For blind and visually impaired tabletop gamers, there are currently a few ready-for-purchase options for how to generate a random number, each with its advantages and drawbacks. This writeup is intended to be an overview of what options already exist, as well as a how-to for creating some alternative options for yourself or a friend who could benefit from such accessibility and inclusivity measures. Feel free to send your own ideas, if any should occur to you, and I shall append them to this writeup, crediting you. I will also attempt to create and "playtest" any suggestions made over this writeup.

Braille playing cards

Advantages:
  • Easily purchased
  • Reasonably easy to make, through the use of a Braille slate
Disadvantages:
  • The person who applies Braille to a standard deck of playing cards needs to be able to see to do it, since they need to read the card's suit and rank. Some mobile applications for smartphones can work around this, as can video calling a trusted helper, but that makes the process take an obnoxiously long time to complete.
  • Making your own is pretty much guaranteed to induce a cramp in your hand. This is a lot of Braille to do with a compact slate.
  • Pre-made Braille playing cards are pretty expensive compared to a regular deck of cards.
  • The usable lifespan of a Braille deck is very short. The bumps catch on each other and on the edges of other cards when shuffled.
  • Very difficult to shuffle.
  • If anyone participating in a card game has working vision, they can generally visually see what cards another player has in their hand, from the depressions of the Braille cells on the backs of the cards. It's also disgustingly easy for the dealer to cheat by reading the cards by touch or vision before dealing them.
  • Good luck finding a missing card, if you drop one.

Braille Dice

Advantages:
  • Similarly priced to other dice; often priced lower than other dice, because their materials do not need to be visually appealing to the user.
  • Every popular denomination (number of sides) is available through many online vendors. No common numeric style of tabletop polyhedral dice is excluded.
  • Dice make noise when they hit the table or the floor, which makes it easier to find one that goes missing, compared to cards.
  • Often colour-coded with bright pigments on the sides, so that users with partial vision can use their colour perception to read the dice, if they are not proficient at Braille.
Disadvantages:
  • Painful to step on.
  • Requires a large enough space to roll them, and a table surface which will make noise when the dice hit it. Pretty useless on soft surfaces like a carpeted floor. Consequently still very easy to lose. A dice tower can completely fix every aspect of this problem during normal gameplay, however.
  • Non-numerical dice are still a total wash. Fate (Fudge) dice don't have a widely available option to accommodate users with impaired vision.

Arrow Spinner + Braille Spin Table

Advantages:
  • The spin table can say whatever the user wants; completely customisable.
  • Does not need a large workspace to be used.
  • Relatively difficult to misplace.
Disadvantages:
  • Generally will need to be created by a person with working vision.
  • It's easy to bump the arrow spinner into a different position than the one actually indicated, in the attempt to feel what position it is pointed at.
  • It's easy for other players to cheat undetected by tampering with the arrow's position, before the user can read its result.

DIY: Counting Beads

This unorthodox RNG is based on the wrist mala style of bracelet. First, select how many numeric or other values you wish to represent with this RNG. If you intend this to be a wearable bracelet or necklace, measure the wearer's wrist to determine the goal size of the item, or determine a correct necklace length. Once you know these two numbers, find some beads that have at least two subtypes of the same size: they may be shaped slightly differently (rounded or barrel shaped), textured differently (smooth or rough or faceted), or made of materials which feel different to the touch (metal, glass, freshwater pearl, wood, bone, plastic). Thread the target number of beads (or a whole number multiple of that number) onto your cordage, creating a repeating pattern that distributes the different bead textures evenly, and knot the cord. If the knot is large enough, it can be used as an indicator for position "zero" on the loop, or a larger or smaller indicator bead can be used to mark this spot instead. Aim for all beads to be very close in size, e.g. all 6mm or 8mm, so that the differences in their weight and friction when handled will not be significant enough to throw off the randomness of the item.


Example 1: I Ching
The following bead sequence offers a simple way to calculate an I Ching trigram, with equal probability of every trigram being selected:
XXXOXOOO, and repeat as many times as makes a whole number of circuits around your wrist or neck. Treat X as one texture of bead, representing a Yang line, and O as the opposite texture, representing a Yin line.
The bead you grab between your fingers is the middle line of your trigram. The bead 'under' it inside your palm is the foot of your trigram. The bead 'over' it outside your palm is the head of your trigram. You select a bead by idly turning, twisting, and otherwise fidgeting with your bracelet or necklace, before spontaneously grabbing one bead as your selection, without trying to pay close attention before making your grab.


Example 2: D20
1,2,3 - Beads which suggest "low value" to the wearer, like plastic "kandi" style pony beads. These three beads can be identical; any group of three beads together is easy to tell apart by touch, due to their neighbours outside that group being a different material, texture, or shape.
4,5,6 - Beads which will be colder to the touch than the lower values. Glass or metal is good.
7,8,9 - Beads with a clear temperature contrast from glass or metal. Wood is best.
10,11 - Whatever "cold" material you did not use for the 4-5-6 string, use it here, glass or metal. This is a good use case for faceted glass, rather than spherical glass.
12,13,14 - Bone, horn, amber, shell, or freshwater pearl beads are good here as contrast from the previous segment. Irregularly shaped kandi beads, like stars or hearts, are also a fine option in this segment.
15,16,17 - Beads with a coarse botanical texture, like rudraksha beads, lotus seed beads, are good here.
18,19,20 - Semiprecious stone with a slightly waxy texture, such as lapis lazuli, or waxy bodhi seed beads, provide a good contrast from the coarseness of the neighbouring group, and the dry texture of the pony beads in group 1-2-3.
21, 0 - If you wish to use this strand of beads as a Tarot indicator for the Major Arcana, rather than a twenty-sided die, add two more wooden beads of a different shape than the previous set of wooden beads, or use sandpaper or a scoring tool to apply some texture to the wood of these two beads, to differentiate them.

This sequencing of materials helps balance the weight distribution of different sections of the bracelet, so that one side does not repeatedly turn up more often than another side.

The main three advantages of this method of RNG:

  • Portability - you can wear it anywhere
  • DIY - The person who makes this bracelet does not need vision to make it; it can be done by touch alone.
  • Easy to avoid losing it.
The main three disadvantages of this method:
  • Relies upon memorisation, though at least not difficult memorisation, compared to Braille. This makes it rather easy for the user to cheat other players who don't know how to "read" the result of using this method.
  • Acquiring the materials may be a bit obnoxious, though not expensive.
  • No two wrists are identical in circumference, so some dice values may inherently result in a bracelet that fits you very loosely, even if you use very small beads to get the job done. The aesthetics of the final item may also look childish, depending on materials used.

DIY: Decision Pen

Online it is easy to find ink pens with a fidget spinner device integrated into the back end of the pen. Some of these are even marketed as "dice pens" or "decision pens," with dice pips or various Magic 8 Ball style answers printed on them as text. By using a Dremel rotary cutter or an engraving tool, you can score, gouge, or engrave texture onto each face of the spinner of such a pen, making it perfectly usable without vision. The disadvantages of this approach are the need to buy the supplies and have the engraving done by someone who can see, for safety reasons. The advantages are portability, ease of avoiding losing the pen, and the simple pleasure of using the pen itself as a fidget toy. Fidget pens are currently available with either four or six faces on their spinners. I have found a couple fidget pens by the Smootherpro company which already have engraved pips, and while I do not believe they were actually made with blind users in mind (they are, after all, ink pens for writing, which is not something a blind person frequently has need of), they are quite serviceable!

Iron Noder 2024, 28/30

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.