|
So this happened at the bng prerelease and I wanted your input on it. When determing who went first everyone refused to roll a d20, in favor of two d6. Their claim was "it's more random". I could never get a straight answer out of anyone why, nor could I calculate how they came to this. To me it just seems more likely to result in a tie. Maybe everyone just copied the owner since that's what he did. Anyone have an idea of what I'm missing?
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 21:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 09:35 |
|
|
Hot Dog Hotline posted:So this happened at the bng prerelease and I wanted your input on it. When determing who went first everyone refused to roll a d20, in favor of two d6. Their claim was "it's more random". I could never get a straight answer out of anyone why, nor could I calculate how they came to this. To me it just seems more likely to result in a tie. Maybe everyone just copied the owner since that's what he did. Anyone have an idea of what I'm missing? People are dumb, mostly. Some people don't like to roll spindown d20s because "someone can learn to roll them for a high number each time" or something equally inane. As to the randomness claim, that's just wrong. There are 36 permutations for 2d6, but there are only 10 numbers you can get. That's half the options of a d20, because permutations don't matter, no one is betting they'll go first on a hard eight.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 21:58
|
|
|
Hot Dog Hotline posted:So this happened at the bng prerelease and I wanted your input on it. When determing who went first everyone refused to roll a d20, in favor of two d6. Their claim was "it's more random". I could never get a straight answer out of anyone why, nor could I calculate how they came to this. To me it just seems more likely to result in a tie. Maybe everyone just copied the owner since that's what he did. Anyone have an idea of what I'm missing? This is probably because those people are crazy, but assuming you have ordinary chessex type dice the d20 is less random (at an incredibly marginal, statistical level irrelevant to rolling for going first in a game of magic) than ordinary chessex style d6s because the problematic manufacturing process is magnified more with more faces. Unless your opponents were pulling out casino grade d6s as their response they're just crazy. That said I have to include the unless since I ran into a guy with a 4 digit DCI number who pulled out a pair of casino grade d6s to determine who goes first at my prerelease.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:01
|
|
|
Hot Dog Hotline posted:So this happened at the bng prerelease and I wanted your input on it. When determing who went first everyone refused to roll a d20, in favor of two d6. Their claim was "it's more random". I could never get a straight answer out of anyone why, nor could I calculate how they came to this. To me it just seems more likely to result in a tie. Maybe everyone just copied the owner since that's what he did. Anyone have an idea of what I'm missing? You'll come across people specifically that don't want to roll the spindown dice, cause if you wanna get anal about it that's not a D20. Your average dice are made to where opposite sides always add up to the same sum. Like on a D6 any two given opposite sides should always add up to seven. That kind of distribution makes it so that there aren't a bunch of high or low numbers clustered together on touching or nearby faces, which would effectively make one side or area higher than average and the other lower. Spindowns aren't like this because they count down sequentially so they're exactly like what I just said; one hemisphere is really high and the other is low. In theory someone could hold and throw the dice in such a way to deliberately hit the high side, and in reality nobody's gonna be able to. It's just something that makes everyone feel better that has a really tiny bit of logic behind it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:03
|
|
|
Olothreutes posted:People are dumb, mostly. Some people don't like to roll spindown d20s because "someone can learn to roll them for a high number each time" or something equally inane. The spindown thing has a small grain of truth to it. Spindowns aren't weighted evenly and tend to roll higher numbers, on average, than a a standard d20. It shouldn't matter when you are rolling off against someone, because your chance of rolling any one number is the same as theirs.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:03
|
|
|
Olothreutes posted:People are dumb, mostly. Some people don't like to roll spindown d20s because "someone can learn to roll them for a high number each time" or something equally inane. But spindown d20s aren't 'proper' d20s, since the numbers are sequential (19 adjacent to 20 etc), and the sums of opposite sides don't add up to 21, as it should be. With how common a 'proper' d20 is in a gaming store, why not just roll one of those, I personally won't roll a spindown if I can avoid it. Kinda  , apologies about that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
Madmarker posted:The spindown thing has a small grain of truth to it. Spindowns aren't weighted evenly and tend to roll higher numbers, on average, than a a standard d20. It does have a small grain of truth, but honestly if anyone at your LGS can reliably throw a spindown for 17+ or something like that they should be on a craps table and not at a prerelease. Coin flips are always a decent go to, and I'm not averse to the coin flip options in some of the phone apps. I did have one guy at my LGS decline the app flip because "he's a software dev and knows those aren't truly random." which always felt a lot like the spindown argument to me. Just find a fair way to determine who goes first, even if it isn't random. Fairness is much more important.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:09
|
|
|
Hot Dog Hotline posted:So this happened at the bng prerelease and I wanted your input on it. When determing who went first everyone refused to roll a d20, in favor of two d6. Their claim was "it's more random". I could never get a straight answer out of anyone why, nor could I calculate how they came to this. To me it just seems more likely to result in a tie. Maybe everyone just copied the owner since that's what he did. Anyone have an idea of what I'm missing? It's actually significantly less random because simply adding multiple dice together gives you a bell curve distribution of results where the average result is much more likely than an extreme result on one end or the other, where using a single D20 has an equal probability of rolling each result. 2D6 is adequate for something like "who goes first" because it's still 50/50, but you're going to see more ties and rerolls than with 1D20. I think they're getting a D20 and a spindown counter confused. Spindowns should never be rolled to determine a random result; they're much easier to coax into getting near a certain result because all the lumbers are next to each other.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:09
|
|
|
Just get them to call even or odd and roll any die. Of course there are some D8s or D10s or whatever that have all the odd numbers on one side and all the evens on the other...
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:10
|
|
|
My favorite way of determining who goes first is pulling out Rock Lobster, Paper Tiger, and Scissors Lizard and shuffling them facedown and letting my opponent pick his card and mine.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:13
|
|
|
Olothreutes posted:I did have one guy at my LGS decline the app flip because "he's a software dev and knows those aren't truly random." which always felt a lot like the spindown argument to me. Yeah, this is bullshit. I'd bet you that the app flip is more random than any die that's not casino-grade.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:13
|
|
|
UberJew posted:This is probably because those people are crazy, but assuming you have ordinary chessex type dice the d20 is less random (at an incredibly marginal, statistical level irrelevant to rolling for going first in a game of magic) than ordinary chessex style d6s because the problematic manufacturing process is magnified more with more faces. This is a really awesome post about the randomness of Chessex and Game Science d20s: https://www.awesomedice.com/blog/353/d20-dice-randomness-test-chessex-vs-gamescience/ Basically, a d20 from either company isn't truly random, but the margin from true randomness is so small that it doesn't matter for tabletop games or deciding who goes first in magic. Also, anybody who won't trust a program because it's only pseudorandom doesn't understand why it matters that it's different from random.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:15
|
|
|
I prefer to flip a $0.50 piece personally. No muss, no fuss.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:15
|
|
|
Kabanaw posted:Also, anybody who won't trust a program because it's only pseudorandom doesn't understand why it matters that it's different from random. With as many RPGs as I've played I don't trust PRNGs because some sort of invisible entity exerts spite via them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:19
|
|
|
Best 5-card poker hand dice roll or bust. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:20
|
|
|
Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:With as many RPGs as I've played I don't trust PRNGs because some sort of invisible entity exerts spite via them. Yeah, but I've read some of your let's plays. I mean after what you did to ff5, do you think any PRNG should have mercy on you?
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:25
|
|
|
vOv posted:Yeah, this is bullshit. I'd bet you that the app flip is more random than any die that's not casino-grade. Most RNGs I've seen make their "calculation" based on the system time, so you can actually gain some information if you know that. That said, we're talking about responding to things on a per-millisecond basis so unless you're a beep boop robot (a RUG Delver player) it doesn't really matter and he is just being a big weirdo.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:34
|
|
|
AgentSythe posted:Most RNGs I've seen make their "calculation" based on the system time, so you can actually gain some information if you know that. That said, we're talking about responding to things on a per-millisecond basis so unless you're a beep boop robot (a RUG Delver player) it doesn't really matter and he is just being a big weirdo. A robotic player wouldn't play Affinity, Stax, Painted Stone, or Shop?
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:36
|
|
|
Zoness posted:A robotic player wouldn't play Affinity, Stax, Painted Stone, or Shop? Though those are all robots, I can't but thinking that a true robot would be playing doomsday combo. Even though, the original Sad Robot played Mono-black Control
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:40
|
|
|
Me and my friends usually roll the two d10 percentile dice to determine who goes first. It makes it a lot less likely to get duplicates in a 4-8 player EDH game.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:41
|
|
|
AgentSythe posted:Most RNGs I've seen make their "calculation" based on the system time, so you can actually gain some information if you know that. That said, we're talking about responding to things on a per-millisecond basis so unless you're a beep boop robot (a RUG Delver player) it doesn't really matter and he is just being a big weirdo. The only thing to worry about isn't that the number you're getting isn't really ~random~, it's that your opponent is using something that sets its RNG seed once and he or she knows the pattern. I could write a little app that sets its RNG based on a defined number and memorize that number pattern a certain distance out, but anything that sets its RNG again based on the system clock on each call for a random number (which I assume a dice-rolling app will do) is nigh-impossible to game. Besides, at some point you have to accept that your opponent isn't a weirdo creep out to eek a tiny advantage out of the dice roll and just wants to play some magic.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:41
|
|
|
Kabanaw posted:The only thing to worry about isn't that the number you're getting isn't really ~random~, it's that your opponent is using something that sets its RNG seed once and he or she knows the pattern. I could write a little app that sets its RNG based on a defined number and memorize that number pattern a certain distance out, but anything that sets its RNG again based on the system clock on each call for a random number (which I assume a dice-rolling app will do) is nigh-impossible to game. Besides, at some point you have to accept that your opponent isn't a weirdo creep out to eek a tiny advantage out of the dice roll and just wants to play some magic. Of course this is a game where people have stacked their deck or otherwise used magic tricks (  ) to win before so when the 4 digit DCI number guy broke out the casino dice I did not begrudge him.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:44
|
|
|
UberJew posted:Of course this is a game where people have stacked their deck or otherwise used magic tricks ( Definitely, if someone prefers to roll 2d6 or whatever I'll go with it. It's faster to use their correct method of randomness than to try to explain to them why my method of randomness is, for all effective purposes, equally correct.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:46
|
|
|
Since I'm not a D&D player and I prefer to keep track of life on paper, I don't own any d20s. I don't object to using a d20 to roll, but I have d6s available for counters and other things, so I default to those.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:48
|
|
|
Kabanaw posted:It's faster to use their correct method of randomness than to try to explain to them why my method of randomness is, for all effective purposes, equally correct. This is the correct answer. Unless they're offering you a method that isn't 50/50 or is easy to cheat, just go with it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:49
|
|
|
qbert posted:My favorite way of determining who goes first is pulling out Rock Lobster, Paper Tiger, and Scissors Lizard and shuffling them facedown and letting my opponent pick his card and mine. This is the best way to do it and I won't hear otherwise. I had BaronVonVaderham make me up a set in foil and they are sweet as hell.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:52
|
|
|
I challenge my opponents to a game of Magic and then whoever loses goes first next game.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:52
|
|
|
AgentSythe posted:I challenge my opponents to a game of Magic and then whoever loses goes first next game. Sounds good. OK, who goes first in thi-- oh.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:53
|
|
|
Zoness posted:A robotic player wouldn't play Affinity, Stax, Painted Stone, or Shop? Heh, excuse me, a robotic player plays Doomsday all day.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 22:55
|
|
|
qbert posted:My favorite way of determining who goes first is pulling out Rock Lobster, Paper Tiger, and Scissors Lizard and shuffling them facedown and letting my opponent pick his card and mine. This is what I do, everyone loves me. Do this. Bonus, these cards are 50c each, but I've traded them as a set to people for lots more than $1.50 in trade.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 23:01
|
|
|
I know some people here liked him (I really did not care for his coverage or his "news" show) but Reuben Bressler is streaming now. http://www.twitch.tv/moxreuby
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 23:08
|
|
|
Bugsy posted:I know some people here liked him (I really did not care for his coverage or his "news" show) but Reuben Bressler is streaming now. http://www.twitch.tv/moxreuby Son of a bitch, my eyes crossed for a bit and I thought that was Randy Bhueler streaming.
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2014 23:31
|
|
|
quote:Worth Wollpert @mtgworth 6m We'll see. We'll see.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2014 00:01
|
|
|
On the subject of dicechat, this seems like a good place to mention Go First dice:quote:I studied the idea for a while, but it was then another friend of mine, Robert Ford (a mathematician), who devised this specific configuration of numbers on four twelve-sided dice.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2014 00:31
|
|
|
vOv posted:Yeah, this is bullshit. I'd bet you that the app flip is more random than any die that's not casino-grade. Sometimes, sometimes it's not. Cockatrice, the free MtG client, has a really, really bad RNG -- in my experience it shits itself if you try and roll a d2 (for a coin flip) and it's way better to roll a d20 and just call odds or evens. I know this is totally anecdotal and could be a freak occurrence but an opponent and I sat there rolling d2s back and forth for a minute and I rolled ten 1s and he rolled ten 2s. Whatever algorithm they use seems seriously hosed
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2014 00:47
|
|
|
Hot Dog Day #42 posted:On the subject of dicechat, this seems like a good place to mention Go First dice: This is a really cool read even if you have no interest in the subject at hand, it's like a mathematical magic trick and even after reading the explanation I can't totally parse WHY it works
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2014 00:49
|
|
|
Hot Dog Day #42 posted:On the subject of dicechat, this seems like a good place to mention Go First dice: The flip side being nontransitive dice, which have the property that if you let your opponent pick one then you can always pick one that gives you better than even odds of beating them.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2014 00:49
|
|
|
goferchan posted:I know this is totally anecdotal and could be a freak occurrence but an opponent and I sat there rolling d2s back and forth for a minute and I rolled ten 1s and he rolled ten 2s. Whatever algorithm they use seems seriously hosed That kind of event doesn't preclude good randomness, no matter how unlikely it is. Paradoxically, it actually means the RNG is working well because it defied your expectations.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2014 00:49
|
|
|
Tharizdun posted:This is what I do, everyone loves me. Do this. TCGplayer has them all at around a dollar to a dollar twenty-five. They're listening to you.
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2014 00:50
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 09:35 |
|
|
oh no we rolled dice and there was a tie, let's spend 2 seconds to reroll them
|
|
#
?
Feb 12, 2014 00:53
|
|
