cannot tell any more than that. With only that knowledge, I believe that it is better to be safe than sorry, and thus not traveling is the better option.

(Sorry about the weird spacing thing, my blog is acting up.)