Quote from: Rincewind1;920194In my 10 years of gaming, I have yet to see anyone in real life actually make a fuss about the dice not being fair. Then again, I am from a different generation, so we never had really bad dice.

Still, cool video. Definitely something for dice makers to watch, more than players.

I see it fairly often in the board gaming community. And the bitching about dice "fairness" goes way way back in the RPG community. And part of why I developed a slightly lower opinion of Lou Zocchi.

Quote from: Omega;920248I see it fairly often in the board gaming community. And the bitching about dice "fairness" goes way way back in the RPG community. And part of why I developed a slightly lower opinion of Lou Zocchi.

That's weird, as I've actually had a pretty decent board gaming experience, more so even perhaps than RPGs in regard to attending tournaments and so forth, and I've never seen the problem outside of jokes. Maybe it's the attitudes and rewards - the board gaming scene is still being born in Poland, so there's not a lot of stress nor huge prizes to worry about.

Whether the dice are fair or not is one of those issues where you have a small but very vocal minority that cares a great deal and an overwhelming majority that just doesn't really give a crap.  I think it's just luck of the draw whether you come across one of those people who care Very, Very Much about this or not.

I love to watch the veins on people who declare that electronic and PC rollers are totally fair when I get to point out how the various RNGs are sometimes anything but. Flash in particular. I playtested a bunch of flash games and list track of just how absurdly off kilter the RNG can be. And also just how wretched it was to make an item drop needed for a simple starter crafting item have a mere 0.025% chance. Especially with Flash's screwed up rollers. No. Im not joking. The chance was that low. And you needed 100...

Quote from: Omega;920346... And also just how wretched it was to make an item drop needed for a simple starter crafting item have a mere 0.025% chance. Especially with Flash's screwed up rollers. No. Im not joking. The chance was that low. And you needed 100...

You needed 100 what to craft what?

Quote from: Skarg;920497You needed 100 what to craft what?

An online MSO (Massively Single Player) I was alpha and beta tester on. The designers really had no grasp of both flashes wonky roller and of probability vs frustration levels. Combine the two and its a study in futility.

I bought a bunch of 12mm 'clear' D6 sets from Chessex at one point and it was impossible to stack more than 5 of any of them facing the same side without it toppling due to deformities. They were that bad, and it was because the plastic shrinks more around the pips while cooling.

Quote from: jadrax;919627I just saw this pair of videos on Youtube of what happened when someone gave Professor Persi Diaconis a d30. I think we have had a few discussions on what makes a die 'fair' in the past and I found this quite interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7zT9MljJ3Y

I would summarise but they are quite lengthy. One of the things I did find very interesting in part two is that for some of the more odd shaped dice, the surface you are rolling them on actually effects how fair they are.

Nifty!

Quote from: Omega;920346I love to watch the veins on people who declare that electronic and PC rollers are totally fair when I get to point out how the various RNGs are sometimes anything but.

They're only totally fair if they're using a physical entropy source, but even the best semi-random algorithms are more fair than any physical die can possible be.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;921110...
They're only totally fair if they're using a physical entropy source, but even the best semi-random algorithms are more fair than any physical die can possible be.

Why do you say that I think you must've got the second clause backwards (best->worst?), but I'm having trouble getting what you were trying to say. Are you trying to say that a physical die can never be 100% perfectly even because it's a physical thing that will always have some unevenness, even if it's practically impossible to measure?

Quote from: Skarg;921494Why do you say that I think you must've got the second clause backwards (best->worst?), but I'm having trouble getting what you were trying to say. Are you trying to say that a physical die can never be 100% perfectly even because it's a physical thing that will always have some unevenness, even if it's practically impossible to measure?

From experience coding. Alot of RNGs are fairly even simply by dint of the mechanics behind the RNG. For example the ones that glance at the game clock and use that as the seed. I've seen a few that were random only per playthrough. The seed was read once to generate the string for the game thereafter. IE: if you restarted from a save at an earlier point in the game and did the exact same things then the results would be exactly the same. This can be a feature instead of a failure.

Others have some severe quirks. During the playtest of DragonFable and MechQuest youd see it again and again. Id heard complaints of Flash's RNG problems but never seen the numbers before. Quite a few of my bug reports consisted of logs of the RNG locking into patterns for example.

Rolling by hand can be 100% pure with any dice as long as you roll consistently on the same surfaces. This is why dice towers became popular. But toss in the X-Factor of unconcious micro-reflex and all bets are off.

Though watching some peoples luck or lack thereof with electronic rollers... Im starting to suspect instrumentality! :eek:

Maybe it's quantum universe selection. :-)

I do get slightly superstitious about how I'm rolling the dice, which has me try to turn the dice to unknown different positions before I roll them, but I suppose if my subconscious is clever enough, it could be messing with me... but that seems pretty paranoid to think so, and I'm sure my rolls are quite random. At some point, a bit of salt in the RNG seems fine to me. But there are definitely problematic lines that can get crossed, especially with computerized ones.

Or just toss the dice you need to roll in to a cup and roll out of that no micro reflex that way.

Quote from: Skarg;921494Are you trying to say that a physical die can never be 100% perfectly even because it's a physical thing that will always have some unevenness, even if it's practically impossible to measure?

No, because it's quote practical to measure. Otherwise yes.

Quote from: Skarg;921868I do get slightly superstitious about how I'm rolling the dice,

Ask yourself why. Challenge your irrationalities.

Quote from: Skarg;921868But there are definitely problematic lines that can get crossed, especially with computerized ones.

Still less so that physical dice.

Quote from: kosmos1214;921896Or just toss the dice you need to roll in to a cup and roll out of that no micro reflex that way.

Youd like to think so. But thats the creepy thing about this sort of ability and just how far it can reach. Though I personally think that yeah cups and towers will confound it. Or at least make it work overtime.  Whatever the mechanism is. It isnt allways on the players side. One of my players rolls absurdly well using a dice tower. Another one rolls absurdly low. Sometimes with the same dice.

So just roll the damn dice and stop obsessing over "fair".

Quote from: Omega;920248I see it fairly often in the board gaming community. And the bitching about dice "fairness" goes way way back in the RPG community. And part of why I developed a slightly lower opinion of Lou Zocchi.

Say more, please.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;922343Say more, please.

He just had a slight tendency to badmouth other peoples product to make his look good. Nothing offensive. Just annoying. Otherwise nice guy from what little saw of him wayyyy back. And he got his own Lost Worlds book. Now you can pit Lou Zocchi against Micheal Stackpole.

Its a practice I dislike in gaming. Fantasy Wargaming (the RPG. Not the un-related wargame) is still tops on my list of low. Though Zweihander has been bucking for the position.