A Game of Dice - Part I

Many failures but one theory...May be it is time I let out of what I think on the theory of my failures in my life, Why I lose out in the most trivial things where others seem to just pass through...

Before I begin I have to mention thanks to 2 persons "Stryker" and "Divs" for their Optimistic Views without which my Theory would have never popped out of my head into the words I write here :-)

After the HP incident, I always wanted to find out the cause, the reason why I fail in things that were pretty trivial to me. There were many incidents where, signs were too evident to be ignored when I visited some of the more important failures in my life. It has been almost a year since then. After coming to Chennai though the brainstorming on the theory was fueled by extreme optimism, especially declaring the fact that these incidents were nothing more than a patch of bad luck that I am going through. Well...I thought If this is just a bad patch then why do I repeating patterns in my life???

I always knew my theory of failure had a strong base but I wasn't able to convince Stryker about it, he just wouldn't accept it. And it was between one of those days I got introduced to one of the best RPG games ever made named "Neverwinter Nights". This game had a unique fighting system. The fights were based on Die Rolls. To be precise let me give a small background on 2 Common Fighting Methods in RPG.

1. Turn Based
   
   Here we fight the opponent in a Turn Based fashion, where the fights lasts several rounds. In each round you don't get to fight directly. You are only given the choice on what action the Hero can do and you have to choose among the various options once done, you lose control and then the battle takes place. The same goes for the opponent also. There is no real time battle going on, just the action of your choice based on probability to hit the opponent vs the probabilty for the opponent to block an attack. To conclude
   
   
   p(A) > p(D) -> Your Attack is a Success
   p(D) > p(A) -> Your Attack is a Failure
   
   
2. Real Time (Hack & Slash)
   
   Games like Diablo is a classic example of Hack & Slash adventure. Where in you have real time attacks based on the command given by you. Here is there is no predefined set of rounds and then lose the control of your Hero. Your hero is well within your control and you just choose to attack and all the calculation takes place in real time.

Now NWN implemented a System that was somewhere in between the 2 systems, you had rounds, within a round once initiated (this initiation is a die roll) has to be played till the opponent finishes their die roll. And in that short span of time you can't control the outcome of the events since it is purely probability driven and not click driven like in Hack & Slash. But once a die roll is over you are free to control you hero once again. Even more interesting is the Hero can be called out of a consecutive die roll event causing the Hero to fail to roll the die, but not the opponent's die roll.

Now this is where things get interesting, I always had a hunch that life was largely governed by the laws of probability, but I never knew where exactly probability kicked in i.e until I played NWN.

Before I go further let me explain some basics of probability for those who are not well versed in it. Take the classic example of tossing a coin. What are the outcomes? It is either a Head or Tail.

Sample Space for a Coin is {H, T}
H - Head, T -Tail

A sample space is the set of all possible outcomes and one thing that can be assured is an outcome of an even will only occur from the Sample Space. Now if we keep tossing a coin long enough we will see that, the number of times the Head or Tail occurs is a number close to the half of the total number of throws, to put in other words, we have a 50% chance that we will get a Head (or Tail) in coin throw. And there is a 100% chance that it will either be Head or Tail and it can be assured that no other event will occur in this sample space.

Let us take a more complex scenario a Dice for instance, in a die roll we have the following as the sample space

{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}

And we have 1/6 of chance that the number we choose will occur in that Die Roll. From this we can deduce the basic formula that

Probabilty of Occurance of Event = Required Event(s) / Set of all Event(s)

Enough of mathematics I think most of you must be having a fair idea of what and how probability is all about?

Probability by itself is pretty boring until you apply it to a system, especially to games. Now in most games of chance (like Snakes and Ladders or even Russian Roulette) everybody plays under the following conditions

The outcome of all events are equally likely.

What exactly does this mean, for e.g. I throw a die and get a number and then you throw a die and you get another number. The outcome of your number is in no way different than mine. Also Another basic rule of die rolls are "They are mutually exclusive events", which means that your Die Roll doesn't affect mine and mine doesn't affect yours.

It is the "chance" part in the games of chance that keeps people thrilled. Extend this to our lives and you will see that even more interesting things happen.

In usual games of chance we play, the dice is common i.e all share same set of dice in one common ground and hence the outcomes are equally likely. But in life, we all play with our dice and not all of our dice are same, most of us get a fairly well balanced die and our rolls in life are good enough to keep us going.

The game gets interesting when you are playing with Weighted Dice, in games of chance this is basically called "cheating." But in life we call this Good Luck and Bad Luck. Most of the events in our lives are a result of the Die Rolls that we make at the time the event occurs, more of less like a fight in NWN. We always have the choice of neglecting the opportunity to roll the die, but once done the Die roll cannot be reversed, once you take part in the event you have to complete it till the next die roll, where you are again given a choice to play or leave.

Under similar conditions each of our die roll's outcome will effect other players in the same game, this implies that our rolls are not mutually exclusive. Another interesting point in this game of life is how Die rolls of others can be used to our advantage. In normal games of chance, each player is for himself / herself and one player cannot play for other unless in some kind of team. But in life we can utilize the die roll of another person to play the game for us and that person need not be in the game at all...

In the next post I will be explaining practical scenarios of the Die Roll theory by taking simple examples from my life

(To Be Continued...)