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The Big Mek wrote:rolling 40 twice takes longer than 80 at once. Time is the crucial element here as sheer deployment and moving phases take up alot of my time as an ork player.
My plan is just to stack in 10s and have afew different colours just to say 'These four are PowerKlaw attacks' etc.

The tupperware idea, though aesthetically not pleasing, sounds quite good! It'd be awkward taking the body off to leave the top with dice each time, and leaving it in the 'body' of the tupperware makes the edges in the way of dice, thus giving my opponent reason to be suspicious about which dice I'm picking up. Can someone please explain these dice cups to me?

Do you simply roll from the cup and scoop up all the hits?

Using my hands should really be out of the question as picking up say even 25 dice takes a long time!
Any other suggestions or the best way to use tupperware (shoeboxs are too large!)

If you actually wanted to do a "Tupperware rolling bin," I'd suggest the following:
1) Get a short, clear, rectangular container w/lid (you're looking for < 2" high; they exist, and can often be found in multipacks at your local warehouse store).

2) Get a thin piece of plasticard; cut to fit the bottom (the bottoms of these often aren't flat).

3) Cover the plasticard in felt of your favorite color.

Alternatively, you could make a dice tower for very little cost and fairly little time.

chromedo; It's not about fitting in my hand, as I said, it's about picking them up individually.

I was looking at these dice tower but the time element of picking up dice is still in play, unlike in tupperware were you just take out the misses and roll again.
It sort of goes over gamers heads that when they pick up dice its 1 or 2 at a time, with 80 or even 40 this can take a while, even if a while is say, 30 seconds.
Every second counts in a tournament so I may take Janthkin up on his advice!
Thanks!

Though can you explain the point in a dice tower if its just the same as rolling bar maybe 'cant fit all the dice in my hand' ?

The Big Mek wrote:chromedo; It's not about fitting in my hand, as I said, it's about picking them up individually.

I was looking at these dice tower but the time element of picking up dice is still in play, unlike in tupperware were you just take out the misses and roll again.
It sort of goes over gamers heads that when they pick up dice its 1 or 2 at a time, with 80 or even 40 this can take a while, even if a while is say, 30 seconds.
Every second counts in a tournament so I may take Janthkin up on his advice!
Thanks!

Though can you explain the point in a dice tower if its just the same as rolling bar maybe 'cant fit all the dice in my hand' ?

"Goes over gamers heads" ?

Dial down the condescending my friend

I play in local tourneys, GT's, Indy GT's, and I've had situations where I've had to roll plenty of dice. It just doesn't take that long, unless you have a medical issue of some sort with your hands that prevents you from using them normally, dice rolling is a minimal time constraint. Even at Ard Boyz against horde orks, me and my opponent had no issues finishing in time. We're talking 180 boyz just in his troop selections, not to mention the 45 lootas pumping out shots.

I'm of the opinion that you're seriously over-thinking the situation, and if you're having issues finishing game in the allotted time, don't look to your dice rolling, look to:

1) How quickly you move your models
2) How much time you spend thinking/looking up rules

yea... I've never had issues here either. I'm going to second targets post.

moving quickly is the key

The Big Mek wrote:chromedo; It's not about fitting in my hand, as I said, it's about picking them up individually.

I was looking at these dice tower but the time element of picking up dice is still in play, unlike in tupperware were you just take out the misses and roll again.
It sort of goes over gamers heads that when they pick up dice its 1 or 2 at a time, with 80 or even 40 this can take a while, even if a while is say, 30 seconds.
Every second counts in a tournament so I may take Janthkin up on his advice!
Thanks!

Though can you explain the point in a dice tower if its just the same as rolling bar maybe 'cant fit all the dice in my hand' ?

The advantage of the dice tower is threefold:

1) No dice hitting minis;
2) No allegations of dice-throwing-manipulations; and
3) All the dice stay in one place, and none of them are cocked.

Anytime I roll 40+ dice on a gaming table (especially, Emperor save us, a textured table), there are cocked dice, dice going in/under terrain and vehicles, etc.

As for time, I imagine it's at least as fast to pick the misses out of the dice tower's tray. Scooping up the hits is easy in such a confined space, and shouldn't be any slower than reattaching a lid to a plastic container. But the dice tower is a bit less convenient to transport, especially as it is somewhat less indestructable.

Phoenix wrote:

TheCapm wrote:This may or may not be legal, but if you're allowed to bring in laptops, I've seen these dice programs, where you enter the ammount of die you whant, and how many sides it has. It then gives you the total (if you whant it) and shows you every individual role. It's absolutely completely random. in-fact my dad made one. They might accuse you of cheating though and they would have to use it too to make sure or something. They probably won't let you use it, but you never know.

The problem with this is that without knowing how the generator is programed, it's impossible to know if it is random or not. I could easily program one that was well done and very random (you can't actually make one that's completely random, but you can get close enough that it doesn't matter) or I could make one that's weighted to any degree I like. I suppose the same could be done with dice, but it's a lot easier for your opponent to examine your dice than it is for them to examine your code. All in all though I think it takes away from the feel of the game to use computers rather than real dice but that's just my personal opinion on the matter.

This is a cinch, and does not require actual programming. As part of explaining radioactive decay for my pupils, I created an excel spreadsheet which will do exactly what is being asked for here. Really not difficult at all.

Fifty wrote:This is a cinch, and does not require actual programming. As part of explaining radioactive decay for my pupils, I created an excel spreadsheet which will do exactly what is being asked for here. Really not difficult at all.

It's not "can a (semi-)random dice roll generator be written" that is the problem. It's "do I trust my opponent's purportedly (semi-)random dice roll generator to be fair?"

You can also use a shoe box lid and draw/print a grid (e.g., 10 dice per row) that would make it easy for you to line up your dice and quickly count/show your opponent how many dice you have.

You know, it'd be very easy to "easter egg" the generator to give a pair of slight biases depending on the inputs and such.

You could have a variety of "modes" that are automatically selected via secret key sequences:
- perfectly unbiased (default)
- stat-roll unbiased (based on requesting 100+ rolls)
- mass-roll biased high
- single-roll biased low (i.e. Leadership)
- mass-roll biased low

Hidden key sequences could be buried based on which "Enter" key was used, and how long it was pressed, along with timing and "innocent" cancel \ correction actions.

This would allow for both players to use the program, and verify with statistical analysis giving the general appearance of fairness. But actually the program would give the owner a 10-15% swing in the odds, which should be enough to tip the scales, but not blatantly so.

I like it when my opponent rolls smaller batches of dice. In a roll of 76, he could easily roll 80 or more and I wouldn't have the time to count them as they are rolled and picked up and re-rolled as quick as possible in the essense of time.

Fifty wrote:This is a cinch, and does not require actual programming. As part of explaining radioactive decay for my pupils, I created an excel spreadsheet which will do exactly what is being asked for here. Really not difficult at all.

That's good for one random number seed. Then we'll want a new one.But yes, the basic problem of a deterministic machine being unable to generate non-deterministic results (i.e. random dice rolls) can be solved by adding an external source for randomness. Currently, I am a really big fan of using the noise a vid cam produces (at last, I found a use for the cam on the macbook...).

After doing that, it should be noted for the non-techies, that a proper dice simulator is sufficiently random. That means "sufficient for all practical purposes", so using something as standard as a mersenne twister for random number generation you'd have to roll more than 10000000000[imagine another 5980 zeroes here]0000000000 times in a row to see that the random numbers repeat themselves. Even ork horde armies will have a hard time doing that.

Note that, compared to that, a standard chessex die would probably not even manage to pass the basic requirement for good randomness, like having a 16.667% chance for each number to come up (see That's how I roll).

So there is no reason to distrust computer generated die rollers.

Janthkin wrote:

Fifty wrote:This is a cinch, and does not require actual programming. As part of explaining radioactive decay for my pupils, I created an excel spreadsheet which will do exactly what is being asked for here. Really not difficult at all.

It's not "can a (semi-)random dice roll generator be written" that is the problem. It's "do I trust my opponent's purportedly (semi-)random dice roll generator to be fair?"

I think it is the same problem with dice, isn't it? How can I be sure the dice aren't weighted? As a matter of principle, I used have a box of Chessex leaded dice (using the simple "drill out the 1, replace with tungsten rod of same diameter" trick), just to prove that it might be a little more work, but it is a lot more convincing. Actually proving that these dice are leaded is much more complicated that running the results of a computer die simulator through one of the standardized tests for statistical behaviour, but besides:

Anybody with a computer can whip up a cheating dice roller. But people who can hack an existing program imnsho are fewer than those who can use a drill and some lead to modify a die. Using a standard program (like it was recommended in the beginning when some D&D programs where mentioned) should work around that .

Even more tamper-proof would be a program that went through some kind of "clearing" process. Like hacking something bought from the apple store. It's complicated enough to just get the program there, so to me, that is an appropriate level of security. So for stuff like 24 gaunts assaulting, we in our gaming group use MachDice for the iPhone.

I usually bring 30 blue dice, 20 red and 10 grey when I play my Orks.

Makes it pretty easy to pick up the correct amount of numbers. I make sure to tell my opponent about it in the beginning of the game as I have had a few; "Did you just pick up a random handfull of dice?"-moments.