Citizen Sleeper and Disco Elysium Show That Rolling Dice Is The Perfect Mechanic For Late Capitalism
While dice rolls have long been a staple of RPGs, in recent indie standouts, the roll of the dice has taken on added anti-capitalist significance.
In Disco Elysium, ZA/UM Studio's breakout 2019 detective RPG, each decision was accomplished by a roll of the dice. Think you can wrestle a body down from a tree? Good luck rolling a high enough number to pass the endurance check required to enter the corpse's pungent proximity. Want to attempt to fight Measurehead, the slab-like Semenese supremeacist standing between your detective and the union-controlled half of Revachol? With the right roll you might deliver an impressive roundhouse kick. With the wrong one you might end up flat on your back.
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In Disco Elysium, the roll of the die determines your progress. Money helps! But, the amount of money that Harrier Du Bois can scrabble together on the streets and darkened corners of Revachol is insignificant in comparison to the kinds of wealth that the people in control of the city's fate can throw around. Instead, his (and by extension) the player's currency, is chance.
The same is true in Citizen Sleeper. In Jump Over The Age's indie adventure game/RPG hybrid, learning how to use dice advantageously is essential to making progress. You play as one android, recently escaped from servitude, attempting to survive on a massive space station. In a game with three separate currencies — energy, money, and dice — dice are the most essential. You begin the day with a set amount (which can decrease if you're low on energy), and use them to accomplish each action. If the die has a high number on it, you're guaranteed to accomplish your goal. The lower the number goes, the
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