Dice Worship.

Chagen

SOmetimes, I think Tabtletop RPG players take it a little too far.

There are a limited number of “twenties” in any given d20. That is, no matter how many times you roll a d20, you cannot roll another twenty once the supply has run out. These twenties can only be replenished by rolling a corresponding one with the same die. Thus every gamer is duty-bound to protect their supply of good rolls. If a friend rolls a twenty using your die, not only have they stolen your good roll, but they have doomed you to the extra one required to replenish the twenty.

Some players get excited when they roll several twenties in a row, concluding the dice are “hot”. Don’t make this blunder! This is like driving your car for 400 miles without gassing up, and then concluding that your car is a perpetual motion machine. After a few good rolls, pass the die off to an unwitting companion and let them charge it up for you.

Statisticians have known about this behavior for years. They call it “the probability seesaw”. Unlike the bell-shaped curve, in the seesaw system the odds of rolling high or low is directly proportional to what has been rolled in the past. They usually pretend this isn’t true. If a statistician hands you a die insisting that “any given roll has the same odds of rolling a one or a twenty”, it means he’s handing you a depleted die in the hopes of taking advantage of you. Don’t fall for it!

Now, I've been proven wrong before, but I have my doubts as to this actually being true.

CommandoDude

^ No. The chance does not diminish with each roll. There is always a 1/20 chance of rolling a 20 on a 20 sided dice.

The only thing that changes with each roll is the improbability of rolling another 20.

This is why the 'worship' of dice is stupid. Because you're convincing yourself that you're outsmarting the improbability of rolling more certain numbers.

DYRE

To be fair, most of the time when people say things like that, they're joking, or at least exaggerating.  Doesn't mean people don't do things like that, but I'm pretty sure they don't take it too seriously (like how people cross their fingers for good luck, even though they know that it doesn't really affect anything).

DonZabu

From Darths and Droids #99:

"Pete, being the highly logical, calculating person he is, rejects all of that as superstitious nonsense. He instead applies the scientific approach. Over the years, he's collected somewhere around a thousand twenty-sided dice. Every so often, he gathers them all together. He sits down at a table and carefully and individually rolls each of the thousand dice, once. Of course, roughly a twentieth of them will roll a one. He takes those fifty-odd dice and rolls them a second time. After about an hour of concentrated dice rolling, he'll end up with around two or three dice that have rolled two ones in a row. He takes those primed dice and places them in special custom-made padded containers where they can't roll around, and carries them to all the games he plays. 

Then, when in the most dire circumstances, where a roll of one would be absolutely disastrous, he pulls out the prepared dice. He now has in his hand a die that has rolled two ones in a row. Pete knows the odds of a d20 rolling three ones in a row is a puny one in 8,000. He has effectively pre-rolled the ones out of the die, and can make his crucial roll with confidence. Furthermore, being scientific about it means he knows that it doesn't matter who rolls the die for the third time, so he has no qualms about sharing his primed dice with other players, if that's what it takes to avoid disaster."

TuefelHundenIV

I can tell you what does effect a roll.  How you roll as in the motions you use and how land the dice on your surface.  Also the surface you choose to roll on .  Some surfaces reduce the number of times your die tumbles about or can affect how it bounces and rolls on striking the surface.

Also the edges and faces of a die can affect how your die lands.  Which is why things like weighted die and shaved die are prohibited in games where die are used.

FrodoGoofballCoTV

I tend to have a superstition that I get better rolls when I shake the dice between my cupped hands before I roll.

However, we should probably put this to test. Roll a bunch of dice a bunch of times, and sort them by the results, and then do the experiment again to see if there is any correlation.

snowbull

Tests only anger the dice god.

ClockworkUniverse

There is one way to make a die roll more likely: store them with the number you want to roll face up. This will very slightly weight them so they favor that number. 

Chagen

Only crappy RPG dice do that though.

Casino dice don't.

...Which doesn't really matter, given that 99% of all RPG players won't be able to afford Casino dice.

DYRE

If you want to see any sort of results from that though, I recommend using dice made of chocolate, or something else that's far meltier than plastic.

Also I recommend using dice made of chocolate because it'd be delicious.

And messy.

Do not actually use chocolate instead of dice.

Chagen

I wanna buy some dice....just to have them, I guess. They look really cool. And I can have my own dice for RPGs.

If I ever get rich, I will have my own custom set of dice made out of cut diamond with pure gold poured in for the numbers. Just because that would be awesome.

CommandoDude

Either way. The fact that a die may have rolled a one twice in a row bears nothing on the odds of if that die will roll another one.

The human mind only thinks that it does through a convoluted self imposed delusion that things which are "highly improbable" cannot happen because the odds are against it.

Why else do we have the "MillionToOneChance" trope? Because an audience wants to see people beat the impossible odds. We care very much about the odds. But they don't. Because there aren't odds in fiction, everything follows the rule of the plot.

snowbull

^Wait, are you saying there's a 1 in 20 chance of a die rolling three ones in a row?

I ask cause i dun get probiblity

Nova

I think it's 1 in 8000. Lemme check.

Nova

Yes. It's cubed- a 1 in 8000 chance of rolling a 20 on a d20 three times in a row.

That's to the power of 4 4 ties in a row, etc etc

DYRE

However, if a die has already rolled two ones, then the chance it will roll a third one is of course still just 1 in 20, which is what CommandoDude was talking about.

Nova

Yes. This is only looking at the chances of rolling, say, 3d20 and hoping for 3 20's.

DYRE

It would be somewhat amusing though if it meant you had a 1 in 8000 chance of getting a one after already rolling two ones.  That would seemingly imply that there's a 399 in 400 chance that the die wouldn't come up with any number at all (after all, getting two ones and a two is just as likely as three ones, for example, so that would mean there'd be a 1 in 8000 chance of getting each number, and there are 20 numbers.  So, there'd only be a 1 in 400 chance that the die would even show a number.  This is of course silly, but that's because it's based on incorrect logic).

Nova

Hahaha'

That made me laugh.

TuefelHundenIV

It is possible to get a "cocked" die.  This is when the die gets stuck up against a surface or some other object presenting a non-number surface  usually an edge or corner.

Nova

It is also perfectly possible for a die to land on edge.

Just incredibly unlikely.

TheMightyAnonym

Worshiping Lady Luck is a very bad idea.

Nova

-worships Lady Luck-

CommandoDude

And HOW many times am I going to have to keep hearing that stupid saying?

"Fortune favors the bold"

Nova

Bold, you say?

TheMightyAnonym

I'm far bolder than *YOU*, Cygan!

Nova

NO U

TheMightyAnonym

HA!

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!

CommandoDude

-_-

Nova

Great, you bloody broke the page.

Nice job.

TheMightyAnonym

It's not broken on my end.

Then again, I'm viewing the website on a shiny widescreen computer monitor...