by Damien Moore
Historical evidence suggests that most dice are copies of an original set of wooden blocks hand carved by Gary Gygax sometime in the 70's. The algorithms for their so-called random number generation have never been entirely understood, but have been blindly copied by one manufacturer after another. However Gygax never would have expected his dice would have lasted the 25 odd years from then until now, and cannot be blamed for his apparent shortsightedness. |
Another shock victim of the otherwise non-event Y2K crisis, it has been discovered that many dice are not Y2K compliant, and that the probabilities of any particular face appearing may in fact be date-related.
Experiments since the new year have discovered a disturbing tendency in many high-facet dice to be incorrectly configured to deal with the new millenium. The most prevalent issues are with the 10, 12 and 20 sided dice.
The problem occurs because many dice use a random number generator based on the current date/time. This generator is the key component which fails, and instead of producing a valid dice number can return either a NULL value or a 0. This effect is immediately obvious on the use of a 12-sided or 20-sided dice, but it seems that use of these dice has declined in the latter years of the last decade (barring certain fetishist systems) and that the remaining users were regarded as mad or doomsayers. However, the prevalence in the use of the 10-sided dice makes this issue the problem it is.
Extensive enquiries have been made within the roleplaying community, with mixed results. Cthulhu and other percentile-based game players have expressed concern and are conducting their own internal investigation. The AD&D community is awaiting the publication of "The Dice Handbook", 200 page set of optional rules to avoid the problem. No Whitewolf player could be reached for comment, although incessant sniggering was heard coming from some locations.
Investigations will continue until gamers everywhere can be assured of the evenhandedness of their tools.