Gaming philosophy conundra

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

From the point of view of tabletop gaming, the sphere is indisputably one-sided rather than infinite-sided, unless you have found one that can produce an infinite number of possible displayed results depending on the point at which it stops rolling.

It's fairly trivial to paint a sphere with equal-sized zones and declare that the roll is whatever zone it winds up in (somewhat hard to read the die unless using a transparent table or a transparent die with a floating bubble).

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's fairly trivial to paint a sphere with equal-sized zones and declare that the roll is whatever zone it winds up in (somewhat hard to read the die unless using a transparent table or a transparent die with a floating bubble).

True, for a finite number of zone (albeit the nature of a sphere will mean that it will probably take longer to come to a stop than an edged solid, and it will be far easier to make it start rolling again by jerking the table if one of the players doesn't like the result it seems about to stop at), but fitting an infinite number of zones onto the sphere is going to be problematic.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

True, for a finite number of zone (albeit the nature of a sphere will mean that it will probably take longer to come to a stop than an edged solid)

For the sphere with a bubble, not sure if that's true; fluid-filled containers roll a bit oddly.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Its one side would be a Möbius strip or something analogous.

Spheroid. With an eccentric weight to make it come to rest in a consistent orientation. Like a lawn bowl.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

I'm told that a great many primitive cultures tend to have an endonym which, on translation simply means "people" and refer to all of the rest of humanity as "not people" (although polite translators sometimes parse this as "other people"). Sort of like a cultural equivalent of that theory of mind deficiency that makes toddlers hide by covering their eyes.

I'm not sure how good a translation it is as primitive cultures conduct diplomacy, and have duels, tourneys, or athletic events with one another. They also have trade fairs and marriage negotiations. If they really didn't regard each other as people they would not do the things, well, people, do with them. Just to start cannibalism would be more common.

In real life people who want other people to be "not people" want it both ways. Slaveowners for instance do things like wanting slave concubines and wanting to count their slaves to their population when getting legislative representation.

In any case the only way we could know that the word they use means "people" the way it does in English is for them to literally treat unpeople as unpeople (lower animals, vegetables, or minerals). Probably "Us" is a better translation and "People" a red herring. After all there are plenty of people whom we would regard as civilized however that term is defined that regard those outside of "Us" as being outside ethical consideration but ultimately regard them as people however paradoxically (Hatfields do not regard McCoys as Unpeople, they regard them as People They Don't Like).

For a similar dynamic in a game you would have to use not the difference between PCs and NPCs but that between a Nemesis and a Minion.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by SolemnGolem

What does a 1-sided die look like?

It's a Gömböc.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

From the point of view of tabletop gaming, the sphere is indisputably one-sided rather than infinite-sided, unless you have found one that can produce an infinite number of possible displayed results depending on the point at which it stops rolling.

(Anyway, if you argue that the sphere has a number of sides equal to the number of possible tangent planes, then any actual die becomes a d[huge number] due to the fact that its "faces" are not perfectly flat, and any actual roll will be undetectable cocked at one of a vast number of possible angles.)

Ah, but this is a philosophical discussion, so we're free to postulate an ideal polyhedral die whose faces ARE perfectly flat. And they contrast with an ideal spherical die that has no flat face of any finite area.

As for displaying an infinite number of possible displayed results, let our ideal sphere have color gradations: changes of hue with longitude, and changes from pure black to pure white with longitude. In physical reality, those color points could not be smaller than single molecules, but as an abstract philosophical hypothesis we can have arbitrarily small areas of color, and arbitrarily keen vision to discern which is which.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by whswhs

As for displaying an infinite number of possible displayed results, let our ideal sphere have color gradations: changes of hue with longitude, and changes from pure black to pure white with longitude. In physical reality, those color points could not be smaller than single molecules, but as an abstract philosophical hypothesis we can have arbitrarily small areas of color, and arbitrarily keen vision to discern which is which.

Why a sphere? Why not a sand table?

Suppose the results are calculated by the elevation of where the die lands not by numbers on the die itself?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Why a sphere? Why not a sand table?

Suppose the results are calculated by the elevation of where the die lands not by numbers on the die itself?

That seems to be a shift of topic, from "what is a one-sided die?" or "how many sides does a spherical die have?" to "how can an infinite-sided die be realized physically?" I think that's one shift too many. I only took up the sidedness of a spherical die to question the supposition that it was properly described as a one-sided die; I wasn't pursuing it for its own sake. But I don't see how your sand table can be interpreted as a one-sided die . . .

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That seems to be a shift of topic, from "what is a one-sided die?" or "how many sides does a spherical die have?" to "how can an infinite-sided die be realized physically?" I think that's one shift too many. I only took up the sidedness of a spherical die to question the supposition that it was properly described as a one-sided die; I wasn't pursuing it for its own sake. But I don't see how your sand table can be interpreted as a one-sided die . . .

I suppose by that definition a one sided die is an infinite plane. If you toss it on the table it will always have the same side touching it, because you can't actually flip it around - the table will always get in the way.