A Quick Note on Shoving Scrimshaw Dice

Doth Computeth Spawn:

I'm in the lab this morning and will be focusing on all sorts of important science stuff shortly, but Roger's good-humoredly cranky post about dice caught my attention. He points to a Forbes article that points to a test of 2 d20s (Chessex and Game Science) rolled 10k times each by the folks at Awesome Dice Blog. They show that the Chessex die is less random than the Game Science die, but neither are perfect; in fact the little nubbin on the 14 of the GS die severely affects that die. Now I didn't read all the comments on the post, so maybe this has already been said, but the Chessex data indicates that it can't be considered a "lucky" or "unlucky" die in the sense of always rolling high or low. The problem with that die is that it's slightly ovoid rather than spherical, and the 1-20 axis is relatively long. Neither crits nor fumbles are likely with that die. You can see this by comparing the data they present on the blog.

The red line is the expected outcome of 500 rolls per face. It's obviously not random. In fact there's some interesting structure in the data: opposite faces tend to be equally likely to appear. Combining these frequencies we see this:

How do you like that? I don't have a d20 in front of me and the distribution of the faces on d20s vary by manufacturer, but my guess it that overall the die is a bit longer across the 1/20, 2/19, 7/14, 8/13 axis. So that reduces the likelihood of rolling at the extremes of the range and a couple chunks in the middle as we see above. The dip at 5 in this die may be from the little nubbin not being filed off. But I wonder if this ovoid shape has anything to do with rounding off the edges per se, as opposed to the problems with the shape of the mold or uneven shrinkage in the plastic as it sets (or whatever, I'm not a dice manufacturer).

So to Roger's point about lucky dice being loaded, if the pattern above is common, it seems unlikely that players are really holding dice that give them better chance to roll high or low. Even if you have the 20 on the short axis, the 1 will be there too, and so you'll have a die equally likely to crit and fumble more often than expected. With a squashed die, switching roll-high or roll-low mechanics to keep players on their toes may not mitigate the lucky/loaded die superstition. Well, if I remember I'll take some digital calipers home tonight and see if I can detect squashedness in my Chessex d20s.

d30 Emulator - Fudge Die Variant

As I recently reported, I am the proud owner of a set of Fudge dice now, and it occurred to me that those dice would be perfect for d30 emulation. Using the Fudge die as the "tens" column in a d30% roll, the "-" result would indicate a "0" in the tens column, the blank result would indicate "10," and the "+" result would indicate "20," i.e.:

Fudge Die roll	Result	Modified d30% "tens" result
-	0	0
[blank]	1	10
+	2	20

Yes, I know, I'm just swapping one esoteric die for another here, not very practical or widely applicable. But what fun! Doesn't this make you want to acquire a d30 now? Or some Fudge Dice? Look at all the obscure fun you can have generating tables that practically no one will use!

d30 Emulator

I am sure I am treading over well-worn ground here, but I was walking to the grocery store last night and wondering what all those poor unfortunates who don't possess d30s do when they come across a d30 table?  How do they emulate a d30 roll?

Again, I doubt that this is wholly original, but here is what I came up with:

You take two dice, a d6 and a d10, and roll them as if they were percentile dice, using the d6 as a modified d3 for the tens column like this:

d6 roll	Result	Modified d30% "tens" result
1-2	0	0
3-4	1	10
5-6	2	20

So, using this system, I could roll the d6 to obtain a 0, 10, or 20 result for my "tens" column, then roll the d10 for the "ones" column and obtain a final result of 1-30.  Of course, the "00" roll = 30.

Make sense?

Does anybody do this differently, or is d30 emulation even a very big thing? I assume it doesn't come up too often. . .

The reason I ask is because in time -- probably several years from now -- I plan to release the Lands of Ara Gazetteer, which will include a great many region-specific encounter tables. Yet I happen to strongly favor d30 encounter tables for my home game, and therefore most of my own Arandish encounter tables use that die. So I started wondering whether I would need to convert those tables to d20 rolls, or else suggest a d30 conversion technique somewhere early in the Gazetteer? Or maybe include multiple versions of each table -- though the latter option seems like a big hassle.

Pound-O-Dice Revisited

I was just reading Spawn's great pictorial account of the arrival of his very own Chessex Pound-O-Dice, and found myself particularly impressed with his shot of the lb. split up by die type. It had not occurred to me to depict my own lb. of dice this way, and since I have to gather those dice together for the first orientation meeting of my FLBS D&D group tomorrow, I thought I would pause long enough to take just such a shot or two.

Here is my Pound-O-Dice still in the bag, next to the case I plan to store it in for travel to Lift Bridge Books tomorrow.

Bird's eye view of the Pound, separated by die type.

I won't bother to do the whole mathematical breakdown, but it does look like the set strongly favors d6s and d20s, with a decent spread of d8s, d10s, and d12s, but I got short-changed on d4s:  I only got two d4s in the whole set!

 My two pink d4s.

Here is a pic of a few of the smallest d6s I got, with another d6 in the frame for scale. Are these the tiny ones you other guys are complaining about?

My menagerie of small d6s, plus their big brother for comparison.

And lastly, a couple of pics of my array of materials for tomorrow's meeting:

My dice in their case, including my special DM-only "Theo set" on the right there.

Adventure awaits the boldest and bravest of Brockport!

Another Pound-O-Dice? Yes.

Ein Spawn of Endra quantifies it:

Like Carter, I also could not resist the sirens' song that is the Chessex Pound-O-Dice. I've got my favorite sets of dice for my own gaming purposes, and unlike Carter I'm not trying to run a public game, but this was not purely commodity fetishism on my part. Last week I was messing around with Zak's Quickie Small Castle/Fort Generator and since I was lacking in d6s, I had to mix in d12s, things went pear-shaped ... but that's another post. For those sorts of things I need more dice. Perhaps a Pound-O-Dice would suffice. Ah that reminds me of the extemporaneous lyrics to I Worship Satan:

I'd like to sacrifice some rice. Now wouldn't that be nice? Build a sacrificial altar on the Rock of Gibraltar. And I didn't even falter.

 Anyhoo, here's the teaming horde I got for what you spend on a 6-pack in Pennsylvania:

There's some pretty cool dice in this set. Maybe I like colors that are not market-viable. Well, sucks to be you, Everybody Else That Hates These Colors! Why don't you buy another set $10 set of 7 beautiful dice to drown your sorrows in already? Having said that, I wasn't stoked on the (promised to be speckled) coherent set of dice included:

These are cooler than they look here -- the white groundmass is flecked with orange -- but you think they should glow in the dark and they don't. You're never really gonna love dice that should do something and they just don't do it. Seriously. But what the fuck, they cost me about $1.50 total. And I miss using the beautiful geological term groundmass.
 

But, heedful of a comment from the inestimable Kelvin Green, I broke this down a bit. Here are the dice sorted by shape (note the coffee mug/wine glass axis implied at the top of the image):

So yes, we're a bit light on the d4s, d8s, and d12s. And the dice aren't totally random, there are matches within types (though much less so between them). What I got:

d4: 7. 1 pair among them.

d6: w/ pips: 18. Incl. matching sets of 4 and 6. Officially cool.

d6: w/ numerals: 11. 2 pairs.

d6: w/ special '6': 4. 1 pair (check out WTF below).

d8: 5. 1 pair.

d10 (0-9): 19. 5 pairs.

d10 (00-90):  8. 1 pair.

d12: 5. No pairs.

d20: 19. 5 pairs, 3 triplets. Pretty much cool.

That is 96 dice total. I'd like more of the d4, d8 and d12, but I do like a bunch of these dice. The many pairs of d20s I have will serve me well when I construct my Dice Golem; as testicles (for him) or boobs (for her). Or both! Hell I've got 5 pairs!

So help. I've got two of these d6s and another with the same symbol. What is that? A dragon or wolf head? What game does this belong to? Rotate this thing around, I can't make any sense of it.

As I sifted through these dice and latched on to the colors that I liked the most I became more pleased with some of them. Then I saw how my favorite dice were congruent with one of my favorite albums, Stereolab's Dots and Loops. 

At any rate, cheap thrills from the Pound-O-Dice.


 

Chessex Pound-O-Dice Arrives!

As you may have guessed, I ordered a Pound-O-Dice from Chessex, and it arrived at my door yesterday!  Here is the box it came in:

Here is the box, barely opened . . .

Viola!

A Pound-O-Dice!

(My cats prefer the box to the dice.)

Here's what a pound of dice looks like out of the bag . . .

. . . depicted here with the bonus set of dice it comes with in its separate sealed envelope . . .

. . . here is the bonus set itself . . .

. . . here are a few of my favorite individual dice from the Pound . . .

. . . and, lastly, the whole shebang.

Thanks Chessex!

Mobile DM'ing Equipment - Dice

With my public FLBS Labyrinth Lord game getting started soon, it strikes me that I may need to invest in a few more dice than I currently own.  I recently revealed how many dice I possess, and it is not really a giant collection: 

 
What I have now is enough for myself and a few players, but maybe not quite enough to go around if I get a large number of dice-less neophytes arriving at my gaming table later this month. 

When it comes to new die purchasing, I immediately think of Chessex Dice. Look, for example, at these:

Or these:

 

Or perhaps it is finally GameScience time.  I have read the posts about their quality and accuracy, and I am intrigued by some of the "oddball" selections like the d7 and the d5.  Yet for my present purposes -- bulking out the collection for general, public use -- maybe Chessex is the way to go?

Any comments?

P.S. Note to self: I should also look up where the local game / hobby shop is in the Rochester, NY area, so maybe I can buy these dice from a FLGS.

Show Me Your Dice Marathon

Here is my entry in the Gothridge Manor "Show Me Your Dice" Marathon!

Here are the current dice I pull out of my "use at the table" jar for use during a typical session.

Here are all my dice, not counting the miniature sets in my LotFP and S&W White Box Boxed Sets. 

And here is my cat Charlie, investigating my dice.

Stopwatch as d% Roller

Ein quick one from Thoust Spawn of Endra:

I was recently in Belize doing fieldwork and learned that you can generate random numbers from 0-99 using the 100ths of seconds on a stopwatch. I thought I'd share in case you ever find yourself without dice, or a smart phone with some cool app, or you have no electricity to charge said phone. In the event, I was with a colleague of mine laying out plots in some recently planted milpas. The purpose of these is to see how features of the soil, landform, fallow, etc., contribute to corn yields in a swidden system. Her interest is primarily in modern land use decisions by contemporary Maya farmers, mine is in the productive capacity of the land when it was cultivated by the ancient Maya. Here are some newly cleared and planted milpas:

She wanted to randomize the layout a bit more than I had been doing in previous years, so the idea was to stretch out a 100m tape, and she would run the stopwatch and then add or subtract the 100ths of seconds value (d%) or just the last digit (d10) to offset the plots from 0m, 50m, or 100m, more or less. Pretty cool.

So if you had a table like this one that Jim Pacek reworked from a truly bizarre Judges Guild chart, you could be generating any type of die roll you needed.

In fact, by running the stopwatch twice you could generate a value with 100ths of percents (or a d10000), so the problems of uneven distributions with d6, d8, and d12 could be resolved easily. If you get a 16% on a d6, you could run it again to figure out if you've rolled a 1 or a 2. If you end up with 16.66% you could run it again, and so on (though you probably need to lighten up if you're taking it that far).

One downside is most stopwatches beep when you run them and that might get annoying, but it's still better than nothing.

Payday Ordering Spree

Today was payday, and of course that is a great time to stock up on old-school gaming products, so that is just what I have done.  Let me share the highlights of my three-part consumerist orgy:

1.  Ordering two classic TSR modules from Amazon.com Marketplace vendors.  There are two AD&D modules from the olden days that I have been wanting to obtain print copies of, both for the sheer fun of it (I fetishize books) and also because I intend to get working on Labyrinth Lord conversions of them as soon as they arrive.  Like JB at B/X Blackrazor has done with his excellent B/X conversion of White Plume Mountain, I intend to make my Labyrinth Lord module conversions available as free pdfs to all you folks in the blogosphere once I complete them.  I don't wish to reveal exactly which modules I ordered just yet, because my players could be reading this and there is a good chance (I hope!) that at least one of these adventures may find its way into my current campaign.  (Remember, I am extremely lazy so usually don't convert or adapt stuff unless I plan to use it.)  Suffice to say that I found the two modules I wanted for less than $10 each, cover price.  The shipping bumped them up to about $13 and $15 respectively, but that still feels like an excellent deal for two much-beloved classic modules in "very good" to "like new" condition that I know I will use again and again.  Score!

2.  Ordering a hardcover Labyrinth Lord Revised Edition rulebook and a print copy of Stonehell megadungeon from Lulu.com --  at a discount!  There is -- for two more days, until the end of the weekend -- a 10% discount to be had when ordering certain stuff from Lulu.com, so I took advantage of that deal to order two essential OSR products.  The first is simply a hardcover version of a book I already have and use, the Labyrinth Lord  rulebook.  My players have been using my paperback copy at the gaming table a lot, and despite the fact that my friend Carl brings his paperback copy too, those greedy players seem to like to refer to them a fair amount as we play.  So my desire to have an exclusive DM's copy of the rulebook, combined with my tendency to fetishize books in general, led me to the conclusion that I should purchase a nice, hardbound copy of the rules set I will doubtless be using for years to come.  This hardbound Labyrinth Lord book was my most expensive and extravagant purchase of the day, but well-justified I think, now that I have a weekly LL campaign underway.  My second Lulu purchase was the much-anticipated (by me) and much-lauded (by James Maliszewski and others) Stonehell megadungeon.  I have seen the pdf preview version of Stonehell, which I liked, though I kind of need a print copy of a thing in my hands before I can really get familiar with it.  So the pdf and the positive reviews of Stonehell whetted my appetite, and that combined with my general appreciation for the work of Michael Curtis -- do yourself a favor and check out his superb Dungeon Alphabet, reviewed here -- made my purchase of Stonehell in print inevitable.  The fact that the multi-talented Carl also has published artwork in Stonehell only sweetens the deal (support your local artists!).  I don't know exactly how I will use Stonehell in my Arandish campaign yet, but I know I will find plenty of inspiration and good material to hork (or possibly use whole-cloth) within its covers.  Score!

3.  Going to my favorite local game store and buying $10 worth of dice.  I have been feeling a bit short of d12's and d8's lately -- I only own one of the former and two of the latter! -- though this hasn't mattered to me all that much in recent years since I have mainly been a player in the game sessions with my former 3.5 group and my current Mutant Future group.  But now that I am the referee of a full-blown Labyrinth Lord campaign, I feel the need to have more dice on hand to share with dice-less players etc.  Plus, it is far more fun when rolling for things like starting gold or flaming oil damage to actually have three (or more) eight-sided dice to roll at once.   So today I went to Evolution Games in south Eugene and picked a grand total of twenty dice out of their 50-cent basket.  There were a lot of pretty ones -- I somewhat fetishize dice -- so I walked out with a bunch of d20's and d6's I probably didn't need, but also with 4 or 5 more each of those much-needed d8's and d12's.  Score!

My d30 arrived this weekend!

I just got my first-ever d30 in the mail this Saturday.  I had always heard about 30-sided dice when I was coming up in the RPG'ing hobby in the 1980s, but I never actually played in a campaign where anybody had one, nor did I own one myself -- until now!  Now that mine has arrived, I can proudly claim my membership in the Order of the D30, I was able to use it earlier tonight in Mutant Lord Carl's KILLER Mutant Future campaign, and I have been inspired to create a special new d30 table for random tavern encounters in Ara.  Enjoy!

30 Arandish Tavern Patrons - rural or wilderness area

Note: all NPCs are assumed to be human unless otherwise specified.
1:  A competent scout / guide approaches the party offering his/her services.*
2: An eccentric scout / guide approaches the party offering his/her services.**
3: A group of three dwarven miners sits at a table, drinking ale and talking amongst themselves.
4: A solitary young woman with a learned look sits nervously at a table.  She is a 3rd level Magic-User on the run from the Council or Noffellian authorities, and if approached in the right way, might hire the party as bodygards to escort her to the next town.
5:  A drunkard approaches the party and shares a (true) local rumor.
6:  A very erudite journeyman sage shares a (false) local rumor for 1gp.
7:  A young local scoundrel / cutpurse shares a (true) local rumeor for 1gp.
8:  At a nearby table, a 1st Level rodian illusionist is using his change self spell to appear human, allowing him to eavsedrop on another table of humans nearby.
9:  A Noffellian 6th Level fighter, who is an agent of the Noffellian High Guard, enters the tavern, scopes out the main room, and then circles the room, giving various patrons a description of someone the party knows and asking if they know where s/he is.
10: A drunk blacksmith approaches the party looking to start a fight with one of its members.  Armed only with a dagger, the blacksmith fights as a 1st Level fighter.
11:  A minstrel plays a song for the party then demands 1gp.
12:  A group of rowdy Mizarian barbarians is giving the tavern staff a hard time, and will attack anyone else who intercedes or intervenes.
13: A persistant traveling salesman attempts to sell the party some stolen goods for half their list price.
14:  A 5th Level Magic-User approaches any arcane magicians in the party and cautiously sounds them out about their opinions about the Council and the Invisible Hand; he is a recruiter for the latter.
15:  A rodian 2nd-level illusionist uses change self to impersonate someone the party knows, in order to lure one or two party members outside where the rodian and his colleague, a female rodian 3rd-Level rogue, mug them.
16:  Four richly dressed merchants get drunk at a nearby table, and eventually all but one of them leave, and the remaining fellow passes out.  The merchants each have 10-60gp on them.
17:  A man with an eyepatch enters the bar, approaches the characters, mumbles something about being followed, and drops a bag on the PC's table.  He then exits the tavern in a hurry.  Once on the street, he is followed by two assassins, who kill him on the next block.  The bag contains 50gp and an idol.***
18: A well-known local woman adventurer (Ftr - 2) enters tavern, swoons, and falls to floor clutching her neck.  She is dead, having quite recently been sucked dry by a vampire.  She will arise as vampire spawn tomorrow. 
19:  A Kaladarian exotic weapons buyer will haggle with any PCs who have ornate or magical weapons, trying to buy their items off them.
20:  The barmaid is actually an assassin (Level 4) hired to kill one of the party members.
21:  A pair of lovers at a nearby table is actually a duo of spies hired to follow the party.
22:  There is an invisible rodian illusionist / rogue (Levels 2 / 2) picking pockets in here.
23:  An insane hill troll attacks the tavern, ripping off the front door and attacking those nearest within.
24:  A local farmer is selling the sexual favors of one of his sheep, 5gp per go-round.
25:  The security chief (Ftr-5) for a merchant caravan passing through town is hiring mercenaries to work as caravan guards.
26:  An agent of an organization hunting / opposing the party or its employers sees the party, then exits the tavern hurriedly to go report to his / her superiors somewhere nearby.
27:  A jealous, hot-tempered local merchant mistakes a party member for his / her spouse's illicit lover and challenges the character to a fight.
28:  A group of five Noffellian soldiers drink and talk boisterously at a nearby table.  Anyone who appears too obviously to be an arcanist will get harassed, even threatened by this group.
29:  A large cloaked figure enters the tavern and heads to the bar, where, after a few heated exchanges with the bartender, he throws back his hood, draws a battle axe, and kills the bartender.  The stranger is a hobgoblin.  After killing the barkeep, he will make for the exit and leave if unopposed.
30: The barkeep takes an instant dislike to the party (or at least some of its members) and refuses the party service.

*  Near the Great Western Swamp or in the city of Tradefair, this could be Rogath the Swamp-Ranger.
**  Near the Great Western Swamp, this could be Rabbit-Head.
***  Customize the idol or item in the bag to function as an adventure hook in your campaign.


Endnote: Those interested in 30-sided dice and their lore should also read Jeff Rients' review of some out-of-print Armory d30 books.

The Fun of Oracular Dice

I expect that MUTANT LORD CARL will probably cover this too (he has promised to!) but I wanted to briefly mention what a great time I had tonight at the regular Friday Mutant Future game session, particularly because we seemed to have some pretty oracular dice tonight.  There were some well-timed good rolls by myself and the party, but just as many flubbed ones, by party and Mutant Lord alike, that really appropriately fit the scenarios we were in.  Carl will fill in details on the Mutagenic Substance blog, but as usual, GROGNARDIA offers some good thoughts on the power and pleasures of randomness, a key element of old-school games that seems to have been largely drummed out of newer "point-buy" based and "balanced" rules systems.  Here is a key quote on why true randomness, as represented by die rolling, is FUN:

"There's something powerfully primal about tossing dice and waiting to see the numbers they reveal.  [. . .]  [The] real heart of this particular matter [is] the embrace of events beyond your control as an integral part of the gaming experience. This includes players and referees alike, it should be noted."