Anyone play with alternative dice?

[Thotas]

I'd be happy to have one of the Gamescience d5s as a curiosity, like my d30, but not at 5 bucks. And if I need a d5 for gaming, I'll use the same method I use for my d4s that I prefer the caltrop design and my d3s: use the d(x2) and repeat all the numbers on the second half of the faces.

 

[Umbran]

Make a spinner...

If you've played enough of any of those games, you'll find that it is pretty darned easy for the person using it to "finesse" the thing into giving the result he or she wants.

 

[Zander]

The Gamescience die is fair. It was tested using a machine invented by a Canadian physics professor. The machine rolls and reads dice; it can be left unattended to roll many thousands of times. I believe that the die has a level of randomness equal to or better than a standard (shop) d6 but not as high as a casino d6.

I have co-invented a method (that's not the same as Gamescience's) of making dice with odd numbers of sides so that the dice are fair. I have had the following made by this method: d3, d5, d7, d9, d11, d13 and d15. I believe that the d15 I have is the only fair fifteen-sided die in the world. The person who made it (and co-invented it) said that it was so difficult to machine that he would not make another! Unfortunately, I don't have a pic of these odd-faced dice. But I do intend to take one when I have the time and will post it at the Dice Maniacs' Club.

If you're interested in dice, check out the Dice Maniacs' Club at: http://groups.msn.com/DiceManiacsClubakaTheRandomFandom

 

[woodelf]

I am not a lawyer, and I know nothing but patent laws, but I'm not sure about the ethics of holding a patent on polyhedrons. The D5 is especially annoying, considering all it is is a pyramid, and if that isn't an ancient geometric shape, I don't know what is.

um, truncated (or is that doubly-truncated?--edges and vertices have all been truncated) triangular prism, and the specifics of the proportions are the secret to its fairness. I'm not sure it deserves a patent, but it certainly is not simply discovered, but rather engineered.

 

[woodelf]

I do use my d30, d32, and d36 from time to time. I also have a complete set of random dungeon dice (most are d6s) that can make for some really fun maze locations.

Are those typos? Do you actually have d32 and d36? Where'd you get them? What about the random dungeon dice? That sounds like fun.

 

[woodelf]

And so last week I get the bright idea that if there were dice out there with 3, 5, 7, etc., sides that these might be fun to incorporate into my campaigns on a house-rule basis............OR TO SELL! This morning I decided to research the originality of my idea. Unfortunately, I came across the following site:

http://www.gamescience.com/

Anybody use these? Some comments:

1) There is no way I'd ever pay $5 for A SINGLE DIE!
2) I love how one of the selling points for the product is "unlike most gaming dice that roll unevenly, OUR dice are BALANCED and have been TESTED!" LoL
3) The 2-year guarantee. LoL. What, after 730 days they explode?
4) Why do I find it very difficult to accept that no one else in the world can produce a d5 or a d24 because these guys apparently "hold a US patent"? It doesn't stop this company from selling d4's, d8's, d20's, etc.

Anyway, that's my little rant on alternative dice. Personally, wizards and the like (IMC) would use the d5 for hp rather than the d4.........BUT NOT AT $5 PER DIE! I'm thinking a d7 for Druids and Bards, too.

Can anybody enlighten me as to where I'd have to go to figure out whether or not I'd be able to make and sell my own alternative dice? Again, I seriously question the validity of their claim that no one else can produce d5's and such. However, I also have close to nil knowledge about patents and copyright laws. Common sense tells me that I'm right, though. Thanks in advance!

First of all, you want to read http://hjem.get2net.dk/Klaudius/Dice.htm . It'll tell you all the dice you can make that are fair.

Gamescience actually sells two styles of d5. One is a kite-faced decahedron--i.e., a d10, numbered 1-5 twice. The other is the one most people here seem to be talking about: triangular prism with all edges and vertices truncated (so it actually has 20 sides, but 15 of them are so small that, while you can balance the die on them, it'll never land on one of them. I'll take his word for it that the mixture of face shapes, face surface areas, and between-face angles renders the die fair--i haven't the patience to test it out.

As for validity of patents: the d24 is a tetrakis hexahedron, a well-known 2nd- or 3rd-order solid (i'm probably goofing up the terminology: it is not a Platonic solid, but is based upon one, does have all faces identical, but does not have all vertices identical, and the faces are not regular polygons (they're icosceles triangles)). It is also the only one of the "weird" dice that Gamescience makes that one of the competitors (Koplow) has copied, which, given the non-obvious usefulness (yes, yes: hours in a day; how often do *you* need to randomly generate, with non-waited probabilities, which hour of a day something occurs?), and the relative usefulness of some of the others (d3, d5) makes me think that the patent issue has at least some validity. [Koplow and Chessex do sell doubly-numbered cubes as d3s, but, AFAIK, nobody but Gamescience makes a d5 of any sort.] edit: actually, it looks like Koplow has licensed the d24 design from Gamescience, so maybe they aren't interested in challenging that patent, either.

On quality of dice: he's right. Koplow and Chessex dice are noticably uneven by comparison. Gamescience dice are near-casino in quality and consistency. Also, unless this has changed in the last few years, the rounded edges of most Koplow and Chessex dice are achieved by tumbling them--i.e., rolling them around with something abrasive to take the edges off, same as polishing rocks. This is bound to introduce unevennesses. So his claim isn't bogus or unfair. But it might be unrealistic: given the pseudo-random toss involved in rolling a die, only really glaring imbalances are likely to matter in the end, and then probably only on d20s, d30s, and other large dice with shallow between-face angles. I mean, strictly speaking, a decahedron isn't fair, either--the odds of the die rolling over the long edge between two faces that share an "end" vertex is considerably greater than for it to roll across the "equator", given equal impetus. If you really care about fair dice, you should only be using those that have all faces and all vertices identical (d4, d6, d8, d12, d20--doubly-numbered icosahedron for d10). But, again, every die roll starts with a pseudo-random toss, so the d10, frex, should have equal odds of landing on either "hemisphere", and thus the fact that it's not likely to roll over to the other hemisphere is moot.

And, to sort-of-answer the question: numbered dice i'm aware of (well, and own):
d3 (doubly-numbered cube)
dF (cube numbered -,-, , ,+,+)
d4 (regular tetrahedron)
d4 (square prism with conical ends)
d4 (doubly-numbered octahedron)
d4 (triply-numbered dodecahedron)
d5 (doubly-numbered kite-faced decahedron)
d5 (truncated triangular prism)
d6 (cube)
d6 (sphere with weight inside)
d6 (truncated trapezoidal dihedron?--i'm not even sure what to call this--the "log"-style d6 from, i think, Crystal Caste)
negative d6 (cube numbered -6,-5,-4,-3,-2,-1)
averaging die (cube numbered 2,3,3,4,4,5)
backgammon die (cube numbered 2,4,8,16,32,64)
d7 (pentagonal prism)
d8 (regular octahedron)
d8 (isosceles octahedron)
d8 (truncated trapezoidal dihedron)
doubling die (octahedron numbered 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128)
d10 (kite-faced dihedron)
d10 (truncated trapezoidal dihedron)
d10 (doubly-numbered icosahedron)
d12 (regular dodecahedron)
d12 (truncated trapezoidal dihedron)
d16 (triangular dihedron)
d18 (no idea what shape it is--mixture of rectangular and rhomboid faces)
d20 (regular icosahedron)
d20 (truncated trapezoidal dihedron)
d24 (tetrakis hexahedron)
d30 (rhombic triacontahedron)
d34 (triangular dihedron)
d50 (rounded triangular dihedron)
d100 (um...spherical with circular faces equally spaced about it, and a freely-shifting weight inside)
and of course decahedral d10s numbered 00,10,20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90; ditto for hundreds and thousands; and 00,00,10,10,20,20,30,30,40,40,50,50. I've also not mentioned the near-infinite variety of labeling schemes available on cubes (such as assorted fractions), other than a couple of game-significant ones.

and some i don't have:
d4 ("stretched-out" tetrahedron)
pseudo-talus (regular octahedron numbered 1,1,3,3,4,4,6,6)
d20 (square, diamond, and pentagon sides, IIRC) & d26 (octagon, trapezoid, and rectangle faces), neither of which makes any claim to be fair--they come with probability charts to tell you exactly how fair they aren't.

 

[woodelf]

These guys at gamescience didn't invent a 5-sided shape, they merely took an existing shape with five sides, put five different numerals on said sides, called it a die, and are selling it at outrageous prices.

Actually, it's a 20-sided polyhedron, with 5 different faces, which has been carefully engineered so that the differences in area, angle, etc., more-or-less cancel out and lead to a pseudo-fair die.

No. I would sell packages of dice the way conventional game dice are sold. A set of a d2, d3, d5, d7, d9, and d11 for $11.99. The seemingly minimal price (at least compared with five bucks for ONE!) would be in an effort to discourage the fact that the dice aren't huge sellers. I can't see the total manufacturing cost of a piece of plastic with some paint to be $1.70. CDs cost under a dollar to make.

Economies of scale. Same reason Gamescience charges several dollars for a d24, and Koplow can afford to sell them for under $2--Koplow is simply making more of them. Same reason Gamescience's truncated-prism d5 only comes in one color and i can't get it in the 6 colors i want. Same reason Britney Spears' latest CD is $12, and some indie jazz band's is $20. Oh, and the physical CD is pressed by the millions, if not hundreds of millions, so the cost for the molds/presses/whatever is a heck of a lot cheaper than for dice sold by the thousands.

 

[Zander]

First of all, you want to read http://hjem.get2net.dk/Klaudius/Dice.htm .

woodelf,
That page is wrong. There are an infinite number of other shapes that are fair; we just don't know what they are.

How do I know?

Imagine a pyramidal die with a square base and four triangular sides such that the four triangular sides are the same. If the height of the pyramid is very large compared to the dimensions of the square base (i.e. it's long and thin), it will land on any given triangular face more often than on the square base. If, on the other hand, the height of the pyramid is very small compared to the square base (i.e. it's low and almost flat), it will land on the square base more often than any given triangular face. Somewhere in between these two extreme pyramids, there is, in theory, a pyramid of a particular height to base ratio such that it lands on its square base exactly as often as it lands on any given triangular face. This theoretical pyramid would be as fair a die as a regular tetrahedron (i.e. a standard d4), cube (d6) etc.

~~~
Here's a summary of the variously shaped dice in my collection, excluding ones that are double/triple etc-numbered (such as a cube numbered 1 to 3 twice). The number in parentheses is the number of different shapes I have for that particualr d#:

d2 (2)
d3 (2)
d4 (8)
d5 (3)
d6 (too many to count! Probably more than 12)
d7 (3)
d8 (2)
d9 (2)
d10 (3)
d11 (1)
d12 (3)
d13 (1)
d14 (1)
d15 (1)
d16 (1)
d20 (2)
d24 (1)
d30 (1)
d32 (1)
d34 (1)
d50 (2)
d100 (1)

 

[Chaldfont]

The ultimate die is, of course, the time cube.

 

[Krieg]

The ultimate die is, of course, the time cube.

Hmm, so that's what insanity looks like.