Pros: Fully customizable, super trippy. Cons: The usual Kickstarter small-team caveats.
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20-sided smart dice over the rainbow: Ars tests $39 LED-filled Pixels Dice
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Can you roll it 1000 times or so and post the results of the rolls? I'm curious about the balance.
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I was curious about that too; they have that data on their website: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/cont ... rmat=1500w
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Yeah, I saw that. But I'd like actual data from a random production unit. I'd also like to see more statistics than they've got in those graphs.
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It's probably crap, but the dirty little secret of TTRPGs is that all gaming dice are pretty crap. Even brands like Game Science that tout their exacting specifications in the name of balance produce randomly biased dice. The most fair dice are those made for casinos, which take into account the relative densities of both the die body itself and the putty used to fill in the pips. Gaming dice don't typically go that far.
There's a rigorous lab test here. It also seems to indicate that the float test isn't a valid one.
The upside is that their unfairness usually only manifests after many thousands of rolls, not a few hundred or even one thousand.
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Easy with the pitchfork, Plato.
As long as it's symmetrical it can be used. D10s (and the double-digit version, the percentile die) are not uncommon.
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I didn't see the adjective "regular" anywhere in that sentence. That's not an inherent requirement of a polyhedron.
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For regular tabletop use I don't think it's very important with balanced dice. I don't even mind playing with cheap or home made novelty dice that are heavily biased one way or another if it's just with my friends because there's a good chance you'd never know if you weren't keeping a record of the rolls.
Part of the fun when we were younger was having "cursed" dice that for one reason or another got a bad rep after a particularly bad run of 1's or 20's, depending on which end of the outcome you were. "No, give me that other die, I'm not rolling with this one again!"
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And when someone does that, you absolutely know which way that roll is about to go"No, give me that other die, I'm not rolling with this one again!"
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Or if they preface it with "Don't fuck me, Gil!"And when someone does that, you absolutely know which way that roll is about to go"No, give me that other die, I'm not rolling with this one again!"
But seriously, aside from EGREGIOUSLY unfair dice it doesn't happen often enough to matter. People like to look for mechanisms behind random chance, or create little rituals that they instinctively feel will govern the outcome one way or another, when simply tossing a die from a cup or shaken hand is usually more than enough to get "good enough" results.
For some people I think it's just a natural expression of our desire to believe there are ways to control randomness because randomness is uncomfortable, rather than thrilling, for them. For others it's probably part of an inherently superstitious outlook. It's a powerful reflexive belief for many, and I've even found myself automatically inventing rationalizations or imaginary rules to put a system around something that's actually just chance. So I try not to be superstitious because it brings bad luck.
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The article could really benefit from a video showing those custom PNG patterns in action.
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20+ years of playing D&D I will pass and just use my plain old fancy looking resin dice.
$40 would purchase me a new board game rather than a gimmick.
If you can afford it, go for it they already have 20K backers. Stuff like this never excites me because the shine eventually goes away or it breaks in some way.
$40 would purchase me a new board game rather than a gimmick.
If you can afford it, go for it they already have 20K backers. Stuff like this never excites me because the shine eventually goes away or it breaks in some way.
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Your imagination will surely run wild with the possibilities! Like a light show on every roll! Or a sound! Or.. no, that’s it! Yours for $39.
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But... why N-sided die? Once you've put the electronics inside, why not just
- use a 6-sided die - of no particular "balance" (who cares if one side is more likely "up")
- allow each side to display "any" number (e.g. 0-99)
- permit the Owner to set the die to a range (e.g. 1-31)
[or even multi-die ranges (e.g. modelling the sum of 2 seven-sided dice plus a 13-sided one)]
- use the electronics to randomize an answer within that range
- and display the answer on all sides
With this you get The Universal Die, true (okay, Pseudo-) randomness, and the Joy (?) of throwing the die (or dice if you can afford several).
Yeah, 'haven't played those games for decades....
- use a 6-sided die - of no particular "balance" (who cares if one side is more likely "up")
- allow each side to display "any" number (e.g. 0-99)
- permit the Owner to set the die to a range (e.g. 1-31)
[or even multi-die ranges (e.g. modelling the sum of 2 seven-sided dice plus a 13-sided one)]
- use the electronics to randomize an answer within that range
- and display the answer on all sides
With this you get The Universal Die, true (okay, Pseudo-) randomness, and the Joy (?) of throwing the die (or dice if you can afford several).
Yeah, 'haven't played those games for decades....
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At that point, just use a phone app that lets you shake your phone.
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BS! Everyone knows that how often dice roll the desired number is correlated to how well the dice’s guardian maintains their dice shrine.
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The article unfortunately missed to mention some of the potential use cases for these dice, beyond the mere geek factor.
Visually impaired people can roll dice and perceive the results themselves rather than have other tell them what they rolled. Different colors and flash patterns for people who still have some eyesight, the app speaking the result for others.
The creator is also working with different companies to get support for the pixel dice into online services like Roll20 or D&D Beyond. You will be able to play with your friend on the internet and still be able to roll physical dice and everybody will see the result instantly.
In the year until the Pixels ship the community will certainly have a few more creative ideas.
Visually impaired people can roll dice and perceive the results themselves rather than have other tell them what they rolled. Different colors and flash patterns for people who still have some eyesight, the app speaking the result for others.
The creator is also working with different companies to get support for the pixel dice into online services like Roll20 or D&D Beyond. You will be able to play with your friend on the internet and still be able to roll physical dice and everybody will see the result instantly.
In the year until the Pixels ship the community will certainly have a few more creative ideas.
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On the Kickstarter campain site as well as the website of the creator.
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One funny thing about tabletop roleplaying game players is that a handful of bad rolls can turn the most diehard Richard Dawkins spewing atheist into a superstitious paranoid "blessing" their dice in about an hour of play.
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...wait a minute -Pretty neat idea. But this remains my favorite d20:
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One thing I really would like to know, especially with the price of these dice: Is the battery replaceable? After charging them regularly for 1-2 years, I can see those batteries dying. Are you then out of luck, or can you open up a die and replace the battery? I do not expect some kind of no-soldering-required replacement, but if you cannot even open up the dice because they are glued shut, that would be annoying.
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Pretty neat idea. But this remains my favorite d20:
Looks like the die I use while playing the video game Pathfinder Kingmaker.
I set everything to the easiest "tell me a story" mode and the game cheats heavily in your favor.
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...sounds like they're inductive-charging wirelessly-programmable cores cast in resin, so no, but the loads are probably intermittent and light-enough to be very gentle on the battery life...
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I would guess at a lifetime of about 1000 charging cycles before the battery capacity would drop below a usable charge per gaming session. So probably a fair number of years, depending on how often you play.
TL;DR: I don't think it'd be a problem for most users.
Edit: Why on earth would anyone downvote this comment? I mean, go ahead & do so if that floats your boat - it's no skin off my nose, but why?
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Per the FAQ on the kickstarter, the dice are sealed resin encasing the internals and the batteries are not replaceable. The battery life on a single charge will depend on how fancy one gets with the animation. I appreciated Sam's heads up that the charge decays when not in use, and hope that is addressed.
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I remain unconvinced about the Pixels, but at least their failure mode is "inert lumps which still function perfectly well as dumb dice".
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OK - that's a bit annoying, but pretty much what I expected. I just hope that the batteries do not suffer too much when the dice are sitting around for a couple weeks with a completely dead battery, should you ever have to skip the weekly gaming session due to another lockdown or whatever....
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Never owned glow in the dark dice? I can't say we ever really played in the kind of darkness that would have made them necessary, but it's a logical progression.
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