Troperville
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"If a statistician hands you a die insisting that “any given roll has the same odds of rolling a one or a twenty”, it means he’s handing you a depleted die in the hopes of taking advantage of you. Don’t fall for it!"
A statistician can tell you that properly-generated random numbers will follow a discrete uniform distribution, giving you a roughly equal chance of rolling very good or very bad numbers. He may wax eloquent about how pseudo-random numbers are generated in computers, and how dice are wonderful randomizers.
A gamer will tell you that this is all a load of dingos' kidneys. Random numbers do not follow "distributions" or "probabilities," they usually produce whatever number you really didn't want. Unless, of course, you know the proper way to placate the Random Number God: then the dice will smile upon you. Usually.
The name of this trope comes from Net Hack's fanbase; the game itself is partially a Luck Based Mission, considering how many Instant Deaths there are, and the players of Net Hack have been known to build altars to the " Random Number God" or curse his name. Or both.
Some random-number superstitions:
- When your dice aren't being used, place them with the highest number facing up. For 10-sided dice, use the 9, because it's better for percentile rolls, where 00 is 100, and 01 is 1. (This would actually make sense if dice were made of lead or another low-melting-point material: "creep" would make the lead flow downward, making the side opposite the highest number larger, and thus increasing the odds of landing on that number.)
- Fools! You put them with the lowest number facing up, to fool the dice into thinking they've already made a bad roll. That way they won't roll bad when you need them, since they've reached their critical miss quota for the day.
- Related is the phenomenon of craps shooters in casinos carefully arranging their dice before a throw. This Troper tends to find more enjoyment in grabbing two and flinging them at the end of the table. This troper also loses at casinos, tho.
- When a die rolls badly, switch to a new die. Similarly, if the Game Master is rolling too well, insist that he uses a different die. Steal (or hide) his killer die if you have to.
- Similarly, you can "test" a die by making several practice rolls. If it rolls fairly well, then it will roll high when you need it. Assuming that you didn't use up all the good rolls that the die had ...
- Chronically bad-rolling dice, on the other hand, should probably be ritually sacrificed. With a sledgehammer, if possible.
- Don't let anyone else touch your dice. Borrowing dice is strictly verboten.
- This troper takes bad dice out of circulation during play. After bad games it is not uncommon to have pockets filled with dice.
- Studies show that a single "bad" die mixed with a group of normal dice causes the normal ones to roll extremly poorly.
- The odds of getting a good roll are inversely proportional to the importance of that roll. You'll max out your shoelace-tying checks every time, but expect a one when you make a crucial attack on the Big Bad.
- If only the lowest roll will produce an unwanted outcome, Don't ever say "Anything but a 1", or something similar. That's just asking for it.
- Specific to modern and sci-fi settings, some gamers go to great lengths to avoid calling a missile launcher a missile launcher. Rocket launcher, hitile launcher... anything that doesn't have the word "miss" in it.
- That's not specific to modern/sci-fi, though. Two words: Magic Missiles! Though that's more likely to invoke the wrath of the Memetic Mutation than anything else...
- Magic Missiles are (or shall I say, were) the exception, as the spell literally cannot miss.
- If someone in your group is known for a certain style of roll, try to convince the dice that you are not that player. This actually worked at least once, with the group telling the dice that they were not This Troper, known for managing snake-eyes on d20s about once or twice a month (one in 400 my eye!). Then, when a 1 was needed, they claimed to be me..and they got that 1.
- As a fairly longtime Warhammer 40K player, I saw a lot of fun ones. One that got a lot of laughs was setting aside dice that seemed to roll low as "Leadership dice", as rolling low was a good thing for certain situations, typically leadership checks.
- This troper would arange all his dice (6s up, 5s facing him) in a likeness of the symbol of Khorne. That seemed to work pretty well. Especially if you only use the red ones.
- This Troper has a friend who only collects the ugliest dice he can, with the ruling that "Ugly dice try harder". Being the typically munchkin game breaker, it seems to work well for him.
- Trying to look at life pragmatically, This Troper poo-pahs the ideas of Number Gods, or even the idea that dice can go 'bad'. Needless to say, this (non)faith is regularly tested. Such as a Risk game where he had his starting horde of around 12 armies attacking three defenders. And rolling utterly horrible rolls. His siblings advised him to stop or at least trade dice, but no, this Troper had to stand by logic and insist on the laws of probability, resulting in his army being wiped out without taking out a single enemy. The Gods don't like doubters, evidently.
- Another anecdote: This troper has infamously bad dice luck within both of her D&D groups (to the point where her ill luck is taken into account and compensated for as a legitimate gameplay factor in the testing of our homebrew systems). Once when rolling up stats for D&D characters, with the rules of "re-roll all ones" and "re-roll all stats if ability modifiers do not add up to greater than +6" (a lower number than normal), she had to re-roll her stats at least 6 different times. One friend insisted that she switch to different dice, but a more logical one continued to assert that "that won't matter." That is, until the 5th re-roll in, when even he was crying for her to try every d6 in the room. Even then, the other players finally managed to give her character some decent stats only by rolling the dice for her.
- This Troper on the other hand has the exact opposite 'problem' in his gaming group. You would have to be a fool not to let the little meh...Asian kid in the group roll stats for you. The Karmic and Physical resemblance to Buddha astounds.
- This troper has a method of dealing with "bad" dice. When a die in particular shows itself to enjoy rolling critical misses, that die is placed in a metal dish, sprayed with lighter fluid, and lit on fire. The other dice are lined up around the dish to watch (if d6s, the 2 side faces so they can watch with their 'eyes'). The remaining dice are both well-behaved and terrified.
- And this troper's roommate has taken to putting all her dice in the freezer for a night as punishment when they misbehave. Whether it has ever actually worked or not is still in controversy.
- In this troper's D&D circle, bad dice are exorcised by holding them in one's fist while delivering a cheap-shot punch to the DM (Seriously). We know it doesn't work, but it sure is cathartic.
- Apparently, the dice really had it in for one player. See this
 Usenet post in rec.games.frp.dnd. Long story short: the character's rolls resulted in self-decapitation.
- Luck within a group is a zero-sum game. One or more players can hog all the luck, leaving the rest of us in the lurch. Running a Saga Edition Star Wars campaign, in epic confrontation with the evil genocidal force mage and his posse of Force-Powered super-mooks, I rolled more than 30 rolls running the bad guys, and got 0 natural 20s. One of the players rolled 4 within 15 rolls. This is not considered unusual within the dynamic of the group. I'm bitter and jealous, but fully acknowledge that it's petty and selfish.
- How this interacts with Game Masters is interesting. If a Game Master is lucky for the villain naturally the party is unlucky and this evens out. However if a Game Master is very lucky for, say, a treasure roll the entire party should panic as that is a large amount of luck for EVERY SINGLE PLAYER and karma is about to equalise.
- This Dork Tower strip◊ was the beginning of an arc about scheming dice that started behaving only when the cats got a hold of them.
- This troper once found a whole page of dice rituals when he was in the sixth grade, he adopted a few of them which he uses to this day. To wit, I use the "highest number faceing up" method already discussed which works when I'm rolling high but seems to backfire under roll low systems (I've tried it both ways, High numbers up and Good numbers up) and I blow on my dice when I need luck, I toss the dice as high as I can when I'm really desperate. Also, I once took to using "Incantations" (various rhymes, mostly the 5th age nursery rhymes from the wheel of endlessness series) in a Warhammer 40 K game, and it got me perfect rolls until the other players began chanting "counter-spells."
- This troper once systematically tested EVERY group of EVERY dice he had. Rolled everything five times, noted the numbers, tallied the overall results... all the 'good' dice? Turned out to be Red, giving rise to a whole new superstition: Lucky Reds.
- Also, he swears to god that different *characters* roll differently. The sorcerer NEVER rolls good attacks, but *touch* attack rolls for spell are never below fifteen. The Paladin tends to make ridiculously lucky attack rolls, especially when doing something stupid but brave. The Duelist? FIVE Nat. 20's in a row for tumble checks.
- This troper's characters in an online game all roll dramatically differently. One character has low stats, but more than makes up for it by rolling consistently very high. Another character always rolls an int fumble (resulting in a powerful but uncontrollable spell) every time he uses pyromancy.
- This troper has terrible luck with dice, except while playing Warhammer 40 K and saying 'for the Emperor' before rolling dice. It annoys the other players, but gets good results if not overused.
- Another player in his roleplaying group has tupid good luck with dice, proven by any dice taken off him for rolling too good instantly switching to rolling 1s. Said luck caused him to go through multiple characters in a single Dn D campaign while this troper snuck under the radar with a single extremely broken character the whole way through because he couldn't hit ANYTHING until the final encounter, finally cutting loose with all his archery feats, rolling high, and spreading about 500 damage across a small army of enemies in a single round.
- There's a sort of Double Subversion to this concept, detailed in the annotations to this Darths And Droids strip, which involves "rejecting that superstitious nonsense" and instead using the laws of probability distribution: Step 1: take 1000 or so 20-sided dice. Step 2: Roll each and every one of them once. Step 3: About one-twentieth of these will have rolled 1's. Take these fifty-odd dice, and roll each of them again, once. Step 4: Two or three of these dice will now have rolled 1 twice in a row. Statistically, the odds of rolling the same number three times on a 20-sided die is 1 in 8000, so now these dice have the 1's "rolled out of them"; step 5 is to place them in a special padded container so that they can't roll around, and you may now safely bring them out in emergencies for use for a die roll in which you really don't want a 1. This is of course patent nonsense; no matter how many times in a row you get a 1, the odds of the next roll getting a one are always 1 in 20, even if it seems "overdue" for a different one. Well, technically; see the rest of this article.
- In the back of the Hackmaster 2nd Edition rulebook it actually contains a list of various dice rituals that are prescribed for the game, including: rubbing the dice clockwise for higher rolls and counter clockwise for lower rolls.
- In Knights of the Dinner Table, related to Hackmaster, a character was once beaten to a pulp for touching another gamer's dice. He was blinded by a cupful of soda and then was on the recieving end of a flying tackle. No one thought that this was uncalled for, as "that's one dice squirrel who'll think twice before touching another man's dice!"
- This concept is taken to extremes in Kingdom of Loathing, where the RNG is a conscious entity that has its own account and frequents the various chat rooms. Those who please the RNG in some way may find themselves "Blessed by the RNG", whereas those who annoy it (especially by begging for a blessing) may find themselves "Cursed by the RNG" (both of which are active character effects). Because Ko L game mechanics rely heavily on random number generation, and because Ko L effects are rarely explicitly defined, there is still a significant debate over whether or not the Blessing and/or Curse actually affect a player's RNG-based "luck" in the game, or if it's just a red herring.
- I make sure to use dice whose appearance is somehow thematically appropriate for the character I am playing (such as mottled green for a druid), in the hope that the dice will identify with the character and want to help her succeed. If I don't have any dice that match to my satisfaction, I buy new ones, just for that character. I can't tell whether it actually works or not, but in any case it makes me feel better for trying. Plus I wind up with lots of pretty/interesting dice.
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