Analogue Gaming: Cards & Dice as Game Consoles

I've noticed a recent boom in people moving towards "analogue" media and technology. The analogue movement as a whole has been taking over social media. One aspect that has confused me about the movement is the overall lack of analogue gaming.

The Analogue Movement

Firstly, there's four main promises of the movement so far.Some, as we will see, more honest than others. These are:

The core idea of the movement is to move away from modern technology and media. Modern social media is trained to expertly grab our attention and collect our usage data without the opportunity to object. Modern media like movies and video games have become licensed, meaning, for example, you can get a license to access movies via Netflix and Disney+, but cannot own them. This is part of the broader modern philosophy of media being disposable. You pay for limited access and move on to the next piece of media once that loses steam. This gives way to perhaps the most influential aspect of the analogue movement. Which is the opportunity to engage with older media and technology we have left behind. From old DS games to flip phones we crave to engage with the culture we grew up with in a world where culture is designed to keep us from being a part of it. (Something I wrote about in a previous essay ).

The issue is that the analogue movement has largely failed to realize these promises outside of engaging with nostalgia. The very fact that disconnection from social media is a trend on social media demonstrates the core issue. People are driven to buy older technology to participate instead of using the technology that have around them. This is because it's "promises" function more as virtuous justifications for participating in the movement rather than the actual driving force which is, as mentioned earlier, nostalgia and the desire to engage with culture that has been abandoned. This too is not possible under privately owned cultural entities.

The core concept and promises of the movement, however, is still workable. One small suggestion I would like to propose for the gaming aspect of the movement is a move away from the retro gaming focus of the movement, and spotlight real analogue gaming.

Indie Analogue Gaming

Analogue gaming includes everything from board games to tabletop role-playing like Dungeons and Dragons. The games I want to focus on primarily in this section are the variety of "print and play" role-playing games that many people overlook.

Tabletop role-playing games have garnered a reputation of being too complex for the average non-tabletop gamer. However, believe it or not, there is a thriving scene of innovative independent tabletop games, often with far more simple rules. In one of my game design courses we played a one-page role-playing game, where the entire rules were all on one page. In just a couple minutes we were able get into playing the game and finished our session in about two hours. There are hundreds of one page role-playing games out there.

This is a good place to start for one page role-playing games:

1-page rules (OPR) TTRPG

A collection by Random Creation

There are also games designed to be played solo. My girlfriend recently got me the game Colostle . It's an RPG where you explore a world inside a giant castle and fight building sized robot creatures called Rooks. You can explore entire cities, there is character progression, and even entirely new sections that unlock as you progress through the game. All you need is the book (or PDF), a deck of playing cards, and a journal. You can do a lot with just these few materials and a couple rules.

This is a good place to start for solo role-playing games:

Top rated physical games tagged Solo RPG

Explore physical games tagged Solo RPG on itch.io. An RPG that you can play by yourself.

There's also role-playing games for almost any demographic. I recently came across the game Le Bon Ton . It's a regency romance role-playing game inspired by media like Pride and Prejudice as well as Bridgerton. My friends are big Bridgerton fans and despite not being big into the typical tabletop role-playing games might be interested in playing a game like that.

Cards & Dice as Game Consoles

Exploring the plethora of analogue games makes me think of a different framing for the role of cards and dice in these games. When you play a video game console, you insert a disc or cartridge into the system. The disc and cartridge contain code, lists of instructions and rules, that manipulate the console's memory and use the console's computing power in order to output your gameplay. This is the same dynamic that cards and dice have to rulebooks in tabletop games, except the player takes up the computation role. As a player, you take the rulebook, which contains instructions and rules, in order to manipulate the cards and the dice to output your gameplay. In this way, a standard deck of playing cards can be seen as an analogue game console.

Even outside of tabletop games, a standard deck of playing cards unlocks hundreds of games that can be played with it. There's the popular casino games like Poker and Blackjack . Casual family games like Crazy Eights and Go Fish . Solo solitaire games like Klondike (the solitaire most people think of when they hear solitaire) and Spider . Even solo dungeon crawlers like Scoundrel are possible with just a deck of playing cards. Many of these games, unlike video games, have rules that are easy enough to memorize instead of having to purchase a disc or cartridge with every new game you want to play.

While there are many premium playing cards that features beautiful unique artwork, you can easily buy a cheap deck for around five dollars or less that will work exactly the same and last for over a decade with proper care. You could even make your own D.I.Y. card decks by printing or drawing on cardstock and cutting it into sections. Same with dice. a twenty sized dice used in a lot of tabletop role-playing games could easily be replaced by twenty numbered strips of paper in a bowl or jar than you can shake and pick a number out of.

These Analogue games and "game consoles" deliver a lot better on the core ideas and concepts of the analogue movement. Once you get the rulebook you can make as many copies as you want for yourself. For simple games, like I mentioned earlier, you can memorize the rules and pass it on to others. You don't have to rely on buying game discs and cartridges just to have ownership of your games. You can also easily "mod" the game and add rules, characters, etc... to the game, in an era where companies are making it harder to mod games. Overall analogue gaming makes gaming less disposable, helps stand against consumerism, and gives you more control and ownership of your gaming experience.