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I've seen the dice rings Kickstarter mentioned a few times in various threads, but nothing dedicated to it. Figured it was worth pointing out that it ends tomorrow night!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/critsuccess/dice-rings

I had sworn off Kickstarters for 2012, but just got permission from my wife to spend $100 on gifts for our nerd friends... so I'm pledging for this as I think they'll make great gifts at $14 or $13 apiece.

Teaser pic . I'll be keeping a 3D6 and 2D6 ring for myself, likely (to play around with rolls for Warmachine / Hordes, where those are the most common rolls)

Oh man, this is awesome, but I'm already scrounging money up for other Kickstarters!

Yeah I know

Added a teaser pic to the OP. Note that I think that's an error that the "5" and "6" are next to each other there, or at least I hope so- they've said they distribute the numbers to make it impossible to aim for a high spot, so it seems to me that the 6 should be flanked by the 2 and 3, rather than the 5 and 3.

(i.e, 6 is opposite 1, 5 opposite 2, and 4 opposite 3)

In order around the dice, that'd be 2, 6, 3, 5, 1, 4 to have a proper distribution, imo.

They replied and let me know that it was just a sample and they hadn't given the manufacturer the order. 5 and 6 won't be adjacent

Ah crap, I missed this one.

I hope they have room for late backers of the project.

Picked up one ring, probably gonna make it a D20 for infinity fun.

I hope they unlock the moon ring, for the sake of those that wanted it- less than 1K short of the goal, and every other KS I've seen or been a part of that has come that close has unlocked the goal anyway (given a good faith push to reach it by the backers). Will be poor form if they don't!

I'll update with the renders when they send them out of the final few ring unlocks, there's an interesting "sum 3r6" (sum of 3D6) that was unlocked that will somehow only use 2 spinners. I'll probably go with the 3 spinner 3r6 instead, but will be cool to see how they do it with only 2 spinners, too.

 d-usa wrote:
Picked up one ring, probably gonna make it a D20 for infinity fun.

Good idea, I should get one as well.

Got my rings this week, thought I'd put this review up here...

Well, bummer! Mine have shipped and I expect to have them this week... hopefully they'll be more balanced. I mostly went with D6's, so with a larger "target" than the D20 numbers maybe they will be better... or, perhaps that will exacerbate the problem...

Did you randomise the start position of the ring ? or start it from a set point, or where it stopped last

it could be the bias you're seeing may be due to how hard you generally spin it

(the force you apply to spin the ring will be generally similar, so friction will naturally end up stopping in a similar position)

it's a potential inherent bias in the system

When I was spinning it before testing, I wasn't starting in the same place; when I tested it, I always started at 1, and (as far as I could tell) got anywhere from around half a spin to two full spins out of each, so got some degree of variation.

In both cases, there were still the same notable spikes around or on specific numbers. I also tested it again after the recorded test, though I didn't record it: the same numbers still came up with regularity.

If I get the chance, I'll try to confirm numbers with the same sample pool but not starting in the same place.

I suspect you're probably right about the bias then (which is a shame)

but I'll be interested to see if you get the same pattern from a different point

Well, I was tired and needed a break, so, just got a second sample of data, this time using random start locations. (Same link)

The results were largely similar.

I really have to ask; what is the point of those rings?

Most of the time when rolling a die you are doing it in some kind of competitive setting......so any person sitting opposite of you will expect to be able to verify your "roll", preferably at a glance as dice rolls in our usual setting is one of a quite large number of rolls.

This seems like a fun and cool little gadget but huuuuugely impractical for any real use.


....

They are a fun gadget, nothing more really.

I went in at the $5 level and didn't spring extra for the life counter ring. I did end up with a R20 and I will pretty much only use it for playing MtG.

Steelmage99 wrote:
I really have to ask; what is the point of those rings?

Most of the time when rolling a die you are doing it in some kind of competitive setting......so any person sitting opposite of you will expect to be able to verify your "roll", preferably at a glance as dice rolls in our usual setting is one of a quite large number of rolls.

This seems like a fun and cool little gadget but huuuuugely impractical for any real use.


....

I got them for RPG-ing on the go- sometimes we feel like heading out, and in non-combat situations, we don't need anything beyond a decent memory of stats and a random generator. A d20 is highly flexible, and can easily be used for lots of things, but can't really be rolled while walking.

Steelmage99 wrote:
I really have to ask; what is the point of those rings?

Most of the time when rolling a die you are doing it in some kind of competitive setting......so any person sitting opposite of you will expect to be able to verify your "roll", preferably at a glance as dice rolls in our usual setting is one of a quite large number of rolls.

This seems like a fun and cool little gadget but huuuuugely impractical for any real use.


....

How else would you be able to dramatically offer forth a dice ring to your opponent for that game-ending roll and utter in your best Gandalf impersonation:

"Let the ringbearer decide!"

However for RPGs they are somewhat useful, especially when the only dice rolling surface you have apart from carpet is a glass coffee table that only seeks to make the loudest ear-splitting rattle with every roll. When you trust everyone to make the right call of their actual rolls, there's no issue.

Does the spinning portion of the ring just sit loose on the body of the ring, or is there some sort of bearing or bushing on it?

Damn shame about the randomness. I'm still getting one when the website finally goes live. Cool trinket.

Unfortunately this is why I didn't get in on the kickstarter.. I was unconvinced on the randomness factor that would come from a spinning ring over a die.

I'm not sure that there's an issue. I did a quick Chi-Squared test on both of these data sets and got a X^2 of 26.5 (p-val 0.11) for the start-at-one set and a X^2 of 19.6 (p-val 0.42) for the random start set. They look random enough to me.

I want one of these for myself. It looks really neat.

I got the d100 ring and didn't notice any real outliers with how it spun. I reckon that you should probably give it more than one spin to generate a random number, but I'm also not convinced that taking 80 spins to hit every number is wrong.

There's probably some sort of math that explains this, but I'm too lazy to figure that out. On the other hand, I did write a quick brute-force program that rolls a d20 a ton and counts how many rolls it takes to hit every number once. After 20,000 iterations, the average number of rolls to hit every number on a d20 once is 72.

So, if that's the basis of determining whether your die is random enough, I'd say it's doing pretty well.

I should be receiving mine in the next few days, so I'll update on the impression I get (whether they seem to "stick" or favor any particular number).

 Redbeard wrote:
I got the d100 ring and didn't notice any real outliers with how it spun. I reckon that you should probably give it more than one spin to generate a random number, but I'm also not convinced that taking 80 spins to hit every number is wrong.

There's probably some sort of math that explains this, but I'm too lazy to figure that out. On the other hand, I did write a quick brute-force program that rolls a d20 a ton and counts how many rolls it takes to hit every number once. After 20,000 iterations, the average number of rolls to hit every number on a d20 once is 72.

So, if that's the basis of determining whether your die is random enough, I'd say it's doing pretty well.

Good to know.

If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll do additional sample sets, but for now, I'm still dubious...

I got my rings, and am very happy with how mine spins after being washed in soapy water and allowed to dry (most of them are gifts).

However, when they say their rings may run a half size small, it seems they all ARE a half size small, from what I can tell. I hope they are not going to charge me $4 per ring just to get the size that I originally wanted! Will update after I find out from my friends how many of them are OK with the ring size or need to have theirs sent back along with a few of ours.

I got my rings and am very happy with them; my wife's fits great and mine's a little tight. Think a half size change would be too much though, a quarter size bigger would be perfect. Both spin great out of the bag with no washing. With it on my index finger, I get a good amount of revolutions when using my thumb to spend most times; about what I would expect from the videos and what I have read. Very happy with the purchase. If it matters at all, I got the rElderFuthark size 11 for myself and size 9 for the wife.

Mine fits perfect.

Just putting it out there, after around 300 spins (numbers updated in my post linked above), I'm still seeing about the same trends. Things are a little more even, but there are definite outliers that have stayed outliers.