Dice aren’t just dice. And you don’t need to consciously cheat to have dice that are quite a bit less than random; which Colonel Zocchi ain’t afraid to tell you:
For a more scientific study of the imprecision of dice, check out this paper, not to mention the Dice-o-Matic. Now if you’ll excuse me, I just checked my own dice, and they’re… questionable, so I’m off to find a place to buy casino-grade dice in Copenhagen; if not, Game Science it is.
PS: If you, like me, like playing around with various dice probabilities for use in for instance a roleplaying system, AnyDice Calculator is your best friend in the whole world. And if you need insta-dice on-the-go, check out Mach Dice for the iPhone.
There’s an interview with the creator of the Dice-o-Matic in the ubergeeky board game podcast “The Dice Tower”, episode #150 (starts about 00:16:00)
http://audio.funagain.com/thedicetower/TDT150-TheDiceTower-Episode150.mp3
He has a few interesting thoughts on randomness, and I especially like his quote (if I remember correctly), “the Dice-o-matic is not supposed to be simulating true randomness, it’s simulating dice rolls”
Okay, by any measure, this guy is EXTREMELY geeky ;-)
That was brilliant!
OMG that guy is a genius :-)
I have tried a dicetower, its fun, but slow.
Thanks for posting this. I love listening to people talk about something they know.