[OT?] Really weird dice

[Drawmack]

Those weird d6's in the last photo, there is acctually an entire set of d20 dice based on that design. They are weird barrel like things with no numbers on the end. But the d20 is almost perfectly round and makes a great roller for times of high suspense.

 

[Zander]

Those weird d6's in the last photo, there is acctually an entire set of d20 dice based on that design. They are weird barrel like things with no numbers on the end. But the d20 is almost perfectly round and makes a great roller for times of high suspense.

Do you mean the Crystal Caste dice shown below? I have the matching D12 as well; I just didn't have it with me when I took the pic.

Interesting story about the transparent orange D6's with white pips above... They were made by Hasbro for the Millennium edition of Monopoly, but they infringed a patent held by Crystal Caste who issued a 'Cease & Desist' order against Hasbro. As a result, those dice are difficult (though not impossible) to come by. The dispute has not been resolved yet, but I've read Crystal Caste's patent and in IMHO they have a strong case.

 

[ichabod]

A dice fiend myself, I would be interested in where one can get the d24, d5, d2s, and the skull dice.

As for the d7/d9: it is theoretically possible to make a fair die of any number of sides using that method. I have seen the d9's and they didn't look very well manufactured. On the other hand, the d7's are made by Gamescience IIRC, which is usually pretty good about it's manufacturing.

Back to the d5 the canadian prof tested, I'd be very interested if you have a reference on that. If he's using the usually chi-squared test for goodness of fit for discrete distributions, that's a very low power test. That is, it can tell you a fair die is fair pretty well, but it's not so good at saying an unfair die is unfair. At least not without a LOT of replications.

 

[DWARF]

Hey, I have those bone dice! Not the skull ones, but the ones that look like little knuckle bones. Heh, great for rolling damage for necromancy spells!

 

[Michael Tree]

Damn I wish I had a digital camera.

Try to imagine the D-Skiiiieieeeeeeeeeee
16 sides (laid out akin to a D10), of which:
- 8 are 1's
- 2 are 2's
- 2 are 4's
- 1 is an 8
- 1 is a 16
- 1 is a capital T
- 1 is a copyright symbol

The name comes from the sound you make as your mind snaps from trying to understand just what the heck the thing is for.

I also have a D34, a '2 to the d6' (a d6 with side 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64) and a bunch of miscellaneous other weird ones, which I can't fully remember.

 

[Zander]

A dice fiend myself, I would be interested in where one can get the d24, d5, d2s, and the skull dice.

I was going to auction a D24 on Ebay, which probably would have netted me a fair amount, but I promised Lou Zocchi that I would help promote his dice. So the answer is you can get the D24's, the D10 marked 1 to 5 twice and the transparent D5's from Lou Zocchi at:

Gamescience
7604 Newton Dr, RR9
N. Biloxi
MS 39532 - 2830
USA

Tel. 228-392-4177

When you contact him, please mention that Alexander Simkin, the British dice collector, told you where to find these dice. That goes for anyone else who contacts him too. Thanks.

The silver-coloured metal D2's were a promotional item for Living Room Games. The wooden D2's say www.pudnorts.com on them, but I can't find their site. I got both the silver metal and wooden D2's at UK GenCon. The golden D2 is from the NFL edition of Monopoly. The white plastic D2's are from a set called Binary Dice invented by Swedish games designer Dan Glimne. The skull dice came from an OOP German game called Calva D'Os.

Hope that helps.

Back to the d5 the canadian prof tested, I'd be very interested if you have a reference on that. If he's using the usually chi-squared test for goodness of fit for discrete distributions, that's a very low power test. That is, it can tell you a fair die is fair pretty well, but it's not so good at saying an unfair die is unfair. At least not without a LOT of replications.

Unfortunately, I don't have a reference. And I don't know whether he used Chi-square or not. He may have used an empirical basis of comparison such as an ordinary D6 or, even better, a casino die. If he did use a theoretical standard such as Chi-square, a large number of replications would not have been a problem. From what I understand, he can set his machine to run by itself. I don't know how many rolls he had the machine do, but it might have been in the tens of thousands or even the hundreds of thousands - in which case he could have used a Chi-square test.

 

[Zander]

Damn I wish I had a digital camera.

Try to imagine the D-Skiiiieieeeeeeeeeee
16 sides (laid out akin to a D10), of which:
- 8 are 1's
- 2 are 2's
- 2 are 4's
- 1 is an 8
- 1 is a 16
- 1 is a capital T
- 1 is a copyright symbol

The name comes from the sound you make as your mind snaps from trying to understand just what the heck the thing is for.

I have a grey one like that. Lou Zocchi who made them once told me what game they were for, but I've forgotten. You can ask him if you like (contact details above).

I also have a D34, a '2 to the d6' (a d6 with side 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64) and a bunch of miscellaneous other weird ones, which I can't fully remember.

The D34's (see top two dice in pic below) were originally made for one of the European lotteries.

The 'D6' that goes 2, 4, 8 etc is a backgammon doubling cube. Technically, it's not a die because you don't roll it to generate a random number. You place it with a particular face uppermost to indicate the current stakes in the game. I suppose you could roll it and use it as a die, but that's not what it's designed for.

 

[Zander]

Hey, I have those bone dice! Not the skull ones, but the ones that look like little knuckle bones. Heh, great for rolling damage for necromancy spells!

There are two kinds of those, but only one kind is shown in the pic. They're very similar and I suspect that one kind is a (Chinese) copy of the other. The two kinds are slighlty different shades of off-white and the pips are nicer on one kind than the other.

 

[Zander]

Sorry, need to bump my own thread to find out what the URL was.

 

[Isida Kep'Tukari]

Honestly, if anyone could point me toward a website or something where I could obtain some of those skull dice, I'd be most grateful. They'd be perfect for this scene coming up in my game. And those little d6 "knucklebone" dice too.