Dice Imperfections

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Jack Burton
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Dice Imperfections

Unread post by Jack Burton »

I thought this was an interesting YouTube video about dice. It helps explain "lucky" or "cursed" d20s:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VI3N4Qg-JZM
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drewkitty ~..~
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Re: Dice Imperfections

Unread post by drewkitty ~..~ »

So we nowe know how to find the dice that have a greater chance of rolling Nat 20s.
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Jack Burton
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Re: Dice Imperfections

Unread post by Jack Burton »

It appeared as if the guy in the video had 2 of them. Oddly enough, he didn't comment on the fact that both dice he showed kept popping up with the 20 facing up. I'm sure if you asked him about that, he would've said, "What? These old things? I've had them for years." Hahaha

I tried that test and my primary d20 kept showing 14. It was hard to get it to float. I had to use a bunch of salt. The other d20 I sometimes use kept sinking like a rock no matter how much salt I added. My kids got a kick out of this "science experiment".
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Rallan
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Re: Dice Imperfections

Unread post by Rallan »

I'm seeing a couple of problems with this video.

For starters, he doesn't even bother establishing how biased his biased dice are. Will a die that fails the salt water test be biased enough for players to notice even if they're not looking for it? Who knows? Maybe those dice are coming up with natural 20s 10 times out of every 100 instead of 5 times. But maybe it's just 6 times out of every 100 instead of 5 times. Or maybe it's just 51 times out of every 1000 rolls instead of 50 times.

And for seconds (and this is a way bigger factor) lots of people convince themselves that they've got lucky or unlucky dice for literally no reason. They get a few really memorably high rolls and decide the dice are lucky. hey have a total failure of a session ending in a TPK and it's because that d6 over there is cursed. They see a youtube video about dropping your dice in salt water and suddenly they've convinced that half their dice have absolutely humungously intolerable biases even if they've never noticed them rolling consistently high or low before today. And so on and so forth.
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Re: Dice Imperfections

Unread post by BookWyrm »

I have a clear generic set I bought decades ago that does just fine. The couple of Chessex translucent sets I have are just show-pieces.
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Jack Burton
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Re: Dice Imperfections

Unread post by Jack Burton »

I must be a nerd because I found this interesting:

http://bit.ly/IuFVdz
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