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Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

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Re: Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

#21

Post by Karliss »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #15
sgbeal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but wouldn't you need 101 sides to get 0% and 100% for that? There is no 0% in d100/d-percentile rolls. Every "how to interpret these dice" paragraph in games which use them will tell you to interpret 0-0 on 2d10 as 100, not 0. Or, hypothetically (but i don't recall having ever seen this), they'll have a stated range of 0 to 99 (inclusive). Either way, the numeric range spans precisely 100 digits.

yeah but that means there is no 0% on the scale

The point of percentile dice isn't to generate a string between "0%" and "100%", it is to test if action with chance of x% success gets done or not. For every o value of x, there are x out of 100 values which are strictly less than x, or if you count 0 as 100 then there are x out of 100 values which are less than or equal to x. Either way you get x% percent chance for event to happen. If the dice had 101 sides, the probabilities would be x/101 which aren't nice round percents.

It even works correctly for 0% and 100% chance events. Assuming 0 is counted as 0 - For 0% there are 0 numbers less than 0 on dice so chance of throwing number less that is 0/100=0%. For 100% all 100 numbers are less than 100 so no matter what the result of throw is you will succeed.

Re: Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

#22

Post by gus_massa »

sd9 wrote: post #11

It had never occurred to me that somebody needed to invent polyhedral dice. There must be so many inventions in the world that I’m completely unaware that there was a point in time before which something didn’t exist and after that it did, thanks to somebody.

There are only 5 Platonic Solids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid : D4, D6, D8, D12 and D20.

There are 13 more solids with equal faces and vertex (but not equal edges) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_solid but none of them has 100 faces (It looks like a nice project for 3D printing.)

You can cut the corners, but now the faces are different and ensuring all the faces have the same probability is a nightmare. Some info in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truncation_(geometry)#Uniform_... (This include the soccer ball.) (I have no idea if this include the D100.)

You also can "cheat" and use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teetotum that allows any number if you don't care too much about the polyhedral property.

Re: Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

#23

Post by gus_massa »

klez wrote: post #17
pcblues wrote: post #5

I just throw 17d6 and subtract 2. Problem solved. (I am joking!)

Joking aside, is throwing 2d10 and using one for tens and one for units different from throwing 1d100?

Throwing 2d10 of different colors is equivalent of trowing 1d100. It's nice they have different colors to avoid discussions, but you can throw them in two different bins or one at a time or something. Remember to sum them as (x-1) * 10 + (y-1) + 1, that is a clear indication of why zero-based indexing is better.

(Does someone sell "decade" dice, which faces say: 10, 20, 300, ..., 90 and 100?)

Re: Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

#24

Post by klez »

gus_massa wrote: post #23
klez wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joking aside, is throwing 2d10 and using one for tens and one for units different from throwing 1d100?

Throwing 2d10 of different colors is equivalent of trowing 1d100. It's nice they have different colors to avoid discussions, but you can throw them in two different bins or one at a time or something. Remember to sum them as (x-1) * 10 + (y-1) + 1, that is a clear indication of why zero-based indexing is better. (Does someone sell "decade" dice, which faces say: 10, 20, 300, ..., 90 and 100?)

> (Does someone sell "decade" dice, which faces say: 10, 20, 300, ..., 90 and 100?)

Yes, they do. I used to use them for this exact purpose.

Re: Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

#25

Post by tonyl »

tgrover wrote: post #10

The amount of games that use those kinds of dice make his contribution to tabletop gaming incommensurable. Sad to see him passing. But 91 yo is more than respectable

Those of us already over 40 already thats maybe the best we can expect, for 20 y/olds who knows..

Re: Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

#26

Post by sgbeal »

praptak wrote: post #18

The internet reports that D100 is impractical to use but it's cool if your game design calls for a relatively rare "ritual value".

> The internet reports that D100 is impractical to use...

It's a nice novelty but it's not terribly practical. Despite having a d100, 2d10s are invariably more comfortable to use and easier to read. My d100 was purchased back in 1998-ish for its novelty and nostalgia value, not its functional value.

Re: Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

#28

Post by throw0101a »

gus_massa wrote: post #23
klez wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joking aside, is throwing 2d10 and using one for tens and one for units different from throwing 1d100?

Throwing 2d10 of different colors is equivalent of trowing 1d100. It's nice they have different colors to avoid discussions, but you can throw them in two different bins or one at a time or something. Remember to sum them as (x-1) * 10 + (y-1) + 1, that is a clear indication of why zero-based indexing is better. (Does someone sell "decade" dice, which faces say: 10, 20, 300, ..., 90 and 100?)

E.g.

* https://boxcarsandoneeyedjacks.com/product/10-sided-decade-d...

* https://extrememathgames.com/product/10-sided-decade-dice-00...

Re: Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

#29

Post by vikingerik »

gus_massa wrote: post #22
sd9 wrote: post #11

It had never occurred to me that somebody needed to invent polyhedral dice. There must be so many inventions in the world that I’m completely unaware that there was a point in time before which something didn’t exist and after that it did, thanks to somebody.

There are only 5 Platonic Solids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid : D4, D6, D8, D12 and D20. There are 13 more solids with equal faces and vertex (but not equal edges) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_solid but none of them has 100 faces (It looks like a nice project for 3D printing.) You can cut the corners, but now the faces are different and ensuring all the faces have the same probability is a ni…

The Zocchi d100 isn't face-symmetric and thus isn't a fair die. It's as close as he could get. It's really effectively a golf ball with 100 dimples, but they aren't and can't be arranged perfectly symmetrically.

Any even number dX can be made as a fair die as a bipyramid or trapezohedron. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapezohedron These would be the only fair face-symmetric d100s. The standard d10 is this, and you sometimes see a d14 or d18 or something like that constructed this way. It becomes impractical with very thin faces past 20 or so. An odd-numbered fair die is also possible by using one twice as big and duplicating the numbers (like 1-5 twice on a d10.)

Re: Louis Zocchi, games industry pioneer, has died

#30

Post by TacticalCoder »

tgrover wrote: post #10

The amount of games that use those kinds of dice make his contribution to tabletop gaming incommensurable. Sad to see him passing. But 91 yo is more than respectable

> But 91 yo is more than respectable

And it still fits on a d100!

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