Kevin's Watch

D20s are dangerous

www.videosift.com/video/The-Science-Of-Dice

LOL!!!

Alright, I got to about 5:58 before i just couldn't listen to anymore.

--A

Such a pedant about dice, yet he doesn't know the singular noun.

^ Oh snap. I laughed. And felt a little bad for watching the whole thing.

Very intriguing. I have a very large(About 75-200) collection of dice. My dad has about 100-300 and so does my mom. A friend has a huge collection of them(I would guess about 300 to 500). Course, we play D&D a lot, so lot's of dice are important. I bet we don't have too many dice that are "made right", so to speak.

I guess I like pretty dice more than accurate dice! lol.

And, yeah. I watched the whole thing, Despiser take me! It was actually kinda cool. Some of it sounded a bit...quackish, but what the hell! I',ll accept it for now. Until I make my own! MUAHAHAH!

I have my box-o-dice. Buncha 10s for Vampire. Buncha 6s for Shadowrun. But really, these days, I just use the the rnd() function in Excel.

I'm not sure if that makes me more or less of a geek.

Goatkiller666 wrote:I have my box-o-dice. Buncha 10s for Vampire. Buncha 6s for Shadowrun. But really, these days, I just use the the rnd() function in Excel.

I'm not sure if that makes me more or less of a geek.

Heh...I dont' play anymore, but I still have all my dice, I DM'd a lot, so I had "spare" sets for when players were new or absent-minded.
Piles of 6-siders, [clear, plain, marbled, spotted, blah blah] in sets of 10 of each color [shadowrun], 10-siders the same for white-wolf games, multi-sets the same for dnd, metal dice, "crystal" dice, bone dice, and a set of dice I built myself with wire, soldering iron, and snips of tin roofing for a game I was creating with a friend of mine. Why, you ask [in my head you do anyway...even if you don't care, I can MAKE you care in there] would I make my own dice? And I answer: because the system uses only prime-number dice. [3 sided, 7 sided, and 13 sided].

7 sided die in Excel: =ROUND(RAND()*6,0)+1
13 sided die in Excel: =ROUND(RAND()*12,0)+1

But, while I think there's a certain amount of geek cred in using a computer to do all the random functions... building your own actual dice... that's a whole other level of dedication to the cause.

My hat is off to you, sir.

So.... just thinking... =ROUND(RAND()*6,0)+1 would make 1 and 7 only 50% as likely as 2-6. (Or, if you change that for any number of sides, you're still 50% less likely to get the highest or lowest value.)

Perhaps I need to rewrite my spreadsheet. My Vampire players may well owe you some thanks, Vraith.

=roundup(rand()*7,0) should prolly do it.

Goatkiller666 wrote:7 sided die in Excel: =ROUND(RAND()*6,0)+1
13 sided die in Excel: =ROUND(RAND()*12,0)+1

But, while I think there's a certain amount of geek cred in using a computer to do all the random functions... building your own actual dice... that's a whole other level of dedication to the cause.

My hat is off to you, sir.

Heh...well, I only made 2 of each of them, and mostly cuz of a crazy-altered-consciousness bet inspired by an altered-consciousness session mixed with random happenstance.
Player: Crap...man I just rolled a 13 AGAIN...4 times in a ROW! I'm making 13 my lucky number from now on.
Me: Too late for that now, 13 again means you miss, again. The svirfneblin doesn't miss though...bad luck, cuz now you're unconscious and bleeding to death.
Player2: Holy Shit! I rolled a 13, too! What the hell happens next? Some guy named Eric shows up telling us to beware of the Gazebo?
My Wife, [who was not my wife yet, but was an Earth science major, math minor at the time] calling from the living room: Guys! Stop rolling the 13-siders, attack rolls are 20-side.
Everyone laughs, except one person who say, loudly "You can't make odd-sided dice that roll right...they're all lopsided if you do!"
My [eventual] Wife, from living room: From now on, you can only allow players in the game smart enough to get a joke!
Non-joke-getting-person muttering while we laugh at him: well you can't...
Me: I bet I can, somehow.
Humour-challenged person: Bet! If you can't do it, I get 10,000 extra experience end of next session!
Me: OK...but if I can, you never get to play a secretly evil character plotting to steal everyones loot and rule the world ever again.

Well...I won the bet...then I had to invent a game that actually USED odd-sided dice...I mean, that's a rule, right? If you CAN make something, you HAVE to make it useful for something?

great video.

having not played d&d in maybe 20 yrs I haven't even thought of multi-sided dice.

i do have two old Dragon mags that my comic store gave me for free.

i should read them.