Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Ah, I had no clue that was a cumulative graph. That makes more sense as to why the variance was so low after are the first three or so rolls.

Yeah, 29% seems a bit high. I would contend that it is introduced on rolling style. I noticed that my dice (which most people will vouch hate me with the passion of a thousand suns) roll much more normally when using a dice tower. I have a feeling it is because I am rather ginger about my dice throws (I spend too much time painting models and do not want the dice to even touch them), so that might be the issue. But I only maybe throw 12 dice at a time, so I get a few decent shakes of the handful in.

I was thinking, to get the large sample of dice boxes, asking 40k opponents to test their dice might work as well, especially with the throw the dice 50 times, record the results method. It would be fast enough that some people might participate. I would have to go dig out my statistics book to figure out the ideal sample size though.

Last time I tested dice, I had a program to compile data (ah college, where you have access to pretty tech and machinery that you will never again), so it was pretty quick to test dice individually. (It's how I know which of my d20's roll the best and what the distribution of their rolling looks like.) And I would probably test one box at a time. I'm not that much of a masochist.

One of the things I like about rolling lots of dice is that it reduces variability somewhat. I'd be in favour of maybe upping the wounds of many infantry choices in 40k to reduce variability ...

Oops. I meant different types of dice. Large numbers of d6's (or whatever type of die a system uses) I am perfectly fine with.

Ideally in a wargame like 40k (which typically takes several hours to play a "standard" sort of game) I like minimal variability, enough such that outcomes aren't predetermined, but not so much that a few bad rolls determine the outcome of the game. Games which are faster to play I think can get away with more variability, because I don't care if I win or lose a game due to bad luck if I can turn around and play another game of it in half an hour.

So true. I agree.

That sounds REALLY like Stargrunt (which is available for free from Ground Zero Games, I believe) - they referred to it as the Full Metal Anorak system


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Note - this is a good thing. Stargrunt is great.