My Dice Has an Aperture Lens
Dice are fine.
That might've been inflammatory to say, once. I recall a certain zeitgeist of everyone and their aunt coming out with bespoke dice sets——a new dicemaker on my timeline every week——pornographic high-res photography of light passing through the jeweled facets of a resin cube with, I dunno, a baby tooth inside. Maybe that fire is still burning in other corners of the net. If so, I don't frequent them anymore. I feel quite at peace in this quiet spot, where dice are simply objects of play and one needn't remark on how deeply they desire to eat them.
As tools, they do their job exceedingly well. Roll a dice, generate a random number. There's a tactile element of manipulating something, of hearing it hit the table, of the short burst of tension as it rolls and settles. Different dice have different spikes of tension. D4s are quite tame overall, D6s perfectly reliable with D10s close behind, D20s coveted for their highs and lows, D8s and D12s the neglected middle children. You can take their results in a thousand different ways: roll-over, roll-under, take the highest, take the lowest, look for matches, assemble poker hands, explode on maximum, decay on minimum, dice as resources, dice as metacurrency, dice as vibes.
But when I roll a die, I don't feel anything.
Maybe that's the untreated lack of serotonin talking, or maybe I'm not fetishizing them sufficiently. And, to clarify, I'm not saying that I never feel tense when I roll dice and hope for a particular outcome. But I am quite comfortable attributing that tension to the game, not to the die itself. As a tool, dice are extremely reliable and flexible and utterly numb.
An Aside About Candles
Recently I read a thread on Bluesky about Ten Candles. David J. Prokopetz expressed frustration in the way people treat fire-as-a-tool in games, always relating it back to Stephen Dewey's Ten Candles. In that game, candles play several roles:
- Timed. You begin play with ten candles. When they burn out, you move to a new scene and establish new truths. When only one remains, you're approaching the grim conclusion of your tale. Sometimes they burn out on purpose, sometimes accidentally——but the nature of a candle is that it'll always burn out, even if you walk away from the table.
- Destructive. You begin play with your character written on several index cards (traits, abilities, you get the gist). When you use one, you set it alight by a candle and set it in a fireproof bowl to burn. You've burned that part of you away——used it up to survive. You could tear up an index card, but you could probably still tape it together. You could swallow the cards, but that's not very feasible for repetitive use. The nature of a candle turns it to unrecognizable, unrecoverable ash.
- Atmospheric. The game is about darkness. The lights have gone out. Something is hunting you in the dark. It's meant to be played together in a dark room so you feel what your characters are feeling: the unknown around you, the world reduced only to the people nearby, and the candlelight to guide you. You could use a flashlight, but the batteries last too long. You could play at dusk, but the sun isn't very manipulable. The nature of a candle renders its light small and fragile and perfect to huddle around.
But, Prokopetz says, the fire itself is not the resolution mechanic. You still use dice to determine whether you succeed or fail. The burning is just a ritual. And for everything I said in the second bullet point, he's right: you could just toss the card in the trash and you'd have a similar albeit less tonally poignant result. Ten Candles uses fire for many incredible things, but not resolution. Later in the thread, he continues that a fire-resolution would need to draw upon the properties unique to fire. It burns unpredictably. It flickers in different directions. It casts shapes in the air. It makes smoke. These are things dice can't do, so a system that resonates——that justifies its use of fire beyond a thematic gimmick——would build itself around them.
An Autopsy of the Die
Let's carry that analytical framework back to our polyhedral mainstays. What does a die do that, say, a deck of cards cannot?
- Uniformity. Dice are uniform and random. A D6 is no more likely to land on a 1 than it is a 6. This is just the nature of Platonic solids, a set to which most traditional dice belong. (D10s, notably, are not Platonic, but they're regular enough that it's functionally the same.) The nature of a die is reliably random, with only physics and user error to say otherwise.
- Mathematics. Because of their uniformity, there is an arithmetic to dice that is easily understood and applied. There are four results on a D4, so it's intuitive that you'll roll each result 25% of the time. When you roll a D10, you'll get a 1 or a 10 as often as anything else——but when you put them in a pool, the extremes are averaged out. The most common combination of 2D6 is 7, because no matter what you roll on the first die, there's a possibility to sum up to 7 with the second die. Further, the raw output of numbers allows you to perform tricks: two D10s can be read as D100, or two D6s used to produce 36 results on a D66 table. The nature of a die is mathematically flexible——easily molded to the experience you want to create.
- Scale. Polyhedral dice belong to a set, and that set has connections. A D4 is more constrained and has lower results than a D6; you can reward a player by "improving" their D4 to a D6, or inversely punish them by "degrading" their D6 to a D4. With just one set of tools, you can apply different odds of success simply by telling players to use a different die——and changing what die each player has access to changes the way it feels to play. (Consider how much ink has been spilled on the difference between a 2D6-greatsword and a D12-battleaxe.) The nature of a die is elemental, belonging to a set you can expand or restrict as desired.
Much as the die itself is a Platonic solid, these properties are a sort of Platonic design: elegant, regular, and easily applied. But they lack weird edges. A cube is perfect and solves many problems, but it's not a very good knife. A pyramid is a highly stable way to stack rocks or tie rope, but it never surprises. I could, and indeed have, written myriad games using dice in perfectly serviceable ways and will continue to do so.
But what else is out there? What else could I be feeling when I poke my head up from the narrative depths to seek resolution? How could the nature of a game convey itself in a way that's self-evident, the way Ten Candles can wordlessly convey its themes and tensions by candlelight?
Enter Stage-Left: Camera
I chewed on a variety of mediums to answer that question with. Playing cards have been a favorite lately. (Have you considered that a deck of cards is basically an analog computer? It has memory states!) Body parts require no additional equipment. (But this body doesn't even belong to me two-thirds of the time.) I've got a lot of empty pill bottles lying around. (A bit kitsch, isn't it?)
Then I got a Discord ping. It was a photograph of the sky. It wasn't the first I'd received that day, but it was from a different vantage point and hours had passed between their capture. It was the same subject but an utterly different object; I was struck. There were other considerations, too. I knew how far away that sky was——somewhere impossible for me to see on my own. I knew who had taken it, and why. Properties were tingling in my throat, unspoken.
Math, again: the set of games that exist is a subset of the games that are feasible, which itself is a subset of the games that are possible. It's that middle set that fascinates me the most. Technology develops, economy changes what is accessible, communities do the collective computation of learning and honing. Feasible is a fluctuating range, but usually it grows. Which brings me to my answer: what does everyone have in their pocket now that they didn't decades ago? What has become a universal feature of such? What has without peer contributed to the widespread documentation of the modern world, and in doing so, become an extension of the human eye?
A camera.
This miracle among miracles. Every phone with a camera comparable to something prohibitively expensive decades before. Cameras are fascinating as objects of intent. Nothing beyond capture with a few seconds' notice——enough storage to keep thousands of such——displayed in digital plazas visible to the world or shared privately and instantly across any distance. I've neglected taking photos for a long time and only recently coming around to appreciating them more. Which leads to me ask:
An Autopsy of the Photo
What properties does a photograph have, as an object of play?
- Effortful. Photographs are an effortful object. Compare to dice: rolling a die is nearly instant and nearly effortless. It doesn't require you to make any decisions and the output is reliably readable. Photographs aren't so. Taking a photograph requires a litany of decisions: where to place the frame, where to stand, what lighting illuminates the subject just so, how many to take and how many to keep. You could take a hundred of the same photo, all with subtle differences——indeed, in some cases it might be hard not to create similar photos of a subject without leaving your house or waiting several hours. The nature of a photograph is intentional, requiring you to make decisions when making it and using it.
- Dense. Photographs are supremely dense with information. What subjects are visible in the photo, and in what number? What subjects are given more importance? What colors and shades are present? Where and when was the photograph taken? What emotion do you feel while looking at it? A photograph is not discrete data, requiring you to interpret it. A D6 always shows a number between 1 and 6, but two players might take entirely different things from a photograph. A single photograph could be dissected for dozens of attributes, used individually to resolve different questions or considered in tandem for a more nuanced resolution. The nature of a photograph is complex.
- Lasting. Photographs are, in most formats, preserved. The result of a dice pool is lost as soon as you pick up a die; a hand of cards vanishes when you shuffle the deck; the height of a candle or shape of a flame is gone as quickly as it appears. Photographs leave a tangible record of themselves. It is easy to look back at the last resolution, or the one before that. You could consider them as part of a series, judging how often an element appears——whether they're geographically clustered——how often a photograph is given to you by a particular player. The nature of a photograph is, famously, enduring.
In many ways, a photograph is a sort of anti-polyhedral. Dice are simple tools that generate endless, easy-to-interpret results; photographs are vague and complex knots of data that demand mindfulness to capture and use. Dice are self-contained, suited for an escapist fantasy; photography demands that you engage with the world around you, suited for games about real life——or, at least, meant to point at real life.
Most of all, while the result of a die roll is the same no matter who rolls it, photographs are idiosyncratic. I could not have taken the same photograph of the sky. I would've aimed higher——erased more of the treeline——witnessed it from indoors and behind a fog of light pollution——used a different camera. Given the exact same parameters, we're rolling different 6s on the same D6. That opens such a door: photographs as a form of identification; as gifts or burdens, representative of a bond; as symbols of a domain of experience or expertise. Take a photograph the way your character would——literally see the world through their eyes for a moment——and use that to resolve their desires.
...I wanted to write a conclusion, there. I really did. But it's digging at me that this little essay doesn't end with proof——with an application of everything we learned together, you and I. It felt dishonest to suggest the photograph and then leave all the work on your lap. So, here——my proof of concept:
A Photograph of the Entire World
Gather a few friends and ensure everyone can take photographs. Start a forum, or a Discord server, or something similar. That done:
You are the small gods of the world. Your holy names are long forgotten and your worship is relegated to wishful thoughts and wistful moments. Your nature is malleable and uncertain——ink spreading through water, metal leaking poison into blood, flavors lost on the palate——changed by touching each other and the world around you. Eventually you'll lose track of who you were, and you'll just be who you are. Not a god but a person. Human, almost.
Not yet, though. Rewind the tape.
Selfie
At the start of play, decide what you are the god of. Choose something you can see: cats, clouds, carpentry, writing utensils, power lines, leaves, or something else. Something narrow——small enough to explain why no one knows your name anymore, but not so small that it doesn't need a god.
Gods, like humans, are flawed. Silently, without telling anyone else, set a rule for yourself in regards to the photos you will take. "They will never include", or "they will always include", or "they must have at least", or "I will always frame them as"——something like that. This rule can be used against you; keep it to yourself.
Write your domain on your skin and take a photograph, following your flaw. This is the root of you.
Forum
Your forum is your temple——the place where you confer with your divine cohorts, untouchable by even your most faithful (and, probably, only) adherents. A long time ago, this might've been a real place with columns and statues and grace; now it's a Discord server. Times change.
Only speak in-character here. Never use your human voice; it destroys the sanctity of this fragile place. You can be irreverent, petty, or small, but never human. You can talk with each other as much as you like. Provide texture to your holy (and ordinary) lives; form friendships and dalliances and petty rivalries rooted in thousand-year-old arguments but expressed in GIFs of actors labeled with Impact font.
But if you want to stay a god, you need to do something else. Every day, take at least two photographs of your domain: one for you, and one to give to someone else. Post them both in the forum. You don't need to collect them, but you can, if that sort of thing suits a god of your temperament. If you'll be absent a while, work a few miracles in advance——because you can't make up for ones you missed. The world doesn't forgive cold and absent gods.
The Law
There is one law all small gods must adhere to. If someone——by looking at your photographs or earning your trust or simply knowing you in ways you can't defy——guesses your flaw, they can use it to command you. If they tell you to say something, you have to say it. If they tell you to take a photograph of something, you must——and post it, too. You could tell people they have this power over you, but then your secret is within their reach, too——and why wouldn't they reach for it, old avaricious they?
If you can't——if you won't——if you beg for mercy and they turn you away——the only way to refuse is to divorce your power, become human, and leave the forum. One fewer small god in the world.
(And if they guess wrong? You can command them, just once. Pick something that will discourage them from making hasty guesses in the future.)
The game ends when the forum falls silent.