Statement of Purpose (plus more dice)

Hi. I’m Brian. I am starting an ecommerce store where I sell game related stuff. It’s called Gamification. Hi. Welcome to the store.

A lot of this is me breaking out of my rut and trying new things, while learning to connect with the outside world. If you have comments on that please fire me an email at billion-six@mail.com. I welcome any comments on what items I should sell, thoughts on any blog posts I make, and any mistakes that a fledgling ecommerce businessman should correct. If your comments are how I am stupid and shouldn’t even try this, I am sure you can find a brick wall to tell those comments to. 

I decided to do this recently, at about the same time I started therapy. I realized that I, weirdly, have an addiction to doing nothing. To entering that zoned out state where you daydream, watch YouTube videos and wait until it’s time to go to bed or work. I always had plans for things I wanted to do, but instead the time just slipped away. 

So now I am doing something. I am starting a tiny little online store. I paid for a course on Udemy.com on how to build your own dropshipping business, watched it, and here is where I am so far. A few items for gamer nerds like me. The staples, mostly. Dice and dice bags, and a few things that I might call Gamer-Adjacent like a leather journal, or dragon t-shirt. 

Ultimately, I want to do other things. Creative writing. Maybe some Twitch streaming part time. If I do that I will likely be faceless or use some kind of vtuber style avatar. I would need some work before I considered myself camera ready. 

But for now I want to build my business. If I can get a little traffic going, I might be able to worry less about rent and bills. A nice side hustle. 

Anyway.

Dice Part 2.

DCC dice: Let’s be honest. Tabletop gamers have always been hipsters when it comes to dice. We look at our favorite 20 sider and think, “Ah, you beautiful icosahedron. Who else but a true gamer would roll one such as you? Not those mundane masses using dotted cubes to pay their Monopoly or Risk. You, my darling, place me above the common rabble!”

 Well, the game Dungeons Crawl Classics knew that gamers, especially old school gamers, felt that way, and created a game not just around the Standard Seven (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20) but also the d3, d5, d7, d14, d16, d24, and d30. These are also referred to as Zocchi dice, after dice designer Lou Zocchi. 

 Well, DCC, we know the real reason behind these dice. Escalating hipsterism. “Ah, my beautiful Zocchi dice! Who but a true gamer would roll such as you? Not the common muck with their Dungeons and their Dragons, rolling mere 20 siders. You, my darlings, exalt me above the gaming gods!”

Fudge dice: Also known as FATE Dice, these dice are mostly use for the various iterations of the Fate System which grew out of the Fudge System, which I just now, poking around on Google, discovered is still around and being played around with and modded.

 Basically, a Fudge Die is a six-sider with two Blank sides, two Plus sides, and two Minus sides.You roll four of them at once to create a bell curve between +4 and -4. 

 Fudge and Fate games have never gotten a lot of recognition. I think they promote a style of gaming that is a bit polarizing. The game Fate Core, as has been pointed out, seems to have been written by people who had a great game, knew it inside and out, and wrote it up as a personal reference manual with little thought as to how to get other people to understand it.

 Still the dice are cool.

Genysys dice: Originally created for the Fantasy Flight Star Wars game, then genericized for the Genesys system, these guys are weird. The six types are Ability, Proficiency, Boost, Difficulty, Challenge and Setback. They have weird symbols instead of numbers. Basically, instead of a simple pass/fail, you interpret the rolls to determine outcomes, like “failed but something good happened” or “succeeded but at a cost.” Fans of these dice will talk about how they create such cool unexpected outcomes, though I have heard others talk about “crit fatigue” where they get tired of constantly interpreting rolls, and just want to know if they hit. 

 I’ve never gotten to try them, but they seem like they’d be cool.