Another Holiday Meta-Game

Just like last year, we had another holiday gift exchange.  This time some new rules and twists were tried.

Instead of picking numbers from a hat (because that was too much work to set up), we all passed around a small tray and rolled two dice.  If you rolled doubles, you got a turn in the regular gift exchange, using the regular rules: steal an already-opened gift or unwrap a new gift.  Even though there were about 15 people, I immediately saw that this could take a while.  In fact, there's no guarantee that ANYONE would roll doubles.  Sure, 15 people in a row not rolling doubles would be rare, but the chance is non-zero.  It could quite possibly take hours for 15 people to roll doubles.  It could theoretically never end at all.  We could still be there failing ... way off the deep end of the Bell curve.

As expected, the first time through the circle, I think only two people rolled doubles.  After another loop, the person in charge decided we would each roll twice the next time around.  There were still a lot more failures than they probably expected.  So we each rolled three times after that.

The group should have just picked numbers out of a hat.  Not only would each selection take a predictable amount of time, there wouldn't be the constant sense of failure when the dice let us down.  And it gets old hearing so many players go on and on about how lucky or unlucky they are, or how they have a system for rolling dice.  No, no and no.  Dice don't care what happened last time.  That's not how it works.

Rolling the dice just made people feel bad and useless while other people got stuff.  Numbers pulled from a hat is more neutral.  And of course the last person chosen is going to say how they're always the last person chosen for everything going way back to volleyball teams in junior high school.  We feel so strongly tied to these little tiny actions which are independent of whatever we do or feel.  Try going a whole day without mentioning luck or fate or fortune.  It's wired deep into our brains for some reason.

On the funny side, we found a new way to subvert the game entirely.  We should have thought more about the gifts we got, but we were in a hurry and just grabbed two $30 gift cards, only to recall that this group didn't like the gift cards last year, they wanted physical stuff.  So, I got a massage thing when I finally rolled doubles, and let it get stolen by someone else later on, after which I "accidentally" opened one of our own gifts after watching it go unwanted, and acted like we really wanted it, which we did, because were happy with gift cards where we can get what we want as opposed to random stuff other people thought we should have.  Then Anne used her turn to unwrap the other gift card.  Surprise!  So we circumvented the game, got nobody anything, and have two free meals at a place we really enjoy going to.  No junk that's going to take up shelf space.

It was funny seeing the different strategies for trying to hide a gift or eagerly holding them up hoping to get them stolen.  Everyone had a good time.