Post Script
Rolling with the changes
For all of the gaming technologies that have come along in the time since its introduction, several thousand years ago, sometimes you can’t beat a good old-fashioned die. This object, which takes a concept as abstract as probability and condenses it down into something concrete and knowable – just six faces and 21 pips, small enough that many can fit within your palm at once – so that you might be fooled into thinking it can be mastered. It’s an incredibly versatile tool for which game designers, millennia on, are still discovering new opportunities.
For a time in videogames’ evolution, though, dice were treated as objects of shame, to be hidden away behind the scenes. That’s now changing, with the likes of Baldur’s Gate 3, Disco Elysium and Citizen Sleeper embracing their tabletop antecedents. Disco Elysium’s entire UI judders to the sound of each roll, while Larian gives its dice the same lavish treatment as every other part of BG3, trying to capture the thrill of the real thing. The Citizen Sleeper games are different.