The Bones is meant to be a book that gamers everywhere can relate to. We play games differently, but we all face the same common factor of the dice, even if we each face the dice in our way. The Bones is a book collecting thoughts and experiences from a slew of great writers, some waxing philosophic some waxing comedic, but all writing about dice and randomness in our games and our lives. If you play games, we think you’ll find something to like in The Bones. (It debuts later this month.)
To be honest, though, it’s not as if our essayists and interviewees are the only people with stories of confounding dice or theories about how randomness affects our fun and our reason. The Internet’s gaming literati is full of bloggers with their own tales of damnable dice, unlikely victories against randomness, and unlucky nights spent getting gut-punched by once-loyal polyhedrons. You have your own theories about how randomness impacts and shapes your play; you have your own theory about how dice make us crazy.
So let’s talk about you.
We here at Gameplaywright are hosting a “blog carnival” on the subject of dice and gaming. It’s simple: You blog about dice or randomness—about your favorite die (and why), or how come no one is allowed to touch your dice, or how you detach from your mathematical reason whenever twenty-siders come out, about whatever you want—and you link back here at the top of your post.
Then you come here and drop a comment on this page, letting us know where to find your blog entry. Other people come by, see your link, find your blog, and read your enlightening, thought-provoking post. Everybody wins.
Jeff and I will be browsing through the posts linked here with an eye toward finding a new essay or two to include in the ebook edition of The Bones. If we see something that we think would fit right into the book, we’ll maybe offer to buy limited print rights to the post. (No promises!)
See a particularly great essay? Point us toward it in the comments here.
Above all, though, we hope to spark a conversation about randomness and dice, and how they can make us crazy… and inspire us.
The Bones debuts later this month. Check out the book’s info page here at gameplaywright.net for more details.
[...] good folks over at gameplaywright have started up a little blog carnival to support The Bones. I decided to add my own thoughts to [...]
I’ve put up something, maybe a bit of a challenge to other gamers, especially those with lots of dice. Rather than being a remembrance about something my dice did, it’s more a reflection on how dice get their stories, why you need new dice, and why you need to give away dice that don’t have any story attached.
It’s called Give Your Dice A Story
I express my love of dice by paring them down to a bare minimum.
Less Dice for More Awesome
[...] you heard of Will Hindmarch’s anthology The Bones? It’s a book about dice, our love of them, and the cool things they’ve done for us. [...]
I posted on the metaphysics of rolling dice over at Machine Age Productions: http://machineageproductions.com/?p=442
Dice are not just dice. They are nothing less than the Artefacts of Fortuna.
I got thinking about dice and roleplaying games as a manifestation of our brain’s overactive pattern recognition systems: http://mrteapot.livejournal.com/82528.html
Dammit. You bastards made me start brushing dust off an old idea.
Here is what I remember when I read your book.
http://gmwithadd.com/?p=53
Thinking about dice got me pondering their power to create reality on the fly:
http://darrellhardy.com/archives/dice-of-creation
I spose I could tell you about Tunnels & Trolls and how it requires whole buckets full of dice, but I think I’ll send you over to the blog where I express my appreciation for a couple of new dice games, and interesting new dice from Steve Jackson Games.
Cthulhu dice and Zombie Dice: http://atroll.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/cthulhu-dice/
I talk about The Gift of Dice.
http://www.dmperez.com/2010/06/30/the-gift-of-dice-the-bones-blog-carnival/
As a nice cap to the whole The Bones carnival, you should all go take a look at this animated Knights of the Dinner Table strip, specifically starting at 1:25.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5g337Imvlc
Monkeyboy.
[...] love games with dice, and want to write about a dice-centric topic, Gameplaywright is hosting a Blog Carnival to commemorate the release of The Bones. There’s a lot of discussion going on about the role [...]