Dice bag vs app

[Cadence]

Be honest, tell the truth.

How many people still carry a dice bag and how many use a roller app on their phone? I'm curious.

I'm old school gamer, so I generally use a bag o' dice.

We all use the dice when its in person still.

 

[Sanguinarious]

I have one on my phone just in case I ever need one.

 

[uzirath]

My whole group uses physical dice except during the pandemic when we played online. Some still used physical dice even then.

 

[DeviousQuail]

Physical dice in person and the option to use a roller or physical dice on Roll20/Discord. I find the dice are faster than most apps unless you've programmed in a bunch of stuff.

 

[aramis erak]

Be honest, tell the truth.

How many people still carry a dice bag and how many use a roller app on their phone? I'm curious.

I'm old school gamer, so I generally use a bag o' dice.

I only use dice rollers for online play.
FTF, excepting L5R5, Genesys, and Star Wars (EotE, AOR, F&D), it's real dice. As a GM, when the die roller is used, I put restrictions. must be flat on the table, roll must not be made until called for. And I need to see the results.
It's not so much that I'm that much a control freak as that such a restriction prevents a lot of accusations by player vs other player. Head it off, don't have to deal with it in session.

 

[Lanefan]

Physical dice unless playing online and the GM insists on virtual.

 

[CleverNickName]

The dice always match the game format, in my experience.
I've never seen anyone roll a physical dice when playing a virtual game...nor have I ever seen anyone roll a virtual dice when playing a physical game.

 

[aramis erak]

The dice always match the game format, in my experience.
I've never seen anyone roll a physical dice when playing a virtual game...nor have I ever seen anyone roll a virtual dice when playing a physical game.

I've found that, online, the number of "exceptional rolls" from groups I've let "use" physical dice in online play significantly outperform even the hottest misreaders. Which is why I used shared visibility dice programs ...

Until it broke, I used the one at CatchYourHare.com; I then switched to a dice bot in Discord.

And then, since I found the Discord Bot I was using was statistically skewed too far for my comfort. (And skewed in an odd way - 3 & 5 were more that twice 6's and 1.5× 1's. on well over 200 d6's - 4 consecutive sessions of Pendragon with heavy combat action. The d20 rolls had a similar discrepancy.)

So I wrote my own Discord bot. In Python. I only run it during games.

I use a variation on the χ² test of fit.
x = √{∑(e-a)²/n}
Where
e = rolls per side (aka expected rolls)
a = actual results per side
n = number of trials =sides × e
x = poorness of fit.
x = 0 is not a random die, but a deck of cards, using each card, and not shuffling until the dec is exhausted.
0.1 ≤ x ≤ 0.5 is a good fit. Any lower, and its time to test for patterns... and higher, and its skewed
the bigger e is, the more reliable the result, 5 is the minimum for any validity, but above 30, becomes diminishing returns; 10's pretty reasonable for hand rolled, I use 50 for PRNG. The bigger x is, the less fair the die or PRNG.

PRNG: Pseudo-Random Number Generator. the technical name for the computer programs that generate "random numbers."

Python 3's Random.shuffle() method is good enough for me, and my players.

 

[delericho]

Physical dice. I even used them when running via Teams/Zoom during lockdown. I don't expect ever to change.

I don't care what my players use.

 

[Blue]

In person is exclusively a dice bag and same for everyone else around the table. Online is a mix - with one DM it's Roll20 but he doesn't mind if people roll their own dice, and I use Google Draw in a game and people are exclusively their own dice.

At no point does a dice roller app on a phone come into play.