Hi there,

while enjoying the BlackBeltGaming YouTube channel and watching the Elder Sign play-through I became curious: How good is the quality of the gaming-dice?

Considering the MoM and AH dice as inferior in quality (my AH dice mostly results very often are high, a friend's AH dice results are low against all odds; my MoM 10-sided die has a tendency towards rolling the 10 awfully often ...), and looking at the funny colors and paintings on the ES dice in this YouTube channel, I really, really wonder: are these dice of good quality? Are they "fair enough" balanced? Or what are your experiences with ES dice?

Since these items are a key-game-component, I would be very mad and sorry to buy a game with less reliable dice ...

All the best!

Mad

I've begun keeping track of "outrageously lucky" and "outrageously UN-lucky" die rolls in Arkham Horror and Elder Sign. So far I have many more checks in the Lucky category for ES, and more UN-lucky in A-H.

An exampe of Outrageously Unlucky in AH would be zero successes in 14+ dice (or zero out of 24 one time) Lucky would mean rolling a 6 with just one die, or 3 successes with only 5 dice (to kill a Dark Young with feeble weapons), that sort of thing. So my definitions are REALLY un-scientific so far. I'm just keeping track of rolls that FEEL grossly unfair, one way or the other.

So far Elder Sign feels a lot "luckier"- my brother beat Rlyeh using only green dice and a single clue the other day(!)

Are some dice really weighted unevenly? Is there a good quality brand of dice that gives truly even odds?

Of course they are somehow. Whenever the symbols are carved in the weight differs a little on the sides and the die loses precision and odds get a little less even.

For most even odds you could take dice for casino games. They're not that hard to find and if you don't want the highest precision possible they're not that expensive. The only thing is... there aren't any with Elder Sign symbols on em

Of course you could try to put stickers with the symbols on the dice but my suggestion would be just to live with it the way it is. It's just a game... Nevermind and have fun!

Hi there,

thank you very much.

In the meantime I have bought the game. And what am I supposed to tell about the quality of the dice?

They feel very good. They have a good weight. They roll very well. And their results are OK.

And yes, I know: as there are carvings on each side of each die, the balance of each die already is destroyed. But nevertheless: I am pretty amazed about how "even" all symbols show up. I played the game now for a couple of times. And until now I could not say that certain symbols show up especially often or obviously a lot less then they are supposed to do.

I wonder if this has some influence on my dicing results as well: I use a small box for rolling the dice into. And the inner walls and ground of this box I covered with those follies with air-chambers (the ones you use as protection for CD or DVD or BlueRay delivery; the ones you can make "pop" in order to drive people insane or at least mad at you); as soon as the die hit the bottom of the box they bounce around like crazy. This works pretty well.

All the best!

Mad