This came up in a recent thread I started about a cheating player in my campaign. Is it the common belief that some people tend to roll better or worse than others? And what about the dice themselves? Do many of us believe that certain dice just tend to roll higher or lower than other dice?
My gaming group has joked about this for years. “Don’t roll that die it rolls crappy.” “Uh oh, John has to make a saving throw, start rolling up a new character.” In my group, I am one of those who has a reputation for rolling badly. I joke about it, but I never actually believed it.
So who thinks some people just roll better or worse? And who thinks they have certain dice that they can count on to roll well, or poorly? And have you run any probability tests on your dice, or on yourself? If so, what were the results?
Well some dice DO roll better or worse. One of the people in my group has a green d20 that we have actually tested and its got like a 1 in 5 chance of a 20. Its absurd.
That said obviously in general people dont roll better or worse, unless they never change their dice and the dice are similar to the above mentioned d20. On the other hand people do tend to have certain things they favor. They guy in our group who always plays dex characters and thinks improved initiative is a must have at level 1 always 'seems' to roll well on initiative. Often it is less the die roll that we remember but the success or failure. And we look back and thinkg 'I rolled badly' or 'I rolled well' But in reality it was more likely 'I didnt have a good chance of success' and 'I only had to roll like a 5 to hit that thing'. People, regardless of character tend to build them a certain way, and so their characters will be good or bad at certain things. In which case they gain a reputation for rolling well or poorly in those areas but its just a matter of statistical chances.
Well some dice DO roll better or worse. One of the people in my group has a green d20 that we have actually tested and its got like a 1 in 5 chance of a 20. Its absurd.
That said obviously in general people dont roll better or worse, unless they never change their dice and the dice are similar to the above mentioned d20. On the other hand people do tend to have certain things they favor. They guy in our group who always plays dex characters and thinks improved initiative is a must have at level 1 always 'seems' to roll well on initiative. Often it is less the die roll that we remember but the success or failure. And we look back and thinkg 'I rolled badly' or 'I rolled well' But in reality it was more likely 'I didnt have a good chance of success' and 'I only had to roll like a 5 to hit that thing'. People, regardless of character tend to build them a certain way, and so their characters will be good or bad at certain things. In which case they gain a reputation for rolling well or poorly in those areas but its just a matter of statistical chances.
That is kind of what I always thought. You develop a reputation because of some good or bad rolls you made at a crucial moment. From that point on, whenever you roll well or badly again, everyone notices, and the reputation continues.
I have heard that some people can affect the outcome on a d6 like cheating at craps, but what about a d20? Do you think some people can manipulate a d20 when rolling to affect the outcome?
Logically, I don't believe that certain people have a better chance of rolling good or bad, or that some dice are cursed or blessed (through they might be damaged or worn) and that it's all just a part of the gaming culture. If you get a reputation of rolling either way you start to remember when you roll well (or poorly), but not when you just roll average.
However I must admit that despite my logical beliefs I do find that I roll extremely well. I once kept track of my rolls for several sessons, switching up dice every so often, and found that my average was roughly a 16 on a d20, with a surprisingly high number of 18's. I even got one of those big inflatable dice so everyone can see what I've rolled and avoid the accusations of cheating.
Of course that's only a good thing in Dungeons and Dragons and other high success roll games. In game where you want to roll low my characters can't put on their shoes without shooting them-selves in the face.
I don't usually believe this, but some days I feel like a statistical outlier. I roll a lot of 1's. There are many stories of the things I've critically failed. One particular encounter that I DM'd went on for two rounds where three out of six of the enemies shot each other (Because I rolled those 1's...)
I have a reputation among my group for always rolling badly except when I absolutely need to do 'x' or die. In which case I proceed to do 'x,' often with a 17+.
...This seems to be inverted whenever I gm, which leads to some exciting encounters as I roll 2-3 natural 20's in a short session.
I think if this is a problem you aren't playing enough for the strong law of large nubmers to work in your favor.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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I know that studies with electronic random number generators found that people were able to influence the results. I don't really understand the study myself, but it seemed facinating when I read about it.
Most dice companies don't have a very strict quality control, and their manufacturing processess almost never create completely impartial dice. Most of the gaming dice have slight egg shapes instead of perfect spheres, and some even have slightly heavier sides. The differences are not huge, so your dice will still roll pretty fairly, but it might roll two or more numbers slightly more then others.
There is a way to figure out if your d20 rolls even, but I don't know it personally. It has something to do with rolling it 200 times.
I have a set of grey dice that I use all the time. They tend to roll high, and I have seen more 20s then 1s. However, the dice are not so reliable that I always succeed with them and I have had 1s show up during critical moments.
Another thing I have noticed is that I fail more when I am in a negative mood. This may be a matter of perspective, but it does seem that I roll more low numbers when I am angry or depressed.
My friend rolled only twice above 5 in our last game session, and it was a pretty action packed session too.
Another friend of mine thought he was rolling low most of the time, so I built him a dice tower on the spot. He then proceeded to roll really well. I think it was a case of focusing on failure vs. success, but the tower is now a group artifact.
Of course there are a couple ways that dice will give you better then average results. One of them involved microwaving a die in short bursts with the number you want to be rolled most often facing up. What you re doing is melting the die enough to warp the shape but not so much the appearance is destroyed.
Or you can buy a set of Chessex cheat dice. In that set one of the d20s has no 1 but two 20s.
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So who thinks some people just roll better or worse? And who thinks they have certain dice that they can count on to roll well, or poorly? And have you run any probability tests on your dice, or on yourself? If so, what were the results?
This is truth, tied in thoroughly with your personal gaming ki/ka/karma/mojo/what-have-you, that of your character, and the personality - benevolent or malevolent - of your dice. Jason, for example, just invested in a set that refuses to roll above "2," and has long kept a moon die tied up that tries to communicate numerologically whenever it gets a second free (but that as little bearing as far as predictability goes). Erik's character Ostog rolls one crit per session pretty reliably. My bard Styrian rolls only odd numbers and 4s - in keeping with his mystery and misfortune reputation. Sutter has never made an unaided save against ever. Ever. Sean... I don't think he uses dice - he probably uses chits or cards or little ivory zodiac figurines in some system that only makes sense to him, but I'm sure is statistically far more reliable. Stephen, on the other hand, uses threats... and follows through... criminally so. Seems to work.
I find my dice like cool dark spaces, the smell of dust, and - ugh - Lionel Richie (we all do what we have to do to roll 20s), but everyone should experiment with what works for them and their favorite dice.
I once went an entire three month campaign without ever managing to land a hit. As far as the GM and the other players could tell, there was nothing wrong with my build, and they certainly had no problems hitting things with their characters. Just the worst streak of dice luck ever. I actually ended up killing the character off out of frustration. (She could win an opposed grapple check like nobody's business though...one of the other PCs kept trying to pick her up as a means of restraint. :P ) This is also how I learned there is nothing to dice mysticism, because believe me, it didn't matter how many new sets I bought or whose dice I borrowed.
Dice aren't true random number generators for a variety of reasons, but they're good enough for this kind of application. It's just that the sample sizes are generally pretty small, and people forget that while statistics makes statements about probability in large data sets, any outcome is as likely as any other for any particular individual roll. So the fact that you've rolled badly all night has no bearing on whether your next roll will be good or bad.
If you have a real worry about your dice rolling poorly, there's no reason you can't substitute a computerized generator (though some of the same caveats apply).
As far as ways to cheat, well, obviously I don't endorse it but I've seen my brother-in-law reliably roll any number he wanted on a d6 and a d20 as a party trick. So it's possible to learn how to roll well or poorly, which is why some groups insist on dice tower devices to randomize rolls.
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My regular GMs have special 'mulligan' rules for me, because I roll so terribly. If I roll a character, and it ends up with a net 0 or less total attribute modifier (as in, the total of all my attribute modifiers added together wasn't at least +1), I got to reroll, for instance.
I particularly loathed random character generation in Villains & Vigilantes, where one rolled for the number of powers one had, and then rolled on charts for what the powers were. I ended up with a character with a single power, in a game with people with four to seven powers, some of which were better than my one... (So it was like being the Invisible Kid, on a team with Superman, Martian Manhunter and Jean Grey!)
On the other hand, even the luckier players have occasional horrible streaks, such as the ranger who rolled six 1's on attack rolls in a single 10 round combat.
I have had two or three sessions where I haven't rolled over a 1. One session-- it consisted entirely of a single combat on a mountain-- I actually was a non-factor in the fight. I did not land a single hit or make a single check-- except for 3 climb checks to climb up rocks to follow other party members. I had a feat to give party members a +2 to Reflex saves when I was adjacent to them-- we were hit by an AoE lightning effect, and everyone at the table rolled an 18 or higher, except for me-- who rolled a 3. I then charged the enemy and was instantly killed by a critical.
Fun.
I particularly loathed random character generation in Villains & Vigilantes, where one rolled for the number of powers one had, and then rolled on charts for what the powers were. I ended up with a character with a single power, in a game with people with four to seven powers, some of which were better than my one... (So it was like being the Invisible Kid, on a team with Superman, Martian Manhunter and Jean Grey!)
I had a character once who had Ice Control and Incorporeality that was it.
In a party with a character who rolled 6 powers, had enhanced strength, stamina and enhanced intelligence, invulnerability and magnetic control. Another character had Absorption, but the DM let them absorb everything on the table. So they had 1 power that acted as 6 powers. They also had Fire Control and like Emotion Control and some other powers.
The first one could beat anyone at the table in combat, and the second one could beat anyone in the world with creative application of their powers... and chose to run away from almost every fight.
I don't remember making a single positive contribution to any combat.
At least I wasn't the guy who rolled a 100 and the DM made him the power of "Random Power." He always rolled garbage-- Wings, more likely than not, and there are still jokes in our games shouting 'WINGS!' as a response to world-shattering power. The one time he rolled something good-- Regeneration-- the DM cut off his head and let him spend three hours real time watching the fight. The other time?
The gal with absorption stole it...
One of my players has a yellow D20 with which I have never seen him roll higher than a 10!
When I DM and the BBEG has to roll a saving throw, about half the time I roll a 1. When I play a group of mooks of which my players are sure they could never hit them, I usually roll on average 2 or 3 crits, and several times I have rolled 2 or 3 20s in a row.
Of course this must be coincidence!?
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So who thinks some people just roll better or worse? And who thinks they have certain dice that they can count on to roll well, or poorly? And have you run any probability tests on your dice, or on yourself? If so, what were the results?
This is truth, tied in thoroughly with your personal gaming ki/ka/karma/mojo/what-have-you, that of your character, and the personality - benevolent or malevolent - of your dice. Jason, for example, just invested in a set that refuses to roll above "2," and has long kept a moon die tied up that tries to communicate numerologically whenever it gets a second free (but that as little bearing as far as predictability goes). Erik's character Ostog rolls one crit per session pretty reliably. My bard Styrian rolls only odd numbers and 4s - in keeping with his mystery and misfortune reputation. Sutter has never made an unaided save against ever. Ever. Sean... I don't think he uses dice - he probably uses chits or cards or little ivory zodiac figurines in some system that only makes sense to him, but I'm sure is statistically far more reliable. Stephen, on the other hand, uses threats... and follows through... criminally so. Seems to work.
I find my dice like cool dark spaces, the smell of dust, and - ugh - Lionel Richie (we all do what we have to do to roll 20s), but everyone should experiment with what works for them and their favorite dice.
That was easily the funniest thing I read all day!
In a game this past Sunday, one player rolled so many 20's, he started keeping track by marking them down on a piece of scrap paper. I don't remember the final number, but it had to have been well over 25 20's in roughly a six hour session. Freakin' uncanny!
I tend to roll well, but I seem to ALWAYS roll horribly for initiative. Pretty typical initiative for us:
DM: OK, roll for initiative everyone. What are your totals?
Rod: I got an 17
Mitch: Woo hoo - 22
Eric: 21
Marc: (heavy sigh) ... 3
I roll well.
Or, I should say, I have rolled well, perhaps will not roll as well in the future because I believe in statistical odds, but...
I have rolled well for a decade or more. Better than anybody I've met.
I think maybe one player has rolled 3 20s in a row.
I have done it with some frequency.
When a PC needs to live, or when I roll the party's luck, but have an inkling for a wandering monster, I'll roll several '1s', . Followed by a 20 for severity of said monster. (Two 1s for luck and two 20s for severity led to Red Dragon from Fire Giant Hall coming out and attacking them in their Rope Trick. They had provoked it earlier, so it made sense for it to track. Near TPK, but they TPed out, intact.)
I roll to stabilize in secret, so healers don't metagame (w/o the player being allowed to say how far he dropped). Most everybody stabilizes. Often at -9. (I scar people who bleed this far, and I've scarred a lot of people, more than I've killed.)
Apologies for those who've heard this before, but I rolled 3 20s the first time I rolled in the open. One player commented about how I really do roll that extremely. Did he think I was fudging?
Maybe. So I started rolling in the open. Always.
That was early in 3.0.
The luck's still going.
Or is it? Maybe I've just bought dice rounded just right.
I've appreciated the luck, and the wonderful drama it's caused. It may have spoiled me, but I really don't believe in it or its future.
But many of my players do.
Some even have built characters or made choices to account for my high number of crits.
Player 1 "You're dead."
Player 2 "What do you mean? What are the odds?" Looks at me. "Oh."
Me, rolling crits in front of them. "You're dead."
Player 1 "You knew better..."
Tee hee. :)
(This is one reason I use a variant hero point system. Round one (of 20+) in "Against the Giants" vs. Hill Giant feast, charged Cleric killed by axe crit. Thankfully, hero points prevented the crit part.)
Could be I'm Irish. ;)
I think those who put the most investment in Initiative, roll the lowest when it matters. 25, 22, 26, Finale 9...
True/False?
Reminds me of a MtG comment, that it always seems like the all-Black player lands a Dark Ritual with a Hypnotic Specter. Always.
If I recall, the odds are 1/4 or less.
But the severity of the event makes it seem more common.
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I once tracked my d6 rolls over the course of a 40k campaign, after having an argument on just how bad my die rolls were.
With over a thousand die rolls, my average came out to about 2.3.
The person I was arguing with tracked his as well, he came out with an average of 3.6 over the course of the same campaign.
Some people will statistically be 'lucky' while others will be 'unlucky'.
Imagine that you have a set of 3d6. You roll them 1,000,000,000 times. Most of those rolls will be 9-13. However, some of them will be 3-4, and some will be 17-18, but those will be much rarer.
Now imagine you have a group of 1,000,000,000 people and you tell them all to roll 100d20.
Most of them will roll 1100-1200 total on those 100 dice. However, when you plot the bell curve, some of those 1,000,000,000 will roll 100-400, and some of them will roll 1700-2000.
Now combine the fact that statistics actually predict that certain people, even with fair dice, WILL be 'lucky' or 'unlucky', with the fact that in an average game session the important rolls get magnified. If you attack a monster 20 times, none of those rolls matter... unless one of them crits for max damage and finishes the monster off. The crit is then self selected as a 'lucky' roll, despite all the other rolls around it.
Similarly, a failed save at a critical moment is magnified many times in perceived importance, making the roll appear 'unlucky'.
Given that you're playing with dice, and rolling a lot of them, a 'statiscal anomaly' becomes a 'statistical certainty'. You roll enough dice and if wacky stuff DOESN'T happen, then statistically something is wrong.
Craps dice can be cheated and precise results can be achieved with extensive practice. Craps dice, as in tested for balance, straight edged, casino dice. And I'm talking about live games, in a casino, where they must hit and bounce off a wall. And this is with casino managers, eyes in the sky, security and tons of money on the line. With lots of practice, some skill, and study, the game can be beaten by the very best in the professional gambling world.
So let's move to RP gaming. Many dice have rounded edges. Most dice-makes have no quality control for balance. Heck I've seen dice that do not even properly randomize opposite numbers. There is (in most games I've played) not a lot of environmental quality control about how the dice are rolled (such as in a casino) or the surfaces they are rolled on.
So do I think some gamers can cheat and control their dice to roll well consistently? Yes, absolutely they can. No doubt in my mind. I can. And if they are REALLY good at it, a casual observer will never know.
Disclaimer: And just for the record, just because I can control dice with much more probability than they should have, I don't do so in games that involve dice as an element of chance. Dice are present as a random number generator. I prefer to use them as such.
I think those who put the most investment in Initiative, roll the lowest when it matters. 25, 22, 26, Finale 9...
True/False?
Reminds me of a MtG comment, that it always seems like the all-Black player lands a Dark Ritual with a Hypnotic Specter. Always.
If I recall, the odds are 1/4 or less.
But the severity of the event makes it seem more common.
Actually, MtG is an exceptionally bad example of randomization in card games, at least in tournament play. The large majority of tournament decks are set up around particular and specific card combinations, and because of the low card numbers needed in a deck (60, last time I was playing), and the ability to have multiple copies of each card for the combo in your deck (up to 4), a skilled deck builder can create a deck which is virtually certain to produce the desired combination within their first five turns of play.
Of course, many of them won't even wait that long, and will instead repeatedly mulligan their opening hand until most or all of the needed cards are present in it.
Forgive me for my lack of clarity. I meant on the opening hand, not over the course of the game, and can't account for mulligan cheaters.
Considering we're comparing MtG to a d20, and a normal deck is 52, I'm not sure why '60' is low...But I'm not talking about odds, but rather the 'feeling' that the opponent would get the Hypno/Dk. Ritual combo ALL the time, when it's actually rare in the initial 7 out of 60 having one of the 4 Hypnos and 4 Dk. Rituals.
That same 'feeling' applies to RPGs where d20s can feel lucky or unlucky because of particularly dramatic moments when they roll poorly.
I may roll well all night, but if I roll poorly when I 'need' it, then it may 'feel' like I'm rolling terribly, when I'm not.
I might even be hitting each round, but one failed save, and 'crap!'.
I find Artanthos' example funny because he certainly is unlucky, and proved it.
(Sorry...)
;)
It's normal for people, I think, to believe in causality coming from the roller, and 'jinxing' and so forth, but odds are somebody rolls badly and somebody rolls well, or appears too. I think if we tracked die rolls more closely, we'd see less belief in good or bad rollers and 'luck' (good or bad), but maybe that's just the statistician in me.
There is no getting around that fact that some players roll better than others.
However, the error comes when people use these past events to predict future events. We are pattern-seeking mammals by evolution, so when we see someone roll better than someone else, we mistakenly believe that the pattern should continue.
As a DM, my rolls are inversely proportional to the CR rating of the creature I pitch against the PCs.
Dragons, bad a** fiends: can't roll anything to save their life, but fear my 1 HD goblins!
go figure...