TOPIC: Pretty cool dice

EvilJohn wrote: Drool.
I know they promise fairness, but I'm still dubious that the rolls will be truly random. I may wait for gen 2.

They actually do a comparison of how "fair" their dice are compared to other existing dice. Looks good enough to me.

I haven't been able to quite pull the trigger on them myself though. Mostly because I keep thinking "but if I get some of these, I want to be able to have my character rolling nothing but these dice... and I don't know what kind of character I'll have next, so I need all the sets!"

EvilJohn wrote: I'm still dubious that the rolls will be truly random.

Fiddy wrote: They actually do a comparison of how "fair" their dice are compared to other existing dice. Looks good enough to me.

I share EvilJohn's concern. I've exclusively used GameScience dice for decades because I want my dice to be as close to true random as possible. I watched the video and looked at their chart. I'm more than willing to accept that I may be reading it wrong, but the chart in the video and the "pretty" chart do not look the same to me. The chart in the video looks like it has a wider range of rolls.

How is it that I am not surprised that the Dream Crusher is a GameScience pedant.

I watched the video. I did not see how long the batteries will recharge. How long before they will not take a charge?

Druegar wrote:

EvilJohn wrote: I'm still dubious that the rolls will be truly random.

Fiddy wrote: They actually do a comparison of how "fair" their dice are compared to other existing dice. Looks good enough to me.

I share EvilJohn's concern. I've exclusively used GameScience dice for decades because I want my dice to be as close to true random as possible. I watched the video and looked at their chart. I'm more than willing to accept that I may be reading it wrong, but the chart in the video and the "pretty" chart do not look the same to me. The chart in the video looks like it has a wider range of rolls.

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Video looks like it ends with the lowest being 437 and the highest being 560, out of an expected 500. That translates into a range of 0.874 to 1.12 which seems to match up to the graph.

John Ohlinger wrote: I watched the video. I did not see how long the batteries will recharge. How long before they will not take a charge?

They touch on battery life in their Kickstarter FAQ:

Ok, but what about when the battery dies?

It will take years for the battery to go completely bad (thousands of charge cycles). What will happen is that the battery will slowly hold less charge, but it will be a long time before that becomes noticeable in use.
Last updated: Tue, March 9 2021 4:23 PM CST

and on their pixels-dice.com FAQ:

How long does a charge last?

We’ve been showing the dice at conventions for hours on end, and we can tell you with confidence that each charge will last a minimum of 5 hours of constant use. The dice use low-energy Bluetooth so, really, they use almost zero battery unless they are lighting up.

Fiddy wrote: Video looks like it ends with the lowest being 437 and the highest being 560, out of an expected 500. That translates into a range of 0.874 to 1.12 which seems to match up to the graph.

Thank you for explaining that.

<===Not great with numbers. Or letters, for that matter.

Fiddy wrote: I haven't been able to quite pull the trigger on them myself though. Mostly because I keep thinking "but if I get some of these, I want to be able to have my character rolling nothing but these dice... and I don't know what kind of character I'll have next, so I need all the sets!"

I backed for 1 set plus 1 D20. I plan to program mine to only flash when I roll the maximum value on the die. That way, they will better blend-in with my other dice on most rolls.

You could do a celebratory flashing for the max value, and a flashing red for a fumble!

SnakeEyes (Eric) wrote:

Fiddy wrote: I haven't been able to quite pull the trigger on them myself though. Mostly because I keep thinking "but if I get some of these, I want to be able to have my character rolling nothing but these dice... and I don't know what kind of character I'll have next, so I need all the sets!"

I backed for 1 set plus 1 D20. I plan to program mine to only flash when I roll the maximum value on the die. That way, they will better blend-in with my other dice on most rolls.

I play almost purely virtual. Since it's open source, I'm sure there will be something for Fantasy Grounds, but I'm just getting a d20 because I'll let FG handle all the damage calcs rather than trying to get the right number of dice.

Not sure if anyone caught that Stephen Colbert did a bit around these dice on his show last night. I think he thought they were kind of cool, but then he also made fun of the fact you could turn the lights off and then they'd just be dice and then provided their pricetag and made some joke about explaining that to your spouse. Still, he did show a short video of how they look. Free advertising?

It's well known that Colbert is a huge Lord of the RIngs geek. I'm kind of surprised he was so mean to the dice.

But then consider the fact that he or his writers even knew about them. It was probably meant "in good fun"?

I want some just because of the neat tech, but so far the best reason I've seen for them to exist is to assist visually impaired gamers.