Long ago, it had been explained to me that the reason spin-down D20s weren’t generally permitted in events (at least for the events I was playing in/judging) had less to do with inherent flaws of the number distribution in an “honest” roll, but rather the potential of their pattern’s exploitability for those intending to exploit that distribution. It would be interesting to test how much one could exploit the pattern to manipulate results (or, realistically, if such exploitation is practically possible).
I used to do magic and I had a trick that relied on rolling a dice in a specific way so it would land how you wanted but looked like it rolled. This is much harder to do with a d20 however after some trying I can kind of manipulate it so with practice I could probably make it so I only roll high on a spin down. This is however a small test I did at home for only a few days.
Yeah if you're going for high numbers, it's significantly easier on a spin down. Roll it against a surface, make it bump, even just start it in a specific orientation and what was a 1/20 chance affected by skill becomes a 4/20 to get something good enough affected by skill much more heavily. Hell you don't even have to be doing it intentionally, I used to roll against a box all the time and we just threw it in a way where it hit the sides most rolls. On a d20 that barely matters, but a spin down would've stopped at a number within the cluster of whatever hit the side. Edit: also, the majority of spin downs aren't manufactured to be balanced, they don't need to be balanced they just display a number.
@@bye1551and how would you be able to choose which side of the dice hits the wall? Maybe I'm missing something in your comment, but if you just throw the dice it shouldn't matter if it hits the wall or the floor. Simply because you can't guarantee or even influence wich side hits.
Dices where the numbers are cut you can cut more material in the numbers you want so they roll with more frequency. How much it affects I don't know but it is enough that I have heard and seen this trick done.
@@Jehty_ oww yes you can by checking the die in your hand and making the right flick or the wrist you CAN influence this. Tried an tested. Takes a little bit of practice but the skill can be developed quickly
I’m a boxman, and have worked in casinos for 25 years. Here’s a bit of my knowledge on dice. The material removed to carve out the numbers has weight. If you want a dice to be balanced you need to refill that space. The way casino dice manufacturers make them fair is by refilling the space carved out for the numbers with a different colour of the same material. They are also clear so that the inside can be inspected visually. A tiny bubble will cause the dice to be unbalanced. Given what I know I would say that both are unbalanced, but the spin down should be worse because all the 2 digit numbers (which have more material removed) are grouped together. The side with the lower 1 digit numbers should be at the bottom more often because that will be the heavier side. Oh and the float test isn’t really accurate enough. Get casino equipment and you will very quickly and easily find out if you dice are balanced or not.
I was thinking about that. Given that the die with 20, 19, 18, 17, 16 and so one all on the same side had more material removed to carve the numbers, its opposite side, with the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on would have less material removed and naturally be heavier, and thus have a tendency to end up more often at the bottom, meaning that the 20 and close numbers would end up coming up more often. At least that was my logic.
The casino industry is also based on not being able to be called a cheater while taking in billions of dollars. They're going to make sure that their dice are the fairest they can in order to make sure that not only can they not be called out f or cheating, but to also make it harder for anybody on the floor to cheat. That said, if you wanted to cheat, you'd need actual weighted dice. You can tell that they are weighted just by holding them in your hand. there isn't enough weight in the dimple to make enough of a difference when you actually roll the dice.
@@jessiehogue. But the question would be, how much weight is actually removed, and how does that effect the actual rolling of the dice. The answer is "very little" to both questions. Yeah, after thousands of rolls, you may start to see a statistical anomaly, but if you're rolling one extra crit for every 5000 rolls, are you really gaining all that much?
As the only person at my table who recognises a spindown vs a standard d20, I always balk at one of my players bringing a spindown to DnD. And then I immediately mentally talk myself down because there's no real impactful difference and my player just picked that die because they think it's pretty. Excellent video!
So, the thing with spindowns is, I think, if they're being rolled fairly, they're probably not really any less random than a standard D20; considering that the standard D20 manufacturing process includes, presumably, making sure the die is balanced well enough, you'd probably have to do it on purpose to make the die poorly balanced. However, because all of the high numbers are on one side and all the low numbers are on the other, it makes it much easier to manipulate the die into always giving you a number in that 16-20 range.
Testing a die for fairness would take more time than actually making the die. whether the dice are mass manufactured or small batch, that's just not worthwhile for the manufacturer. think about how hard-edge dice are often marketed as more fair due to the tumbling process of typical dice allegedly reducing the fairness of each individual die. If the makers of typical dice had the testing records for this, it would be very clear cut whether hard-edge dice are an improvement, and that kind of clarity is just not what we see. Followup: the video mentions a "float test". I was implicitly assuming a higher standard of testing (rolls and statistics) in the claim about testing time. With small batch manufacturing, float testing each die is at least achievable, though still not worthwhile in my opinion. float testing each die with mass manufacturing is still intractable though.
@@LaBlueSkuld They do a little bit. A very little bit. And pretty much only for transparent and translucent dice. I know this because I buy them by the bucket on Chinese websites. Sometimes they have bugs stuck inside of them. That's pretty cool. They also roll hilariously biased. But it's pretty much impossible to tell what exact number they're biased at without spending way too much time doing the math. It's funny watching people get angry at one set of dice to swap them for another set of dice, they also get angry at.
I have absolutely no idea how I got here. I don't even play DnD, or any another dice rolling game. I am though definitely pleased with the algorithm, but I am a wee bit alarmed it knows me so well. Now you've got me down the rabbit hole on dice sir! I've just been googling what a "float test" is!
You and I both, brother. Have you been watching Bauldr's Gate 3 content too? (a game I don't even own because turn based RPG's are icky and yucky but that one looks nominally interesting)
I’ve totally played DnD, but I’ve never worried that much about my dice as long as we’re all using the same ones…still. I was absolutely and totally fascinated by this.
The way I've always understood it is that placing numbers so that opposites add to Dice Sides + 1 is an ancient measure intended to offset the fact that old dice weren't very precisely made, and to make it more difficult to 'weight' the dice. It might even go back to the use of knucklebone dice (aka Astragaloi, Talli, Shaggai) which had only four sides and were numbered 1, 3, 4, 6, with the numbers 1 and 6 being only 10% likely compared to the 3 and 4 being 40% likely. This required 1 and 6 to be opposite one another and 3, 4 likewise, because that's how the astragalus bone is shaped - opposite sides are roughly the same size and shape, meaning the die's average remained somewhere close to the middle of its range. These measures are no longer necessary with modern dice, which are much more uniformly shaped and weighted.
Having seen the rest of the video now, I think I'll also point out that simply being off-balance isn't enough to make a spin down die noticeably unfair, it specifically has to be unbalanced away from or towards the 'high point' (the centre point at which all the highest-rated facets are clustered around). As I noted above, the 'opposite sides' safety measure is only really effective at preventing deliberate cheating and correcting excessively poor manufacturing.
yeah, you're assuming that the imbalanced dice is something people don't want today, and is something that is all but eradicated. There are still cheaters around, plenty of them. They could be skill-based with sleight of hand, or have imbalanced dice on purpose. So why allow a die that allows for those by grouping all the good numbers on one side. It's real difficult to use sleight of hand or to imbalance a regular d20, since every good value (15+) is surrounded by bad values, and even the slightest miscalculation spoils the good result. But if all the good results are on one side, then with a miscalculation you just get a slightly worse result. Instead of a 20, you get a 17, stuff like that.
Unless it's a competitive context, I expect any difference is minimal enough to not be worth arguing about as long as the die is rolled in a proper manner. If someone's willing to cheat in what's essentially a casual cooperative game like most RPGs then it really says more about the person than the dice. Ironically, the most likely competitive context I can think of for rolling D20s would be rolling for who goes first in MTG which is typically going to be done using spindowns since they're on-hand already.
There shouldn't be any difference at all, they should both be fair, assuming that they are made properly. Or rather as fair as dice could be, after all, they're only fair in theory. As the numbers themselves even if the entire dice is uniformly dense, would shift the fairness to the sides with the least amount of material removed.
> f someone's willing to cheat in what's essentially a casual cooperative game like most RPGs then it really says more about the person than the dice. Exactly! But a person doing that is typically a cheater through and through, and will tend to also cheat on tons of other stuff, too. TTRPG is a cooperative setting, but the general idea is still to play fairly with friends... and do we really want to have a person with such bad character flaw in our group? Also, those ypes of person HATE losing, they are very bad losers, and their tantrums whn they lose can ruin the fun of everyone. And when they win (as they typically end up doing), then they GLOAT and "rub it in" i.e. bad losers tend to also be bad winners. Which is also annoying. So just kick the moron as soon as you find proof of their cheating. What I did as DM, when I had my suspicions, is to recruit my two best most vigilant players to watch his rolls closely, without seeming to be spying too much, and not tell anything during the game. Just watch closely his rolls AND any other cheaty behavior. I did that because when I DM, my attention is solicited in all kinds of ways, way too much for me to watch closely players rolls. It then took only a SINGLE game to have both my solid players to detect not one but several instances of true cheating (like, the guy has 110 gp, buys a 50 gp potion ... after buying he marks off only 20 gp and thus still has 90 gp left), and that is in ADDITION to the super consistency of the way he rolled, and the consistent special way of "pre-placing" the d20 in his hand. Bu in a really competitive game, with money involved? Back then, that guy would have ended up at the hospital. Not nowadays though, not in this frakked up era where criminals get treated like victims, and the actual victims get treated like criminals.
You're missing the possibility of people who are not cheating intentionally, but doing fairly standard TTRPG player things like believing in lucky dice. So let's assume that multiple of a player's dice are unbalanced, and they pick out their favorite ones, they're going to ditch unbalanced dice that are unbalanced negatively, and favor those that are unbalanced positively. A player could well be rolling statistically better dice despite no ill intent.
It is facinating to see the testing methods. I personally don't mind if someone has a spindown or a normal D20. If i notice a character has a propensity to cheat. I deal with the player, not find one million different ways to get them to not cheat.
Exactly. If you put a roll down in a cup, it doesn't matter, but use a careful and consistent rolling move and line up the dice in you hand when you "shake" and you can easily get some higher results. It just makes it easier to manipulate.
Suggest applying a chi-square test to your dataset. I've had good results testing d20's this way with just 500 rolls. It's much more sensitive to bias than just measuring mean, median, and sigma.
this right here. chi-square goodness of fit my beloved. plus: dice give out qualitative data, the numebers on them could be replaced with letters or images with no functional difference. This makes the "standard deviation" not really a standard deviation.
@@eiolli8014 while that's true, the purpose of these particular die is to give a number 1-20. Once we assign a number to each face, a standard deviation is generated and is also helpful to illustrate the spread.
The same data is being collected. How you apply that data doesn't change the appropriate sample size for an experiment. 500 is mathematically not enough to get an acceptable level of statistical variance from coin flips, let alone something with more than a binary condition.
Yes but that isn’t actually what this discussion is about. It’s about the complete randomness of a random role. How someone can manipulate their dice role is a different matter.
@@JackWest-sp1zc in the video, he mentioned spindown dice had been banned in some tournament settings, and the concern in those cases was almost certainly to avoid intentional manipulation rather than concern over deviation from being absolutely random. So yeah, that's not what the video was about, but it would have been good to discuss at least briefly. But he preferred to make a long video answering a question nobody asked. (Which I did find interesting anyway.)
@@JackWest-sp1zcit is what the video claims to be about because he introduces it with the fact that those dice are widely banned and that is the sole reason that they are banned.
Yeah, I would have really liked to just see the distributions. Since there are only 20 outcomes, binning isn't an issue and a plain old histogram would be fine. To be really nerdy and pedantic.. empirical cumulative distributions are usually the thing to use if you want to to compare stochastic things which have lots (or continuous) possible states/outcomes. You can also more easily fit functions to them.
Yeah, I wasn't really satisfied with just an average. Having a lot of 1s and a lot of 20s would still benefit the player more than a spread of 1-20. A 6 is still very likely to fail, and a 15 can still fail. And in games with crits, 20s are usually natural criticals. Median will just be 10 or 11 once you have over a hundred rolls, unless something is severely wrong with the die. A bar chart would've showed the actual distribution. How much each individual number was rolled. I know he had the numbers on the sides, but they weren't even talked about.
A new set of seven die (4 sider thru 20 sider) seemed "uncooperative" during an RPG game. I performed a Chi-Squared test on all die in the set. The stats said "unfair" with a better-than 95% confidence. Assuming a cause and guided by the observed frequency pattern, I cut the worst offender (a ten-sider) open with a jeweler's saw (to minimize material removed by the kerf). The data had not led me astray: I had cut through the approximate (close approximate) center of internal voids. The voids unbalanced the die making it a "loaded" die (although classical "loading" consists of adding mass, not removing it). The voids typically form in injection molded die. They occur because the molding process is set up to produce uniform exterior surfaces. This pristine outer surface is typically accomplished by having a relatively cold mold that quickly freezes the skin in place. When the hot interior material cools, it shrinks and voids are formed. The exact location of the voids can "wander" from mold shot to mold shot. There are methods to minimize or even eliminate void formation, but they usually involve mold design and extended process time. While the extra mold cost can be amortized across many parts, the extra processing time--and its cost--is added to every shot. Consequently, manufacturers of molded dice not intended for casino use are unlikely to worry about fairness. Opaque die can hide voids. Transparent die cannot. If you are worried about die fairness, use transparent die. However, factors other than voids can be in play: The sharpness or relative roundness of edges and corners will also subtly influence roll outcomes. Such issues cannot be spotted using a "float test." Dead-sharp edges are usually a feature of casino dice. On a practical level, how many die rolls are actually made in an RPG gaming session? Unless a die is seriously unbalanced, it is unlikely that the game's outcome will be significantly influenced by a "bad" die. Furthermore, a die's bias might not be game altering (the 20 sider in my unfair set preferred 13). It would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine (with confidence) which rolls are truly random and which were influenced by a fractional gram of mass that shifted the die's center of gravity away from its geometric center. Of course, the situation is a tad more serious in a casino.
The ability to learn things to a deep level is so unimaginable to a dumb person, it looks like LSD to them. Me, I'm sending screenshots of this to my D&D group because it fits their interests so well.
@@CidVeldoril Easily achievable if you vary the infill in your printing, yes. If you set to solid print, it should in theory be fairer - though if we're going to get technical, any dice with engraved numbers is going to be marginally unbalanced due to that fact, though whether it's a statistically significant difference is unclear. If the dice are resin cast, and the numbers flat filled with another color of resin of the same density however, the dice would then be balanced.
One thing to note about statistics is to get to a true distribution of something, you need a sample size that is so large that the thing that happens the least happens at least 30 times in your sample size. if you do that it will bring your t-distribution to the point that is is 95% accurate in comparison to the true z-distribution. so for the perfect case the smallest sample you need to get close to that for a 20 d would be 600 samples as that would be 30 cases of each side. So for your case here the sample 1000 should be counted as close to the true distribution of these cases. This is one of the main things I remember from my stats class when looking at sample sizes and how to tell if something was doing enough sampling to get to a true distribution.
Yeah, it really is refreshing to have someone _not_ say "I rolled three nat 1's in a row, so that means that the likelihood to get another 1 has decreased significantly..."
When I worked at a game store several years ago, This exact question game up. My Pathfinder group wanted to ban me using the MTG spin-down dice. So I spent a few slow days rolling the spin down 5000 times. I should have done a standard deviation like you, but instead I just used a more crude metric of average rolls, and highest and lowest rolled numbers. I compared this to 9 other sets of 5000 randomly generated dice rolls. Since my dice did not have the highest average or an unexpectedly high number of high rolls compared to the random sample, my group relented, and let me use the die. However, I think they really just wanted to shut me up. I have also confirmed that if you want to cheat, you can finesse the roll for a more favorable outcome on a spin down. In another test, I was able to roll a 20 in 20% (4/20) of rolls, and a 16 or better about 40% of the time after 300 rolls. But this involved holding it just so, and barely letting it tumble out of the hand on a specific surface after several minutes of practice. If you are rolling fairly, your spin down dice should give you just as random of a result, within reason. I say if you have someone cheating with spin down dice in your game, and you ban the dice, they will cheat in other ways, and probably already are.
Spindowns are the easiest possible die to cheat with. The only thing potentially easier is a coin flip. Die are gambling equipment. Any gambling equipment or randomizer that is less secure than THE STANDARD equipment should be banned across the board as essentially the only functional difference is being able to cheat with it easier. This is no different than allowing cards with slightly different design or textures on the back. Spindown die even being made in the first place is massively suspect. A normal d20 is not hard to track life on if you know all sides add to 21.
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtreyit's completely different. You're totally capable of using a spin down legitimately. There's no way to use a set of cards like that without seeing the differences. But even then someone who doesn't know the differences would be able to use the cards just the same as a normal deck. If you don't trust the people you play with not to cheat, just don't play with them. It's pretty simple my guy. Also it's a game. You don't have to take personal games between friends so bloody seriously.
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtreyWhat are the odds of rolling a 20 on a regular d20? I in 20 What are the odds of rolling a 20 on a spin down? 1 in 20. Y’all are making too big a deal out this. The arrangement of the numbers doesn’t change the odds, and the average person, and hell, even most sleight of hand artists, isn’t going to be able to reliably game a spin down. This is a nonissue.
@@Glmorrs1 You're missing the point. Sit down with a spin-down die and a normal die. Don't ~try~ to be fair, ~try~ to cheat with the spindown die, and you will find it's much easier. It's not about the probability, it's about abusibility. Is it a BIG deal? No. Can anybody learn to cheat with them after just a few minutes of practice? Yep.
1:22 I think they are both equally random. Maybe a malicious player could try some tricky roles to get an advantage, but it could be easily solvable with a dice tower.
Paused when asked. Prediction: no statistically significant difference. My attitude: I don’t care. … and yet I’m here and watching. Must be the Math nerd in me.
I would be very surprised to see any statistically significant difference in any study of (a) 1000 balanced and 1000 slightly unbalanced die, (b) tested by throwing each a million times. I would expect that until you start actually drilling voids into die, or manufacturing them with weights in them, there would be little significant differences due to merely injection moulding process imperfections alone, such as tiny voids.
This video is about exactly the kinds of things that I think about in my head and have no idea how to actually test because I’m not a Maths person. I love how detailed this is and how much you break it down for the non-maths like myself. I’m a new sub just to see what other delightfully detailed information you have!
For finding unbalanced dice, you could drill a tiny hole in each, and then cover up the entrance to the hole with paint. That would change the mass distribution, and also you could forge similarly unbalanced dice, both normal and that other one
In the context of plastic dice, the uniformity of the material is probably not as important a biasing factor as is the symmetry of the outer surface. Most modern dice are gently rounded at their points and edges, but it can be quite hard to tell whether this rounding is equal: A very slightly flatter corner on one side makes those faces less likely to remain on the bottom, whereas a slightly pointier corner is more likely to 'stop' the die and remain on the lower half of the die. Since dice do wear down over time (including their time in the dice bag, which if sufficiently agitated could conceivably wear them down even more than rolling them during a game), older dice are expected to become less fair over time as a result. It's also not the case that all wear will produce a bias that moves the average. Smoothing out that top or bottom corner on a spindown (neighboring the five highest faces or five lowest faces, respectively) is going to impact the distribution more than the other ten corners. So, for most purposes, in a typical TTRPG context in which people are rolling with sufficient gusto (or using a pyramidal backboard, dice tower, or similar accessory), the bias on dice will arise randomly and idiosyncratically, and while the *severity* of that bias will tend to grow faster on spindown dice, it will almost certainly fail to move the needle appreciably. However, spindown dice are going to be a lot easier to *deliberately* bias, and depending on what they want to do, a bad faith actor could put their foot on the scale in ways that are subtle but meaningful. For example, polishing down specific corners on a spindown die could make it tilt away from rolling a 1 and toward rolling a 20 without changing its overall average very much. This would be a pretty bizarre thing to do for most TTRPG contexts (which are very rarely competitive with any stakes), but you can imagine that this is the sort of thing a casino might care mightily about. So, in short, concerns about the 'fairness' of dice in tabletop contexts can mostly be addressed by not letting people play with obviously damaged/chipped/scratched dice and making sure rolls bounce enough; any incidental bias from standard vs. spindown is going to be vanishingly small in most cases. Fairness ends up mattering most when people have a strong motivation to cheat, in which case spindown dice are considerably easier to doctor.
Also how it's rolled is going to play a part too. Drop it through a dice tower, it's fine. Just drop it (like Sam on Critical Role), it's probably more likely to be in the range you want.
I wouldn't be certain that older dice would be less fair. As far as I understand and know, a rough vaguely spherical object that is put into an agitator with other roughly spherical objects... Will tend to round off sharp edges and equal out abnormalities. I don't see why a die might become more fair after being rolled and stored in a dice bag rather than less. Also, a float test would also be affected by more material being on a certain side, whether or not it would change the float test enough to help the test be more accurate, I don't know. But a float test seems like the most accurate simple/easy test.
This is the specific reason gamescience dice exist. Louis Zocchi wanted the most fair dice you could get, so they aren't tumbled in a rock tumbler and treated in such ways that ruin the initial geometry of the die. He literally cuts the die off the sprew, and calls it good, because even with part of the sprew on the die, it's still more random than your standard manufactured dice. If you want a truly random die, get gamescience dice.
I think a bigger flaw in this experiment than the small sample and spindown only being slightly unbalances, is that it's starting from a false assumption. This video is actually the first time I've even heard the idea clustering of numbers in spindown could give unbalanced results in a normal roll. The main argument I've always seen is that clustering of numbers on a spindown makes it easier to use a rolling technique that could look fair but increases your likelihood of rolling high.
Question: are the numbers on these dices always carved in? Because if so, wouldn't spin down dices basically have a production fault since higher numbers have two digits and therefore more material carved out thus unbalancing the dice?
Was thinking the same. Spin down having one area/side with only two digit numbers would move the center of gravity to the singel digit side. Making it inherently unbalanced and more prone to rolling high numbers.
In general, I think the paint is supposed to be weighted to correct for that. That said, I've heard concerns that spindown dice would have less attention given to making them balanced in manufacturing because they're primary intended purpose is for rolling. That said, I think Wizards of The Coast has claimed that their spindowns are balanced for use when rolling, so it's probably fine.
Back in the day, I knew a guy who thought it was cool to melt different colored wax into the number grooves. He said it made the dice easier to read. Back then some dice were pretty plain, but now they come in nearly infinite varieties of colors, sparkly/not sparkly, etc. I questioned whether he'd noticed any difference in the performance of his dice because he'd added weight to them, but he didn't think so. I think we've all had one or two dies that we really liked, because we used them to pull off some incredible feat in a game. I had a d20 that was my favorite, but at the game table I was well known for being either incredibly lucky, or incredibly unlucky. That die was probably biased since I didn't know about float tests back then. In nearly every game we played, I did something great with a 20, or nearly died with a 1. And sometimes both in the same game.
I carry both of these dice, and oddly enough i use a spindown dice as my DM descretion dice because it's easier to control a result to prevent total disaster
^^ the only use case for the spindowns is so the DM can cheat on saves and attack rolls to subtly prevent full party wipes or make his big bads last a bit longer.
@@Muhahahahaz it's easier to manipulate because, if you watch the video, the numbers have a more controlled group. you cant make it land on a number, but you have a better time to get a result you want with it
I play around with resin casting, and I have molds for dice. I got some powered brass for a completely different project but decided to see if I could get a metallicish set of dice, well the resin I used wasn't nearly viscous enough to keep the brass in suspension during the cure, so the brass just fell to the bottom face. The d6 was obviously the most egregious, however after around 100 rolls the 6 (the 1 face was where all the metal settled) only came up slightly more often, and more than half of the weight of the die is in the bottom millimeter of the 1face. I mean 100 rolls is basically nothing, but it was interesting to me, I thought there would be a significant result (but again only @ 100 rolls)
I think that you would find the weight difference of the brass powder was minuscule compared to the weight of the resin it displaced. Also, while the difference in distribution of the powder in the D6 was the most obvious, because of the larger faces of the die and it's relative stability sitting on a surface, it is the least affected by sight weight imbalances. Those dice with smaller faces relative to their diameter, and thus more likely to keep rolling with the slightest bit of force or inertia, are going to be the most influenced.
100 rolls isn't outrageously few, I don't remember the formula off the top of my head but the rule of thumb is that 400 rolls is enough to find a biased d20 with 95% accuracy. For fewer faces, the number of rolls needed is lower, so your 100 rolls are probably statistically significant enough.
I did some attempts at making a d6 that mostly rolled 6. The best method I found was slightly rounding the edges of the 6 and keeping all the other edges sharper. This improved the 6 rolls considerably and reduced 1 rolls since the dice stops easier on the sharper edged side and rolls off the smoother edged side easier.Even making one side weigh almost 40% more didn't change the rolls anywhere near as much.
@@NEEDbacon Fair enough. I found it slightly distracting for this video but each to their own. I had some sound activated colored led lights that I rather enjoyed when listening to music.
@@NEEDbacon I thought it was a candle effect too and just happened to use a really bad/distracting pattern. Didn't realize it was tied to the sound level, that would be cool if it were tied to maybe hue or something instead. Or maybe just a slower on/off so it didn't look like power outages.
This entire video missed the point because you were assuming fair rolls. The whole issue is that it is very easy to cheat using a spindown. Test it for yourself, I have. It only takes a few minutes of practice to consistently roll high numbers every time.
@@WalterSMM2I would find out why people cheat before ditching them. For some people it's because they struggle with invisible disabilities. Read a story from someone who DMs public games. Had a player who cheated because they struggled so much with math that adding numbers for attack rolls was hard for them. They were ashamed of this, so instead being vulnerable and risking ridicule by asking for help, they cheated to get pre-calculated results. If the player was able to ask for and receive help, or was in an understanding and caring group who noticed the problem and offered help, the player wouldn't cheat. Even those who cheat for ego reasons can often be talked to and have their underlying issues addressed and the cheating potentially stopped. That said, not everyone has the time, energy or ability to handle cheaters this way, and not all cheaters can be handled this way. I think most cheaters can be helped though.
@@WalterSMM2 That's fine and all, but nobody thinks that a spindown is any less random on a fair roll. The entire issue is that they're easy to cheat with and ignoring that makes the video pointless
Is it a silly question to ask a 'standard' die has a numbering arrangement that is not spindown, is the relationship between the numbers fixed beyond the requirement that opposite faces add to 21?
It might be a silly question, but I'd also like to know the answer. From my quick search of the internet I learned different manufactures use different patterns. The website "Alea Kybos’ Dice Collection" has a "Configurations" section which shows a bunch of different d20 layouts.
Fundamentally, they're exactly the same. What I've heard is that some people think you can easily go for specific rolls with a spindown. The thing is, if you have enough control to pick a side on a spindown, there's literally nothing stopping you from doing the same thing with a "normal" d20. Like, there's the whole "there is slightly less resin on one side because bigger numbers", but, geez, no, not on the scale of the die, it's smaller than a rounding error. I guess I'll see what your testing shows. Edit: Aaaaaand, yeah, exactly what was expected. ;) For something like this, your error bars are really small. Rolling more with the same dice is not likely to produce significantly different results. You'd have to roll at least a hundred outliers in a row to even budge the numbers you had. Statistics is great, but the N you need is dependent how complex your model is. You do not have a complex model here. No academic body on the planet would look at this and say "nope, obviously not enough trials". Its how a lot of studies get away with having a random sampling of, say, a thousand people. What you should do, instead of rolling the dame dice thousands of more times, is roll _all of the d20s you have_ a thousand times each. Then check the metrics of their metrics; the average average, the true median, etc. That would be a better test than checking the same four dice over and over again.
"The thing is, if you have enough control to pick a side on a spindown, there's literally nothing stopping you from doing the same thing with a "normal" d20" Well, a cheater doesn't necessarily need to pick a specific face; just a general area. On a spindown, most of the faces that are adjacent to each other are similar in size; so if you miss, you're probably more likely to get a number in the range you wanted. I agree though, worrying about cheaters just isn't a reasonable thing to do. Cheaters gonna cheat. I'm more worried about the highly specific mannerisms people can have when they pick their die up to roll again.
I've never heard of this before and don't know how I got here. The algorithmically demanded engagement is hereby complete and I will now watch the rest of the video, thank you.
So here's my take on this: - In any low stakes scenarios, the difference between a spin-down and a Regular D20 are so small as to be nonexistent. - Most spin-downs are made well enough that they *are* just as fair as the average Regular. However: - These dice configurations serve different purposes, and they may be designed with those purposes in mind. A spin-down may have a center weight, and a different surface finish so it's less likely to tip over on accident (f.e. when someone bumps the table) Also they may not be tested for weighting, because gain, they're not primarily designed to be rolled. - Conversely a Regular D20 is specifically designed to be rolled, hence they are more likely to be tested for fairness - *IF* either die configuration happens to favor a side, the Regular D20 will stay "fairer" with increasing bias, hitting a wider range of results, rather than a specific sequence.
Great Video Thanks for sharing. As a dm who later encountered spin downs from folk who played magic I immediately fell in love. Love me some giant MTG dice. With TTRPGs, I'm a lot more selective with who I play with and it's been a nice "can you be chill and hang" measure. Also great counters for things like frosthaven monster hp and such, can see why mtg players use them.
While rolling a die, unless it's weighted, usually evens out the numbers you get. But with that spindown die, you could technically learn the exact way to hold the die to scew the odds in your favor. It will take a while, but if you roll the die the exact same way every time, the way you place the die in your palm gets more important. Seeing how the high numbers are grouped together the odds of rolling a high one gets increased.
I learned how to do this with a regular 6 sided die as a kid, the solution is a backboard that's why casino dice games make you roll them at the backboard first so you cant control them
@@user-ee6lk1pb6w No, because with the spindown dial all the numbers you would want is right next to each other. Making it easier to either roll low or high depending on what you want. On a regular die, low and high numbers are mixed which means you have the same odds getting a low number as a high one no matter how you roll.
Factors: Cheating. Mathematical Randomness Balance Cheating: you can cheat on regular dice too, even if its harder. More importantly, if you try to cheat on spindowns, its painfully obvious the dice only stayed on one side. MOST IMPORTANTLY consider the priority and motives of people trying to cheat in a casual game for fun. In summary, cheating isnt a good argument against spindowns in practical situations Mathematical randomess: So long as the dice are adequately rolled, both dice will produce a random number from 1-20 without bias. Just roll correctly like you would any other oppositional d20.Summary, spindowns are mathematically random. Balance: you could argue that a spindown is more likely to bias higher or lower rolls based on the ways it is off balance. But the way it is off balance could result in higher rolls, lower rolls, or more medium rolls. or more higher and more lower rolls and less medium. exct. off balance oppositional dice can also do this, if maybe to a lesser degree. Oppositional dice are however not less likely to be imbalanced. Spindowns are generally of high quality, as they generally come from wizards of the coast. i encourage you to try balance testing them. In summary, balance is always an issue with dice, but is less common in spin downs. Verdict: spin downs are perfectly fine for casual use, if an event is competetive, you better be checking every dice and the way theyre being rolled, not just the spindowns.
There is a way to accurately measure this. The perfect theoretical dice is using binomial distribution and we can test it our dice does as well. We should use the Chi2 compliance test to determine whether the dice is actually using the binomial distribution.
Others have kind of pointed it out, but spindown dice are much easier to cheat with, most people aren't going to enforce good dice rolling practices so you can just side spin them for a higher chance of high rolls.
I’ve never heard of this before and I have only been playing D&D for 2 months now. But I’ve been going down a rabbit hole of D&D videos trying to learn the game and this video popped up so here I am.
I feel like it doesn't matter at all where the numbers are. But there's a chance for manipulation if you don't have a watchful DM, doing "micro" rolls and/or "flips". but as long as you're yeeting the dice a similar way every time the results should be random.
No idea how I got here and while I'm a board gamer I don't usually play games with d20s, but, your video looks fun and I'll indulge in your invitation to engage. I speculate that they'll be equally random from a blind roll but the spin-down will be easier to chuck in a way that you'd have a better chance of getting your favourable numbers, because of their groupings.
I think, generally, spindown dice will exacerbate any uneven weighting in the dice. if your dice are very evenly weighted, spindown is fine. if not, probably not.
For your efforts, a like, sub, and ding. I remember having this argument 15 years ago when mtg started giving out spindowns in precon packs. Kind of amazing it's been going this long.
I haven't rolled a d20 in 25 years but this is funny as shit! I'm commenting before watching, as you suggested, so I assume with the spindown you can cheat by adding spin! I'll probably still think that even if you didn't figure out the trick. ;)
I never heard of this before, i don't know how i got here, but after the intro i gotta say, i am truly intrested on listening to you talkjng abou it, go ahead dear stranger!
I didn't know any of this before and I don't really know how I got here. You got me soo good with that one I just had to actually leave the comment as you asked 🤣
A big thing to note, the idea that spindowns don't roll properly was put forward when most, if not all of them on the market were MTG fat pack spindowns that had an expansion symbol, usually on the 20 position, rather than a number. The specific symbol and how much carve out it requires might affect the roll.
I imagine that so long as they are both rolled fairly, there is little difference. If someone were to purposefully roll unfairly, however, the spindown die might be easier to manipulate into consistently higher rolls.
simple solution to the debate, if you think a party member using a spindown will use it to cheat then just dont play with them, games are about fun and if a mechanic requires the chance of a d20 it shouldnt matter which dice use so long as you trust everyone your playing with enough to not be a brat and skew the rolls in your favor. if cheating is a concern then as i said simply do not play with that person. i love spindowns as an ex mtg player and i get hella annoyed when people assume im gonna use the spindown maliciously to skew things into my favor, i just have prettier spindowns and wanna be fancy :'( i made this in regards to the people arguing that its easier to cheat or theyre weighted differently due to how the numbers are carved out, my answer is "who cares just have fun" so to speak i know what the points are im just saying the points are pointless outside of tournament or public event settings so there shouldnt be as big of a gripe with it as there is
This was a really cool video, and I'm interested in your automated die-roller project if you ever do build it. Thanks for doing the math for fair/unfair dice, and then spending 4 hours rolling and recording d20s for our edutainment! I did have issues with your audio, you started out fine, then would fade out dramatically then come back to an acceptable level.
I use numerically-balanced d20s and d30s from The Dice Lab. "In the standard d20 numbering, small and large numbers are distributed more-or-less evenly over the die, with the following vertex sums: 39, 47, 49, 51, 52, 52, 53, 53, 54, 56, 58, and 66. Using computer search techniques, we've managed to find a numbering with ideally-balanced vertex sums while retaining the opposite-side numbering convention: 52, 52, 52, 52, 52, 52, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, and 53."
I find it funny when you're playing magic, and your opponent deals you some damage. You pick up your spin down to change your life total and you cant find the number because its a normal d20. 😂
Hypothesis before seeing the rest of the video: Theoretically, a spindown should have the same odds/randomness as a standard since they have the same amount of sides and the same shape, so each side should have the same odds. But I feel like with enough practice, it could be really easy to manipulate rolls with a spindown to consistently roll high numbers, whereas the mixed layout of a standard die makes it much more difficult to do the same. The next paragraph will be me after I've seen the video. Hello future me, by the way! You look extra cute today. Aww, thanks past, pre-video me! You looked cute too! Anyways, the data was super interesting to see the results of, and I'm honestly a little sad that the spreadsheets weren't linked in the description. I would've loved to see if the "unbalanced" (in quotes because of the well-done manufacturing) spindown die had clusters of similar roll results or if the results would have been as evenly spread out as the balanced standard die. Perhaps my hypothesis would be correct? There's just not enough data to tell, but I did enjoy the video and will be sharing your efforts around to more people. Also, this is my plea for a link to a public form of the spreadsheets for the three sets of rolls 🙏
There is a similar test with coins where there is a small unbalance where if you flip a coin it was biased towards landing on the same face. Potentially the dice has a similar bias where it might land towards one face more often if rolled from a specific face. Someone could gain a tiny advantage by rolling from the same face.
pausing and commenting because the nice video guy told me to: i've been playing dnd for more than 10 years, new all d20 opposite sides added up to 21 but hadn't heard of spin-down dice. i think they will be equally random. yw for the engagement edit: but i *have* heard of the peasant railgun. so. idk
this is incredibly interesting! my mtg pod only rolls spindowns for heads/tails sorts of rolls because they have equal quantities of odd and even sides. i think that we all were just under the assumption that they are entirely unfair, but its exciting to see the mathematical evidence for that claim!
I didn't know a spindown dice was even a thing but in hindsight there is an active item in Binding of Isaac called Spindown Dice in addtion to the D6, D20 etc. cool info!!
Long ago, it had been explained to me that the reason spin-down D20s weren’t generally permitted in events (at least for the events I was playing in/judging) had less to do with inherent flaws of the number distribution in an “honest” roll, but rather the potential of their pattern’s exploitability for those intending to exploit that distribution.
It would be interesting to test how much one could exploit the pattern to manipulate results (or, realistically, if such exploitation is practically possible).
I used to do magic and I had a trick that relied on rolling a dice in a specific way so it would land how you wanted but looked like it rolled. This is much harder to do with a d20 however after some trying I can kind of manipulate it so with practice I could probably make it so I only roll high on a spin down. This is however a small test I did at home for only a few days.
Yeah if you're going for high numbers, it's significantly easier on a spin down. Roll it against a surface, make it bump, even just start it in a specific orientation and what was a 1/20 chance affected by skill becomes a 4/20 to get something good enough affected by skill much more heavily. Hell you don't even have to be doing it intentionally, I used to roll against a box all the time and we just threw it in a way where it hit the sides most rolls. On a d20 that barely matters, but a spin down would've stopped at a number within the cluster of whatever hit the side.
Edit: also, the majority of spin downs aren't manufactured to be balanced, they don't need to be balanced they just display a number.
@@bye1551and how would you be able to choose which side of the dice hits the wall?
Maybe I'm missing something in your comment, but if you just throw the dice it shouldn't matter if it hits the wall or the floor. Simply because you can't guarantee or even influence wich side hits.
Dices where the numbers are cut you can cut more material in the numbers you want so they roll with more frequency. How much it affects I don't know but it is enough that I have heard and seen this trick done.
@@Jehty_ oww yes you can by checking the die in your hand and making the right flick or the wrist you CAN influence this. Tried an tested. Takes a little bit of practice but the skill can be developed quickly
I’m a boxman, and have worked in casinos for 25 years. Here’s a bit of my knowledge on dice.
The material removed to carve out the numbers has weight. If you want a dice to be balanced you need to refill that space.
The way casino dice manufacturers make them fair is by refilling the space carved out for the numbers with a different colour of the same material.
They are also clear so that the inside can be inspected visually. A tiny bubble will cause the dice to be unbalanced.
Given what I know I would say that both are unbalanced, but the spin down should be worse because all the 2 digit numbers (which have more material removed) are grouped together. The side with the lower 1 digit numbers should be at the bottom more often because that will be the heavier side.
Oh and the float test isn’t really accurate enough. Get casino equipment and you will very quickly and easily find out if you dice are balanced or not.
I was thinking about that. Given that the die with 20, 19, 18, 17, 16 and so one all on the same side had more material removed to carve the numbers, its opposite side, with the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on would have less material removed and naturally be heavier, and thus have a tendency to end up more often at the bottom, meaning that the 20 and close numbers would end up coming up more often.
At least that was my logic.
what's a boxman?
The casino industry is also based on not being able to be called a cheater while taking in billions of dollars. They're going to make sure that their dice are the fairest they can in order to make sure that not only can they not be called out f or cheating, but to also make it harder for anybody on the floor to cheat.
That said, if you wanted to cheat, you'd need actual weighted dice. You can tell that they are weighted just by holding them in your hand. there isn't enough weight in the dimple to make enough of a difference when you actually roll the dice.
@@jessiehogue. But the question would be, how much weight is actually removed, and how does that effect the actual rolling of the dice. The answer is "very little" to both questions. Yeah, after thousands of rolls, you may start to see a statistical anomaly, but if you're rolling one extra crit for every 5000 rolls, are you really gaining all that much?
@@tonyennis1787 supervisor of the craps table
As the only person at my table who recognises a spindown vs a standard d20, I always balk at one of my players bringing a spindown to DnD. And then I immediately mentally talk myself down because there's no real impactful difference and my player just picked that die because they think it's pretty. Excellent video!
So, the thing with spindowns is, I think, if they're being rolled fairly, they're probably not really any less random than a standard D20; considering that the standard D20 manufacturing process includes, presumably, making sure the die is balanced well enough, you'd probably have to do it on purpose to make the die poorly balanced. However, because all of the high numbers are on one side and all the low numbers are on the other, it makes it much easier to manipulate the die into always giving you a number in that 16-20 range.
Supposedly that's the thing: they're not balanced because it's cheaper to not have to worry about that manufacturing step so they don't.
Allegedly.
@GameScience has excellent videos covering dice accuracy.
I trust the people who I play with. And the people I don't trust were kicked out of the group.
Testing a die for fairness would take more time than actually making the die. whether the dice are mass manufactured or small batch, that's just not worthwhile for the manufacturer.
think about how hard-edge dice are often marketed as more fair due to the tumbling process of typical dice allegedly reducing the fairness of each individual die. If the makers of typical dice had the testing records for this, it would be very clear cut whether hard-edge dice are an improvement, and that kind of clarity is just not what we see.
Followup: the video mentions a "float test". I was implicitly assuming a higher standard of testing (rolls and statistics) in the claim about testing time. With small batch manufacturing, float testing each die is at least achievable, though still not worthwhile in my opinion. float testing each die with mass manufacturing is still intractable though.
@@LaBlueSkuld They do a little bit. A very little bit. And pretty much only for transparent and translucent dice.
I know this because I buy them by the bucket on Chinese websites. Sometimes they have bugs stuck inside of them. That's pretty cool.
They also roll hilariously biased. But it's pretty much impossible to tell what exact number they're biased at without spending way too much time doing the math.
It's funny watching people get angry at one set of dice to swap them for another set of dice, they also get angry at.
I have absolutely no idea how I got here. I don't even play DnD, or any another dice rolling game. I am though definitely pleased with the algorithm, but I am a wee bit alarmed it knows me so well. Now you've got me down the rabbit hole on dice sir! I've just been googling what a "float test" is!
Welcome! 😂
You and I both, brother.
Have you been watching Bauldr's Gate 3 content too? (a game I don't even own because turn based RPG's are icky and yucky but that one looks nominally interesting)
Dice float testing can be fun. I've done some of it before.
Dude you should try Dnd
I’ve totally played DnD, but I’ve never worried that much about my dice as long as we’re all using the same ones…still. I was absolutely and totally fascinated by this.
That "Dear god... It's reality!" Needs to be made into a meme. It's way too relatable.
Happens to me at least once a day
Except he immediately disregarded reality right after it by not rolling them all as he claimed he would.
That honestly has huge meme potential :
Fr.
The way I've always understood it is that placing numbers so that opposites add to Dice Sides + 1 is an ancient measure intended to offset the fact that old dice weren't very precisely made, and to make it more difficult to 'weight' the dice. It might even go back to the use of knucklebone dice (aka Astragaloi, Talli, Shaggai) which had only four sides and were numbered 1, 3, 4, 6, with the numbers 1 and 6 being only 10% likely compared to the 3 and 4 being 40% likely. This required 1 and 6 to be opposite one another and 3, 4 likewise, because that's how the astragalus bone is shaped - opposite sides are roughly the same size and shape, meaning the die's average remained somewhere close to the middle of its range. These measures are no longer necessary with modern dice, which are much more uniformly shaped and weighted.
Having seen the rest of the video now, I think I'll also point out that simply being off-balance isn't enough to make a spin down die noticeably unfair, it specifically has to be unbalanced away from or towards the 'high point' (the centre point at which all the highest-rated facets are clustered around). As I noted above, the 'opposite sides' safety measure is only really effective at preventing deliberate cheating and correcting excessively poor manufacturing.
yeah, you're assuming that the imbalanced dice is something people don't want today, and is something that is all but eradicated.
There are still cheaters around, plenty of them. They could be skill-based with sleight of hand, or have imbalanced dice on purpose.
So why allow a die that allows for those by grouping all the good numbers on one side. It's real difficult to use sleight of hand or to imbalance a regular d20, since every good value (15+) is surrounded by bad values, and even the slightest miscalculation spoils the good result. But if all the good results are on one side, then with a miscalculation you just get a slightly worse result. Instead of a 20, you get a 17, stuff like that.
A dice tower would make the entire issue moot, but this whole issue has only come up for me because of the MTG life counter dice.
@@nevadanate4957 a dice tower would eliminate skill-based cheating throws, but not the purposefully imbalanced dice.
@DifferentRussian oh, true. Man weighting a D&D die is ridiculous lol
Unless it's a competitive context, I expect any difference is minimal enough to not be worth arguing about as long as the die is rolled in a proper manner. If someone's willing to cheat in what's essentially a casual cooperative game like most RPGs then it really says more about the person than the dice.
Ironically, the most likely competitive context I can think of for rolling D20s would be rolling for who goes first in MTG which is typically going to be done using spindowns since they're on-hand already.
We always use two or three d6s I see in the groups. In commander we use the afr non spindown die.
There shouldn't be any difference at all, they should both be fair, assuming that they are made properly. Or rather as fair as dice could be, after all, they're only fair in theory. As the numbers themselves even if the entire dice is uniformly dense, would shift the fairness to the sides with the least amount of material removed.
Wouldn't using the same die make it fair? It seems to me that you should insist on using the same die as your opponent.
> f someone's willing to cheat in what's essentially a casual cooperative game like most RPGs then it really says more about the person than the dice.
Exactly! But a person doing that is typically a cheater through and through, and will tend to also cheat on tons of other stuff, too. TTRPG is a cooperative setting, but the general idea is still to play fairly with friends... and do we really want to have a person with such bad character flaw in our group? Also, those ypes of person HATE losing, they are very bad losers, and their tantrums whn they lose can ruin the fun of everyone. And when they win (as they typically end up doing), then they GLOAT and "rub it in" i.e. bad losers tend to also be bad winners. Which is also annoying.
So just kick the moron as soon as you find proof of their cheating. What I did as DM, when I had my suspicions, is to recruit my two best most vigilant players to watch his rolls closely, without seeming to be spying too much, and not tell anything during the game. Just watch closely his rolls AND any other cheaty behavior. I did that because when I DM, my attention is solicited in all kinds of ways, way too much for me to watch closely players rolls. It then took only a SINGLE game to have both my solid players to detect not one but several instances of true cheating (like, the guy has 110 gp, buys a 50 gp potion ... after buying he marks off only 20 gp and thus still has 90 gp left), and that is in ADDITION to the super consistency of the way he rolled, and the consistent special way of "pre-placing" the d20 in his hand.
Bu in a really competitive game, with money involved? Back then, that guy would have ended up at the hospital. Not nowadays though, not in this frakked up era where criminals get treated like victims, and the actual victims get treated like criminals.
You're missing the possibility of people who are not cheating intentionally, but doing fairly standard TTRPG player things like believing in lucky dice.
So let's assume that multiple of a player's dice are unbalanced, and they pick out their favorite ones, they're going to ditch unbalanced dice that are unbalanced negatively, and favor those that are unbalanced positively. A player could well be rolling statistically better dice despite no ill intent.
When you make the Arduino dice-rolling bot, remember to build a thousand versions of them so you can identify the one that is perfectly balanced.
And roll thousands of different dices.
Computers can’t really have a true random, if you can figure out the seed you can know exactly what comes next
It is facinating to see the testing methods. I personally don't mind if someone has a spindown or a normal D20. If i notice a character has a propensity to cheat. I deal with the player, not find one million different ways to get them to not cheat.
This! 🙌Communicate with your crew!
Don't hate the Character, hate the player.
That is the best way to deal with a cheater.
Exactly. If you put a roll down in a cup, it doesn't matter, but use a careful and consistent rolling move and line up the dice in you hand when you "shake" and you can easily get some higher results. It just makes it easier to manipulate.
yo BRS
Suggest applying a chi-square test to your dataset. I've had good results testing d20's this way with just 500 rolls. It's much more sensitive to bias than just measuring mean, median, and sigma.
As a statistician I approve this
this right here. chi-square goodness of fit my beloved.
plus: dice give out qualitative data, the numebers on them could be replaced with letters or images with no functional difference. This makes the "standard deviation" not really a standard deviation.
@@eiolli8014 while that's true, the purpose of these particular die is to give a number 1-20. Once we assign a number to each face, a standard deviation is generated and is also helpful to illustrate the spread.
The same data is being collected. How you apply that data doesn't change the appropriate sample size for an experiment. 500 is mathematically not enough to get an acceptable level of statistical variance from coin flips, let alone something with more than a binary condition.
A goodness of fit is exactly how I tested my d20s after having a few "very" unlucky sessions lol
I'm sad that you didn't cover rolling technique. As far as I knew, that was the real concern.
Yes, a skilled manipulator of dice would definitely benifit from the spindown layout I think.
Yes but that isn’t actually what this discussion is about. It’s about the complete randomness of a random role. How someone can manipulate their dice role is a different matter.
@@JackWest-sp1zc in the video, he mentioned spindown dice had been banned in some tournament settings, and the concern in those cases was almost certainly to avoid intentional manipulation rather than concern over deviation from being absolutely random. So yeah, that's not what the video was about, but it would have been good to discuss at least briefly. But he preferred to make a long video answering a question nobody asked. (Which I did find interesting anyway.)
@pstrap1311 plenty of people asked the question. You specifically didnt
@@JackWest-sp1zcit is what the video claims to be about because he introduces it with the fact that those dice are widely banned and that is the sole reason that they are banned.
for future reference, a bar chart would be a nice addition to visualize the data
Yeah, I would have really liked to just see the distributions. Since there are only 20 outcomes, binning isn't an issue and a plain old histogram would be fine.
To be really nerdy and pedantic.. empirical cumulative distributions are usually the thing to use if you want to to compare stochastic things which have lots (or continuous) possible states/outcomes. You can also more easily fit functions to them.
I think sometimes having it is the difference between the deal and no deal.
This. And headlines. And possibly even a summarization of what was observed in a more clear manner.
Yeah, I wasn't really satisfied with just an average. Having a lot of 1s and a lot of 20s would still benefit the player more than a spread of 1-20. A 6 is still very likely to fail, and a 15 can still fail. And in games with crits, 20s are usually natural criticals. Median will just be 10 or 11 once you have over a hundred rolls, unless something is severely wrong with the die.
A bar chart would've showed the actual distribution. How much each individual number was rolled. I know he had the numbers on the sides, but they weren't even talked about.
The data looked like it was there for you to make your own chart. But I could be wrong. I do like a visual.
A new set of seven die (4 sider thru 20 sider) seemed "uncooperative" during an RPG game. I performed a Chi-Squared test on all die in the set. The stats said "unfair" with a better-than 95% confidence. Assuming a cause and guided by the observed frequency pattern, I cut the worst offender (a ten-sider) open with a jeweler's saw (to minimize material removed by the kerf). The data had not led me astray: I had cut through the approximate (close approximate) center of internal voids. The voids unbalanced the die making it a "loaded" die (although classical "loading" consists of adding mass, not removing it).
The voids typically form in injection molded die. They occur because the molding process is set up to produce uniform exterior surfaces. This pristine outer surface is typically accomplished by having a relatively cold mold that quickly freezes the skin in place. When the hot interior material cools, it shrinks and voids are formed. The exact location of the voids can "wander" from mold shot to mold shot. There are methods to minimize or even eliminate void formation, but they usually involve mold design and extended process time. While the extra mold cost can be amortized across many parts, the extra processing time--and its cost--is added to every shot. Consequently, manufacturers of molded dice not intended for casino use are unlikely to worry about fairness.
Opaque die can hide voids. Transparent die cannot. If you are worried about die fairness, use transparent die. However, factors other than voids can be in play: The sharpness or relative roundness of edges and corners will also subtly influence roll outcomes. Such issues cannot be spotted using a "float test." Dead-sharp edges are usually a feature of casino dice.
On a practical level, how many die rolls are actually made in an RPG gaming session? Unless a die is seriously unbalanced, it is unlikely that the game's outcome will be significantly influenced by a "bad" die. Furthermore, a die's bias might not be game altering (the 20 sider in my unfair set preferred 13). It would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine (with confidence) which rolls are truly random and which were influenced by a fractional gram of mass that shifted the die's center of gravity away from its geometric center. Of course, the situation is a tad more serious in a casino.
leave some acid for the rest of us
The ability to learn things to a deep level is so unimaginable to a dumb person, it looks like LSD to them.
Me, I'm sending screenshots of this to my D&D group because it fits their interests so well.
So basically if I have a 3d printer I could make myself a D20 which would most often fall on the side I want?
@@CidVeldoril Easily achievable if you vary the infill in your printing, yes. If you set to solid print, it should in theory be fairer - though if we're going to get technical, any dice with engraved numbers is going to be marginally unbalanced due to that fact, though whether it's a statistically significant difference is unclear. If the dice are resin cast, and the numbers flat filled with another color of resin of the same density however, the dice would then be balanced.
This was a very interesting read. Are you involved in injection mold manufacturing some way? Sounds like you have some experience with the subject
One thing to note about statistics is to get to a true distribution of something, you need a sample size that is so large that the thing that happens the least happens at least 30 times in your sample size. if you do that it will bring your t-distribution to the point that is is 95% accurate in comparison to the true z-distribution. so for the perfect case the smallest sample you need to get close to that for a 20 d would be 600 samples as that would be 30 cases of each side. So for your case here the sample 1000 should be counted as close to the true distribution of these cases. This is one of the main things I remember from my stats class when looking at sample sizes and how to tell if something was doing enough sampling to get to a true distribution.
As a data analyst thank you for the statistical significance mention!
+
Yeah, it really is refreshing to have someone _not_ say "I rolled three nat 1's in a row, so that means that the likelihood to get another 1 has decreased significantly..."
When I worked at a game store several years ago, This exact question game up. My Pathfinder group wanted to ban me using the MTG spin-down dice. So I spent a few slow days rolling the spin down 5000 times. I should have done a standard deviation like you, but instead I just used a more crude metric of average rolls, and highest and lowest rolled numbers. I compared this to 9 other sets of 5000 randomly generated dice rolls. Since my dice did not have the highest average or an unexpectedly high number of high rolls compared to the random sample, my group relented, and let me use the die. However, I think they really just wanted to shut me up.
I have also confirmed that if you want to cheat, you can finesse the roll for a more favorable outcome on a spin down. In another test, I was able to roll a 20 in 20% (4/20) of rolls, and a 16 or better about 40% of the time after 300 rolls. But this involved holding it just so, and barely letting it tumble out of the hand on a specific surface after several minutes of practice. If you are rolling fairly, your spin down dice should give you just as random of a result, within reason. I say if you have someone cheating with spin down dice in your game, and you ban the dice, they will cheat in other ways, and probably already are.
Spindowns are the easiest possible die to cheat with. The only thing potentially easier is a coin flip. Die are gambling equipment. Any gambling equipment or randomizer that is less secure than THE STANDARD equipment should be banned across the board as essentially the only functional difference is being able to cheat with it easier.
This is no different than allowing cards with slightly different design or textures on the back.
Spindown die even being made in the first place is massively suspect. A normal d20 is not hard to track life on if you know all sides add to 21.
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtreyit's completely different. You're totally capable of using a spin down legitimately. There's no way to use a set of cards like that without seeing the differences. But even then someone who doesn't know the differences would be able to use the cards just the same as a normal deck.
If you don't trust the people you play with not to cheat, just don't play with them. It's pretty simple my guy. Also it's a game. You don't have to take personal games between friends so bloody seriously.
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtreyWhat are the odds of rolling a 20 on a regular d20? I in 20
What are the odds of rolling a 20 on a spin down? 1 in 20.
Y’all are making too big a deal out this. The arrangement of the numbers doesn’t change the odds, and the average person, and hell, even most sleight of hand artists, isn’t going to be able to reliably game a spin down.
This is a nonissue.
@@Glmorrs1 You're missing the point. Sit down with a spin-down die and a normal die. Don't ~try~ to be fair, ~try~ to cheat with the spindown die, and you will find it's much easier. It's not about the probability, it's about abusibility. Is it a BIG deal? No. Can anybody learn to cheat with them after just a few minutes of practice? Yep.
...you didn't happen to record these results and format them into a quantitative study did you? This is genuinely useful research.
I can't stop looking at the flickering lamp.
1:22 I think they are both equally random. Maybe a malicious player could try some tricky roles to get an advantage, but it could be easily solvable with a dice tower.
Paused when asked.
Prediction: no statistically significant difference.
My attitude: I don’t care.
… and yet I’m here and watching. Must be the Math nerd in me.
I would be very surprised to see any statistically significant difference in any study of (a) 1000 balanced and 1000 slightly unbalanced die, (b) tested by throwing each a million times.
I would expect that until you start actually drilling voids into die, or manufacturing them with weights in them, there would be little significant differences due to merely injection moulding process imperfections alone, such as tiny voids.
This video is about exactly the kinds of things that I think about in my head and have no idea how to actually test because I’m not a Maths person. I love how detailed this is and how much you break it down for the non-maths like myself. I’m a new sub just to see what other delightfully detailed information you have!
For finding unbalanced dice, you could drill a tiny hole in each, and then cover up the entrance to the hole with paint. That would change the mass distribution, and also you could forge similarly unbalanced dice, both normal and that other one
In the context of plastic dice, the uniformity of the material is probably not as important a biasing factor as is the symmetry of the outer surface. Most modern dice are gently rounded at their points and edges, but it can be quite hard to tell whether this rounding is equal: A very slightly flatter corner on one side makes those faces less likely to remain on the bottom, whereas a slightly pointier corner is more likely to 'stop' the die and remain on the lower half of the die. Since dice do wear down over time (including their time in the dice bag, which if sufficiently agitated could conceivably wear them down even more than rolling them during a game), older dice are expected to become less fair over time as a result. It's also not the case that all wear will produce a bias that moves the average. Smoothing out that top or bottom corner on a spindown (neighboring the five highest faces or five lowest faces, respectively) is going to impact the distribution more than the other ten corners.
So, for most purposes, in a typical TTRPG context in which people are rolling with sufficient gusto (or using a pyramidal backboard, dice tower, or similar accessory), the bias on dice will arise randomly and idiosyncratically, and while the *severity* of that bias will tend to grow faster on spindown dice, it will almost certainly fail to move the needle appreciably. However, spindown dice are going to be a lot easier to *deliberately* bias, and depending on what they want to do, a bad faith actor could put their foot on the scale in ways that are subtle but meaningful. For example, polishing down specific corners on a spindown die could make it tilt away from rolling a 1 and toward rolling a 20 without changing its overall average very much. This would be a pretty bizarre thing to do for most TTRPG contexts (which are very rarely competitive with any stakes), but you can imagine that this is the sort of thing a casino might care mightily about.
So, in short, concerns about the 'fairness' of dice in tabletop contexts can mostly be addressed by not letting people play with obviously damaged/chipped/scratched dice and making sure rolls bounce enough; any incidental bias from standard vs. spindown is going to be vanishingly small in most cases. Fairness ends up mattering most when people have a strong motivation to cheat, in which case spindown dice are considerably easier to doctor.
Also how it's rolled is going to play a part too. Drop it through a dice tower, it's fine. Just drop it (like Sam on Critical Role), it's probably more likely to be in the range you want.
Don't tell me you're one of those people who wants to inspect the dice before the game.
Very well articulated, thank you for this.
I wouldn't be certain that older dice would be less fair. As far as I understand and know, a rough vaguely spherical object that is put into an agitator with other roughly spherical objects... Will tend to round off sharp edges and equal out abnormalities.
I don't see why a die might become more fair after being rolled and stored in a dice bag rather than less.
Also, a float test would also be affected by more material being on a certain side, whether or not it would change the float test enough to help the test be more accurate, I don't know. But a float test seems like the most accurate simple/easy test.
This is the specific reason gamescience dice exist. Louis Zocchi wanted the most fair dice you could get, so they aren't tumbled in a rock tumbler and treated in such ways that ruin the initial geometry of the die. He literally cuts the die off the sprew, and calls it good, because even with part of the sprew on the die, it's still more random than your standard manufactured dice. If you want a truly random die, get gamescience dice.
I think a bigger flaw in this experiment than the small sample and spindown only being slightly unbalances, is that it's starting from a false assumption. This video is actually the first time I've even heard the idea clustering of numbers in spindown could give unbalanced results in a normal roll. The main argument I've always seen is that clustering of numbers on a spindown makes it easier to use a rolling technique that could look fair but increases your likelihood of rolling high.
Question: are the numbers on these dices always carved in? Because if so, wouldn't spin down dices basically have a production fault since higher numbers have two digits and therefore more material carved out thus unbalancing the dice?
Was thinking the same. Spin down having one area/side with only two digit numbers would move the center of gravity to the singel digit side. Making it inherently unbalanced and more prone to rolling high numbers.
In general, I think the paint is supposed to be weighted to correct for that. That said, I've heard concerns that spindown dice would have less attention given to making them balanced in manufacturing because they're primary intended purpose is for rolling. That said, I think Wizards of The Coast has claimed that their spindowns are balanced for use when rolling, so it's probably fine.
Back in the day, I knew a guy who thought it was cool to melt different colored wax into the number grooves. He said it made the dice easier to read. Back then some dice were pretty plain, but now they come in nearly infinite varieties of colors, sparkly/not sparkly, etc. I questioned whether he'd noticed any difference in the performance of his dice because he'd added weight to them, but he didn't think so.
I think we've all had one or two dies that we really liked, because we used them to pull off some incredible feat in a game. I had a d20 that was my favorite, but at the game table I was well known for being either incredibly lucky, or incredibly unlucky. That die was probably biased since I didn't know about float tests back then. In nearly every game we played, I did something great with a 20, or nearly died with a 1. And sometimes both in the same game.
guys... these are such small differences in weight that it doesn't matter.
Just check the balance if you're that concerned. It's really easy to float test
I carry both of these dice, and oddly enough i use a spindown dice as my DM descretion dice because it's easier to control a result to prevent total disaster
^^ the only use case for the spindowns is so the DM can cheat on saves and attack rolls to subtly prevent full party wipes or make his big bads last a bit longer.
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtrey yep makez the experience fun for everyone :)
The first law of dnd, dramatic necessity @@KyleTremblayTitularKtrey
Broke: “Nah, you can’t use a spindown to cheat… it’s a nonissue”
Woke: “I intentionally cook my spindown rolls to improve player experience”
@@Muhahahahaz it's easier to manipulate because, if you watch the video, the numbers have a more controlled group. you cant make it land on a number, but you have a better time to get a result you want with it
Maybe you should look at the Kolmogorov-Smirnov or Chi-Squared tests
where H0 : data fits a Uniform CDF and
Ha : data does not fit a Uniform CDF.
I play around with resin casting, and I have molds for dice. I got some powered brass for a completely different project but decided to see if I could get a metallicish set of dice, well the resin I used wasn't nearly viscous enough to keep the brass in suspension during the cure, so the brass just fell to the bottom face. The d6 was obviously the most egregious, however after around 100 rolls the 6 (the 1 face was where all the metal settled) only came up slightly more often, and more than half of the weight of the die is in the bottom millimeter of the 1face. I mean 100 rolls is basically nothing, but it was interesting to me, I thought there would be a significant result (but again only @ 100 rolls)
I think that you would find the weight difference of the brass powder was minuscule compared to the weight of the resin it displaced. Also, while the difference in distribution of the powder in the D6 was the most obvious, because of the larger faces of the die and it's relative stability sitting on a surface, it is the least affected by sight weight imbalances. Those dice with smaller faces relative to their diameter, and thus more likely to keep rolling with the slightest bit of force or inertia, are going to be the most influenced.
100 rolls isn't outrageously few, I don't remember the formula off the top of my head but the rule of thumb is that 400 rolls is enough to find a biased d20 with 95% accuracy. For fewer faces, the number of rolls needed is lower, so your 100 rolls are probably statistically significant enough.
I did some attempts at making a d6 that mostly rolled 6. The best method I found was slightly rounding the edges of the 6 and keeping all the other edges sharper. This improved the 6 rolls considerably and reduced 1 rolls since the dice stops easier on the sharper edged side and rolls off the smoother edged side easier.Even making one side weigh almost 40% more didn't change the rolls anywhere near as much.
Side note, why is the brightness of the lamp in the background seem to be tied to the level of noise in the room?
Because it's cool. TBH didn't even noticed it was tied to noise and thought it was just one of those "Candle effect" lights you can buy these days
@@NEEDbacon Fair enough. I found it slightly distracting for this video but each to their own.
I had some sound activated colored led lights that I rather enjoyed when listening to music.
@@NEEDbacon I thought it was a candle effect too and just happened to use a really bad/distracting pattern. Didn't realize it was tied to the sound level, that would be cool if it were tied to maybe hue or something instead. Or maybe just a slower on/off so it didn't look like power outages.
Y'all I didn't even notice the light level was changing ;-;
My prediction is that the randomness will be unaffected. Every face has a 1 in 20 chance of coming up, no matter what you've named it.
This entire video missed the point because you were assuming fair rolls. The whole issue is that it is very easy to cheat using a spindown. Test it for yourself, I have. It only takes a few minutes of practice to consistently roll high numbers every time.
Don't play people that you think would cheat. This is a problem of choosing better friends, not dice lol
@@WalterSMM2I would find out why people cheat before ditching them. For some people it's because they struggle with invisible disabilities. Read a story from someone who DMs public games. Had a player who cheated because they struggled so much with math that adding numbers for attack rolls was hard for them. They were ashamed of this, so instead being vulnerable and risking ridicule by asking for help, they cheated to get pre-calculated results. If the player was able to ask for and receive help, or was in an understanding and caring group who noticed the problem and offered help, the player wouldn't cheat. Even those who cheat for ego reasons can often be talked to and have their underlying issues addressed and the cheating potentially stopped.
That said, not everyone has the time, energy or ability to handle cheaters this way, and not all cheaters can be handled this way. I think most cheaters can be helped though.
@@WalterSMM2 That's fine and all, but nobody thinks that a spindown is any less random on a fair roll. The entire issue is that they're easy to cheat with and ignoring that makes the video pointless
If someone is gonna cheat on dice rolls they can cheat using other means as well. Maybe don’t play with someone who’s gonna cheat at dnd
Also he did mention “unless you are rolling in a specific way”
Is it a silly question to ask a 'standard' die has a numbering arrangement that is not spindown, is the relationship between the numbers fixed beyond the requirement that opposite faces add to 21?
It might be a silly question, but I'd also like to know the answer.
From my quick search of the internet I learned different manufactures use different patterns.
The website "Alea Kybos’ Dice Collection" has a "Configurations" section which shows a bunch of different d20 layouts.
thanks I didn't even know spin-downs existed until youtube randomly recommended me this video. FASCINATING science thank you for your service
those hours of me yelling about spindown dice in isaac got me here ig
Fundamentally, they're exactly the same.
What I've heard is that some people think you can easily go for specific rolls with a spindown.
The thing is, if you have enough control to pick a side on a spindown, there's literally nothing stopping you from doing the same thing with a "normal" d20.
Like, there's the whole "there is slightly less resin on one side because bigger numbers", but, geez, no, not on the scale of the die, it's smaller than a rounding error.
I guess I'll see what your testing shows.
Edit: Aaaaaand, yeah, exactly what was expected. ;)
For something like this, your error bars are really small. Rolling more with the same dice is not likely to produce significantly different results. You'd have to roll at least a hundred outliers in a row to even budge the numbers you had.
Statistics is great, but the N you need is dependent how complex your model is. You do not have a complex model here. No academic body on the planet would look at this and say "nope, obviously not enough trials".
Its how a lot of studies get away with having a random sampling of, say, a thousand people.
What you should do, instead of rolling the dame dice thousands of more times, is roll _all of the d20s you have_ a thousand times each. Then check the metrics of their metrics; the average average, the true median, etc. That would be a better test than checking the same four dice over and over again.
"The thing is, if you have enough control to pick a side on a spindown, there's literally nothing stopping you from doing the same thing with a "normal" d20" Well, a cheater doesn't necessarily need to pick a specific face; just a general area. On a spindown, most of the faces that are adjacent to each other are similar in size; so if you miss, you're probably more likely to get a number in the range you wanted.
I agree though, worrying about cheaters just isn't a reasonable thing to do. Cheaters gonna cheat. I'm more worried about the highly specific mannerisms people can have when they pick their die up to roll again.
I've never heard of this before and don't know how I got here. The algorithmically demanded engagement is hereby complete and I will now watch the rest of the video, thank you.
Here's a comment for the algorithm.
So here's my take on this:
- In any low stakes scenarios, the difference between a spin-down and a Regular D20 are so small as to be nonexistent.
- Most spin-downs are made well enough that they *are* just as fair as the average Regular.
However:
- These dice configurations serve different purposes, and they may be designed with those purposes in mind. A spin-down may have a center weight, and a different surface finish so it's less likely to tip over on accident (f.e. when someone bumps the table) Also they may not be tested for weighting, because gain, they're not primarily designed to be rolled.
- Conversely a Regular D20 is specifically designed to be rolled, hence they are more likely to be tested for fairness
- *IF* either die configuration happens to favor a side, the Regular D20 will stay "fairer" with increasing bias, hitting a wider range of results, rather than a specific sequence.
Great Video Thanks for sharing. As a dm who later encountered spin downs from folk who played magic I immediately fell in love. Love me some giant MTG dice. With TTRPGs, I'm a lot more selective with who I play with and it's been a nice "can you be chill and hang" measure. Also great counters for things like frosthaven monster hp and such, can see why mtg players use them.
While rolling a die, unless it's weighted, usually evens out the numbers you get. But with that spindown die, you could technically learn the exact way to hold the die to scew the odds in your favor. It will take a while, but if you roll the die the exact same way every time, the way you place the die in your palm gets more important. Seeing how the high numbers are grouped together the odds of rolling a high one gets increased.
I learned how to do this with a regular 6 sided die as a kid, the solution is a backboard
that's why casino dice games make you roll them at the backboard first so you cant control them
You do realize that the same logic can be applied to the standard d20 right?
@@user-ee6lk1pb6w No, because with the spindown dial all the numbers you would want is right next to each other. Making it easier to either roll low or high depending on what you want. On a regular die, low and high numbers are mixed which means you have the same odds getting a low number as a high one no matter how you roll.
Factors:
Cheating.
Mathematical Randomness
Balance
Cheating: you can cheat on regular dice too, even if its harder. More importantly, if you try to cheat on spindowns, its painfully obvious the dice only stayed on one side. MOST IMPORTANTLY consider the priority and motives of people trying to cheat in a casual game for fun. In summary, cheating isnt a good argument against spindowns in practical situations
Mathematical randomess: So long as the dice are adequately rolled, both dice will produce a random number from 1-20 without bias. Just roll correctly like you would any other oppositional d20.Summary, spindowns are mathematically random.
Balance: you could argue that a spindown is more likely to bias higher or lower rolls based on the ways it is off balance. But the way it is off balance could result in higher rolls, lower rolls, or more medium rolls. or more higher and more lower rolls and less medium. exct. off balance oppositional dice can also do this, if maybe to a lesser degree. Oppositional dice are however not less likely to be imbalanced. Spindowns are generally of high quality, as they generally come from wizards of the coast. i encourage you to try balance testing them. In summary, balance is always an issue with dice, but is less common in spin downs.
Verdict: spin downs are perfectly fine for casual use, if an event is competetive, you better be checking every dice and the way theyre being rolled, not just the spindowns.
There is a way to accurately measure this. The perfect theoretical dice is using binomial distribution and we can test it our dice does as well. We should use the Chi2 compliance test to determine whether the dice is actually using the binomial distribution.
Others have kind of pointed it out, but spindown dice are much easier to cheat with, most people aren't going to enforce good dice rolling practices so you can just side spin them for a higher chance of high rolls.
commenting just to acknowledge the dedication of rolling dice thousands of times
Making the algorithm happy for all your hard work. Enjoy!
I went on Amazon last night to buy some dice. Then the algorithm takes me here today. Now I know more about dice then I ever wanted to.
I’ve never heard of this before and I have only been playing D&D for 2 months now. But I’ve been going down a rabbit hole of D&D videos trying to learn the game and this video popped up so here I am.
Thank you for putting an unprecedented amount of time and effort into data collecting!
I don't know how I got here but I find it very interesting! Also quick nod to your passion for this video and doing that many dice rolls!❤
When dice are so well made that they send you into an existential crisis of mathematical proportions
I feel like it doesn't matter at all where the numbers are. But there's a chance for manipulation if you don't have a watchful DM, doing "micro" rolls and/or "flips". but as long as you're yeeting the dice a similar way every time the results should be random.
No idea how I got here and while I'm a board gamer I don't usually play games with d20s, but, your video looks fun and I'll indulge in your invitation to engage.
I speculate that they'll be equally random from a blind roll but the spin-down will be easier to chuck in a way that you'd have a better chance of getting your favourable numbers, because of their groupings.
the algorithm is putting in the work for your hours of dice rolling
My husband and I were debating on this just a couple days ago--great analysis on this!
I think, generally, spindown dice will exacerbate any uneven weighting in the dice. if your dice are very evenly weighted, spindown is fine. if not, probably not.
Your voice is fun. I like the dynamics, your diction, and the confidence in it.
I’d love to see some breakdown on “coin dice” vs “standard d20”. Love the video!
Really interesting and informative video! I'm new to DnD and have only played virtually so wasn't aware of this debate
"Settling" it, then not even scratching the surface, lol.
For your efforts, a like, sub, and ding.
I remember having this argument 15 years ago when mtg started giving out spindowns in precon packs. Kind of amazing it's been going this long.
I've never heard of this but thank you for your hard and tedious work.
I haven't rolled a d20 in 25 years but this is funny as shit! I'm commenting before watching, as you suggested, so I assume with the spindown you can cheat by adding spin! I'll probably still think that even if you didn't figure out the trick. ;)
Ah yes, Spindown Dice. I remember that one from Isaac
I never heard of this before, i don't know how i got here, but after the intro i gotta say, i am truly intrested on listening to you talkjng abou it, go ahead dear stranger!
As a dnd geek and data geek. I’ve wondered this too. Thanks for trying to answer the question
Liked and commented and subbed just cause i respect the effort into your channel my friend. Keep going!
I didn't know any of this before and I don't really know how I got here. You got me soo good with that one I just had to actually leave the comment as you asked 🤣
A big thing to note, the idea that spindowns don't roll properly was put forward when most, if not all of them on the market were MTG fat pack spindowns that had an expansion symbol, usually on the 20 position, rather than a number. The specific symbol and how much carve out it requires might affect the roll.
I imagine that so long as they are both rolled fairly, there is little difference. If someone were to purposefully roll unfairly, however, the spindown die might be easier to manipulate into consistently higher rolls.
simple solution to the debate, if you think a party member using a spindown will use it to cheat then just dont play with them, games are about fun and if a mechanic requires the chance of a d20 it shouldnt matter which dice use so long as you trust everyone your playing with enough to not be a brat and skew the rolls in your favor. if cheating is a concern then as i said simply do not play with that person. i love spindowns as an ex mtg player and i get hella annoyed when people assume im gonna use the spindown maliciously to skew things into my favor, i just have prettier spindowns and wanna be fancy :'(
i made this in regards to the people arguing that its easier to cheat or theyre weighted differently due to how the numbers are carved out, my answer is "who cares just have fun" so to speak i know what the points are im just saying the points are pointless outside of tournament or public event settings so there shouldnt be as big of a gripe with it as there is
This was a really cool video, and I'm interested in your automated die-roller project if you ever do build it. Thanks for doing the math for fair/unfair dice, and then spending 4 hours rolling and recording d20s for our edutainment!
I did have issues with your audio, you started out fine, then would fade out dramatically then come back to an acceptable level.
As a science lad i appreciate tht commitment to repeating the experiment
Leaving a like and a comment for your dice rolling labor, nice work!
I am literally making a comment only because 4000 dice rolls is a feat man. Thank you for the data. You are a legend.
Liked and subbed for the amount of dice rolled alone
I use numerically-balanced d20s and d30s from The Dice Lab. "In the standard d20 numbering, small and large numbers are distributed more-or-less evenly over the die, with the following vertex sums: 39, 47, 49, 51, 52, 52, 53, 53, 54, 56, 58, and 66. Using computer search techniques, we've managed to find a numbering with ideally-balanced vertex sums while retaining the opposite-side numbering convention: 52, 52, 52, 52, 52, 52, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, and 53."
Never seen you before, but rolling dice 4000 times to test a theory earns my sub.
I had no idea there were 2 kinds of 20's! Now I need to go examine all my dice >_>
hopefully i get to see more of your videos in the future, genuinely being reminded to sub made me do it
I do love me a good video about Theoretical Probability vs Experimental Probability. Good video!
I find it funny when you're playing magic, and your opponent deals you some damage. You pick up your spin down to change your life total and you cant find the number because its a normal d20. 😂
I have this old green d20. Loved it as a player, that thing rolled 20's. Had to retire it as a DM, it could TPK a party.
The catch is that you're not trying to cheat.
I would imagine its much easier to cheat with a spindown dice.
Hypothesis before seeing the rest of the video: Theoretically, a spindown should have the same odds/randomness as a standard since they have the same amount of sides and the same shape, so each side should have the same odds. But I feel like with enough practice, it could be really easy to manipulate rolls with a spindown to consistently roll high numbers, whereas the mixed layout of a standard die makes it much more difficult to do the same. The next paragraph will be me after I've seen the video. Hello future me, by the way! You look extra cute today.
Aww, thanks past, pre-video me! You looked cute too! Anyways, the data was super interesting to see the results of, and I'm honestly a little sad that the spreadsheets weren't linked in the description. I would've loved to see if the "unbalanced" (in quotes because of the well-done manufacturing) spindown die had clusters of similar roll results or if the results would have been as evenly spread out as the balanced standard die. Perhaps my hypothesis would be correct? There's just not enough data to tell, but I did enjoy the video and will be sharing your efforts around to more people.
Also, this is my plea for a link to a public form of the spreadsheets for the three sets of rolls 🙏
Great vid, I'm sending it to my DM that refuses to let me use a spin down D20, haha
1:18 I have never used a D20 but I am happy to stay a while and listen.
this is a great video, props to you for putting in the effort for science
today i got up and had a piece of toast, then i brushed my teeth and went for a run.
I don't know how I got here, but I've enjoyed this
There is a similar test with coins where there is a small unbalance where if you flip a coin it was biased towards landing on the same face. Potentially the dice has a similar bias where it might land towards one face more often if rolled from a specific face. Someone could gain a tiny advantage by rolling from the same face.
Not sure how I got here but happy to have found it
pausing and commenting because the nice video guy told me to: i've been playing dnd for more than 10 years, new all d20 opposite sides added up to 21 but hadn't heard of spin-down dice. i think they will be equally random. yw for the engagement
edit: but i *have* heard of the peasant railgun. so. idk
(i do feel like a quick graph comparing some of the numbers would've really helped to illustrate your point)
this is incredibly interesting! my mtg pod only rolls spindowns for heads/tails sorts of rolls because they have equal quantities of odd and even sides. i think that we all were just under the assumption that they are entirely unfair, but its exciting to see the mathematical evidence for that claim!
rolling 4,000 dice deserves my subscription.
the ending was like a lab conclusion
I didn't know a spindown dice was even a thing but in hindsight there is an active item in Binding of Isaac called Spindown Dice in addtion to the D6, D20 etc. cool info!!
I feel like people could potentially influence the roll with a spin down dice if they spend long enough learning some technique maybe?
I would love to see a follow-up on this!! this seems very interesting
Dropping a like and comment for the dedication to rolling dice 3000 times
I dont know how i got here. I love this stuff