A while back, while demonstrating the difference between MtG spin-down dies and RPG d20s, I used the red d20 from the Beginner Box set. To my surprise, only a few sides actually added up to 21 on opposite sides--where as on all my other d20s, all opposite sides add up to 21. I thought mine was a defect until I checked the second copy of the BB I own and it was the same.
Anyone else notice this?
yes it drives me crazy
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As long as it properly cut and balanced it doesn't make any difference.
Maybe they're counter dice instead of gambling dice?
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Any have any actual stats on whether or not the arrangement of the tiny, shallow numbers (not pips) on modern polyhedral plastic dice have any significant impact on the randomness of the die? Or is that just a precedent decided by on person at a dice company 40 years ago?
(Story: Mom makes a pot roast. Her kid asks her why she cuts a tiny bit off one end of it before she puts it in the pot. Mom says she learned that from her mother. Mom goes to grandma and asks her about it, grandma says she learned that from HER mother. They call up great-grandma and ask her about it, and she says, "oh, the pot I had was too small to fit the entire roast, so I'd cut a little bit off the end to make it fit.")
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Okay, as long as you understand that your anecdotal experience is merely an impression based on your overall memory of hundreds of dice rolls of various dice, not statistical data that can be analyzed. So far... no actual evidence that the positioning of the numbers has any effect on the die's probability.
(Note that if 20-opposite-1 on a d20 is the "balanced" way to distribute the numbers, the die should actually be more likely to roll a 20 than a 1, because the 20-face has more material carved out of it than the 1-face does, which means the 1-face is heavier, which means the 1-face should tend to end up on the bottom of the die, which means the 20-face should end up on top more.)
(Note that this also means that variations in the font used on a die, such as serif or sanserif, should have an impact on its probability as well.)
(As would whether or not you mark the bottom of a 6 or a 9 with a dot or an underline.)
(As would heavily-decorated dice like these ones.)
(As would whether the numbers were inked, painted, or colored in with a crayon, all of which would have different weight contributions to the die.)
(And note that I don't think any of these things really play a significant part in the bias of a die.)
(And I'm a guy who wrote a program in the 1980s to use the chi-square method to test whether or not a die is biased...)
(In other words, I think you have bigger things to worry about than questions like, "does the relative positioning of the faces on my dice mean I'm rolling lower overall?" Your character's hair color has about as much impact on your dice rolls. :p)
The main reason for spindowns not being legal for play in events at places like GenCon is because crafty players can manipulate the dice to roll certain ways, attaining a higher roll more often.
Spindowns are also not legal for determining who goes first at game tournaments for games like Magic the Gathering (who ironically are probably the BIGGEST producers of Spindowns in the world) for the exact same reason.
The numbers cut out of dice, as well, do in fact alter the rolls to a small degree (fractions of a percent to certain rolls).
The surest way to counteract this problem would be to have geometrically perfect dice with no beveling at all, nor any painted-on numbers on the dice, either - in other words, to have, say, a purple d20 with gold numbers built into the faces themselves, with the whole thing be made of the exact same material for both body and numbers, and all sides geometrically perfect and even.
This was much harder to do years ago, or even impossible, really, but now with 3D printing technology it's actually quite simple (in theory) to produce mathematically "perfect" dice that will give you absolutely even rolls every single time.
I actually read a few scientific studies on this back in the day; I recall the statistics being that cheap dice actually rolling more 1s (GW dice being brought up as a prime offender).
Not sure if anyone did any on d20s tho. Feels like because of the massively smaller surface area ratio per side compared to a d6, small inaccuracies in the weight distribution because of uneven drilling/etching contribute less to the result of the roll.
Part of this comes from how cheap dice are tumbled - they are polished like rocks and their edges are rounded. This often leads to imperfect edging and significantly greater rolling as well.
Cheap dice roll forever. Good dice, like Chessex dice, will roll only a few times before settling because of their sharper edges. Laser-shaped dice will probably not roll at all unless you apply enough force to purposefully MAKE them roll.
It's not how they roll...it's how they spin!
Anyone else spin dice occasionally?
D4's are the hardest!
D4's are easy to spin if you know how. :P
The main reason for spindowns not being legal for play in events at places like GenCon is because crafty players can manipulate the dice to roll certain ways, attaining a higher roll more often.
This. When used in a properly randomized fashion (dice cups, dice towers, or being rolled by a player who is not trying to cheat), a spindown is going to be as a fair as a similarly-made 'regular' die.
But a spindown is much easier to cheat with, because all the 'good' numbers are clustered together. You still can't get a 20 on demand, any more than with a regular die, but it gets a lot easier to guarantee a 10+.
I haven't taken a close look at my beginner's box dice, but they aren't spindowns. There is no reason fair dN's must have opposite sides that equal N+1, as long as they are 'random-ish'.
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I haven't taken a close look at my beginner's box dice, but they aren't spindowns. There is no reason fair dN's must have opposite sides that equal N+1, as long as they are 'random-ish'.
This careless attitude towards proper randomization is unacceptable to me. I demand that a new printing of the Beginner Box be issued immediately containing a randomization tool based on the observation and collapse of a quantum wave function.
To see if a particular die is good or not, the easiest test is a Chi² or chi square test. There are calculators for this online or you can use a statistics package. I've checked all dice I regularly use. All sides are equally likely to show up.
To me, having the opposite sides add up is important, not for any "real" reason but for mystical reason. I even stopped using some very beautiful dice becaue they were wrong in this regard.
Chief Technical Officer
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Ultra•PRO makes these high-precision aluminum dice... the pips are laser-etched, and they have varied the depth of the etching on each face to ensure that the amount of material removed from the single pip on the "1" face is equal to the total amount of material removed from the six pips on the "6" face, and so on.
Sadly, they only offer d6s right now. Also, they're about $10/die. But they're pretty awesome.
Apologize for the thread necro. But I was checking out my d20's today, comparing my dice from different brands, and discovered the beginner box dice set is actually Koplow's opaque red dice set. It's the exact same font and numbering.
TLDR: Beginner Box dice = Koplow opaque red dice
Mystery solved.
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Chief Technical Officer
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For whatever reason, a number of companies that manufacture polyhedral dice (especially those in China) have identical molds. I don't have any clue whether that mold originated at Koplow, or in China. (If you look closely, especially comparing the digits "3" and "1," you'll find that there are actually several fonts in use across the set.)