MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
There a spectrum of opinions regarding dice and the importance of balance. A healthy minority of gamers have strong preferences for balanced die. Louis Zocchi is the grandfather and first example I think of for this cohort. I've gone down this rabbit hole. When I got back into the hobby, older and with more disposable income, I bought a set of precision dice which were my main DM dice for years (made more expensive because I worked with the vendor to buy colors matching medieval colors associated with each of the polyhedrals, instead of buying a matching set--I wanted the best balance I could get with physical dice, but I still care about aesthetics, character, and like to engage in a bit of magical thinking).
The second cohort are those who care more about character than balance. They want cool looking dice and/or have emotional connections to certain dice. Many of this cohort exhibit a bit of magical thinking about their dice and are often accused of falling for the gambler's fallacy. Yet, I find that in many instances they are not falling for the gamblers fallacy, because their dice are not balanced and their dice will favor certain numbers to various degrees. I have a d10 from the 1980s. A cheap plastic blue die with the numbers filled in with white crayon, which is well worn from years of use and has some gouges from the teeth of the family dog who got a hold of it in the 80s. It ain't balanced. It isn't as consistent as a weighted, cheater's die; any number still has a chance of coming up, but it favors some numbers over the others.
The third cohort are those who don't think about it much and are happy to use whatever dice are available. They are not the focus of this discussion.
So, how do you feel about other players using unbalanced dice of character? I've never experienced a DM or another player complaining because everyone at the table wasn't using precision dice, but I have seen people complain about certain dice being too unbalanced. What about you? Is digging through bins of cheap dice and collecting various dice with a focus on dice that look cool more than being balanced part of the fun, or an annoying distraction that detracts from the pure fun or true randomness? Is it a legitimate strategy to dig through a large bag of dice that you have curated and have come to know their quirks well; rolling one die for one game or kind of roll and another die for another game or kind of roll, based on your experience of how they roll. Or is that cheating?
One thing I miss about in-person play now that I run games on a VTT with digital dice, is the various superstitions, gamesmanship, personification of dice players engage in when rolling physical dice. Unless you are rolling precision dice through a dice tower, you aren't coming close to true randomness. How you role, the imperfections in the dice, and other factors can lead to lesser degrees of randomness. This is something I think most gamer accept. But where do you draw the line?
The second cohort are those who care more about character than balance. They want cool looking dice and/or have emotional connections to certain dice. Many of this cohort exhibit a bit of magical thinking about their dice and are often accused of falling for the gambler's fallacy. Yet, I find that in many instances they are not falling for the gamblers fallacy, because their dice are not balanced and their dice will favor certain numbers to various degrees. I have a d10 from the 1980s. A cheap plastic blue die with the numbers filled in with white crayon, which is well worn from years of use and has some gouges from the teeth of the family dog who got a hold of it in the 80s. It ain't balanced. It isn't as consistent as a weighted, cheater's die; any number still has a chance of coming up, but it favors some numbers over the others.
The third cohort are those who don't think about it much and are happy to use whatever dice are available. They are not the focus of this discussion.
So, how do you feel about other players using unbalanced dice of character? I've never experienced a DM or another player complaining because everyone at the table wasn't using precision dice, but I have seen people complain about certain dice being too unbalanced. What about you? Is digging through bins of cheap dice and collecting various dice with a focus on dice that look cool more than being balanced part of the fun, or an annoying distraction that detracts from the pure fun or true randomness? Is it a legitimate strategy to dig through a large bag of dice that you have curated and have come to know their quirks well; rolling one die for one game or kind of roll and another die for another game or kind of roll, based on your experience of how they roll. Or is that cheating?
One thing I miss about in-person play now that I run games on a VTT with digital dice, is the various superstitions, gamesmanship, personification of dice players engage in when rolling physical dice. Unless you are rolling precision dice through a dice tower, you aren't coming close to true randomness. How you role, the imperfections in the dice, and other factors can lead to lesser degrees of randomness. This is something I think most gamer accept. But where do you draw the line?
