It's Not Your Imagination... Your Dice Really Are Rolling More 1's

We've all sat around a table and listened to that frustrated player who just can't catch a break. Whether it's Warhammer or Pathfinder sooner or later someone will bemoan that no matter what they do all they can roll is 1's.

Goddammit... not again.

You aren't imagining it, according to this study. If you're using the wrong dice you really are rolling more 1's than anything else.

Wait, What?

This study was conducted by an engineer that teaches at ASU. As a man with access to minions in the form of students, and an evil laboratory where all like table wobble and incidental dice collision can be controlled for he decided to try and improve his Warhammer 40K game with science. The study used groups of 36 dice, including the red and white GW dice, square dice with pips, dice from Chessex, and Las Vegas Casino dice. There were 144,000 total rolls that had to be conducted and recorded individually.

Has he ever considered it's because his space marines suck?

What the study found was that if you use Chessex or GW dice then you're looking at about a 29% chance of rolling a one. The Las Vegas dice averaged a 16.6% chance of rolling a 1, which is what they should have averaged. The square dice with pips on them came out to roughly a 19% chance of rolling a 1.

So let me ask you... do you feel lucky?

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