Desdichado
Hero
Tumbled dice are also random enough for a human not to know how to manipulate, assuming you aren't Qui-Gon Jinn.
Gamescience dice are very much worth it.
Scars Unseen
Hero
You may have noticed that I qualified the sentence citing aesthetics with "to me." I make no assumptions on other people's tastes. I just generally prefer the feel and appearance of natural materials over plastic.
Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
I have yet to find anyone who can actually demonstrate that skill even on video - though I have seen many people talk about how OTHERS can do it. I have no doubt that somewhere out there are people who really can but I suspect you can count them on the fingers of one hand. Thus, similar to the advantage granted by untumbled dice, I think it doesn't bear significant consideration. Willing to be proved wrong though...
I met a guy who worked in casino security who said that they had caught a guy who could skew results of dice throws in his decade of experience.
One guy in 10 years.
That can mean they are exceedingly rare, that they are hard to detect, or- as I suspect- a bit of both.
One guy in 10 years.
That can mean they are exceedingly rare, that they are hard to detect, or- as I suspect- a bit of both.
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They are exceedingly rare in casinos, because casinos typically expect/require the thrower to bounce the dice off a barrier. It is incredibly difficult to skew the dice in that setup, yes. Competitive backgammon has players use a dice cup.
But, they use those methods because without them, controlling d6s isn't all that hard.
My point, in fact, is that the two are probably roughly similar risks to your game. If you're going to worry about one, you probably should worry about the other.
Personally, I don't actually think most folks need to worry about dice-manipulators in friendly RPG play. But, I don't think most folks need to worry about the bias of tumbled dice, either.
Desdichado
Hero
That's a lot of crying. Well, maybe not.
Evenglare
Adventurer
I very very much disagree , I have run into MANY MANY dice that rolled certain numbers more often than others. GS die are much more random in my experience.
I don't doubt that you think the dice were biased, but, I'll repeat: humans are *very* susceptible to confirmation bias. The context of when we see a result matters in our perception of its weight.
If you haven't written results down and put them through a statistical measure, don't be too sure that the die is biased. I rolled a d10 FIFTY times, without a single 9 or 10, and that is not strong evidence that the die is biased against those numbers, statistically speaking.
Desdichado
Hero
I have never run into any, and I've done seen an awful lot of dice rolling. Unless you've got solid statistics to back up that claim, I don't believe it.
I'm sure that you do; such is the nature of our experience and our perception of it. But I don't.
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