Pre-Rolled Dice Monday, October 27, 2008

I recently started reading Darths & Droids, a webcomic that presents the story of The Phantom Menace as a role-playing game, after the style of DM of the Rings. In strip #99, the author discusses (below the comic itself) the various superstitions that gamers will indulge in with respect to dice. This one blew me away for being at once eminently logical, hopelessly moronic, breathtakingly obsessive, and, above all, unspeakably geeky:

As pointed out so clearly in this essay on dice superstition, if dice are random, then it doesn't matter if you're superstitious about them. But if they're not... well, you better make sure you do the right thing and treat them properly. No use taking risks now, is there?

Pete, being the highly logical, calculating person he is, rejects all of that as superstitious nonsense. He instead applies the scientific approach. Over the years, he's collected somewhere around a thousand twenty-sided dice. Every so often, he gathers them all together. He sits down at a table and carefully and individually rolls each of the thousand dice, once. Of course, roughly a twentieth of them will roll a one. He takes those fifty-odd dice and rolls them a second time. After about an hour of concentrated dice rolling, he'll end up with around two or three dice that have rolled two ones in a row. He takes those primed dice and places them in special custom-made padded containers where they can't roll around, and carries them to all the games he plays.

Then, when in the most dire circumstances, where a roll of one would be absolutely disastrous, he pulls out the prepared dice. He now has in his hand a die that has rolled two ones in a row. Pete knows the odds of a d20 rolling three ones in a row is a puny one in 8,000. He has effectively pre-rolled the ones out of the die, and can make his crucial roll with confidence. Furthermore, being scientific about it means he knows that it doesn't matter who rolls the die for the third time, so he has no qualms about sharing his primed dice with other players, if that's what it takes to avoid disaster.

I think it's the idea of storing pre-rolled dice in roll-proof containers and carrying them with you that got me. That Pete is a man who takes his dice very seriously.

Star Wars in ASCII Sunday, March 30, 2008

This has got to be one of the geekiest things ever: there's a telnet server that broadcasts Star Wars Episode IV in ASCII text. Open a command prompt and type telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl and you will be treated to the entire movie in ASCII art. No joke.

This slice of geek heaven brought to you by the Red Bull by way of Lifehacker. That rocks. Never... ever... underestimate the power of the bored geek.

A New Sith Monday, January 14, 2008

"A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope: Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III" is a fascinating reinterpretation of Star Wars that draws new conclusions based on the story presented in the first three Episodes, and every fan should read it. It's short but packed with gems like these:

Obi-Wan has spent the last 20 years in the Tattoine desert, keeping watch over Luke Skywalker and trying to decide on one of the three available options:

(A) If Luke shows no significant access to the Force, then leave him alone in obscurity

(B) If Luke shows real Force ability, then consider recruiting him as a Jedi. The rebellion needs Jedi. Now. But, if Luke shows any signs of turning out like his father, then

(C) sneak into his house one fine night and chop his head off. With great regret but it'll save a lot of trouble later on.

Knowing this to be the case, Bail Organa (perhaps at the insistence of his wife) has found excuses not to send Leia to Ben for assessment of Jedi potential, largely for fear of option C.

...

Much of Obi-Wan's behaviour in this film, and Yoda's in the next, can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become. (Ben is also scared that he himself will make all the same mistakes he made with Anakin.)

...

On first seeing R2, Obi-Wan has a twinkle in his eye and calls him "my little friend". Well, he is. However, when Luke wakes up and says that R2 claimed to be owned by an Obi-Wan Kenobi, he blandly says "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid." Ben has in fact owned several but the remark is aimed at R2 and translates as "You keep quiet. I'm not about to tell him everything just yet." Obi-Wan thinks fast and tells Luke a version of his past that does not involve a father who became a dark lord of the Sith. He wants to examine Luke a lot more closely before he risks telling him the real truth.

R2D2 and Chewbacca are master spies for the rebellion. It makes so much more sense that way. If only he could have explained away the midichlorines...

Death Star Energy Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Like Neil Simon did when he described Mississipi's weather as "Africa hot," I'm using a proper noun as a description of scale. Death Star energy is a lot of energy. Like a lot-lot. Enough to blow up a planet. But just how much energy is that? Luckily, we have bored geeks to answer these vital questions for us. Thanks to a link provided by Furrygoat, we now know that the Death Star had to generate about 2.4 × 10³² joules of energy in order to disperse the mass of Alderaan fast enough to overcome the forces of gravity keeping the planet together. If you don't believe me, you can check the math here.

Sure, 240 nonillion joules sounds like a big number, but just how big is that? Well, let's see. It's enough energy to power the entire world for a trillion years (based on 2001 numbers), about a tenth of the kinetic energy of the Earth as it hurtles around the sun in its orbit, or the equivalent of exploding over a quadrillion of the largest nuclear devices ever detonated simultaneously.