3D dice results are not random

[seycyrus]

...
Suggestion: Can we brainstorm fixes that solve this while allowing rolling (both in the box as well as drag/drop or click) to continue to be used? Preferably something relatively easy to implement for the dev team?

The best fix in the short term (and maybe even the long term) is to use some sort of totally random agency that lies outside of the framework of FG to initiate rolls by both players and NPCs. It would be even better if the external agency consisted of multiple random agencies interacting in a random fashion.

We could call it Heuristic Users Manipulating Almost Normal Statistics.

[Weissrolf]

I am not sure if this is meant as ridicule or as lighthearted joke?!

[seycyrus]

I am not sure if this is meant as ridicule or as lighthearted joke?!

It is true, and it is clever - the best of both worlds.

[eporrini]

Significant statistical data has been provided by Weissrolf regarding the percentages of rolls and issues currently in place. My concern is that we can all accept RNG and bad rolling when we know the foundation is in fact "random" and defend it as (just what it is), randomness. Once we've determined it's not randomness at the core, but biased rolling, how then do we defend a bad night or issues with rolls? My biggest worry is that Weissrolf or someone will actually take this further and invalidate the manual drag/drop rolling as well, which would be a GIANT bummer. I think sufficient efforts have been made here to have the developers (at a minimum) respond and review this and provide a determination and next steps as to the severity and possible fixes. Maybe this is a non-issue, but the dialog has been completely one sided so far with Weiss providing significant findings and Smiteworks saying we're not looking at that. Believe me I understand there are a TON of things the team is working on. I see updates weekly with fixes and features being implemented. For me, the CORE of the game needs to work foundationally and we can then stack whatever else we want on top of it.

1. Let's improve the randomness/3d rolling ASAP or debunk the need to do so.
2. Just calling out (different thread) the LOS (for me) is now broken as well and needs fixing, it's why my entire group moved off of FDC to FGU. I get "NO ONE" is going to come to a happy compromise on this however it's implemented, so some kind of toggle to help set LOS will be needed to allow flexibility there.

The rest of whatever is in the devops pipeline can wait.

[damned]

I have also run many hundreds of thousands of rolls and while I have not done any hard statistical analysis on them other than frequency of numbers.

My results lean towards those of Weissrolfs in terms of frequency, though not identically.

However I have not ever seen in my casual browsing of the hundreds of thousands of results, nor in my 9 years of using the software, anything that I can point to and say - that is not possible/probable.

The numbers of rolls we are talking about here in these threads are massive. In all the years that people have talked about bad dice I cannot recall any of them uploading their chat logs so that we can see the actual events as opposed to what they recall as having happened. There is no rocket science involved in sharing of logs, you dont have to write any scripts or throw a million dice and do exhaustive analysis on it. Just access the campaign folder on the GM computer and upload the chatlog file. Im genuinely interested to see peoples logs. Please if you have a bad night on the dice share the logs.

Ive mentioned on this thread that if you threw a bucket of equal numbers of all the different dice sizes (4/6/8/10/12/20) that 50% of the time the number will be in the range of 1-4. People do remember low numbers/rolls and statistically you are going to see lots more low numbers than high numbers because of the different sizes of the dice.

Now in saying all that - I think that sufficient replication of long range odds has been shown that it would be worth the devs having another look at the issue.

And counter to that - in my opinion - there has not been anything that shows even remotely that in terms of the numbers of dice thrown in any session or campaign there is anything that makes me feel the dice are not sufficiently random so if changing this in any meaningful way is difficult I personally would accept that as an answer.

[damned]

As an example - in terms of variance and tolerances - here is an example of the tolerances that are and were deemed acceptable between what your car speedometer says and how fast you are actually driving.

https://www.racq.com.au/cars-and-dri...peedo-accuracy

Australian Design Rule 18 sets out the accuracy standards for vehicle speedos.

Until July 2006 this rule specified an accuracy of +/- 10 percent of the vehicle’s true speed when the vehicle was travelling above 40km/h.

That is, at a true vehicle speed of 100km/h the speedo could indicate between 90km/h and 110km/h.

An odometer accuracy of +/- 4 percent was also a requirement.

From July 1 2006 a new standard began its phase in and by 1 July 2007 all new vehicles had to comply. The new standard requires that:

The speedo must not indicate a speed less than the vehicle’s true speed or a speed greater than the vehicle’s true speed by an amount more than 10 percent plus 4 km/h.
Odometer accuracy is no longer defined.

What this means:
For a vehicle travelling at a true speed of 100km/h, the speedo must read between 100km/h and 114km/h. The effect of this is that many drivers will find that at 100km/h they are driving up to 14km/h below the speed limit if they rely on the vehicle’s speedo.
The speedo must always read 'safe', meaning the vehicle must not travel faster than the speed indicated by the speedo.
This change was made to align Australian vehicle rules with those already in place in Europe. It applies to all Australian motor vehicles except mopeds.
Dealers will generally not attempt to correct speedo error unless it exceeds the legal requirements.

In real life almost everything is variable and not exactly what it is stated as. And we dont care so long as for all practicable purposes it works.

[Jiminimonka]

Significant statistical data has been provided by Weissrolf regarding the percentages of rolls and issues currently in place. My concern is that we can all accept RNG and bad rolling when we know the foundation is in fact "random" and defend it as (just what it is), randomness. Once we've determined it's not randomness at the core, but biased rolling, how then do we defend a bad night or issues with rolls? My biggest worry is that Weissrolf or someone will actually take this further and invalidate the manual drag/drop rolling as well, which would be a GIANT bummer. I think sufficient efforts have been made here to have the developers (at a minimum) respond and review this and provide a determination and next steps as to the severity and possible fixes. Maybe this is a non-issue, but the dialog has been completely one sided so far with Weiss providing significant findings and Smiteworks saying we're not looking at that. Believe me I understand there are a TON of things the team is working on. I see updates weekly with fixes and features being implemented. For me, the CORE of the game needs to work foundationally and we can then stack whatever else we want on top of it.

1. Let's improve the randomness/3d rolling ASAP or debunk the need to do so.
2. Just calling out (different thread) the LOS (for me) is now broken as well and needs fixing, it's why my entire group moved off of FDC to FGU. I get "NO ONE" is going to come to a happy compromise on this however it's implemented, so some kind of toggle to help set LOS will be needed to allow flexibility there.

The rest of whatever is in the devops pipeline can wait.

The devs already said the dice are working as intended except for a small tweak. In this thread. A couple of times.

Also the LOS is not broken its working as intended. On that other thread. Where it should remain.

[Jiminimonka]

Casino dice are manufactured to much stricter standards than D&D polyhedral die (https://www.midwestgamesupply.com/di...ufacturing.htm) but even they are not predictable in their results.

I conclude that the dice in FGU are fine and not broken.

[Weissrolf]

The speedo must always read 'safe', meaning the vehicle must not travel faster than the speed indicated by the speedo.

There is a practical and technical reason for a car's speedometer tolerance: Different tires have different diameters/rolling circumference and speedometer measurements are based on RPM of the wheels.

https://tiresize.com/speedometer-calibration/

Does our little computer program suffer from such real-world challenges? No, it does not.

In real life almost everything is variable and not exactly what it is stated as. And we dont care so long as for all practicable purposes it works.

I emphasize this again: Just by switching from Classic to Unity my chances to roll a 1 or 20 dropped by 10%.

[Weissrolf]

I conclude that the dice in FGU are fine and not broken.

So Classic's dice are broken then, because they behave consistently different?! Which worlds' physics are we playing in when we roll dice in FGC vs. FGU? Again, my chances to roll a 1 or 20 dropped by 10% just by switching from Classic to Unity.