The Casino in the Forest

Fantasy games present a narrative journey for players. A common trope for this narrative journey is a medieval setting among forest, hill, brook, town, castle, and dungeon. Game characters battle in these settings with might and magic against mythical and mundane monsters. These battles and the encounters preceding them are part of the journey narrative. The outcomes of those battles are mediated by numerically defined game conditions. Game conditions motivate or dramatize continuing participation in the narrative journey through structured interactions and structured progress. A common way to express the form that this interaction will take and the kind of progress that occurs is through numerical expression. Simulations of battle encounters are mediated by chance, that is, random rolls of dice. Randomness, expressed in dice rolls are dramatic (i.e., performed actions) and common (i.e., nigh-ubiquitous in games of chance) expressions of probability. A system of probability operates transparently to the way this probability is expressed in dice outcomes and the subsequent game activity initiated by them. This level of randomness keeps the gameplay fresh because outcomes aren't clearly predictable and are tied to discrete choices made by players. The subsequent dice rolls are initiated by player actions with the resultant roll representing the outcome of that choice, be it beneficial or deadly to that player.

Many tabletop gaming environments require players to throw dice and read the result. The parameters of probability, be they 1 through 20 or 1 through 6, express variability. They represent a measure of risk as well. For example, if one throws the 6-sided dice to determine the probability that one's character is hit directly that person faces a greater probability of being hit than if a 20-sided dice is used to determine that outcome. Game parameters frame these decisions by modifying levels of risk. Game creators set those parameters.

This is a very basic introduction to how randomness is adapted to journey narratives in which gamers participate. Probability is a key component of many things here. It is a measure of how 'authentic' a gaming experience feels as a measure of the 'random outcomes,' which occur. It invites the occult desire to predict random outcomes as a manner of satisfying a mental 'appetite' to find order in the randomness of dice. Probability is an inducement specifically when it is modified through an equally mathematically expressed companion: character progression. Progression adjusts the parameters of chance to provide the player's experience of his or her character increasing in power. Specifically, an increase in power gets expressed in the increased probability that an attack will hit accompanied by a decreased probability that an attack will miss. Likewise, the size of the attack, i.e., the number of hit points inflicted upon the monster or upon the player's character, are mediated by other numbers, such as the monster level relative to the character level, or the monster's armor relative to the character's armor, or even magic resistances between the interacting monsters and characters. Numbers and their expression in random rolls demonstrate the countless ways in which a skin of probability mediate game encounters and motivate gameplay. For if random numbers express the kinds and probabilities of encounters, modifications of those numbers and outcomes influence 'state changes' in a player's game character. If that character is, for example, poisoned, their chance to hit a monster may decrease. Likewise, if this character has progressed to a higher 'level' then their chance to hit the same monster increases. Furthermore, choices about what path to take expose a player's character to differing probabilities of encountering powerful enemies. Perhaps few if any gamers recognize this functional layer of probability existing in the narrative for what it is, a casino in the forest.

Probability informs game mechanics through its role as the chance that an action will be performed successfully. Having "success" as the goal for gameplay references the motivations behind play and the motivations that induce players into continuing gameplay. The form that this gameplay takes depends upon a number of factors, which normally coalesce around expressions of probability that are themselves touched and then thrown as a matter of engagement in gameplay decisions.

Numerical operations in this gameplay model function as inducements if only because numbers and probability have always motivated a level of human awareness to seek out patterns in randomness. And in spite of randomness, players construct notions of luck that accompany them through gameplay. Throwing dice in the context of gameplay forms the dynamic core of random outcomes, each of which perfectly interfaces with the game narrative. Rolling a 6 defines a specific outcome whereas rolling a 1 leads to another. This tether between rolling dice and random outcomes is a dramatic expression (i.e., physically performed gameplay action) of the relationship between agency (i.e., rolling the dice) and fate or luck (i.e., the outcome of the roll).

I have yet to find a specific discussion by the likes of Gary Gygax in describing simply the numerical aspect of game theory satisfied by extensive use of dice. Yet, at the heart of his early game designs and simulations is the role of randomness recreated through dice rolls. Dice rolls are essential to the narrative structure of gameplay. The player rolls dice to decide an outcome emblazoned on their up face. This specifically animates the narrative structure of gameplay by introducing random events issuing specific from the hands of the roller's character . Random events decide the outcomes of game encounters, allowing the player to coincide with the narrative in a functionally relevant way. Randomness flavors the outcome dynamically, making randomness a sufficient condition for generating excited participation, which is a hallmark for satisfactory gaming. 

This neomedieval fantasy, this story of swords and sorcery, is broken down into the functionalist vocabulary of combat tables, which mediate the fateful interactions between narrative character and narrative world. Perhaps like the neomedieval world, the fantasy runs on fate expressed as a random outcome. Perhaps unlike the neomedieval world, this random outcome initiates changes in the procedural state of a game. Out of those dice branch myriad possible paths. And one meta-direction represented through conquest and battle-hardened experience, points the narrative to perpetual growth. Numbers substantiate how interactions occur. Probability provides the tether between agency and fate. Under the florid descriptions and heroic actions are the servomechanisms of mechanical fate, parameter-shaped probability, this casino in the forest.

What specifically draws us to these kinds of narratives and this kind of action? I sometimes wonder how the 'work' performed within online gaming environments, which follow roughly the tabeltop gaming model, is a critique of a society that has occluded wide accessibility to personal and financial growth. In the online game the player gathers raw materials and processes them into artifacts to be either used, sold, or discarded in some manner for the sake of gaining experience or 'learning' a profession. This gathering of resources in a natural setting is shares a nervous condition beneficial to the hunting and gathering heritage common to all of humanity. The financial overlay of numerically expressed 'leveling of experience' is something altogether different. A number provides a discrete expression of an increase in something, and in the software logic of game encounters or the dice-logic of tabletop gaming, numbers substantiate a formula for success or character death, for experiential growth or stasis. The desire for bigger numbers or at least growth is a desired direction in which to carry the narrative. So I began this speculative paragraph with a suggestive critique to the world around us, but the world created in its obverse is one driven by some of the same monetary principles driving the first. Risk, luck, and fate are common human companions. That we've ceded their substantiation to financial systems in this world and roll tables in a fantasy world only suggests that numbers offer something deeply motivating. People enjoy taking simply defined risks in order to receive a reward. Allowing these rewards to operate somewhat independent of actions taken keep the actions taken from stagnating too soon. As such, they provide the best long-term method of keeping gamers gaming both in the casino and online.