A Review of Dice That Came with the White Castle

(boardgamegeek.com)

59 points | by doener 3 days ago

6 comments

  • rgoldste 1 hour ago
    Reminds me of an encounter on BoardGameArena where the top ranked 7 Wonders Duel player complained there was a randomization bug (the Great Library never offered the science progress token). I thought he was raging (who hasn’t heard a poker player complain about bad luck) but turns out the developer checked the code and did in fact find this was a bug!
  • fecal_henge 23 minutes ago
    Is a 155 throws enough to evaluate bias? Seems more times than I'd like to roll some dice, but not enough to gain enough measurement confidence. By what criteria is the person assigning the traffic light ratings? What about face coplanarity? Get this enthusiast in a metrology lab.!
  • bombcar 2 hours ago
    This reminds me of a D&D dice website that went into way too much detail about how they weren't fair and I remember photos of them stacked on top of each other to show the variations in manufacturing.
    • gilrain 2 hours ago
      Zocchi retired, but his company charmingly continues.

      https://www.gamescience.com/about-1

      (Note: the sprue left by his sharp-edged process has since been proven to result in more bias than the tumbling undergone by the round-edged process.)

  • the_af 33 minutes ago
    I found this fascinating, if true:

    > The reason casino dice have such sharp edges is to get the to stop rolling faster with fewer tumbling. The more a die tumbles the more likely it will present any issues with it.

    If I understand it correctly, the justification is this: if a die is biased (usually a heavier face), this bias will manifest with a higher chance the longer the die rolls. But if it stops abruptly, for whatever reason (bumping against the edge of the table, other dice, or having a shape that prevents longer roll time, like the casino dice) this bias will be less likely to manifest. Did I get this explanation right?

    • shortercode 25 minutes ago
      I have quite a few sets of dice for D&D, nearly all of which favour aesthetics over balance. But saying that I prefer to use simpler plastic with rounded edges at a table. Sharp edge dice stop very abruptly and tend to show bias based on how they were held. The same is true of metal dice which are heavier, and tend to land instead of roll. This isn’t really the outcome you want.
      • the_af 5 minutes ago
        Your explanation also makes sense. Why then do casinos prefer sharp edges? Casinos strive to remove skill as much as possible.
    • Novosell 32 minutes ago
      That's how I understand it as well :)
  • excalibur 19 minutes ago
    Based on the title alone I imagined this to be a Google review of a White Castle restaurant, that's actually talking about a different business that used to be at the same location.
  • riffraff 3 days ago
    The thread following the review is pretty interesting too!