Sometimes I think the Catholic church is right to fear Dungeons and Dragons.  There are pearls of wisdom there that threaten society’s core.  Today, for me, it’s dice.

Many people worship randomness– from horoscopes to sports to stocks– and find great strengths in it.  The trick to building a divine system of randomness is to ensure long tails: that unlikely events still happen.  In D&D, it’s called a critical hit.  Usually, success is determined by a 20-sided die, and good things happen if you roll high.  If you roll a 20, great things might happen: to find out, you roll again (and again, as needed).

I’m making a system of randomness not as a solution, but to learn from the long tail.  The general rules are simple:

• Every day, I must flip at least one coin (I have a coin labeled ‘1’), which determines one deliverable for that day.  H means, “Do for yourself or community”; T means, “Do for the world or the future.”
• I can ask any binary question by flipping a coin.  H means, “The answer is routine”; T means, “The answer is different”.
• If I flip tails, the degree to which the answer is different can be determined by more flips, with each successive T representing a departure of about the same magnitude.
• I am generally not compelled to continue asking questions, but if I engage in the same sequence of flips twice, I must either come up with a new interpretation or do additional flips.
• To make it easier to get my fortune for the day, I can assign meaning to each of several coins, and flip them all at once.

All the other rules grow organically.