Let's talk dice Veeky Forums...

Let's talk dice Veeky Forums, as this is such an integral part of our hobby I rarely see it being talked about it on here.

Do you do the saltwater test with your dice?

Do you use a dice tray or dice tower?

Do you use the dice that come with a certain boardgame or official manufacturer dice of the tabletop game you play?

Are you superstitious (e.g.: throwing out exceptionally bad rolling dice)?

Are you using regular game dice or casino dice?

What techique do you use when rolling dice?

Any favourite or novelty dice you want to show off?

Buy gamescience dice. If you must buy cheap shit like chessex buy the clear ones.

Dice towers are fucking radical

When a dice has been rolling like crap I let the player roll it again and again until it gets a good result.

Saltwater test?

I just use ones that look pretty. Qworkshop one are quite cool.

I don't really care about much else.

Distribution/randomness? Hey, it's just a game-of-pretend with some rules and dice rolls thrown in for fun. Not serious gaming tournament or casino gambling. If the result is 90% of absolute randomness or 99% doesn't really make any difference. Also I don't play roll-heavy games where there is significant number of rolls per session so basically the dice aren't that important.

Same goes for "being able to tell the result at glance". With nomber of rolls that actually happens spending 5 secs more on a roll to confirm the result isn't really hurting anyone.

I don't see also any reason to fetishize the method of rolling, though tray is useful to keep the dice from falling from the table or rolling somewhere uncomfortably beyond the reach.

I can understand the fetish. Platonic solids are fucking cool.

I only play online so I've never used dice, I don't need them but I know they will make the experience warmer.

Maybe it's too much time board gaming, but I wish their was less random number generation and more hard choices. Gloomhaven in particular did this exceptionally well with cards, but I don't think I've ever seen it done on a TTRPG.

GameScience are too edgy and pointy.

I like rounded dice that are durable, portable, don't scratch the table, look classy and feel good in the hand.

Yeah. Mathematical perfection isn't really a priority. But I do like the numbers to be clear.

Frankly, plastic is perfect for dice. Which is sad because stone and wood and metal are cool. But they're prone to problems that make them a pain in the ass.

I buy cheap chessex dice that I think look nice and don't give a fuck about anything else because I'm not an autist and I'm only playing the game to hang out and have fun.

I'm a machinist and I've made my own D6s

Any other dice types? That's cool af.

Oh hey, here's your dice bro

Nah man. A simple cube I can knock up in about 15 minutes but the other poly dice would take a lot more effort and programming, and basically I cannot be fucked

What material?

I made a bunch from plastic, a couple from stainless steel, and I'm waiting for some offcuts of titanium to show up in the shop bins to knock up some out of that too.

Just googled it. Makezine has a good description. Basically you add salt to water until your dice float. Then fiddle with them and see if the same side keeps coming up.

I'm fond of gamescience dice, not because I'm under any illusion that they are more or less random than other dice, but mostly because I like the feel and look of them, I like dice with sharp corners, and they feel good to roll.

How did you do the edges? Rounded, sharp, or bevelled somehow?

I'm sure it seems simple to a pro, but to me it's like kurd space magic.

That's alright man, that's cool. Before I start explaining, do you know how a CNC machine and subtractive machining works? Do you know what the setup looks like?

Just what you'd learn on Wikipedia. Never seen one up close.

Saltwater? Had to google it. Na man. Don't have time for this shit.

I did by a kilo of dice that I slowly been losing around the house .
I just like roll them.. no techique. I bet the cats hidden most of them.

I do think about getting a dice tower for my missus. She gets zelous with the dice and they tend to go off the side of the table alot.
Its like shes in a tabletop gaming anime I swear
*GO DICE ROLL*

Alright well, it's a simple idea for a D6. I've got a computer controlled machine that I can program to moves in X, Y and Z axises, and it moves within 0.005mm increments of accuracy. It's holding a tool like a drill that doesn't just cut a hole up and down, but cuts side to side as well, and as you can see, moves in lines and cuts a profiled pattern.
I put a piece of plastic or steel in a vice in that machine, so that the material is hanging 20mm above the vice jaws. I use that tool to cut flat the top and four sides of a cube, so now the inaccurate scrap is shaped to nice uniformed flatness on 5 sides. While it's there, I machine-cut bevels on all the edges so those corners stay as accurate and tied in to the faces. After that I flip it over in the vice, and cut away the stock from before, leaving the last face square to the other five, and I finish with beveled edges on that face too. Flipping it over in the vice is what drops my accuracy from 100% to fucking nothing: like 0.1mm out of square, which is still twice as good as any of the other dice I buy.

Other dice would need a 4th axis, like this bad boy here, to hold steel and rotate it around in synchronization with the machine cutting in the other three axises. It changes the workload from apprentice-level basic to fucking astronomical, fuck all that effort.

And all this is all going to be replaced with 3D printing anyway

Thank you very much! Great explanation.

Do you have any pics of the finished dice?

Ah shit, yeah, here you go man

Not that user, but very cool.

I 3d printer a Dice Tower as my first test of a printer and it's pretty rad. I need to design a collapsible one as mine is a big unwieldy.

I think my current favorite are a set of fate dice I made back in trade school out of some aluminum scrap when we were learning how to square up work pieces on the mill.

As far as superstitions...Eh, I'll swap out sets when rolling poorly...That and sacrificing a d20 to the flames when it got a character I really liked killed.

My solution is that I bought 10lbs of dice, and I only roll each die once, then throw them in the used bin until I've rolled all of them. It's not 100% random, but it does let me crush any die that gives me a 1 in vise grips in front of the rest without having to worry.

Only astronomical if you're not using a CAM program. Manually programming 4th axis can go fuck itself with a rake. Highest paid guy I ever saw was some crusty old fuck that programmed old as fuck 6 axis robot arms by hand because our CAM programs wouldn't spit out G-Code they liked.

It is not easy to find 1d2 or 1d3 dices in most game stores...

Can somebody recommed me good Europe or Sweden online shop that sell special dices?