OK - so has anyone out there ever tinkered with dice games? Hey, I'm not talking about Craps or Monopoly here! Primarily I'm referring to a 'cult' book called The Dice Man published in 1971 and written (supposedly autobiographically) by one Luke Rhinehart (see Wikipedia for alternative theory on identity of Mr Rhinehart). The novel tracks the exploits of a bored psychiatrist (Rhinehart), who turns over his entire life to the whim of the dice, and develops the concept of 'Dice Living'. In dicelife, the player allocates a set of choices or outcomes to values 1 to 6, or 1 to 12 if more choices are desired, and then commits to follow the decision of the dice, however they may fall. The fact that he may first designate a set of options keeps the outcome 'manageable', but the path to be taken is ultimately random. Luke applies this framework to direct his decisions on a very wide range of matters, many of which undoubtedly just excuses for him to do things he wouldn't otherwise have the nerve to. One of his earliest 'challenges' set by the dice is to go to the apartment downstairs and rape his colleague's wife. He subsequently leaves his own wife and children (of whom he is not overy fond to start with), abandons his psychiatry practice, promotes dice living as a religion, and enjoys stays in psychiatric institutions in his own right.

The extremes to which Rhinehart exposes himself via Dice Living require him to be, essentially, devoid of emotion and sociopathic. One might also argue 'cowardly'since he defers to the die to 'make his choices for him', claiming that it is 'fate' choosing; however in fairness, he does also address the truth of the matter- that it is he who makes the list of options in the first place. If he were to be truly random, he should have one option which commands him to seek 12 random actions and activities from 12 random people, and as I recall, this is one thing he never does, choosing instead to exercise at least some level of control.

Anyway - this was a fun and interesting read, and led me to wonder whether people actually DO try to live their lives by the fall of the dice? It's something I would LOVE to try, maybe in some time-limited fashion, the main impediment to giving it a go being my real-life responsibilities - family and work.

When I was googling for real-life examples of dice-living, I came across the DiceMan TV show - which I have to admit to never having seen, but it sounds like fun. Travellers set off on a 6-month journey with limited funds and their next steps are dictated by throwing dice.

[This activity bears some resemblance to Dave Gorman's GoogleWhack Adventure - where Mr Gorman's travels are dictated solely by a series of world wide web 'googlewhacks' (too much to explain here - go read about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlewhack)

I also found some slightly more 'wacky' examples of real-life dice-living:  one man claims as a result of the Dice Man principle, he ended up living in Kathmandu after a series of two years' bizarre adventures, twists and turns. I also particularly liked this chap's blog recount of 'softcore diceliving'.

So go on then - please tell me if you've ever taken the bold step of trying this out, and where it led..... Or why not give it a go and report back? Go on - you roll first.....