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Comment by hinkley | Hacker News Reader

Only slightly related to this: I am amazed by the creativity employed by people trying to play D&D in prison. Since gambling is disallowed, dice are considered contraband. So they do things like modify pencil stubs (2 dead ends).

D&D turns out to be a reasonably good exercise in delayed gratification, an essential life skill many people need in order to successfully rehabilitate.

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Interesting, I've played "tabletop RPG" (not D&D, homebrew) on vacations with my cousins, and we used coins, 6-sided dices, and sometimes (when we played while hiking) the DM was just counting quickly in his mind from a random number up or down (modulo N) and the player was saying STOP to get the number.

In one of my best "tabletop" RPG session, we had no dice, no character sheets, just two coins. We upgraded to a D6 mid-game when someone found one lying around.

Wasn't D&D though, the rules (most of them made up) were particularly suited to that sort of play: lots of storytelling and brutal combat.

You should check out Dungeon World (or any Apocalypse World derivatives) - every role is 2d6+ability modifier, and results are always 10+ for complete success, 7-9 for success but with a caveat, and <=6 as a failure.

You're allowed to do anything that "makes sense" given the fiction, and it is so much more storytelling focused than D&D etc.

I'm sure we could come up with a few ways of generating entropy given what is available in a prison. Bear in mind this is for D&D so need not be completely formally random.

You can easily create a reasonable n-gon (for low n) on card or paper and add an axle from wood or whatever is to hand and you have a Dn spinner. D3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and perhaps 10 and 12 will work too - yes more than the usual but why not?

If you have paper and pen and something that will give you heads/tails ie 0/1 then use binary and generate tables of numbers and use them one by one. Other bases and simple devices can be used to get tables for a desired "die" max value.

Two people pick 1-6, add them, mod 6, add 1. This should get you even chances of a number 1-6.

So to get 1-6 you only need two sources of 1-6?

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/072/925/327...

I think the point is that we're not really good at being random, but combining two uncorrelated "random" draws into one gets something that will seem pretty random without closer inspection.

The point is that if a player needs a 6, they will always pick a 6. It's hard enough for people to come up with something random, but even harder if they know what number they need. Put two people opposed picking a number like this and it becomes random ish.

Well, dnd is largely cooperative: if you want to get a 6, I probably also want you to have a six. And if we're not even assuming that we are motivated to produce random results, than I seriously question whether such a simple rule would fix matters.

You are probably a DM and get how it works. Get the dice out for effect - they are a weapon too!

The whole point of DnD n that is it is fantasy ie thinking and talking about something that is not real. How you deal with fantasy is up to you.

Worrying about formalality is generally not a good approach to dealing with phantasy for obvious reasons.

In a game like dnd, you can't trust the player to pick a random number. So two sides who don't trust each other can generate a random number together.

The comments on this Vice video about people playing D&D in prison say people built dice out of bread or toilet paper. I would probably try to select random numbers from a sheet of random numbers like the Rand Corporation's random number book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDseTCNGyA

Learning "delayed gratification" is actually learning to appreciate dreams.

The dream of the cake vs the actual cake.

It's a really freaky shift of consciousness when you think about it. A whole culture trained to prefer dreamcakes over realcakes. To prefer dreams over reality.

Related to this, the classic "marshmallow test," where they left a kid alone with a marshmallow, and told them if they could hold off from eating it they'd get two later.

The standard interpretation of the original results was that a skill at delayed gratification led to better outcomes in life.

A replication of the study found that the effect nearly completely disappears once you correctly account for their socio-economic background. [1]

It also strongly supported the criticism that the lower socio-economic kids may have actually been making a logical choice to take the first marshmallow -- many of them had grown up with a lack of reliable adults and a lack of trust that future dreams will come true. Under that worldview, it makes sense to take the bird in the hand over the two in the bush.

Preferring dreams over reality is a luxury mostly permitted to those whose dreams have a reasonable chance of coming true, and a cushion to hand on when they don't.

1. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmall...

Yep.

It’s not a marshmallow test, it’s a wealth test. Surprise, wealthy kids have better prospects.

Another important point : dreamcakes are much easier and cheaper to manufacture than realcakes.

dice are regularly made in prison from toothpaste and toilet paper. I've used some impressive examples of such

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