El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
. . . D&D dice always have. Most people needed to be told how to read the old-style d4s with the numbers running along the bottom edge. And most folks needed instruction on how to combine two d10 rolls to roll d100. The old dice sets may not have come with instructions but that's only because there was someone to show you. The D-Total is as easy to use as most conventional dice. I've shown people how to read it and they got it instantly. It's really very simple once you know how.
Personally, I never needed anyone to show me how to use dice, and I've never met anyone else who did (even newbies to the game), although I'm sure there have been those who did need to be shown. However, I suspect that statement was meant as sarcastic humor. Those dice do look like some kind of "computational device", or rune laden objects of divination, rather than just polyhedral dice.