As objects of possible interest, here are a few images displaying Zocchi advertisements. They have character.







My "ugly dice" collection, uninked:



And the sets I am using at the table:

If 1/1,000th of an inch really knocks the odds out, then no set of dice would be useful after more than one game session. You'd have to buy more every week.

Which perhaps is the aim of his sales pitch...

I am interested to see if they actually make a difference but damn, those dice are ugly.  I don't think I can bring myself to buy ugly dice.

The gem dice are gorgeous, actually.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;270457If 1/1,000th of an inch really knocks the odds out, then no set of dice would be useful after more than one game session. You'd have to buy more every week.

That was my thought, too, when Lou brought up the matter of casino-standard dice.  Casinos retire dice with a regularity that would bankrupt your average roleplayer, all because of nicks, dents, whatever that may affect the roll of the die.

By the way, I seriously doubt that I've ever rolled dice enough in one game session to see a statistical trend emerge from the minor irregularities of the dice.  Maybe if I played more Exalted I'd see a little.

!i!

I've had several dice over the years that were obviously cocked, like my "always a 12" d20 I referred to above.  However, that's only a handful of dice out of, if not hundreds, then dozens, over 20+ years of RPGs and wargames.

Far more of my dice have crumbled or cracked from just moderate use, however.  I'm hoping the Gamescience stuff holds up as well as advertised, as the higher cost would be worth it in the long run...

Quote from: Ian Absentia;270509That was my thought, too, when Lou brought up the matter of casino-standard dice.  Casinos retire dice with a regularity that would bankrupt your average roleplayer, all because of nicks, dents, whatever that may affect the roll of the die.

Don't they just retire them after one worker's shift? I'm pretty sure that's what they do with the playing cards - I'll have to ask my gamer buddy who was a croupier for years.

Quote from: Ian AbsentiaBy the way, I seriously doubt that I've ever rolled dice enough in one game session to see a statistical trend emerge from the minor irregularities of the dice.

Same here.

Quote from: Ian Absentia;270509By the way, I seriously doubt that I've ever rolled dice enough in one game session to see a statistical trend emerge from the minor irregularities of the dice.  Maybe if I played more Exalted I'd see a little.

You mean you only roll your dice once a sessions, once?

You cannot derive a statistical trend from rolling your dice twice, or three times, or even a dozen, GameDaddy.

There is about a 50% chance that a die rolled X times for each face will roll a particular face up more or less than 1/Xth of the random chance of that result.

For example, if you roll a d4 40 times, about half the time a fair d4 will give (say) a "1" result 1/10th of 25% = 2.5% less or more than the expected 25%. If you roll a d20 100 times, about half the time a fair d20 will give you a "20" 1/5th of 5% = 1% more or less than the 5% expected.

If you rolled a d4 40 times and found that "1" came up on 11 rolls, "2" on 10 rolls, "3" on 10 rolls, and "4" on 9 rolls, you might conclude that it was slightly biased to rolling "1". But it's not necessarily.

If you rolled a d20 100 times and only got "20" on 3 of those rolls, and "1" on 7 of them, you might conclude it's biased. But not necessarily.

We have to do a lot of dice rolling to see if a die is truly biased.

What is needed is not a perfectly fair set of dice, only that they be close enough to fair for a game session. Far more important than the dice themselves is how they're rolled. Commonly a player will put the desired result up in their hand, and toss the dice a short distance. This biases the result in favour of the one uppermost, giving a bigger chance of the dice doing a single revolution. After a bad roll, players instinctively roll the dice harder next time. This is why in casinos people have to toss the dice all the way to strike the far wall of the table.

Then there's how the GM interprets the dice rolls. This is not so important in rules-heavy systems, but is very important in rules-light systems. The standard deviation of GM whim is far greater than any error in the dice.

Against player dodginess in dice rolls and GM whim, it would have to be a very biased die indeed to get noticed, even if we didn't need thousands of dice rolls to discover that bias.

I think Zocchi doesn't game much

I love my Gamescience dice.  Sadly, I only have one complete set, but alongside that I have about 6 extra d20's and 5 pairs of d10's.

I would have gotten more when advancinghordes was going out of business, but I got what they had.

Oddly enough, my players are convinced they only roll high.  And, um... they sure seem to roll 16-20 more than I'd expect.

-O

Funnily enough, I was told Chessex are selling Zocchi dice.

I do know for a fact that Noble Knight and an ebay-mega-dice-selller by the name of G Squared are selling them as well.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;270592You cannot derive a statistical trend from rolling your dice twice, or three times, or even a dozen, GameDaddy.

Well, okay, trends can emerge, but their statistical significance is dependent upon the number of times rolled.

To clarify for GameDaddy, no, I don't think I've ever rolled the dice enough times for a very minor irregularity in one or more of the dice to produce a statistically significant trend.  My grotty old dice, bought for aesthetic appeal, have been randomising my games suitably.

Poo.  That was no fun.

!i!

[Edit: Regarding the "retirement" of dice, I don't know if it's at the end of a worker's shift, or after a certain number of rolls.  I do know that if a die ever leaves the table, aside from being picked up by a croupier or player -- i.e. rolling over the edge and off the table, etc. -- they are automatically ejected and a new pair introduced.]

Quote from: Narf the Mouse;270079Well, as an advertisement, it works. But how does this 'stack up' to reality? (Pun intended)

I've wondered the same thing since watching the vids this weekend.  Kevin Cook, the world's foremost Dice Collector, says he thinks Lou knows what he's talking about.  Yesterday I shot off emails to Koplow, Chessex, and Crystal Caste asking for a response but so far I haven't heard back.

One of Zocchi's broadsides recommended rolling them on a towel to cut down on wear and tear.

I think the main points of the presentation are sound. You just have to ask yourself: how good is good enough? I love Zocchi dice because of the feel and the idea of precision. I don't necessarily need the marginally increased mathematical accuracy. I'm sure I would never notice it. Pretty sure . . .
Well. I don't ever want to have to find out.

I have a set of Gamescience oddball dice (the d3/7/24) and they are pretty neat. Most of my other dice are either Cheesex or TSR original (this d20 rolls an extremely high number of 20s), after seeing this I think a trip to the FLGS is in order.