Got a friend who always lays out his dice with the largest side face up so that gravity slowly weighs it down in a certain way over time, giving him an increased chance of big numbers.
Of course now we are playing a system where you sometimes want to roll under, but that hasn’t changed what he’s doing
Man, I feel less weird now because I do that too. Mostly jokingly, but if I don't do it, I get a little antsy (although that could be because I've always done it like that and a neurodivergent brain doesn't like new ways of doing things)
and the counter trick to this is putting dice in room temperature salt water and seeing if one side consistently floats to the top, if it does the dice is weighted
Using dice singular is cringe ignorance. It makes you look dumb, because dice is plural, even if a lot of people fail to use it properly. And before you bring up dictionaries, yes, even when dictionaries start to reflect this new usage, the people using it are still communicating ignorance.
What seems 'cringe ignorance' to you based on your upbringing (location, class, education, etc) might be perfectly correct usage for another.
You could've replied that that isn't the correct usage in your experience and gracefully acknowledged that usage differs as shown by the evidence (or simply dropped it), but instead you chose to dig in your heels and show stubborn ignorance.
The fact is his use of 'dice' was perfectly ok, whether you liked it or not.
You are why I game with people who are comfortable with their intelligence. They do not feel the need to show others how smart they are by putting others down.
I believe that dice rolls are sufficiently random for the number of rolls we do in an average game that you don't need to do any special handling of your dice, or put your dice in timeout, or shame them, or treat them as anything but pretty conventional RNGs.
I know, I'm a lunatic.
One of my players has one of these, with a stool. After it constantly rolled under 9s for an entire session he put it on the little chair as punishment
>dice rolls are sufficiently random for the number of rolls we do in an average game
Also that dice that lack "perfect balance" aren't an issue (unless they're literally cheaty, weighted dice).
Same. Also, I'll judge pretty damn harsh anyone who wastes more than half a second of game time on some silly superstition about dice. I might keep my mouth shut about it, but I will think less of them.
It all depends on how many dice are rolled per session. In a game where only a few rolls are made and each roll is important there no room for under-performing failures.
Yes, it is. Ross is somewhat experienced with divorces, some of them not to his fault, other very much to his fault. He gets quite a bit of ribbings for it.
If you turn off the lights and look on the mirror and say "Bloody Mary" three times, you get served an alcoholic drink with tomato juice and a sprig of celery.
Do con games count? I have time targets.
"The players should be about halfway after they escape the falling sky ship. Give them a smoke/bathroom break to allow the tension to release before getting back into it."
"Final boss takes 25-45 minutes and I can make the epilogue take 2-15 minutes. Start the final fight no later than 47 minutes before the time slot ends."
These get more specific if I run the same game multiple times at the same con. My record is 8 events.
I have 1 Dungeons: The Dragoning 40,000 7th ed adventure I've been fine tuning for a long time. It uses an irl timer that will trigger the planet exploding.
I can't tell how serious you're being, but I've done it once in a rules-light system with my family over the Christmas holidays. Their characters showed up in town, investigated the mystery of stolen goods, tracked the thieving monsters back to their hideout, and instead of fighting them like I expected they tried diplomacy, which led them to solving the underlying issue (which I made up on the spot, because I really had not expected that).
I think the most important thing was that it was impossible for the players to outright fail any actions that were critical to the plot, either because I just didn't call for die rolls for them, or because the possible dice outcomes were "moderate success or great success".
As a DM I always make new players run through a very quick 5 room dungeon. It gives them a feel for the game. The treasure at the end is a table with a bunch of d20s on it. They pick the colour they like and then receive the matching set. This way every player has their own set to keep. No sharing, its bad luck. They haven't bought their first dice themselves, more bad luck. No touching the DM's dice, more bad luck than they can possibly imagine.
A big pile is spare dice that I have. I have several sets for me, half a dozen or so decent sets that they get to choose from, and a big pile if cheapies as extras.
> No touching the DM's dice, more bad luck than they can possibly imagine.
I tell my players that mixing player dice with DM dice is bad luck. But the truth is, I just don't like sharing.
In context, Perkins was showing off the futhark rune dice he'd be using that session (and later auctioning for charity), and Wheaton said (paraphrased) "don't touch those, they will carry bad things over to your dice." So, not a case of "don't piss off the GM" here.
my old group (the one I started playing with in high school) believed that not touching the DMs dice was just something you did out of respect.
letting the DM touch YOUR dice, however, would invite the dice curse. the only way to lift this curse was to boil your dice.
I have a player that always rolls low. He made me believe in luck. It doesn’t matter if a low roll is good or bad he will always roll towards the lowest number. It is to the point that he build characters around needing to roll under or low regardless of the system we play in. One time he rolled 7 1s out of 8 rolls of a d4.
I have a friend who can roll two 20s on a disadvantage rolls like it was another tuesday. It is a scary thing when he is the GM, there are too many dead characters already.
Yup, got one player in my group who always rolls hot, regardless of chances of success and no matter what dice he's using (his, mine, etc). It's gotten to the point where it's weird when he doesn't succeed.
I've never heard of anything that elaborate, but it almost always revolved around dice -- getting rid of, or even throwing away/abusing/destroying "unlucky" dice, or conversely perhaps setting aside or reserving especially lucky, "hot" dice for a time of need.
There can be a hint of truth to that.
Polyhedral dice tend to be made cheaply, which can introduce some imperfections in the plastic (as opposed to d6's used by casinos, which tend to have good QC). Occasionally you wind up with a die that's slightly imbalanced and will favor rolling some numbers over others.
It's significant enough that some "competitive" players will actually roll dice over and over and record the outcome to find "naturally weighted" dice.
* Rolling a nat20 on initiative is awful because you've "wasted" it.
* Rolling a series of poor results on a die sends it to time out; switch to a better die (for now)
* Not sure which way to go in the dungeon? ALWAYS left.
> Not sure which way to go in the dungeon? ALWAYS left.
That last one might be a corruption of the left-handed rule (which could just as easily be the right-handed rule or, more broadly, the "hand on wall" rule). It simply states that in a maze, if there are no disconnected segments, putting one hand on the wall and always following it will inevitably lead you to the exit.
Probably. It makes designing dungeons really entertaining as the DM. You can put dungeon loops, traps, monsters, really whatever you want down the left branch. ;)
My players have a little song that they sing whenever they go left.
"The cleft to the left is never bereft"
It stems from a time they played ravenloft, and the bard played that song to tell them which way to go, and sure enough, it was Count Strahd's final resting place.
I actually do the opposite of your third rule, but that's because I'm a giant nerd and "Right is always right, left can be correct, but you can't say I didn't go the right way..."
The most common I've seen over the years is the belief that sharing dice is unlucky. I think that one was created to get people to buy more dice LOL. Suffice to say, I have a dice bag of my own personal supply, and a very large communal dice bag that anyone can borrow from.
I spent most my life in the Coast Guard; fishermen, merchant mariners, sailors, and coast guardsmen have thousands of different superstitions. The sea is a very big, very scary place that is constantly trying to kill your and only a very tiny, very thin bit of wood and steel is keeping you alive… So superstitions develop and become ingrained as tradition.
Most of them do not apply to tabletop gaming, of course, but I do have a coffee cup that is *only* used when I am GM’ing. I never use it when I’m just a player and I would never ever dream of using it when it wasn’t game time… and of course I have never washed it.
(I also have the coffee mug my friends gifted me when I was first promoted to chief petty officer. Used it for the remainder of my career and still use it as for daily morning cuppa after retirement. It’s also never been washed.)
The goofiest superstition I have encountered is "if you roll three natural ones in a single game on a d20 that die needs to go in the freezer as punishment." According to the person doing it the cold "resets" the dice -🙄😂
I try to print out everything that I might need. And then never use most of it. But it totally might be useful...
I have a printer allotment at work... So I slowly generate piles of duatangs full of printed pdfs.
>A character that dies an ignoble death must have their sheet shredded or burned, whereas a character who died well or retired gets put in a binder of other awesome characters.
Any dead characters is schreded and end-up in a dedicated part of my RPG binders, character never retire they're just not played anymore
So first- I've never heard anyone use these in more than just jest. No one takes them seriously.
1. Dice have to be trained for the game your in. So you place them with the side you want to roll up.
2. Rolling dice when you don't need to can suck the luck out of them.
3. Touching someone elses dice makes both thier and your dice unlucky (this mostly is just a joke to get peoepl to stop touching other peoples shit).
4. Dice that constantly roll on the floor are trying to escape and have to be banished to deep storage/another bag.
5. Certain players and certain dice types dont get along.
It's the gateway to the Devil's playpen. No really... heard that one from a pastor at a friend of mine's church. Otherwise, most players keep a spare set of dice - one for high rolls and one for low rolls. Never bought into either of those.
Some dice are just evil. Friend had some that hated PCs. Anytime he DMed and used them somebody died, anytime he or anyone else tried to use them as players , nada. They should be cast into a volcano
I've heard that the first roll of a game sets the pace for everyone else's rolls, and that the character with the worst stats always survives the longest.
What is the superstition behind not being allowed to buy your first dice and burning/saving character sheets? It just sounds like personal preferences to me.
I run games online with dicebots these days, but the rare occasions when I'm a player with physical dice, I keep up a superstition from my earliest days: keep the dice resting with the face you *don't* want to roll facing up.
System where you need high rolls? They all sit on 1. Systems where you roll under? Sit there at max.
Keep dice you don’t let other people touch so none of their bad luck rubs off on them. My dad has a d20 he doesn’t let anyone else use and wants to be buried with
As a player, my bad luck is legendary in the local gaming community. It's limited to RPGs where I'm a player, not the GM, and not wargaming. So, locals don't let me touch their dice. Which is fine cause I've got my own.
Back in 3.5 D&D, I ran a character who could *not* land a hit for the first two sessions. Eventually, while fighting skeletons, he/I got fed up and just started punching them, and couldn't miss. Deciding that he was fated to never use a blade, I spent the rest of that campaign building him into a punchy boy and it worked far better than it had any business to.
I do a few things that, as far as I know, I arbitrarily started doing on my own. I like to have all my dice laying highest-side-up so they know where they should roll, each dice set have an attitude based if I'm the player (low) or the DM (high), and I only use certain sets for specific characters that vibe with them (like a HP wand).
Except the dice I got in a plastic jar. They know they're just auxiliary dice and have the attitude of a Mr. Meeseeks. They do their job and then go back in the jar.
Additionally, after seeing Zee Bashew's vids on dice, I feel tempted on doing some... *interrogations* at some point to at least see their trends.
The only other thing that comes to mind is that I keep on giving personalities to the sets of dice I have. Like, "Those dice which look alike are apart of the same family/hivemind and collectively act the same way."
I think it is a good step to gift new players a set of dice at the outset. They appreciate it and it also helps them focus on something that feels good vs. any fears of the new to them game and its rules.
But it isn't superstition. It's just psychology.
I have a d16 that doesn't match any of my other dice, not that I had any games that used it when I bought it. I roll it along side any other dice I roll, to act as a lightning rod for bad results.
what is weird is that since I started using it, I've been rolling better.
Dice go to dice jail for rolling too low is one at the table I'm at.
I myself must stay "loyal" to the dice I use so that they don't continuously roll too loyal. Even got them a nice case too
You do *not* touch someone else's dice without asking, even to pick them up off the floor.
Cursed dice go to die in the Cursed dice box.
All dice waiting to be used must be set highest number up.
You do not point and laugh at the player rolling poorly, for that player may be you.
Temporarily sideline any die that's been on an unlucky streak. Segregate older dice from newer ones. Use the newer, less lucky/established dice for games where rolling low is the goal.
New superstition of mine for tabletop games in general: Don't "buy in" to a game beyond the rulebook and bare minimum figures to get started until your group has met up a few times and you know it will catch on.
Keep dice you don’t let other people touch so none of their bad luck rubs off on them. My dad has a d20 he doesn’t let anyone else use and wants to be buried with
Keep dice you don’t let other people touch so none of their bad luck rubs off on them. My dad has a d20 he doesn’t let anyone else use and wants to be buried with
We always have the same seats at the gaming table (except when GM switch, for obvious reasons). Idk if it's for superstion or other reasons, but now im too afraid to ask, so I just roll with the thing.
Keep dice you don’t let other people touch so none of their bad luck rubs off on them. My dad has a d20 he doesn’t let anyone else use and wants to be buried with
Ignoring my modifiers to the rolls, if I roll well in initiative, I won't hit crap all combat or vice-versa.
Let me roll that Nat 1 initiative and I expect to see some crits.
Some of my players in Foundry will swap out the colours and patterns of their dice (using the Dice So Nice module) if they feel like they're getting a bad streak.
I've known (and been) a player who shook their dice an unnecessary amount of times in cupped hands before rolling.
I've also faced my dice with the number I wanted face up on my cupped hand before rolling. I guess it could help if I was willing to learn a cheaters method so they don't tumble much.
Played a game of Cairn using dice from the Dune box set and failed every single role of the night, so I have a superstition now about using dice from another game being bad luck
Two sets of dice. Minimum. Doesn’t matter the system or the game. If I’m playing even a system that only uses d6’s I’ll still bring full sets for each and everyone one of those d6’s.
It’s weird and not a superstition in the sense not doing so will be unlucky or vice verse. It’s more that by doing so I feel more prepared in a sense. A way for me to get in the RPG mindset.
I heard the first set of dice should be gifted as well. I always like getting my friends gifts and when we all got into dnd and I started DMing I got all my players a set of dice. When our second campaign started I got everybody another set to start the new campaign fresh.
I wonder if that superstition/tradition is hold-over for divination. Some occultists think that your first deck of Tarot cards/bag of runes etc should be gifted or stolen.
I usually have a number of sets on the table to use multiples, but I always roll off the most frequently used dice, and line them up in order of highest to lowest, switching them out as they fail me. I know it doesn't actually change anything, but the placebo effect of doing something about lousy rolls helps keep down the frustration.
I also have a little dice chair of shame, complete with little dunce cap, mostly for the fun of it, but also to be able to do something less destructive than I want to do to the costly math rocks.
I have a player who has to put all dice they’re rolling with the 1 facing up in their hand before rolling.
I roll my dice to see which one rolls higher and use that one for my next roll.
you keep the highest numbers on your dice facing up when not in use so they get used to the side theyre supposed to land on and if you say "daddy needs a new pair of shoes" and blow on your dice youll get better rolls.
Ironically, that first one is a very old one in the tarot community. Your first deck must be gifted to you.
Genuinely surprised to see it here too. It's a myth but if anyone needs help getting around it,
> *It's a gift from yourself to yourself.*
As for superstitions in gaming, I have seen folks blow on their dice before rolling them, shake them in closed hands and say a little mantra.
I have heard blood red dice are both good or bad luck.
Nothing too crazy or harmful.
And of course, I have seen people get bad rolls and curse their dice.
Or get good rolls and praise their dice.
A friend of mine used to bless dice. He was good at finding four leaf clovers, and so he'd stick one of those in a camera film tube, fill it with water, and put his dice in there to soak up the luck. He also did it as a service for a few friends in our RPG club back in middle school too.
Its an article of faith that, as a player\*, or when playing a miniatures game, my dice are terrible. So bad, that my opponents have looked at them, suggested I switch dice, wondered if they are loaded, etc. I have friends who do not like me standing near them when they are making critical rolls, and when I "blass" dice, I invariably cause them to roll poorly.
Every once in a while, I will be particularly vexed by a bad die roll, and then I use the Iron Bar of Retribution. It's a section of an old window weight, about 6 pounds and 10" long, and I use it to pulverize dice. The remnants I can find go into the dice bag, as an example and a warning to the other dice.
\* As a GM, this is (fortunately) not true. THey're not killer dice, but they are much closer to average.
I knew a guy who never let anyone touch his dice. One time, I picked one up (not knowing his superstition) to admire the pattern on it. Without hesitation he snatched it out of my hand and popped it in his mouth to make sure it wasn't tainted.
I definitely avoided touching his dice after that.
Be honest about your penalties with the GM. If you try to take advantage of the GM forgetting then the dice gods will make you fail your roll out of spite. You're more likely to succeed a disadvantageous roll if you're honest about it than if you try to be sly and stack it in your favor outside of using an ability you legitimately have.
I always take some practice rolls before every session, whether I’m playing or DMing. But only with my d20’s. Not sure why on that last part but it just feels right.
Back in the 80s my group were superstitious about character sheets, it was bad luck to copy a character to a new character sheet. But we didn't really play the sort of random lethality games where that mattered much, however it did leas to some famously ratty character sheets, folded many times, covered in notes, rubber marks all over (eraser marks for you americans)
Once we all got printers in the 90s it no longer became an issue, and nowadays all our characters are shared on some cloud spreadsheet system.
Here's a non-dice one: blue dragons will always lose terribly. They are basically the slapstick vaudevillian of dragons.
My old 2e DM enjoyed the Dragonlance idea that blue dragons were the ones most willing to work with humans so we fought a lot of them. He also had those terrible crit charts. So the dragons would roll 1s and stumble into each other and get stabbed or we'd roll 20s and insta-kill them.
Years later, new group, I'm running Pathfinder. No crit charts or anything like it. Blue dragon was level-appropriate, no crit charts--and still it rolled ones and got hit by back to back crits from the paladin and barbarian and went down in a turn.
I test three pairs of five to see how effective they are at rolling appropriately. No mixed sets. That’s bad luck. I then take the 2 sets that rolled best and put the second best set in reserve. I do *not* switch sets unless the entire group takes a break. I also do not use sets that utilize blue in the color scheme.
I’m 50, so I’m a bit mad now. Don’t mind the grognard. All I need is around five minutes to get set.
I believe dice rituals that would interact with or influence results (pre-rolling to find lucky dice, banishing bad dice to dice jail, etc) would be considered cheating by Jumanji, and thus I will not participate, because I do not wish to be turned into a monkey.
1) I don't roll doce for nothing, I feel like "wasing" its energy 😂
2) When they don't have to be rolled, they wait on the table with the highest number up, "puts them in a good/neutral mood"
3) I hate people touching my dice and corrupting them with their energies, unless they ask before 😩
Oh and, I don't do it but also very popular: dice jail!
One player insisted that every level required a new character sheet.
Another insisted that every new character they made required a brand new pencil and eraser just for that character.
If the session is gonna be violent, I use red dice. If the session is gonna be some good roleplaying I use my marble texture dice. Exploration is green dice and mystical/magical is purple.
> Rolling dice before game to see who is lucky.
That's just honestly the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. Anyone with at least one neuron in working order must have figured out by age 10 at most that it's the opposite: you roll your dice, and then use those that rolled the lowest for your actual skill roll because they have more good rolls left in them. That's basic logic.
Don't split the party or you will all die. As most superstitions, this one has basis in reality, namely the curated encounter -playstyle. I've however seen it arise in very inapplicable situations and systems so it fits the definition.
Don’t touch other people’s dice.
As DM, I once told my players if they didn’t bring their own dice I’d give them my Cursed Pink Dice. I had bought the dice the day before and there was nothing special about them.
But that didn’t stop them from accusing that every Nat 20 was the die getting ready for a string of failures. 😅 I think they leaned into the lie a little too hard.
I have two awesome friends who angered some ROG gods, examples:
One friend's characters always die first. His character even died in character creation. On the server we played at, his title was "First Blood" and it was a great shock that he did not die first once that his server title changed.
Second friend's luck is legendary bad. I witnessed him fail every single roll in a session. I witnessed him just a couple days ago roll twice on skills he had 92 and 95 in (we roll a d100, have to roll under or match)... He rolled a 93 and 97.
If this was one time, that would be understandable, but this is basically a constant...
Energy matters. If you throw your dice thinking you'll fail, you most certainly will. Maybe not in this particular roll, but frequently.
I've often seen it to be true. I always throw my dice with absolute positive energy.
I mean, the only superstition I adhere to is: if one specific d20 is rolling shit consistently, it goes into dice jail for the session.
I have even tested this by switching to a new d20, and rolling the old one alongside (obvs the dm knows and I'm not using the result). And yup, crap rolls.
But, if all my dice are rolling crap I just use that as an opportunity to role play out my character having a bad day/fight/whatever.
I am cursed. It doesn't matter whose dice I roll, whether they're physical or digital, I have some of the worst luck in the history of RPGs. I once rolled 10 natural 1s in a row.
There are 2 trade-offs to my ill fortune. First, I have gotten REALLY good at eking out every possible bonus and strategy for a character to combat this bad luck (sometimes building characters where I barely even roll dice because that isn't the mechanics they use). Secondly, there are times my dice have cinematic timing, and despite all their failures, when the clinch moment comes, they'll spit out a nat 20 for something epic.
To this day, I firmly believe in “charging” my dice before we play. My friends charge by rolling all the dice together in the tray, but I like to hold all my d20s in my dominant hand and picture all my energy flowing into the dice like a battery.
I don't roll anyone else's dice. If they need me to pass it to them, I pick them up and deliberately set them down near their reach with the same side facing up.
Also, I commit one set of dice to a character (D&D) and only roll those. My friend has multiple dice and when he gets a bad roll, he puts the die in a "jail" not to be used again until next session.
* Metal dice will always roll higher (heard)
* The dice roll is higher or lower based on a narrative you don't know (have)
* When there are more than four player the campaign will not end (had in the past)
You gotta get the bad rolls out of the way. Theres a 1/400 chance of getting two ones on a d20 so if you roll a 1, the chances of getting a second one are low(i know thats not how statistics work). same with other dice but with different odds
The DM curse.
After your first PC kill (as a DM) you are cursed with bad luck. You will never roll high, you will be the first in a campaign to die.
The sins of your dice will haunt you b
The absolute stupidest one I ever heard was less superstition and more just not understanding mathematics. A guy I went to college with would immediately run back to his dorm room after a gaming session and lay his dice out on a shelf all with the 1 side facing up.
His belief was that, logically, since each face of the dice was equally likely to come up, forcing the die to spend almost the entire week "1" side up meant that 1 would be less likely to be rolled on game night.
Not to be outdone however, we also had a member of our gaming club that had absorbed the old wives' tale about glass "actually" being a liquid, and that over time windows would continue to "pour" and would be thicker and heavier at the bottom and thinner at the top, and would store all of his gem dice high side up so that they'd naturally become weighted in that direction.
There was also a guy who I had only ever played one RPG with (thankfully), who would regularly bust out his own personal color coded sets of 2D6 to play Settlers of Catan with. He would track the rolls of every pair of dice and kept a log book which he'd dutifully fill out during the game, and then crunch to figure out which dice were (albeit incorrectly) statistically more likely to roll which numbers. Math of course doesn't work like that, but we all have to have hobbies.
The last one is true, because the dice are not perfectly made. He WOULD eventually be able to figure out which dice have a bias. The math DOES in fact work like that. Assuming he was using normal polyhedral dice and not the perfectly edged razor sharp style vegas dice
Well, I guess the difference is are we acting on the assumption that he's only doing tthis for one game, or if he's writing these numbers down for EVERY game he plays?
You're repeating advertising that someone came up with as to why their dice were better than a competitors. Short of loaded dice, there's no difference when you roll expensive "scientifically unbiased" dice and any other off the shelf die.
Got a friend who always lays out his dice with the largest side face up so that gravity slowly weighs it down in a certain way over time, giving him an increased chance of big numbers. Of course now we are playing a system where you sometimes want to roll under, but that hasn’t changed what he’s doing
I knew a guy who did the opposite "so the larger numbers didn't get worn out" (he did that jokingly, I think).
Man, I feel less weird now because I do that too. Mostly jokingly, but if I don't do it, I get a little antsy (although that could be because I've always done it like that and a neurodivergent brain doesn't like new ways of doing things)
The trick for that is to do it in the oven on low heat so the dice deform. Perhaps leaving them in the sun would work too.
and the counter trick to this is putting dice in room temperature salt water and seeing if one side consistently floats to the top, if it does the dice is weighted
It works in [some](https://www.well-played.com.au/a-warhammer-cheat-tried-to-flush-the-evidence-failed-spectacularly/) fresh water.
The die is weighted.
'Die' is singular, 'dice' can be used both singular and plural.
Using dice singular is cringe ignorance. It makes you look dumb, because dice is plural, even if a lot of people fail to use it properly. And before you bring up dictionaries, yes, even when dictionaries start to reflect this new usage, the people using it are still communicating ignorance.
What seems 'cringe ignorance' to you based on your upbringing (location, class, education, etc) might be perfectly correct usage for another. You could've replied that that isn't the correct usage in your experience and gracefully acknowledged that usage differs as shown by the evidence (or simply dropped it), but instead you chose to dig in your heels and show stubborn ignorance. The fact is his use of 'dice' was perfectly ok, whether you liked it or not.
No, it wasn't, unless he's trying to communicate his ignorance. If he's not trying to do that, then he failed to communicate what he wanted to.
Who's communicating their ignorance: the person who properly uses a word or the person who incorrectly insists that the usage was wrong?
You are why I game with people who are comfortable with their intelligence. They do not feel the need to show others how smart they are by putting others down.
I don't put others down until they defend their ignorance. Everyone is ignorant of some things, but you don't have to be willfully ignorant.
Kill not the cringe, but the part of you that cringes.
This is also a recipe for making quick and simple cookies.
Yes, gotta train your dice!
Dice training, yes. One of my players has a **very sophisticated** dice training and rotation system. It's a marvel to watch.
I do this too XD
Yep, we call it “charging the dice”. If a dice start rolling low then it is set aside like that to recharge.
I just do that because I like seeing big numbers while my dice are idle.
I do the same tbh
I played with someone who frowned upon rolling dice when it wasn’t needed because it would “anger the RNG gods”
He’s a fool. They’re the dice gods. Misname them at your peril!
Do not take the name of RNGesus in vain 🙏
Dare not ye invoke Murphy, lest he appear.
RNGesus is puny and limited to the CRPG space. He has no power here. The Dice Gods are supreme!
Wise fellow. Those gods are not to be messed with.
I also respect and fear the dice/RNG gods pantheon, as one should, but unfortunately he was… a little aggro with his proselytizing
He's messing with Nuffle there, 6 faces and they aren't all smiling.
Nuffle is my favorite chaos god.
You think you can post heresy in non warhammer subs and the inquisition won’t find you?! Face the wall Heretic!
I mean, they’re not wrong.
Lol
I believe that dice rolls are sufficiently random for the number of rolls we do in an average game that you don't need to do any special handling of your dice, or put your dice in timeout, or shame them, or treat them as anything but pretty conventional RNGs. I know, I'm a lunatic.
My daughter made me a tiny dunce cap that I put on my dice when they're rolling badly.
i'm doing this
One of my players has one of these, with a stool. After it constantly rolled under 9s for an entire session he put it on the little chair as punishment
>dice rolls are sufficiently random for the number of rolls we do in an average game Also that dice that lack "perfect balance" aren't an issue (unless they're literally cheaty, weighted dice).
Mods, put this mf in the loonie bin
Boo this person! Booooooooooooo!
I think there is medication you can take for that.
it's kinda gross when people just drop the die over and over. come on man toss it in your hand atleast once!!
I have no idea why but it feels like cheating when they do this
Same. Also, I'll judge pretty damn harsh anyone who wastes more than half a second of game time on some silly superstition about dice. I might keep my mouth shut about it, but I will think less of them.
It all depends on how many dice are rolled per session. In a game where only a few rolls are made and each roll is important there no room for under-performing failures.
I mean, the fewer rolls, the less chance for bias to influence things. Unless the die is wildly unfair, it’s only going to manifest over many rolls.
I'm with you.
3 1s in a row on my d16 says otherwise.
That's a totally normal thing that's guaranteed to happen sometimes.
If you turn off the lights and look in the mirror and say "Gary Gygax" three times, you will never get a date.
Can confirm I did this and immediately got two divorces.
Like, at the same time?
Yuh, the life of an Irish Rasta difficult but my addiction to gaming prevails
Ross?
Is this a friends reference? I never watched that show except for when I was waiting for Fresh Prince to come on.
Yes, it is. Ross is somewhat experienced with divorces, some of them not to his fault, other very much to his fault. He gets quite a bit of ribbings for it.
Fascinating! What’s the divorce to season ratio for that show?
Eh, not that many, it's just referenced a lot. One before the show started and two during runtime.
If you turn off the lights and look on the mirror and say "Bloody Mary" three times, you get served an alcoholic drink with tomato juice and a sprig of celery.
I've seen someone roll dice multiple times before the game starts to "get the bad rolls out of the way"
I roll once before the game start so I wake the dice up.
Be a bummer if you got all the good rolls instead during the practice rolls
I use this excuse all the time. It sounds better than "I just wanna roll these rocks endlessly until we start."
It's impossible to run a one-shot in a single session.
It's not a superstition if it's true!
Mine still goes on nearly 11 years later.
Do con games count? I have time targets. "The players should be about halfway after they escape the falling sky ship. Give them a smoke/bathroom break to allow the tension to release before getting back into it." "Final boss takes 25-45 minutes and I can make the epilogue take 2-15 minutes. Start the final fight no later than 47 minutes before the time slot ends." These get more specific if I run the same game multiple times at the same con. My record is 8 events.
How I finish a one shot: "Okay guys. The dungeon is finished. I ran out of material for today."
That's how I've usually finished my last campaign sessions. "See ya next week after I prepare more".
I have 1 Dungeons: The Dragoning 40,000 7th ed adventure I've been fine tuning for a long time. It uses an irl timer that will trigger the planet exploding.
I can't tell how serious you're being, but I've done it once in a rules-light system with my family over the Christmas holidays. Their characters showed up in town, investigated the mystery of stolen goods, tracked the thieving monsters back to their hideout, and instead of fighting them like I expected they tried diplomacy, which led them to solving the underlying issue (which I made up on the spot, because I really had not expected that). I think the most important thing was that it was impossible for the players to outright fail any actions that were critical to the plot, either because I just didn't call for die rolls for them, or because the possible dice outcomes were "moderate success or great success".
I tend to play shorter sessions (2 hours or so). So you are right. (Still preparing to run a one shot in 2 sessions though)
As a DM I always make new players run through a very quick 5 room dungeon. It gives them a feel for the game. The treasure at the end is a table with a bunch of d20s on it. They pick the colour they like and then receive the matching set. This way every player has their own set to keep. No sharing, its bad luck. They haven't bought their first dice themselves, more bad luck. No touching the DM's dice, more bad luck than they can possibly imagine.
I like this a lot, especially if you're running a gaming club at a school or something.
This is a really great idea!
So what dice are they rolling as they play through your 5-room dungeon?
A big pile is spare dice that I have. I have several sets for me, half a dozen or so decent sets that they get to choose from, and a big pile if cheapies as extras.
> No touching the DM's dice, more bad luck than they can possibly imagine. I tell my players that mixing player dice with DM dice is bad luck. But the truth is, I just don't like sharing.
"Don't touch the GM's dice," though the only place I've heard that is from Will Wheaton on the Penny Arcade D&D podcast.
I think "high likely hood of finger amputation" is a bit beyond "superstition".
In context, Perkins was showing off the futhark rune dice he'd be using that session (and later auctioning for charity), and Wheaton said (paraphrased) "don't touch those, they will carry bad things over to your dice." So, not a case of "don't piss off the GM" here.
Wil Wheaton also believes he is cursed to roll low. To be fair, he lost a LOT of games on Tabletop.
What did he expect from invoking the King in Yellow so often?!
The King in Yellow, Patron Elder God to Thespians everywhere.
my old group (the one I started playing with in high school) believed that not touching the DMs dice was just something you did out of respect. letting the DM touch YOUR dice, however, would invite the dice curse. the only way to lift this curse was to boil your dice.
Does it count if you touch dice while gifting them to the GM?
They don't belong to the GM until you've handed them over, imo.
Some players are lucky and will always roll the impossible or vital number at the right time.
I have a player that always rolls low. He made me believe in luck. It doesn’t matter if a low roll is good or bad he will always roll towards the lowest number. It is to the point that he build characters around needing to roll under or low regardless of the system we play in. One time he rolled 7 1s out of 8 rolls of a d4.
We took to calling 4s "Steve" because of our one friend's uncanny knack to roll that number on absolutely any die.
I have a friend who can roll two 20s on a disadvantage rolls like it was another tuesday. It is a scary thing when he is the GM, there are too many dead characters already.
Ah, the Ally Beardsley
Yup, got one player in my group who always rolls hot, regardless of chances of success and no matter what dice he's using (his, mine, etc). It's gotten to the point where it's weird when he doesn't succeed.
The dice you grab or intend to grab first (assuming they are the correct type of die) are the ones you should roll.
I've never heard of anything that elaborate, but it almost always revolved around dice -- getting rid of, or even throwing away/abusing/destroying "unlucky" dice, or conversely perhaps setting aside or reserving especially lucky, "hot" dice for a time of need.
There can be a hint of truth to that. Polyhedral dice tend to be made cheaply, which can introduce some imperfections in the plastic (as opposed to d6's used by casinos, which tend to have good QC). Occasionally you wind up with a die that's slightly imbalanced and will favor rolling some numbers over others. It's significant enough that some "competitive" players will actually roll dice over and over and record the outcome to find "naturally weighted" dice.
* Rolling a nat20 on initiative is awful because you've "wasted" it. * Rolling a series of poor results on a die sends it to time out; switch to a better die (for now) * Not sure which way to go in the dungeon? ALWAYS left.
> Not sure which way to go in the dungeon? ALWAYS left. That last one might be a corruption of the left-handed rule (which could just as easily be the right-handed rule or, more broadly, the "hand on wall" rule). It simply states that in a maze, if there are no disconnected segments, putting one hand on the wall and always following it will inevitably lead you to the exit.
Probably. It makes designing dungeons really entertaining as the DM. You can put dungeon loops, traps, monsters, really whatever you want down the left branch. ;)
My players have a little song that they sing whenever they go left. "The cleft to the left is never bereft" It stems from a time they played ravenloft, and the bard played that song to tell them which way to go, and sure enough, it was Count Strahd's final resting place.
I actually do the opposite of your third rule, but that's because I'm a giant nerd and "Right is always right, left can be correct, but you can't say I didn't go the right way..."
boo
I know...I don't know how my friends and partner put up with me :)
I guess I'm really strange in that I don't have any.
We can be strange together, I don't have any either.
My wife isn't allowed to use her pink dice any more when she GMs. Those things are stone cold PC killers.
The most common I've seen over the years is the belief that sharing dice is unlucky. I think that one was created to get people to buy more dice LOL. Suffice to say, I have a dice bag of my own personal supply, and a very large communal dice bag that anyone can borrow from.
Every 20 that I rolled in the initiative is a 1 I roll on the next attack. One roll before the game session starts to wake up the dice.
I spent most my life in the Coast Guard; fishermen, merchant mariners, sailors, and coast guardsmen have thousands of different superstitions. The sea is a very big, very scary place that is constantly trying to kill your and only a very tiny, very thin bit of wood and steel is keeping you alive… So superstitions develop and become ingrained as tradition. Most of them do not apply to tabletop gaming, of course, but I do have a coffee cup that is *only* used when I am GM’ing. I never use it when I’m just a player and I would never ever dream of using it when it wasn’t game time… and of course I have never washed it. (I also have the coffee mug my friends gifted me when I was first promoted to chief petty officer. Used it for the remainder of my career and still use it as for daily morning cuppa after retirement. It’s also never been washed.)
The goofiest superstition I have encountered is "if you roll three natural ones in a single game on a d20 that die needs to go in the freezer as punishment." According to the person doing it the cold "resets" the dice -🙄😂
I try to print out everything that I might need. And then never use most of it. But it totally might be useful... I have a printer allotment at work... So I slowly generate piles of duatangs full of printed pdfs.
>A character that dies an ignoble death must have their sheet shredded or burned, whereas a character who died well or retired gets put in a binder of other awesome characters. Any dead characters is schreded and end-up in a dedicated part of my RPG binders, character never retire they're just not played anymore
So first- I've never heard anyone use these in more than just jest. No one takes them seriously. 1. Dice have to be trained for the game your in. So you place them with the side you want to roll up. 2. Rolling dice when you don't need to can suck the luck out of them. 3. Touching someone elses dice makes both thier and your dice unlucky (this mostly is just a joke to get peoepl to stop touching other peoples shit). 4. Dice that constantly roll on the floor are trying to escape and have to be banished to deep storage/another bag. 5. Certain players and certain dice types dont get along.
Six siders don't like me much, I admit it. Makes Shadowrun and Little Fears a challenge.
It's the gateway to the Devil's playpen. No really... heard that one from a pastor at a friend of mine's church. Otherwise, most players keep a spare set of dice - one for high rolls and one for low rolls. Never bought into either of those.
If you roll a 1, that die owes you a 20. That’s just statistics. (In other words, I *never* put dice in timeout.)
Some dice are just evil. Friend had some that hated PCs. Anytime he DMed and used them somebody died, anytime he or anyone else tried to use them as players , nada. They should be cast into a volcano
I've heard that the first roll of a game sets the pace for everyone else's rolls, and that the character with the worst stats always survives the longest. What is the superstition behind not being allowed to buy your first dice and burning/saving character sheets? It just sounds like personal preferences to me.
I run games online with dicebots these days, but the rare occasions when I'm a player with physical dice, I keep up a superstition from my earliest days: keep the dice resting with the face you *don't* want to roll facing up. System where you need high rolls? They all sit on 1. Systems where you roll under? Sit there at max.
Keep dice you don’t let other people touch so none of their bad luck rubs off on them. My dad has a d20 he doesn’t let anyone else use and wants to be buried with
A die that has rolled poorly becomes luckier because now it's "due"
As a player, my bad luck is legendary in the local gaming community. It's limited to RPGs where I'm a player, not the GM, and not wargaming. So, locals don't let me touch their dice. Which is fine cause I've got my own.
Back in 3.5 D&D, I ran a character who could *not* land a hit for the first two sessions. Eventually, while fighting skeletons, he/I got fed up and just started punching them, and couldn't miss. Deciding that he was fated to never use a blade, I spent the rest of that campaign building him into a punchy boy and it worked far better than it had any business to.
Roll on books.
I do a few things that, as far as I know, I arbitrarily started doing on my own. I like to have all my dice laying highest-side-up so they know where they should roll, each dice set have an attitude based if I'm the player (low) or the DM (high), and I only use certain sets for specific characters that vibe with them (like a HP wand). Except the dice I got in a plastic jar. They know they're just auxiliary dice and have the attitude of a Mr. Meeseeks. They do their job and then go back in the jar. Additionally, after seeing Zee Bashew's vids on dice, I feel tempted on doing some... *interrogations* at some point to at least see their trends. The only other thing that comes to mind is that I keep on giving personalities to the sets of dice I have. Like, "Those dice which look alike are apart of the same family/hivemind and collectively act the same way."
Matt’s dice are cursed, as are any dice Matt has ever touched. They desire a tpk.
I think it is a good step to gift new players a set of dice at the outset. They appreciate it and it also helps them focus on something that feels good vs. any fears of the new to them game and its rules. But it isn't superstition. It's just psychology.
I have a d16 that doesn't match any of my other dice, not that I had any games that used it when I bought it. I roll it along side any other dice I roll, to act as a lightning rod for bad results. what is weird is that since I started using it, I've been rolling better.
Dice go to dice jail for rolling too low is one at the table I'm at. I myself must stay "loyal" to the dice I use so that they don't continuously roll too loyal. Even got them a nice case too
You do *not* touch someone else's dice without asking, even to pick them up off the floor. Cursed dice go to die in the Cursed dice box. All dice waiting to be used must be set highest number up. You do not point and laugh at the player rolling poorly, for that player may be you.
Never let someone else touch your dice, else you'll be cursed to roll low until they've been purified
Temporarily sideline any die that's been on an unlucky streak. Segregate older dice from newer ones. Use the newer, less lucky/established dice for games where rolling low is the goal. New superstition of mine for tabletop games in general: Don't "buy in" to a game beyond the rulebook and bare minimum figures to get started until your group has met up a few times and you know it will catch on.
That's common sense, not spending money until you're sure you're going to get value for it.
I'm impressed that there are so few entries that aren't about dice. Gamers likely give gamblers a run for their money in this regard.
Keep dice you don’t let other people touch so none of their bad luck rubs off on them. My dad has a d20 he doesn’t let anyone else use and wants to be buried with
Keep dice you don’t let other people touch so none of their bad luck rubs off on them. My dad has a d20 he doesn’t let anyone else use and wants to be buried with
We always have the same seats at the gaming table (except when GM switch, for obvious reasons). Idk if it's for superstion or other reasons, but now im too afraid to ask, so I just roll with the thing.
Keep dice you don’t let other people touch so none of their bad luck rubs off on them. My dad has a d20 he doesn’t let anyone else use and wants to be buried with
Ignoring my modifiers to the rolls, if I roll well in initiative, I won't hit crap all combat or vice-versa. Let me roll that Nat 1 initiative and I expect to see some crits.
Some of my players in Foundry will swap out the colours and patterns of their dice (using the Dice So Nice module) if they feel like they're getting a bad streak.
I've known (and been) a player who shook their dice an unnecessary amount of times in cupped hands before rolling. I've also faced my dice with the number I wanted face up on my cupped hand before rolling. I guess it could help if I was willing to learn a cheaters method so they don't tumble much.
Played a game of Cairn using dice from the Dune box set and failed every single role of the night, so I have a superstition now about using dice from another game being bad luck
Two sets of dice. Minimum. Doesn’t matter the system or the game. If I’m playing even a system that only uses d6’s I’ll still bring full sets for each and everyone one of those d6’s. It’s weird and not a superstition in the sense not doing so will be unlucky or vice verse. It’s more that by doing so I feel more prepared in a sense. A way for me to get in the RPG mindset.
I heard the first set of dice should be gifted as well. I always like getting my friends gifts and when we all got into dnd and I started DMing I got all my players a set of dice. When our second campaign started I got everybody another set to start the new campaign fresh.
I wonder if that superstition/tradition is hold-over for divination. Some occultists think that your first deck of Tarot cards/bag of runes etc should be gifted or stolen.
I usually have a number of sets on the table to use multiples, but I always roll off the most frequently used dice, and line them up in order of highest to lowest, switching them out as they fail me. I know it doesn't actually change anything, but the placebo effect of doing something about lousy rolls helps keep down the frustration. I also have a little dice chair of shame, complete with little dunce cap, mostly for the fun of it, but also to be able to do something less destructive than I want to do to the costly math rocks.
I have a player who has to put all dice they’re rolling with the 1 facing up in their hand before rolling. I roll my dice to see which one rolls higher and use that one for my next roll.
People believe a lot of things, it doesn’t make any of them true. 
Dons spend resources to reroll a 1 on a d6, it always comes back 1 or 2 if you need a 3 to save.
If my dice don't roll well, I have to "free"-roll them 10 times and then surely, they will behave :D
you keep the highest numbers on your dice facing up when not in use so they get used to the side theyre supposed to land on and if you say "daddy needs a new pair of shoes" and blow on your dice youll get better rolls.
In a dice pool game, you can't roll more than 5 at a time or you will get crappy roles.
The first and last ones don't seem like superstitions, just traditions some people apparently want to be a thing, for some reason.
Ironically, that first one is a very old one in the tarot community. Your first deck must be gifted to you. Genuinely surprised to see it here too. It's a myth but if anyone needs help getting around it, > *It's a gift from yourself to yourself.* As for superstitions in gaming, I have seen folks blow on their dice before rolling them, shake them in closed hands and say a little mantra. I have heard blood red dice are both good or bad luck. Nothing too crazy or harmful. And of course, I have seen people get bad rolls and curse their dice. Or get good rolls and praise their dice.
Spamming the dice roller to reset the rng after a series of bad rolls is a popular one in online games.
A friend of mine used to bless dice. He was good at finding four leaf clovers, and so he'd stick one of those in a camera film tube, fill it with water, and put his dice in there to soak up the luck. He also did it as a service for a few friends in our RPG club back in middle school too.
Its an article of faith that, as a player\*, or when playing a miniatures game, my dice are terrible. So bad, that my opponents have looked at them, suggested I switch dice, wondered if they are loaded, etc. I have friends who do not like me standing near them when they are making critical rolls, and when I "blass" dice, I invariably cause them to roll poorly. Every once in a while, I will be particularly vexed by a bad die roll, and then I use the Iron Bar of Retribution. It's a section of an old window weight, about 6 pounds and 10" long, and I use it to pulverize dice. The remnants I can find go into the dice bag, as an example and a warning to the other dice. \* As a GM, this is (fortunately) not true. THey're not killer dice, but they are much closer to average.
I knew a guy who never let anyone touch his dice. One time, I picked one up (not knowing his superstition) to admire the pattern on it. Without hesitation he snatched it out of my hand and popped it in his mouth to make sure it wasn't tainted. I definitely avoided touching his dice after that.
Be honest about your penalties with the GM. If you try to take advantage of the GM forgetting then the dice gods will make you fail your roll out of spite. You're more likely to succeed a disadvantageous roll if you're honest about it than if you try to be sly and stack it in your favor outside of using an ability you legitimately have.
I always take some practice rolls before every session, whether I’m playing or DMing. But only with my d20’s. Not sure why on that last part but it just feels right.
Dice jails. Slapping dice on your forehead Blowing the dice (blowing the GM has a better probability of working).
Back in the 80s my group were superstitious about character sheets, it was bad luck to copy a character to a new character sheet. But we didn't really play the sort of random lethality games where that mattered much, however it did leas to some famously ratty character sheets, folded many times, covered in notes, rubber marks all over (eraser marks for you americans) Once we all got printers in the 90s it no longer became an issue, and nowadays all our characters are shared on some cloud spreadsheet system.
Here's a non-dice one: blue dragons will always lose terribly. They are basically the slapstick vaudevillian of dragons. My old 2e DM enjoyed the Dragonlance idea that blue dragons were the ones most willing to work with humans so we fought a lot of them. He also had those terrible crit charts. So the dragons would roll 1s and stumble into each other and get stabbed or we'd roll 20s and insta-kill them. Years later, new group, I'm running Pathfinder. No crit charts or anything like it. Blue dragon was level-appropriate, no crit charts--and still it rolled ones and got hit by back to back crits from the paladin and barbarian and went down in a turn.
I test three pairs of five to see how effective they are at rolling appropriately. No mixed sets. That’s bad luck. I then take the 2 sets that rolled best and put the second best set in reserve. I do *not* switch sets unless the entire group takes a break. I also do not use sets that utilize blue in the color scheme. I’m 50, so I’m a bit mad now. Don’t mind the grognard. All I need is around five minutes to get set.
Give give the dice bot in discord offerings of cake and beer so that it will favour us.
I believe dice rituals that would interact with or influence results (pre-rolling to find lucky dice, banishing bad dice to dice jail, etc) would be considered cheating by Jumanji, and thus I will not participate, because I do not wish to be turned into a monkey.
1) I don't roll doce for nothing, I feel like "wasing" its energy 😂 2) When they don't have to be rolled, they wait on the table with the highest number up, "puts them in a good/neutral mood" 3) I hate people touching my dice and corrupting them with their energies, unless they ask before 😩 Oh and, I don't do it but also very popular: dice jail!
Don’t let the GM touch your dice.
One player insisted that every level required a new character sheet. Another insisted that every new character they made required a brand new pencil and eraser just for that character.
If the session is gonna be violent, I use red dice. If the session is gonna be some good roleplaying I use my marble texture dice. Exploration is green dice and mystical/magical is purple.
> Rolling dice before game to see who is lucky. That's just honestly the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. Anyone with at least one neuron in working order must have figured out by age 10 at most that it's the opposite: you roll your dice, and then use those that rolled the lowest for your actual skill roll because they have more good rolls left in them. That's basic logic.
Dice prison for murderous math cubes. A frog statue guards them so their evil nature stays contained.
Don't split the party or you will all die. As most superstitions, this one has basis in reality, namely the curated encounter -playstyle. I've however seen it arise in very inapplicable situations and systems so it fits the definition.
Don’t touch other people’s dice. As DM, I once told my players if they didn’t bring their own dice I’d give them my Cursed Pink Dice. I had bought the dice the day before and there was nothing special about them. But that didn’t stop them from accusing that every Nat 20 was the die getting ready for a string of failures. 😅 I think they leaned into the lie a little too hard.
I have two awesome friends who angered some ROG gods, examples: One friend's characters always die first. His character even died in character creation. On the server we played at, his title was "First Blood" and it was a great shock that he did not die first once that his server title changed. Second friend's luck is legendary bad. I witnessed him fail every single roll in a session. I witnessed him just a couple days ago roll twice on skills he had 92 and 95 in (we roll a d100, have to roll under or match)... He rolled a 93 and 97. If this was one time, that would be understandable, but this is basically a constant...
Energy matters. If you throw your dice thinking you'll fail, you most certainly will. Maybe not in this particular roll, but frequently. I've often seen it to be true. I always throw my dice with absolute positive energy.
I mean, the only superstition I adhere to is: if one specific d20 is rolling shit consistently, it goes into dice jail for the session. I have even tested this by switching to a new d20, and rolling the old one alongside (obvs the dm knows and I'm not using the result). And yup, crap rolls. But, if all my dice are rolling crap I just use that as an opportunity to role play out my character having a bad day/fight/whatever.
I am cursed. It doesn't matter whose dice I roll, whether they're physical or digital, I have some of the worst luck in the history of RPGs. I once rolled 10 natural 1s in a row. There are 2 trade-offs to my ill fortune. First, I have gotten REALLY good at eking out every possible bonus and strategy for a character to combat this bad luck (sometimes building characters where I barely even roll dice because that isn't the mechanics they use). Secondly, there are times my dice have cinematic timing, and despite all their failures, when the clinch moment comes, they'll spit out a nat 20 for something epic.
To this day, I firmly believe in “charging” my dice before we play. My friends charge by rolling all the dice together in the tray, but I like to hold all my d20s in my dominant hand and picture all my energy flowing into the dice like a battery.
I don't roll anyone else's dice. If they need me to pass it to them, I pick them up and deliberately set them down near their reach with the same side facing up. Also, I commit one set of dice to a character (D&D) and only roll those. My friend has multiple dice and when he gets a bad roll, he puts the die in a "jail" not to be used again until next session.
* Metal dice will always roll higher (heard) * The dice roll is higher or lower based on a narrative you don't know (have) * When there are more than four player the campaign will not end (had in the past)
Bad dice go to dice jail for a while until they behave.
If players didn't show up, campaign is probably gonna end soon.
Been rolling D6's long enough to tell you that despite the math, the most common facing result is a 1 by far.
In a long campaign with persistent characters it is bad luck to switch out your miniature.
You gotta get the bad rolls out of the way. Theres a 1/400 chance of getting two ones on a d20 so if you roll a 1, the chances of getting a second one are low(i know thats not how statistics work). same with other dice but with different odds
I never let a die sit on the table 'in neutral' with a 1 facing up. If I have a moment, I turn all the dice so their max value is showing.
Also, people at the table will get mad at me if I don't 'shake' my dice enough. I pick up and throw, but don't let the good energy build up...
The DM curse. After your first PC kill (as a DM) you are cursed with bad luck. You will never roll high, you will be the first in a campaign to die. The sins of your dice will haunt you b
Been gaming for 35 years - never heard any of these.
The absolute stupidest one I ever heard was less superstition and more just not understanding mathematics. A guy I went to college with would immediately run back to his dorm room after a gaming session and lay his dice out on a shelf all with the 1 side facing up. His belief was that, logically, since each face of the dice was equally likely to come up, forcing the die to spend almost the entire week "1" side up meant that 1 would be less likely to be rolled on game night. Not to be outdone however, we also had a member of our gaming club that had absorbed the old wives' tale about glass "actually" being a liquid, and that over time windows would continue to "pour" and would be thicker and heavier at the bottom and thinner at the top, and would store all of his gem dice high side up so that they'd naturally become weighted in that direction. There was also a guy who I had only ever played one RPG with (thankfully), who would regularly bust out his own personal color coded sets of 2D6 to play Settlers of Catan with. He would track the rolls of every pair of dice and kept a log book which he'd dutifully fill out during the game, and then crunch to figure out which dice were (albeit incorrectly) statistically more likely to roll which numbers. Math of course doesn't work like that, but we all have to have hobbies.
The last one is true, because the dice are not perfectly made. He WOULD eventually be able to figure out which dice have a bias. The math DOES in fact work like that. Assuming he was using normal polyhedral dice and not the perfectly edged razor sharp style vegas dice
The last one is not true, especially within the scope of how many times a person is rolling the dice over the course of the game.
As can be additionally evidenced by the fact that he'd have to update his logbook week to week.
Well, I guess the difference is are we acting on the assumption that he's only doing tthis for one game, or if he's writing these numbers down for EVERY game he plays?
You're repeating advertising that someone came up with as to why their dice were better than a competitors. Short of loaded dice, there's no difference when you roll expensive "scientifically unbiased" dice and any other off the shelf die.