After seeing this article about d6's being biased to roll ones, I thought it was time to do some more dice testing of my own. Here's what I came up with.
What is being tested?
Are some types of six-sided dice biased? If so, what kind of dice are the best ones to roll up your character with?
Test Conditions-
Three d6's of the same type are rolled together in a dice cup onto a hard wood table- 48 times. Perfect results would be that each face on the dice would appear 24 times. For this test, the Sum Squared Error (SSE) must be 264 or less for the dice to be considered to be fair. (All I know about testing dice is from this great article at Delta's D&D Hotspot.) The closer the SSE is to 0, the more fair the dice are.
The Dice Tested-
10mm d6's - square edges with pips. I got these from some game maybe from Awful Green Things from Outer Space.
12mm d6's - rounded edges with pips. The most popular kind of d6's used by gamers.
14mm d6's - rounded edges with numbers. The kind of dice that usually come with D&D boxed sets.
16mm d6's - square edges with pips. The big d6's of the kind you see in Walmart.
GameScience d6's- square edges with numbers.
Results-
3d6 Average Rolls (best to worst):
11.02 - 10mm
10.81 - 16mm
10.69 - 14mm
10.58 - 12mm
10.19 - gs
Fairness (SSE, best to worst):
28 - 14mm
82 - 16mm
144 - 12mm
152 - 10mm
210 - gs
Summary-
The results were surprising as the GameScience dice finished last in both fairness and high rolling. The 12mm dice that are so impugned in the article mentioned above are shown to be reasonably fair and I now suspect that article to be complete bs. Also surprising is that the lame dice that came in basic sets are actually the fairest rollers. But the most important thing learned here is that I'm going to start using those 10mm dice to roll up my characters from now on. 
And now some graphs-
Posted in Games.
By Mike
– July 15
From their promo email which apparently caused a bit of a panic from some people who thought their site really did get hacked-
Brian Van Hoose here. Sorry to interrupt. I hacked into the KenzerCo linux server (secure my A$$) and got this list of potentially interested parties. I worked up a deal with the KenzerCo interns where they slide you some product that's been "accounted" for (heh, heh Bob - good luck waiting for that delivery) and I get a little kickback.
Here's what we worked up.
Phone in, fax in, or place an order on the webstore at www.kenzerco.com. If you order a certain amount of physical product (softcovers and hardcovers, you know, not those PDF e-books) AND mention "Brian's special deal" in the comment box, my buddies can slip some extra stuff into your order. Of course, the more you order the more stuff they can slip into your package.
Order $20 or more and you get one of these:
- two issues of KODT from the following list: 54, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 68, 72, 74, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99
- OR d20: By the Sword
- OR SoloQuest: Brothers by Blood
'Course I got more. Order more and ya get yer pick from above plus other choice items I had 'diverted' from Weird Pete's shipment:
$50 or more gets the above plus TWO of these:
- two issues of KODT from 100-133
- HM4th: Isle of Death
- HM4th: Dead Gawd's Hand
- HM4th: Hacklopedia - your pick of one volume: 2, 3, 4 or 7
- HackMasters of Everknight TP
- Kingdoms of Kalamar: Player's Primer
$100 or more gets the above plus TWO of these:
- one issue of KODT from 134-149
- Kingdoms of Kalamar: Atlas hardcover
- Kingdoms of Kalamar: Campaign Setting Sourcebook hardcover
- Kingdoms of Kalamar: Dangerous Denizens hardcover
- Kingdoms of Kalamar: Svimohzia hardcover
- Tech Support
$125 or more gets the above PLUS a special item (this might be one of the KenzerCo guys' throwaway possessions like one of Jolly's dice, autographs, designer game notes and stuff like that) AND both of these:
- Kingdoms of Kalamar: Gnomes & Kobolds hardcover
- Kingdoms of Kalamar: Elves & Bugbears hardcover
Be sure to put yer picks in the webstore comment box (you'll see it as you checkout) or the intern will just give you something from the list at random. And don't go asking for other stuff not on the list, 'cuz Mark keeps an eagle eye on the inventory and he'll know if something else is missing! If yer interested, make yer purchase in the next 2 to 3 weeks before Dave Kenzer gets wind of it and shuts my little black-op down!
Posted in D&D, Games, HackMaster.
By Mike
– July 9
I missed the last one due to being snowed in, but I'll definitely be there this time. If you're in the Knoxville area, check it out.
Update- I had a great time at the con and got to play Battletech for about 12 straight hours! The game was put on by a couple of local companies that specialize in Battletech stuff- Exodus Road Hobbies and Xmarx. Thanks guys!
Posted in Games, Knoxville.
By Mike
– June 25
After upgrading the site to WP 3.0, none of the links to articles are working anymore. Hopefully this will be resolved soon.
UPDATE- If you are having a problem with the permalinks (the_permalink() is returning null) on your WordPress site, turn off the Quick Page/Post Redirect plugin. Everything seems ok now.
Posted in Meta.
By Mike
– June 21
Need to roll up some npc's or pregens for a HMb game quickly? No worries, here's my super fast character generator built on the Quick Start rules. Now you really have no excuse for not creating a character for HackMaster and giving it a try.
Posted in Games, HackMaster, Online Tools.
By Mike
– June 16
The Quick Start rules for HackMaster Basic have been updated with several improvements that make it much more usable. You can download it from here.
Posted in Games, HackMaster.
By Mike
– June 8
My latest project has a lot of textareas in a form that take up a lot of room. The page would look a lot nicer if they were smaller but would grow when added to. It was a little tricky, but here's a way to do it.
$(function(){
$('#myTextArea').keyup(function(){
$('#myTextArea').css('height', '0px');
$('#myTextArea').css('height', $('#myTextArea').attr('scrollHeight')+'px');
});
});
Try it out here-
Posted in Web Development.
By Mike
– May 20
One thing that really annoys me in a roleplaying game are mechanics that rob you of victory. Oh, I don't mean there should be no failure in a game. I'm talking about those times where you have succeeded, but then some rule mechanic kicks in and suddenly you didn't succeed after all. It's disappointing, dissatisfying, annoying and frustrating. A good technical, forgie term for it might be Success Reversal. Call it what you will, but I hate it.
Unfortunately, these NSFY mechanics are found in a lot of rpgs. The easiest example is the critical hit confirmation in D&D 3.x. While trying to be more realistic they created a rule to rob you of the excitement of rolling a nat 20. Here's how that usually plays out-
pc: Rolls a 20. "Booyah! Crit!"
dm: "Ok, now roll to confirm."
pc: Rolls a 3.
dm: "Sorry, no soup for you!"
3rd edition D&D sports more of these types of mechanics. DR and SR are both along these lines. "Ah, I hit him for 10 damage!" "Nope, his DR absorbs it." Even attacks of opportunity are a variation of this type of Success Reversal mechanic which is one of the reasons why I think they are so disliked. D&D 4e removed some of 3e's soup deniers. They wisely abandoned crit confirmations for example, but introduced some new ones of its very own. Marking powers seem to be the biggest offenders here. "Ok, I move here and attack this guy." "No, this other guy has you marked and slides you over there where you can't do anything."
Many games other than D&D are much worse when it comes to this type of rules mechanic. There are quite a few games like GURPS where you roll your attack and then the target gets to roll a defense. Simple, realistic idea in theory. In practice, it's more like-
pc: "Ok, I hit with my sword."
dm: "Nope, he blocks it."
dm: "Alright, he hits you."
pc: "Nope, uhuh, I block him.
etc.
etc.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....
Just give me the odds to succeed figured out up front and let it depend on the one roll. Don't tease me with success and then pull the rug out from under me with yet another roll. Don't be a Soup Nazi game designer.
Posted in D&D, Games.
By Mike
– April 30
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