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ZebulonCrispi
2007-04-01, 04:03 PM
While some of us may deny it, we all know deep inside that the dice are plotting against us. Chance is but a minor factor in how often we score those critical hits - our dice know what we want, and it is fully in their power to provide or deny it.

A similar phenomenon is the inscrutable force of Dice Karma, which we'll all try to believe in despite all evidence to the contrary. Five natural 1's in a row? Clearly the die is due for a whole slew of 20's soon.

This leads me to thinking. Which is a better way to store dice: all on their highest roll, so that they'll grow accustomed to rolling high, or all on 1, to accumulate valuable karma in your absence?

(April Foolsy? Sort of!)

Ranis
2007-04-01, 04:05 PM
That's....umm.....wha?

Get your religious banter out of my D&D!

Hamster_Ninja
2007-04-01, 04:24 PM
I've found that if you store them with the 20 up, d20s begin to feel you only want them for the high numbers. A more middle number helps them know you appreciate them even when they only give you a 4 or 10.

Inyssius Tor
2007-04-01, 04:30 PM
I leave them with 8 facing up. It's directly adjacent to 20 (in case the luck "settles"), but it doesn't actually run the risk of "airing out" all of the good luck.

...:smallconfused:

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-01, 04:31 PM
...god, I hate Magical Thinking.

Green Bean
2007-04-01, 04:32 PM
Rule One of Dice Karma: You do not talk about dice karma

:smallbiggrin:

Morty
2007-04-01, 04:37 PM
Dice Karma=screwed dice.
Really, if some numbers are rolled more often than others, that means you have to buy new dice. It happened to me, my d20 used to roll 9 20% of times.

Swordguy
2007-04-01, 04:50 PM
You want to store them 20's up. Dice have a high viscocity - like glass. Therefore, like glass, they have a tendency to settle over long periods. As the plastic settles away from the upper face (the 20), more weight will be distributed to the bottom of the die and thus make it more likely that a 20 is rolled (due to it being lighter because of having less plastic).

Inyssius Tor
2007-04-01, 04:53 PM
Dice Karma=screwed dice.
Really, if some numbers are rolled more often than others, that means you have to buy new dice. It happened to me, my d20 used to roll 9 20% of times.

Well, the idea isn't to roll 20's all the time; the idea is to roll a 20 right now (when you're surrounded by giants/bluffing your way out of execution/playing dead so the chuul will drop you and go away) and then roll a 1 later; perhaps on a skill check at DC 50 in a skill you have no ranks in.

martyboy74
2007-04-01, 04:54 PM
You want to store them 20's up. Dice have a high viscocity - like glass. Therefore, like glass, they have a tendency to settle over long periods. As the plastic settles away from the upper face (the 20), more weight will be distributed to the bottom of the die and thus make it more likely that a 20 is rolled (due to it being lighter because of having less plastic).
(Was that dripping with sarcasm? If so, sorry about this post; my sarcasm senses need resetting.)

...glass doesn't flow....

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-01, 05:00 PM
Actually, glass does flow. It just flows very, very, very slowly. And not at room temperature.

JoeFredBob
2007-04-01, 05:02 PM
Edit: simuninjad

martyboy74
2007-04-01, 05:05 PM
Actually, glass does flow. It just flows very, very, very slowly. And not at room temperature.
Wait, not at room temperature? What do you mean by that? If you melt it it flows?

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-01, 05:09 PM
You don't have to actually melt it for it to start flowing slowly. If you liquefy it entirely, of course it'll flow.

Sage in the Playground
2007-04-01, 05:10 PM
(Was that dripping with sarcasm? If so, sorry about this post; my sarcasm senses need resetting.)

...glass doesn't flow....

Yes. It does. So slowly your pathetic human eyes can't detect it. Like continental drift.

EDIT: NINJA'D

Oh, well. Useless Fact: Glass is technically a liquid.

daggaz
2007-04-01, 05:11 PM
Glass flows at room temperature. Just VERY VERY slowly. Look at some old windows some time, the streaky, warped look is from glass flow, which of course happened at room temperature, nobody took those windows down and put them in an oven one day to get that effect.

Sage in the Playground
2007-04-01, 05:12 PM
Ninja City!!!!!!!

martyboy74
2007-04-01, 05:13 PM
The gospel of Wikipedia doth deny thou. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Glass_as_a_liquid)

Sage in the Playground
2007-04-01, 05:25 PM
The gospel of Wikipedia doth deny thou. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Glass_as_a_liquid)

Gospel? Dark, dead Elder Gods don't DO gospels.

Premier
2007-04-01, 05:26 PM
Back on topic: It doesn't matter. What DOES matter is that if you're playing around a table with a glass surface, you should first put a sheet of paper on it, and then roll the dice on the paper, not directly on the glass.

I'm speaking from experience.

Demented
2007-04-01, 05:34 PM
Unless you really hate that glass surface.

Arlanthe
2007-04-02, 04:29 AM
I had this brass D6 I carried around with me for awhile once. I want on a ride at the fair, and it fell out of my pocket, and hit a metal platform below with a big "CLUNK". I did find it later, but man that would have stung if it hit someone.

Was this off topic? I rolled a "4" that time.

The_Blue_Sorceress
2007-04-02, 07:05 AM
Before or during a game, I arrange my dice by type in eye-pleasing configurations, as if they had rolled the highest number. Now, I know that this has nothing to do with the fact that I routinely roll high, but it pleases me to think that it does.

As to your question of storage, the folks that say 20-up are backed by genuine science, so I'd agree with them. I, however, store my dice in a Crown Royal bag, and that seems to suit them just fine.

-Blue

Vik
2007-04-02, 07:47 AM
As it has been pointed, it won't flow.
But you'll slowly erode your dices by always putting them on the same side. Depending on how it erodes, it will affect the stats of your d20 ; as I see it, the way I usually put them on the table, it should widen the side you put them on, so that you effectively rise the probability to get the up side.

Telonius
2007-04-02, 08:20 AM
In yesterday's gaming session, on two separate occasions and with two separate players, a roll of 1 was immediately followed by a roll of 20. In a separate occurrence, another player rolled a 1. Trying again, immediately before he rolled, he said, "Let's try not to roll a 1 again, shall we? It's gotta even out." Of course, the die came up as a 1.

Chances of rolling two natural 1's in a row: 1 in 400. Make of it what you will.:smallbiggrin:

alchemy.freak
2007-04-02, 10:48 AM
Dice Karma works in mysterious ways: usually it accumulates for players when the odds are stacked against them.
for instance my players were screwed, i had them up against 2 much higher level terrorists armed with AK's and gave them unnatural CON scores so as that they would be hard to kill. i split my the players up so that two were separated and the remaining 3 were fighting the terrorists. yet these terrorists armed with AK's could not land a hit, every time i rolled it was under 10.

and the one guy in my party scores a crit with a hatchet and he was sneak attacking the terrorist( i know there is no sneak attack in CoC, but i gave it to the player for a reason) so he deals aboot 40 damage to the guy and kills him instantly.

my point here is, the dice karma showed itself when the odds of winning were very low. and helped them out a lot

Legoman
2007-04-02, 11:16 AM
In the last session I DM'ed, a player rolled 6 20's in the span of 10 rolls.

I however, rolled max damage with every attack against the party, and had he not, I would have had to think on the fly to work the TPK into the story.

Dice Karma balances it out. I'm just thankful that this all happened at level 3, not at level 17 when that player will have a vorpal sword.

Variable Arcana
2007-04-02, 12:29 PM
Neat Wikipedia link -- I'd always believed the glass-is-liquid thing.

And that 70-year experiment with the dripping pitch is incredibly cool.

Person_Man
2007-04-02, 12:33 PM
...god, I hate Magical Thinking.

I second that. I also hate animism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism), the belief that animals, plants, and inanimate objects have spirits/souls/magical energy that govern their existence.

The die does not hate you. It's not an evil die. The die was cast from the same plastic as a million other die, and unless there was some sort of physical mistake making your die, it is no better or worse then any other.

If an infinite number of monkeys typed on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, one of them would eventually write Eregon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eragon). If you keep rolling 1's on the same die, you're that monkey.

ZebulonCrispi
2007-04-02, 12:38 PM
I second that. I also hate animism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism), the belief that animals, plants, and inanimate objects have spirits/souls/magical energy that govern their existence.

The die does not hate you. It's not an evil die. The die was cast from the same plastic as a million other die, and unless there was some sort of physical mistake making your die, it is no better or worse then any other.

If an infinite number of monkeys typed on an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite amount of time, one of them would eventually write Eregon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eragon). If you keep rolling 1's on the same die, you're that monkey.
Statistically speaking, I'm sure everyone here is fully aware of how goddamn ridiculous the idea of dice karma is. We're not stupid. In the heat of battle, though, it's easy to let those age-old superstitions take hold of you. Also, it's fun to joke about.

Wolf53226
2007-04-02, 12:45 PM
Chances of rolling two natural 1's in a row: 1 in 400. Make of it what you will.:smallbiggrin:

Which happens to be the same exact odds of rolling any two numbers back to back. You know, when you rolled that 10 followed closely there by the 12, that was a 1 in 400 chance as well.:smallbiggrin:

And once you roll a 1, the next roll with a d20, has only a 1 in 20 chance of coming up a 1 again. :smallbiggrin:

Vik
2007-04-02, 12:57 PM
Which happens to be the same exact odds of rolling any two numbers back to back. You know, when you rolled that 10 followed closely there by the 12, that was a 1 in 400 chance as well.:smallbiggrin:

And once you roll a 1, the next roll with a d20, has only a 1 in 20 chance of coming up a 1 again. :smallbiggrin:What about if you roll it 2 times and roll a 1 every time ? 3 times ? 4 times ? 100 times ?
...
...
...
If I have to bet at 1:20, I bet on the 1, because it's very likely that the d20 is biased.
In fact, even if I see only one roll, I'll bet on that result. No d20 is a perfect random generator :smalltongue:

Wolf53226
2007-04-02, 01:34 PM
So what, are we now assuming that all dice are not random number generators? wouldn't that make all these games that we play that involve dice flawed at the very core of them making them pointless to play? Boy, that's a bad out look. :smallbiggrin:

While I agree with you that dice are not perfectly random number generators, mainly due to how they are made, we can say that absolutely nothing is a perfectly random number generator. Even computers which can simulate randomness, aren't truly random, for the numbers they generate are based on system time, or some other non-random event that the computer can measure. :smalltongue:

Vik
2007-04-02, 01:45 PM
While I agree with you that dice are not perfectly random number generators, mainly due to how they are made, we can say that absolutely nothing is a perfectly random number generator. Indeed. But my experience is that a good number of dices (like, the typical "my favorite d20" (*) ) are not even close to be good random number generators.
That and the fact that every time I hear someone saying "even if you rolled 100 times 20, you only have 1/20 to get 20 (or 1) on the 101th roll", I can't help to say that such an event would most likely lead anyone to think that something's wrong with that d20 :smallwink:

(*) : favorite dices are good examples, because they are oftenly chosen after several good rolls, and the player will change if they roll poorly too often.

Fhaolan
2007-04-02, 01:51 PM
I have vague memories of an old Dragon article that walked you through testing your dice for bias. Something about 'Chi Squared' I think. That was a *long* time ago though, so I can't give you an issue number.

LotharBot
2007-04-02, 04:50 PM
I hear someone saying "even if you rolled 100 times 20, you only have 1/20 to get 20 (or 1) on the 101th roll"

If the die is fair, then it's true -- no matter what you rolled over your last hundred, the chances that you'll roll a 20 are 1 in 20.

However, rolling a hundred 20s in a row should call into question the assumption "the die is fair". Which, of course, you can test by rollling it enough times.

Shotaro
2007-04-02, 05:08 PM
There are people in my guild who I swear are cursed - Take our current DM as a player he cant hit the broadside of a barn with a truestrike up (and he actually has somehow missed with truestrike up - in fact the poor git fumbled and killed a party member) as a DM - possible crit, crit missed 2 dmg. Or the meatshield who rolled 1 (fumble) 1 (oh poop) 1 (autocrit on a party member) - DAMAGE 2d6 1,1 2d8(Thunder) 1,1 2d10(Lightning)1,10 all tripled on the paladin. Then the CON poison kicked in on the poor tin can.. oh well at least we didn't go hungry for a while.

Jack_Simth
2007-04-02, 06:25 PM
Statistically, the person flipping the coin can call the result about 75% of the time. Which is why you have the other person call it while the coin is still in the air.

The die is not the random number generator.

The die obeys the laws of physics. In the vast majority of circumstances you will encounter, it follows the laws as laid out by Sir Issac Newton to within reasonable measurement. The die is exposed to a particular set of forces in a particular environment; it responds according to Newton's laws.

The "random" comes from the unknown forces involved - air currents, irregularities of the table, but mostly, the person rolling the die - because that's where the majority of the activity originates.

Oh - and dense dice are less affected by air currents, which is the most variable portion of the roll outside of the roller.

Your brain handles a lot of stuff that you don't deal with - the control and precision required in many everyday simple actions we all take for granted is actually quite amazing (if you're trying to duplicate it with a robot of some kind, you start to find out just how hard it is to, say, walk over slightly uneven terrain - a task a normal human doesn't even need to pay attention to). That section of your brain learns to do such things through practice and feedback. Die rolls included. Dice games in casinos have you throw the dice a long distance, and against a low wall, to maximize the variables to keep the dice as close to random as possible. If they didn't, they'd lose money so long as the game was winnable at all.

As it isn't controlled on a conscious level, your belief in what will happen can influence what the sub-conscious level of your brain does.

It's not the dice that hate you. It's you that hate yourself.

In theory, anyway.

Nerd-o-rama
2007-04-02, 06:55 PM
Personally? I store all mine on highest value. Even during combat while I'm waiting for my next turn to come around. Which is why I dislike sharing dice, but I get over that.

Mr. Simth does have a point, though. It's just impossible for a typical human to control dice results in a non-obvious manner without a hell of a lot of practice.

BrokenButterfly
2007-04-02, 07:39 PM
I also hate sharing dice, purely because I'm paranoid about them being lost or something. My lucky dice has the 20 coloured in, and it seems to roll better.

But as a DM, I tend to roll much better for monsters than when I use my own character as a player. Due to my D&D monster obsession, I want them to roll well against my players and so they generally do. Critical hits all round.

Jack_Simth
2007-04-02, 07:44 PM
Mr. Simth does have a point, though. It's just impossible for a typical human to control dice results in a non-obvious manner without a hell of a lot of practice.
You'd think so.

If you're referring to a "I will roll a 1, 2, 3, 4... and so on, in order" kind of thing, and do it every time, you're right.

But that's not how the level of control I'm talking about normally works. The coin toss is an aYou don't think about what's involved in walking - you just walk. You don't think about what's involved in running - you just run.

The coin-toss I mentioned is an actual example of something that's testable. If you're willing to accept the possibility of a non-total bias (the tosser calls it correctly about 75% of the time, not the 100% of total control nor the 50% of random chance), you can statistically measure the "skill" effect. Take the "lucky" person at your gaming table, hand him (or her) some d20's, and give her (or him) a favored treat (cookies, candy, beef jerky, whatever - it just needs to produce the "yummy" response in the subject, and not easily pall) for each 20 rolled. The first set is done by hand. Track 20's vs. Other Numbers through, oh, about a thousand rolls (the specific number doesn't matter, just that it be the same for all trials and that it be as large as is feasable - the larger, the better). If the die is "fair", you're expected to get 5% of them as 20's (for a thousand, that would be 50). Then repeat the process, having the "lucky" person roll not by hand, but by dice cup (prefferably on a different day - you want the subject hungry again). Do the same with the unlucky person at the table.

With no luck or skill, both sets of rolls will be basically 50 twenties (give or take; there will be some variance). With luck but no skill, both will be roughly equally off. With skill but no luck, the cup will be about 50 twenties while the hand will be off. With skill and luck, both will be off, but the hand rolls will be off more.

Don't tell the subject why you're doing this. Just do it. It's a favored treat, so it shouldn't be too hard to convince the subject if you're doing it right. Graph the results. Done this way, it's science (really!).

For a practical application, have the "unlucky" person at the table use a die cup. It'll help in many cases.

It also works for training.

Swordguy
2007-04-02, 09:19 PM
*chuckles*

I wondered how many people I'd get with the "dice r liquid" thing. April 1 was the perfect time to post it. :biggrin:

ZebulonCrispi
2007-04-02, 10:48 PM
Interestingly enough, in the next session I played after starting this thread, I scored three crits with a scythe, the last one doing over 200 damage.
These dice, they have good Karma.

Wolf53226
2007-04-02, 11:11 PM
Going against my obvious statistical comments earlier, I think that the karma thing goes both with the die and the person. I have watched one person be able to get good/decent roll after good/decent roll with a given die, then if another friend touches the die...instant streak of awful rolls. Maybe there is something to that, it is all in the way you roll it, but he always rolls like his character has a death wish.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-04-02, 11:14 PM
I have a method for getting good rolls. I communicate with the evil gods that inhabit the dice, and convince them that my constant rolling of natural 20's will completely ruin someone else's day. Thus am I granted the dark powers of high rolls.

TSGames
2007-04-02, 11:24 PM
I have a method for getting good rolls. I communicate with the evil gods that inhabit the dice, and convince them that my constant rolling of natural 20's will completely ruin someone else's day. Thus am I granted the dark powers of high rolls.
All this time I've stuck to the whole sacrificing virgins on an alter made of the bones of puppies on every full moon. ARE YOU SAYING I COULD HAVE JUST PRAYED!!!???

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-04-03, 12:02 AM
Man, sounds like you've been had by some of the younger evil gods. They like to pretend you need these elaborate sacrifices and rituals and stuff just to see you do it all like a sucker. The whole time, they're just laughing and laughing.

TSGames
2007-04-03, 12:09 AM
Man, sounds like you've been had by some of the younger evil gods. They like to pretend you need these elaborate sacrifices and rituals and stuff just to see you do it all like a sucker. The whole time, they're just laughing and laughing.
Man, I've been duped. I guess, *sigh* I could always give it up and take my altar to the antique roadshow or something.

Appraiser:So this altar was used for human sacrifices?
Me:Yes
Appraiser:By what culture?
Me:By me, last Tuesday.
Appraiser:(Gestures for security guard)
Me:So are we talkin' around two-thousand or closer to ten?

Arlanthe
2007-04-03, 01:42 AM
Anyone who says dice are "lucky" or "unlucky" is crazy, or has bad dice. I dare anyone who thinks they are lucky to roll 10D20 here and prove it.

Snooder
2007-04-03, 01:55 AM
Personally my D&D group has come to the conclusion that the best way to imbue dice with good karma is to use them while DMing. These so-called "DM Dice" have been noted for amazing feats such as rolling 3 18s in character gen (with Hackmaster 3d6 no less). Not to mention unholy amounts of crits. Seriously, when monster have to crit to hit you, but end up hitting you five times, its the DM Dice.

its_all_ogre
2007-04-03, 05:58 AM
i roll much better when dming, especially when players are being stupid!

martyboy74
2007-04-03, 06:14 AM
DM dice are much better. One time, in one of our games, (17th level adventure), a highly important character was killed by the vampire spawn.
DM: 20...20...20...
Sorry guys, he just got auto-killed...

Arlanthe
2007-04-03, 06:23 AM
364. The Absurd Dice Liar: Tells outrageous stories about astronomically improbable dice events- of which they have many. "She rolled max damage on a full 10 die fireball! (1:60E6)"; "All four of us rolled 100%! (1:1.0E9); "No kidding, I rolled seven "ones" on attack rolls in a row! (1:1.28E9)"; "He rolled four eighteens on his first five natural stats rolls! (1:470E9)".

All having odds of millions or billions to one- yet have all been witnessed by the Absurd Dice Liar. Several times each, apparently.

*** Copy/pasted from thread "101+ Worse Kinds of Players", back in Feb. ***

its_all_ogre
2007-04-03, 06:29 AM
i play the dice game: grab a load of dice, roll them all, those that roll max put to one side, they are 'out'.
roll the rest, rinse and repeat.
if you do not roll max on at least one die you have to put one back in.

when you're hooked teach it to others. they'll hate you.

SpiderBrigade
2007-04-03, 08:32 AM
Anyone who says dice are "lucky" or "unlucky" is crazy, or has bad dice. I dare anyone who thinks they are lucky to roll 10D20 here and prove it.Oh, but that won't prove anything, because online dicerollers are soulless mechanisms and therefore immune to luck.

Arlanthe
2007-04-03, 11:34 AM
Oh, but that won't prove anything, because online dicerollers are soulless mechanisms and therefore immune to luck.

Ooooh, I see. They're like ghosts- allergic to skeptics.

Fine, all absurd dice claims are now suspect until twenty consecutive dice rolls are filmed on camera by whatever game, setting, person, pretend voodoo makes the cattywompus work. No "stitching" video together- must be contiguous.

Post it on YouTube and link here.

Swordguy
2007-04-03, 02:02 PM
364. The Absurd Dice Liar: Tells outrageous stories about astronomically improbable dice events- of which they have many. "She rolled max damage on a full 10 die fireball! (1:60E6)"; "All four of us rolled 100%! (1:1.0E9); "No kidding, I rolled seven "ones" on attack rolls in a row! (1:1.28E9)"; "He rolled four eighteens on his first five natural stats rolls! (1:470E9)".

All having odds of millions or billions to one- yet have all been witnessed by the Absurd Dice Liar. Several times each, apparently.

*** Copy/pasted from thread "101+ Worse Kinds of Players", back in Feb. ***

What happens when you have witnesses, and independent verification?

Fhaolan
2007-04-03, 02:06 PM
Ooooh, I see. They're like ghosts- allergic to skeptics.

Fine, all absurd dice claims are now suspect until twenty consecutive dice rolls are filmed on camera by whatever game, setting, person, pretend voodoo makes the cattywompus work. No "stitching" video together- must be contiguous.

Post it on YouTube and link here.

I used to be able to pull off twenty consecutive identical rolls on my original d20 (Came with the blue-box edition of D&D). Of course, that die was hideously biased. It would fairly consistantly roll a 15. Can't do it anymore, because that die (and the d12 from that set) developed a crack that caused some of the faces to flake off. The crack was probably existed long before the flaking, and was the cause of the bias.

Avenger337
2007-04-03, 04:45 PM
So what, are we now assuming that all dice are not random number generators? wouldn't that make all these games that we play that involve dice flawed at the very core of them making them pointless to play? Boy, that's a bad out look. :smallbiggrin:


Actually, you're right. Very few things in life are actually random. Most things are chaotic (and not the alignment kind). And yes, there is a difference.

Matthew
2007-04-03, 09:14 PM
Huh, I love Animism, but this not really the Forum. All I know is that my dice are feared and often questioned for their propensity to come up with the goods, but when tested appear to be entirely normal. Magic... it defies Science.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-03, 11:06 PM
Magical Thinking... it doesn't defy science.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-04-03, 11:11 PM
I actually just had a night of terrible luck with natural ones. The worst thing is that I had just read this stuff before I went to play (D&D Miniatures) and thought "Yeah, how many people ever see that many critical failures?".

And in total, I think I crit failed a dozen times in three games. Including twice in a row once. While only pulling two natural twenties. I wasn't happy. But I can very easily blame the dice, since I was borrowing a d20 today.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-03, 11:13 PM
Fortunately for us all, correlation does not equal causation.

Wehrkind
2007-04-03, 11:45 PM
Yea, I am with Bears on this one. I know logically that other than messed up dice (d6's with holes drilled for pips do roll 6's slightly more often, but not enough to really notice) dice just roll, and are unlikely to have bias.

I am going to have to get my father a cup for rolling though. I have never met someone who fails to get a positive result so frequently on plastic polyhedrons. It is uncanny, but I suspect well within averages. He might just be doing it wrong :-P It is just so consistent that it is hard to think otherwise.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-04-03, 11:52 PM
Dice aethiest or not, sometimes you just want to blame something. Dice make for great scapegoats.

Jamie Fameflame
2007-04-03, 11:59 PM
Personally my D&D group has come to the conclusion that the best way to imbue dice with good karma is to use them while DMing. These so-called "DM Dice" have been noted for amazing feats such as rolling 3 18s in character gen (with Hackmaster 3d6 no less). Not to mention unholy amounts of crits. Seriously, when monster have to crit to hit you, but end up hitting you five times, its the DM Dice.

- ARGH! True!!! We had a few of these dreaded dices in our roleplaying guild a few years back, and when the guild were closed down, due to players moving away, the hunt for the dice were on!! Not surprisingly, the two most potent ones were missing... And no-one have ever seen them again...

It's most people's belief that they were spirited away, and are in the possesion of one of us, but no-one will admit that he has them, of fear of reprisals, confiscation and finally, destruction of said artifacts. Think Mount Doom-like scenes here...

They truly were feared :smalleek:

Wehrkind
2007-04-04, 12:11 AM
I agree man. Knowing something, and desperately wanting to believe otherwise definitely go hand in hand here.

"This time, will be different!"

There are definitely times when the chances just seem impossible (rolling a 1 or 2 21 rolls out of 24 to see if a demon prince of Khorne goes berserk, rolling 3+ 21 rolls out of 24 for Khorn berserkers in the same way.) I suspect though that looking at the total rolls for those games, it would come down to being about average (I couldn't roll a 5+ to wound in combat to save my Sister's butts, but rolled a hella lot of 6's with the blessed bolter.)

Arlanthe
2007-04-04, 05:20 AM
What happens when you have witnesses, and independent verification?

I require direct evidence. Quite frankly, people are full of cr@p.

The "people are being drugged and their kidneys stolen" urban myth had "witnesses" and "independent verification" for awhile too. Also, it's amazing how people deceive themselves when they want to believe something. It's been pretty well identified in sociology that stories "escalate" in people's minds and become "fish stories", so to speak, much grander than the original event. People have been filmed telling stories toa camera where the evidence could later be analyzed. People were shocked to see how they... stretched the truth, often a lot, and didn't even realize it. (See sociology book: A Pack of Lies).

Why not capture your "lucky dice" on video, of if you are a "lucky person", roll publicly here in the forums? Prove it, or it's just urban dice legend.

SpartacusThe2nd
2007-04-04, 07:21 AM
I really hate you guys for trying to understand the Way of The Dice!...

martyboy74
2007-04-04, 07:54 AM
I really hate you guys for trying to understand the Way of The Dice!...

Is that like The Heart of the Cards?

Dark
2007-04-04, 11:19 AM
Anyone who says dice are "lucky" or "unlucky" is crazy, or has bad dice. I dare anyone who thinks they are lucky to roll 10D20 here and prove it.
If dice are "lucky" or "unlucky" then that means they're bad dice. Not having an even distribution of probabilities is bad. You're committing a tautology. But, for some reason, you also seem to doubt the existence of bad dice. Why? It's not like they're precision manufactured.

As an aside, "rolling" using online servers is a completely different mechanism. It has little relevance to a discussion of actual dice.

Swordguy
2007-04-04, 11:55 AM
I require direct evidence. Quite frankly, people are full of cr@p.

The "people are being drugged and their kidneys stolen" urban myth had "witnesses" and "independent verification" for awhile too. Also, it's amazing how people deceive themselves when they want to believe something. It's been pretty well identified in sociology that stories "escalate" in people's minds and become "fish stories", so to speak, much grander than the original event. People have been filmed telling stories toa camera where the evidence could later be analyzed. People were shocked to see how they... stretched the truth, often a lot, and didn't even realize it. (See sociology book: A Pack of Lies).

Why not capture your "lucky dice" on video, of if you are a "lucky person", roll publicly here in the forums? Prove it, or it's just urban dice legend.

Why I asked is that Karen at the CLUE files (dumpshock archives) phoned and emailed the rest of my gaming group after we had a guy roll 28 ones on 28 dice during a Shadowrun game to verify it. Never seen anything like it before or since (been gaming in some form or another since 1984). I happened back in the summer of '00, so getting it on video for you is gonna be trickey.

Her writeup on the letter I sent is here (http://archive.dumpshock.com/CLUE/ShowCLUE.php3?page=casefile25.htm)

EDIT: The webpage above was written in the fall of 2000. As it's been in a fixed print form there's no chance of imaginative escalation.

Bobbis
2007-04-04, 12:33 PM
I have a dice I like to call "Ol' Bluey"...namely because it's a blue die, but that's besides the point. I consider it my lucky dice because in pinch situations it's never failed me, and I've done some hilarious things with it out of game.

I was talking to my roommate (who doesn't do PnP games) about luck, at which point I pulled out Ol' Bluey. I proceed to roll it on his desk, and get a 20. He just looks at me with a "no f---ing way" face, and proceeds to scoop it up and roll it. I think he got a 13 or something. I then proceeded to pick up Ol' Bluey and stuck it in my pocket; 'cause that was a damn lucky roll.

Arlanthe
2007-04-04, 12:38 PM
If dice are "lucky" or "unlucky" then that means they're bad dice. Not having an even distribution of probabilities is bad. You're committing a tautology. But, for some reason, you also seem to doubt the existence of bad dice. Why? It's not like they're precision manufactured.

As an aside, "rolling" using online servers is a completely different mechanism. It has little relevance to a discussion of actual dice.

True, there are two topics floating about. "Luck", and "dice". Dice seem to be predominant, but X or Y person being lucky has come up too.

As far as "bad dice", sure they exist, but I don't think even a warped D20 could cause a certain number to appear more than twice as often.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 12:39 PM
Magical Thinking... it doesn't defy science.

True, but Magic does

Arlanthe
2007-04-04, 01:34 PM
True, but Magic does

All Magic: The Gathering posts should go in "other games" forums, tyvm. :P

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" ~Douglas Adams

Matthew
2007-04-04, 01:47 PM
All Magic: The Gathering posts should go in "other games" forums, tyvm. :P

Veh?


"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" ~Douglas Adams

Apparently not.

kamikasei
2007-04-04, 08:04 PM
I wonder if numbers have ever been run as to just how many rolls your average gamer will make in, say, a year? Some of those "astronomical probability" rolls look less improbable if there were 30,000 other rolls made either side that didn't draw any comment. Remember also that any specific set of results on a given number of rolls is as astronomically unlikely as any other - but one of them always occurs anyway.


If dice are "lucky" or "unlucky" then that means they're bad dice. Not having an even distribution of probabilities is bad. You're committing a tautology. But, for some reason, you also seem to doubt the existence of bad dice. Why? It's not like they're precision manufactured.

Obviously it's true that some dice are, due to poor manufacture or whatever, biased and therefore not true RNGs. Such a dice is, in fact, "bad"; if it consistently rolls low, you should replace it with a correctly-balanced one, and if it consistently rolls high, you should replace it with a correctly-balanced one anyway, since it's more honest. It's the people who think a properly-weighted dice will roll differently depending on the person using it, the person's mood, and how badly a particular result is desired or feared, who I think the GP has a problem with.

Erom
2007-04-04, 08:29 PM
When I was younger, and didn't understand that this was indicative of an unfair die, I used to have a "good enough" d20 that used to roll 15's about 1/4 of the time. It was a pretty reliable way to clear moderate difficulty checks.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 08:30 PM
True, but Magic does

Science shows us How Stuff Works. Defy that, and you wind up with... something that can't work.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 09:28 PM
Surely the very definition of magic?

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 09:37 PM
So, um, what's your point? Because it sounds like your argument that magic works is that magic can't work.

Cybren
2007-04-04, 09:41 PM
I had a neat trick with d6's that would let me get a 6 50% of the time. It caused a lot of swearing when playing risk.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 09:48 PM
So, um, what's your point? Because it sounds like your argument that magic works is that magic can't work.

Magic doesn't make sense if you analyse it with Science. Jeebers, you'd think that was obvious. Magic defies Scientific Analysis because it is Magic.

Cybren
2007-04-04, 09:52 PM
But uhm
If magic does something and we can explain and control or atleast observe consistent results to be able to classify it as something such as magic (that is an ordered label) then it is itself able to be studied scientificly.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 09:53 PM
Except, whatever you call it, it has to work somehow. When we say something happens, that actually means certain physical processes occur. If you want to manipulate them, you're going to need a way to do it. If that way has no way of working, it won't work--period.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 09:53 PM
No, magic doesn't have consistant results, that's the whole point. If it were observably consistant or you were able to apply laws to it, it wouldn't be magic.

Er, no, that's exactly why magic is magic. It doesn't have to work to any set of scientific laws. It's not explicable.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 09:54 PM
...conclusion: magic is impossible.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 09:55 PM
No, it's scientifically impossible.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 09:56 PM
I... what do you think science IS, exactly? How can something be "scientifically impossible" but still "possible"? When things happen, that means certain physical processes take place. We know how those processes work.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 10:00 PM
What do you think Magic is? Magic is impossible by the laws of anything we understand to be possible. If something is scientifically possible or explicable, it's not Magic. Science is the denial of the supernatural (i.e. the not possible), not a method of explaining it.

[Edit] When Spock says "It's not scientifically possible Captain," yet is witnessing the event he is describing, there are two possibilities. Science is yet to explain it or it cannot be explained through science because it is beyond mortal understanding.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 10:05 PM
"Magic" is a term for people doing impossible things. It's got a bunch more associations, of course. The thing about impossible things is that they're just what they say they are: not possible.

There's no such thing as "scientifically possible". Things are just plain possible or not. Again: if something happens, molecules move around, energy gets transferred, et cetera. That's what "things happening" means. If the laws of physics don't allow it (and they allow some pretty remarkable things, see quantum mechanics), it just can't happen--in any way, no matter what. If something happens, obviously it's possible--which means the laws of physics allow it (and, in extreme circumstances, we might've been understanding them wrong).

Matthew
2007-04-04, 10:06 PM
Yeah, which is why Magic is not explicable or possible. If it were to exist, this would remain true.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 10:07 PM
Um, "if it were to exist"? Something can't both exist and be impossible, by definition.

PaladinBoy
2007-04-04, 10:14 PM
I think that some people are just lucky with dice. I also think I'm one of them. There is a reason that my brother and father really don't like playing dice games with me anymore.

However, at least in my case, this luck doesn't fall outside what statistical analysis says is possible. I think that's probably true in every case. Science and math predict that someone is gonna roll 6 20s in a row eventually. Someone has to be the guy who rolls those 20s. What do we call him? Lucky.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 10:14 PM
That is what Magic is, a contradiction. It's a paradox. If it were to exist it wouldn't be possible, but if it's not possible, it cannot exist. It's similar to Free Will and Determinism, they can't both be right, but some people think that they are. The traditional answer to this unreconcilable contradiction, is that it is not explicable, we are not capable of explaining it as mortals (and never will be). Time Travel would be another example. It's not possible to go back and kill your father, but it happens in literature and fantasy. It is impossible, but it happens in those fantasy worlds without explanation as to why.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 10:16 PM
No, that's empty philosophizing. There's no contradiction. It's not possible for it to exist. If it were to exist, there would be a paradox. Paradoxes are impossible. Therefore, it doesn't exist. It's not a contradiction, it's just that there's only one option.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 10:19 PM
Well, you are entitled to your opinion, of course, but simply labelling something empty philosophy does not make it so.

Time Travel would be another example. It's not possible to go back and kill your father, but it happens in literature and fantasy. It is impossible, but it happens in those fantasy worlds without explanation as to why. Magic is the same thing.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 10:22 PM
Well, you are entitled to your opinion, of course, but simply labelling something empty philosophy does not make it so.
It's empty philosophy because it's a bunch of words strung together without any regard for reason. It doesn't really mean anything. It doesn't explain itself.


Time Travel would be another example. It's not possible to go back and kill your father, but it happens in literature and fantasy. It is impossible, but it happens in those fantasy worlds without explanation as to why. Magic is the same thing.Yes, it happens in literature and in fantasy. Note how those aren't real life, which is what I'm talking about. Time travel is, incidentally, also impossible in real life.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 10:24 PM
That's the idea. It's not supposed to explain itself. It just means there is no answer.

Well, then, we are talking at cross purposes, because I do not believe in magic or time travel either. Magic is impossible. It can only exist in fantasy and literature, where it cannot be explained by science, because it is impossible.

Viscount Einstrauss
2007-04-04, 10:33 PM
Magic is the name for the unexplainable. When it's explained, it stops being magic and starts being physics.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 10:35 PM
Nah, if it can be explained it was never Magic to begin with.

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 10:36 PM
Well, then, we are talking at cross purposes, because I do not believe in magic


You were really, really coming across like you did.

Edit: but you're still wrong, because in plenty of fantasy worlds, magic can be understood, predicted, explained, et cetera, just like various science-fiction things. "Magic" is still the best term for it.

Cybren
2007-04-04, 11:11 PM
It's empty philosophy because it's a bunch of words strung together without any regard for reason. It doesn't really mean anything. It doesn't explain itself.

Yes, it happens in literature and in fantasy. Note how those aren't real life, which is what I'm talking about. Time travel is, incidentally, also impossible in real life.
I happen to be quite good at going to the future. It seems everyone else has beaten me there.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 11:13 PM
Well, that's why I said 'if' it were to exist.

Which fantasy universes have scientificaly explicable magic systems?

Bears With Lasers
2007-04-04, 11:18 PM
Not scientifically explicable, but internally consistent, at least, and with the flavor of being understood in that world. Also, various sci-fi things aren't scientifically explicable, either. FTL travel, my ass.

Matthew
2007-04-04, 11:41 PM
This is where things start to blend together. Generally, when Fantasy Universes portray Magic as explicable it's very much with the flavour of "The common people call it magic, but the learned know better" i.e. the whole "any society that encounters technology sufficiently advanced will think it is magic" thing.
Science Fiction, on the other hand, presents its impossibilities as plausible and scientifically explicable from the get go (even when not) and may spend a lot of time trying to convince the audience it is scientifically possible (i.e. Star Trek).
As far as I can see, it is much more common for fantasy universes to present magic as supernatural (i.e. not explicable, but possible).

D&D is an interesting case, because although Arcane Magic appears to be scientifically consistant (in the sense of possible to learn the laws that govern it), many things about it remain baffling because unexplained. The whys and wherefores of how Dragon's fly (or Humans for that matter) are just not addressed (which means you are free to interpret things as you see fit).

Arlanthe
2007-04-05, 02:15 AM
I think that some people are just lucky with dice. I also think I'm one of them. There is a reason that my brother and father really don't like playing dice games with me anymore.

However, at least in my case, this luck doesn't fall outside what statistical analysis says is possible. I think that's probably true in every case. Science and math predict that someone is gonna roll 6 20s in a row eventually. Someone has to be the guy who rolls those 20s. What do we call him? Lucky.

You are an example of the "luck" characterization, rather than "bungled dice". Please roll 20d20 in the forum and prove your luck. When people have a "story" , they tend to reinforce the "hits" and dismiss the "misses".

Yes, it is possible that 6 20s be rolled in a row, and surely given that the probability of this happening is 1:64,000,000, it must. It is also true, to address an earlier point, that if 30,000 people make this roll per day around the world, this should happen much more often- in this case about six times per year, somewhere in the world. The chances of winning the lottery are much greater, but yes it could happen. But unlikely over, and over, and over.

But there is a difference between 6 20s in a row (rarer than lottery wins, but possible), and 28 "ones" on 28 six siders. The chances of that happening are 3.6E15. That is one in 3.7 followed by fifteen zeroes. It sounds "easy enough", but does anyone have any idea exactly how phenominally unlikely this is? I mean- really? The numbers get huge deceptively fast. I mean really huge- going into thermodynamics permutation equations huge.

Even if 30,000 "28D6" were rolled every day... the chances of rolling 28 ones on 28D6 in any given year are one in 333E6. To put that into perspective, NASA estimates a 1 kilometer sized devastating asteroid strikes the Earth ever 1000 centuries or so (million years).

The probability of the earth randomly getting hit by 332 1km asteroids in one year is greater than someone rolling 28 ones on 28 D6, with 30,000 rolls being made per day, for that year.

I have the distinctive impression that some people don't realize the statistical magnitudes we're talking about.

Dark
2007-04-05, 02:24 AM
You have to consider the effect of throwing technique.

Many groups have a cluttered play area that's not really large enough, so the dice get thrown in a tiny area, and sometimes even among miniatures that should not be knocked over. The result is half-hearted throws. I've seen plenty of d6 "rolls" where the dice did not tumble at all after hitting the table, and groups which accept this.

If you combine that with a tendency to store the dice with a specific side up when they're not in use, then it becomes easy to explain long sequences of identical results.

Tor the Fallen
2007-04-05, 02:24 AM
Zebulon, is that a pixelate re-enactment of John Wilkes Booth killing Lincoln?

Arlanthe
2007-04-05, 02:34 AM
You have to consider the effect of throwing technique.

Many groups have a cluttered play area that's not really large enough, so the dice get thrown in a tiny area, and sometimes even among miniatures that should not be knocked over. The result is half-hearted throws. I've seen plenty of d6 "rolls" where the dice did not tumble at all after hitting the table, and groups which accept this.

If you combine that with a tendency to store the dice with a specific side up when they're not in use, then it becomes easy to explain long sequences of identical results.

I'm not factoring in cheating. I'm assuming mostly symmetrical dice, and a real "roll". Of course people can fudge their results, but then we go into non-random territory.

Emperor Tippy
2007-04-05, 03:25 AM
You are an example of the "luck" characterization, rather than "bungled dice". Please roll 20d20 in the forum and prove your luck. When people have a "story" , they tend to reinforce the "hits" and dismiss the "misses".

Yes, it is possible that 6 20s be rolled in a row, and surely given that the probability of this happening is 1:64,000,000, it must. It is also true, to address an earlier point, that if 30,000 people make this roll per day around the world, this should happen much more often- in this case about six times per year, somewhere in the world. The chances of winning the lottery are much greater, but yes it could happen. But unlikely over, and over, and over.

But there is a difference between 6 20s in a row (rarer than lottery wins, but possible), and 28 "ones" on 28 six siders. The chances of that happening are 3.6E15. That is one in 3.7 followed by fifteen zeroes. It sounds "easy enough", but does anyone have any idea exactly how phenominally unlikely this is? I mean- really? The numbers get huge deceptively fast. I mean really huge- going into thermodynamics permutation equations huge.

Even if 30,000 "28D6" were rolled every day... the chances of rolling 28 ones on 28D6 in any given year are one in 333E6. To put that into perspective, NASA estimates a 1 kilometer sized devastating asteroid strikes the Earth ever 1000 centuries or so (million years).

The probability of the earth randomly getting hit by 332 1km asteroids in one year is greater than someone rolling 28 ones on 28 D6, with 30,000 rolls being made per day, for that year.

I have the distinctive impression that some people don't realize the statistical magnitudes we're talking about.
I rolled 78d6 on this forum the other day and didn't roll a signal 5 or 6. The odds of that happening were something on the order of 8.4x10^-15 For reference, I have a better chance of winning the lottery 2 times in a row.

I'm hoping that that roll (which was made on these boards) used up all my bad luck for that Shadowrun game.

Dark
2007-04-05, 03:35 AM
I wasn't talking about cheating at all in the effect I described. You can have bad throwing technique without any notion of cheating. The effect would still be that long sequences of identical results are much more likely than your model predicts.

Arlanthe
2007-04-05, 05:52 AM
I rolled 78d6 on this forum the other day and didn't roll a signal 5 or 6. The odds of that happening were something on the order of 8.4x10^-15 For reference, I have a better chance of winning the lottery 2 times in a row.

I'm hoping that that roll (which was made on these boards) used up all my bad luck for that Shadowrun game.

Where is the roll?

Electronic number generators aren't actually completely random anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator

But I'd still be shocked to see proof of that and doubt it highly.

Vik
2007-04-05, 06:35 AM
I wasn't talking about cheating at all in the effect I described. You can have bad throwing technique without any notion of cheating. The effect would still be that long sequences of identical results are much more likely than your model predicts.QFT.
And the fact is, when you store your dices with the highest side up, and have the same rolling move, a single dice will have the same result if it doesn't roll enough - but it can roll a bit. It's more obvious with d6 than with d20, btw.

Arlanthe
2007-04-05, 06:52 AM
QFT.
And the fact is, when you store your dices with the highest side up, and have the same rolling move, a single dice will have the same result if it doesn't roll enough - but it can roll a bit. It's more obvious with d6 than with d20, btw.

Who stores their dice with the same side facing up? Most people just have a sack of dice. And even if you do store your dice one side up, once out of the box is enough.

If someone has developed a technique of sleight-of-hand minimizing rolling action and maximizing probability of getting a "6" on a D6, then it is a nonrandom method and is thoroughly beside the point of "rolling" dice anyway. Buy that guy a Yahtzee cup and make him cachooka it a few times before he dumps them out.

Rigeld2
2007-04-05, 07:23 AM
I rolled 78d6 on this forum the other day and didn't roll a signal 5 or 6. The odds of that happening were something on the order of 8.4x10^-15 For reference, I have a better chance of winning the lottery 2 times in a row.

I'm hoping that that roll (which was made on these boards) used up all my bad luck for that Shadowrun game.
I went and looked at all your posts back to 03-26 (including all the shadowrun rolls) and 90% of them had a 5 and or 6. The ones that didnt werent near 78 dice (teens and 40s iirc).

Yes, I'm bored.

Vik
2007-04-05, 12:59 PM
Who stores their dice with the same side facing up? Most people just have a sack of dice. And even if you do store your dice one side up, once out of the box is enough. A lot of players will, between two rolls, keep their dice with the maximum side up, or on the contrary the lowest side - for "karma" or because it's more appealing.


If someone has developed a technique of sleight-of-hand minimizing rolling action and maximizing probability of getting a "6" on a D6, then it is a nonrandom method and is thoroughly beside the point of "rolling" dice anyway. Buy that guy a Yahtzee cup and make him cachooka it a few times before he dumps them out. It's not a sleight-of-hand technique, it's just that most people will roll dice almost always in the same manner. And if that manner doesn't involve much rolling, then with the same initial conditions, you have the same result. And that's where - imho - most of the abnormal series come from when the dice aren't obviously biased.

Telonius
2007-04-05, 01:34 PM
It's empty philosophy because it's a bunch of words strung together without any regard for reason. It doesn't really mean anything. It doesn't explain itself.

Yes, it happens in literature and in fantasy. Note how those aren't real life, which is what I'm talking about. Time travel is, incidentally, also impossible in real life.

Outside of the standard 1 second per second. :smallbiggrin:

Eldritch_Ent
2007-04-05, 02:24 PM
Matthew- Don't even get into the whole "Magic is unexplained, Science Fictioni s fully explained" debate... (Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indestinguishable from Magic.) but I'll really have to agree with the Bears on this one. Generally speaking, Magic is just Science that isn't fully explained. (Alchemy is a prime example of this, as well as the dark ages theory of "Spontaneus Genesis"- that animals sprung not from other animals, but from elements, like flies were created from rotting meat and mice from hay.)


Also, while we're at it, rolling ANY given combination of 28 D6's is 1 in 64 million or whatever. (Why? Because there's 64 million different combinations!). Basic Statistics should tell you that. However, Dice Karma is more a practice in Psychology- people only notice when interesting things happen, and tend to kinda ignore it if it's mundane.
Plus superstitions are fun. :D

Emperor Tippy
2007-04-05, 02:29 PM
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2253235#post2253235
Thats the thread, second post.

But it doesn't matter. Me and the gm both made a mistake. I just noticed that I was rolling d4's that time instead of d6's. So I guess that I'm not as unluck as a I thought.

Fhaolan
2007-04-05, 02:45 PM
Yeah, I've seen people roll d12s instead of d20s several times. Usually, they catch the problem after the fact, but I've seen a pretty impressive delay between the roll and the realization on occasion. One fellow didn't notice until he was putting his dice away, complaining about how unlucky he had been all night... and then went 'Uh... why is my d20 still in the pouch? I hadn't put any away yet... Ah &$)@#(*$!'