Author’s Note: In solidarity with the participants for the final freeform Challenge of the 2020 Tabletop Writers Diversity Initiative, hosted by the Tabletop Writers Guild – and to provide a little levity on Election Day – comes this loving limerick about embracing a little luck in your games. Also I really wanted to claim a badge. 

 

An Ode To Dice-Chucking

Among the posh gamer ‘elite’

Exists a notion hard to unseat —

That if luck is involved,

All skill is dissolved

And is said with arrogant conceit.

 

Yet were every move so precise;

Calculated, cool, and concise;

We’d all worse off

Unable to quaff

The innervating roll of some dice!

 

Reflecting the hobby’s milieu,

There’s admittedly more than a few

Willing to wager and bet,

And generally bank on kismet —

To consider NO chance? Oh Mon Dieu!

 

It’s not wrong to be risk-averse,

But not all are quite as rehearsed.

With Fortuna’s flirtations

You can balance the stations

And perhaps one’s fate be reversed.

 

Impromptu’s a thematic keystone

Its major appeal – the unknown.

But what good is immersion

With deep-seated aversion

Every time the dice they are thrown?

 

The math says you’re certainly not wrong

Not to rush into dungeons headlong.

But thanks to a pip

With a wink and quip —

You can say you’re impossibly strong!

 

But perhaps the best reason of all

Is the physical tumble and sprawl.

Yes, of all things stochastic,

Nothing’s much more fantastic

Than tossing and see how they fall.

 

Whichever path aleatory,

Be it tactile, gamester, or story,

These games are not less

Than min-maxing finesse —

So embrace the dice-chucking glory!