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.)

Actually, polymers are reasonably fond of creep and/or stress relaxation.

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.

But low numbers are good...

Not always. This Troper kept getting high rolls and then when she finally got a low one it was when she ''needed'' a high one to get out of a Duty.

You want to leave the lowest number on top so that the luck will flow downwards away from it and into the bottom number, usually the largest. The ability to rig a dice is insignificant next to the power of luck.

Related is the phenomenon of craps shooters in casinos carefully arranging their dice before a throw. ThisTroper tends to find more enjoyment in grabbing two and flinging them at the end of the table. This troper also loses at casinos.

This troper took ranks in his "Throw Dice" skill. I plan to take "Improved Dice Throwing" when I level up.

This troper has found; it depends on which die set I'm using. Some like to be placed with the highest number up, in a circle, while others (like the set for my current character) works better if they are placed in a random heap, buth never with the highest or lowest number facing up.

When a die rolls badly, switch to a new die. Similarly, if the GameMaster 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 ...

This does make sense since dice are made to a certain tolerance, and for most dice this is pretty sloppy, so they tend to be weighted to throw certain numbers more often than others.

Chronically bad-rolling dice, on the other hand, should probably be ritually sacrificed. With a sledgehammer, if possible.

Nonsense, you give them to the GM of course.

Don't let anyone else touch your dice. Borrowing dice is strictly verboten.

Alternately, keep a set strictly for lending to whoever forgot theirs this time. You keep your personal dice safe and the other guy still gets to play.

On a similar note, NEVER EVER reach for another players dice. My little brother and his friend wanted to learn how to play D&D, so my group took them in for a session. Little Brother's Friend, no sooner than he had sat down, grabbed a group member's d20. BIG MISTAKE. The player in question grabbed his wrist, hissed "drop it" and gave him the scariest muthafeckin death glare on the planet. Everyone was shocked at the audacity of the kid, my brother was mortified. Let this be a lesson to people who came in here wondering how this trope could possibly have Troper Tales, touching someone else's dice is just about the rudest thing you can do at a gaming table.

Unless there is some weird context I'm missing (though I certainly don't blame you), that is the dumbest thing I have heard all day.

Everyone was shocked at the audacity of a kid who couldn't possibly know better because no one thought to tell him that it was "just about the rudest thing you can do at a gaming table?" Let this be a lesson, just because you're a nerd doesn't mean you're not a dick.

This Troper is actually shocked and appalled at this. In his group while having your own dice is expected of you, if you're short a dice the other players are more than willing to loan it (i.e. having a weapon that deals 3D6 damage and only have 2, D6's). Infact, this Troper is actually sickened that people would have that type of attitude and that you should feel ashamed.

where i live (italy) i never heard of this rule. Neither my group nor any other groups i've played with insist on "personal" dice, even if people are expecting to bring their own. Still, when in rome, as they say...

This troper (a Warhammer40000 player) don't mind others borrow my dice, though I geneually use my own. I'm famed by rolling bad repeatingly (mostly ones, thus called "God of Ones") for a long time and, when some other old players reach for my dice, a CrowningMomentOfFunny usually follow. Now almost every old players who know me will NOT use my dice to roll stuff. There's also a catch: Once I went to the store after school, watching other friends playing a game, and one of them is about to roll two 2+ Save for his Terminators against a Sentinel. Turns out to be Snake Eyes. HilartyEnsues.

Take 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 extremely poorly.

This Troper came up with an entire {{Warhammer40000}}-based Dice Mythology.

The Dice-Emperor of Random-Number-kind is an infinity-sided die who was broken by his son d20 and is held together in the Golden Dice Bag. He uses the sacrifice of all broken or lost dice to fuel the Diceonomicon, which is a field through which he determines how all dice fall.

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 BigBad.

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.

All too true. I learned that the hard way while playing D&D.

This goes for Warhammer and Warhammer 40K as well. Do not say anything but a one when rolling a 2+ save. You will regret it.

One time I was playing AnimaBeyondFantasy, the party was on a zepplin and for some reason, guards were killing everyone, and the zepplin was crashing. So, we head toward the footbridge between the left part and the center part where the cockpit was. But soldiers were waiting us here. I threw a fireball... And I said: Please, not a critical failure, it would torch the zepplin... rollroll... Critical Failure. roll to know what happens... spell wasted, so I didn't torched the zepplin. The RandomNumberGod just wanted to scare me this time.

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 ''Miss''iles! Though that's more likely to invoke the wrath of the MemeticMutation than anything else...

Magic Missiles are (or were) the exception, as the spell literally cannot miss.

Deceiver! You must roll ''damage'' for ''magic missile''!

In 4th Edition they need an attack roll and CAN miss now!

DO-NOT-BLAS-PHEME!

They've recently changed it back to an autohit power, though the damage is less.

My Dark Heresy group uses the Ork designation for any particular class of gun, because of that belief. Notice: Orks never have anything with the word ''miss'' in it. And so far, it's ''worked''.

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 ThisTroper, 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.

When playing Warhammer (40000), set aside dice that seemed to roll low as "Leadership dice", as rolling low is a good thing for certain situations, typically leadership checks.

This troper would arrange 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.

I thought that it was the blue wunz dat iz lucky...

This troper regularly utters a prayer to the Chaos Gods while rolling for the amount of attacks for his Chaos Lord's daemon weapon. He still sometimes rolls ones at crucial moments, but when he doesn't, he tends to get atleast four. He also has some dice he only uses for leadership tests and artillery scatter, as they are roughly twice the size of other dices and when thrown tend not to roll around but instead keep the facing they had when hitting the table (which invariable is 1). He also suggested his friend who plays Imperial Guard to read the Litany of Aiming from the Infantryman's Uplifting Primer (a background book) when rolling to hit.

Actually, you would be right. It turns out that cheaper dice are made in such a way that one or more edges tend to be smoother than the others, causing the die to roll certain numbers more often. So make your number god happy: Buy good dice

I did that. Now I have 5 very nice looking dice with sharp edges. I use them for important rolls, like detemining which half of my Daemon army enters the game in the first turn (he also prays the Chaos Gods to agree with his choise when rolling that).

This troper simply bought a box of 36 semi-transparent dice for his 40K games. The color's vary between clear blueish-white to dark blue, and the closer to white the dice is, the lower it tends to roll. On the other hand, it can be not the dice, but specific ''models'' which are cursed. During a convention in which this troper played two games of 40K, my two Sentinel walkers fired a grand total of 13 las-cannon shots, of which only 3 hit (however, one of those shots killed a Predator tank, one killed a Land Raider, and the other wasted a Terminator) leading to jokes that the two pilots were smoking obscura. I also use the dice from the 4th Ed starter for scatter on barrage weapons, where rolling low is important if the scatter die doesn't like me (most of the time, it doesn't)

It probably is certain models as well as the dice. I have a Terminator Captain who has yet to survive a battle. I've been using him for more than an year at this point, and he just cannot roll invuln saves.

Update: He's lived through a battle now. It helps that the Dark Angels finally got the new Storm Shields.

ThisTroper 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, ThisTroper 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.

Freaking risk. My little sister, in my first game of risk, after a brief break, rolled nothing but fives and sixes. And then, people tried to tell me "your strategy shouldn't depend on dice." It was then I realized Risk is all about luck...

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 Asian kid in the group roll stats for you. The Karmic and Physical resemblance to Buddha astounds.

This troper has phenomenal luck on hit point rolls (he's pretty good with stats too). One time, when he was involved in a game that involved creating level 12 characters to start with, he rolled a hit point total so high the DM refused to believe he was being honest about it (this was with d12s - something like 120 out of a possible 144). So he rolled again, in front of the DM. His total was higher this time.

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.

If the fire is hot enough to imperceptibly melt the dice, this could actually work. For best results, have the ones facing down and the twos facing the fire.

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.

Ah, the Crowley method!

Being in a dorm that doesn't allow open flames, my group's preferred method of corporal punishment is either hurling it at the nearest wall or putting it in a dish of water which goes into the microwave for five minutes.

This troper 'disciplines' his Warhammer40000 dice in a two step process. 1) Placing a Commissar model next to them, to remind them of what happenst to deserters. When that does't work this troper proceeds to 2)summay execution via hurling the dice out of the nearest window. Given that the gaming club meets on the 3rd story of the student union, that tends to be an utterly last resort.

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 Master}}s 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.

Attempting to actively steal someone else's luck via any means (meditation, offering sacrifices, intentional deception) is often considered poor form by the victim. And absolutely hilarious to everyone else present.

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 facing 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 40K 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.

ThisTroper had a character in a play-by-post role playing game whose claim to fame was his bad dice rolls - this character was later slightly retooled into being highly superstitious regarding bad luck omens.

So this just proves that "Da red wunz are betta!"

This troper has terrible luck with dice, except while playing ''{{Warhammer 40000}}'' and saying 'for the Emperor' before rolling dice. It annoys the other players, but gets good results if not overused.

Role-playing improves Roll-playing, folks.

Another player in his roleplaying group has stupid 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 [=DnD=] 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.

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.

This troper does that too! The last character she played went through three or four sets before I figured out what the problem was-- he needed a ''combination'' of different colors. Well, he was a rogue, nothing he owned matched anything else. Of course his dice had to be mismatched too.

This Troper always had very good rolls when it comes to playing characters of other members when the owner of those characters are not present. In other words, This Troper had sucky rolls when playing his own characters that he created himself.

On side note, This Troper has been practicing... Lay On Hands on dices, in a way, as of late. Yield better results (less sucky, that means) than before. Considering to revise hand techniques of rolling as well.

This troper destroys dice. Every one he has ever laid hand upon has had all the luck leached out of them. He knows this because one game session, he literally borrowed everyone's dice, only for every one of them to roll consistently poorly forever more. Solution? He hunted down every game of Frustration he could lay his hands on, carefully sawed out the dice rolling mechanism, purchased all new dice and transferred them to the bubbles with forceps taking excessive care not to touch them - including a dust mask so he didn't accidentally breathe on them - and epoxied all the reassembled poppers onto a board. Results were good.

You're truly {{Brainwashed And Crazy}}.

Actually, I think said troper is positively visionary. You could probably make a killing at conventions selling those as "dice protected from contagious bad luck."

How do the dice ''breathe''?

This troper's Paladin only got ONE critical hit in an entire "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" only after the pally was dominated by Strahd after a critical fail. It ended up decapitating the character's in-game lover. The dice hated this troper whenever she plays Ravenloft...

Dice ''do'' feel fear.

One would like to point out that one is moderately religious in real life, but isn't superstitious. Hence, one does not believe in the Random Number God (though his D&D players do). Just to spite them, one's PennyArcade "I Roll Twenties" shirt always seems to show up on Friday nights.

ThisTroper was once part of a roleplaying group where one player, named Don, was ''really'' annoying... and another player had a six-sided die who had a grudge against him. If this die was used in a roll against Don, while the player said "against Don," it would roll well. To a degree, this would work even if he just ''said'' "against Don," though he tried to save this for really important rolls. Unfortunately, this gradually stopped working after Don left the group -- apparently it grew to realize Don wasn't even there...

ThisTroper has stopped believing in any die-related voodoo ever since he's noticed that his set of d10s will mostly botch when used for PC rolls, but ''always'' Win in epic proportions when he's DMing and trying his best not to kill his players through random NPC luck. It's not your particular dice, and it's not luck, people. Dice are just an example of RealLife PlotSensitiveItems.

Voodoo...? Wait, that's it! They're ''sabotaging'' one's dice from afar!

... What does dice hair ''look like''?

In fact, it does happen with an scary frecuency. I usually have bad throws unless I'm using my white d10 set for LegendoftheFiveRings. But if I'm the master, all the dices have really good throws. I call this situation "having the Hand of the Gods".

The Random Number God hates me. I know, so I don't even bother trying to placate him. Instead I cry out SmiteMeOhMightySmiter and proceed to win anyways. Unless the other players backstab me... which happens a lot.

This troper follows no superstition. He borrows (and lends!) dice at will, deliberately arranges dice with the highest numbers upwards (while playing D&D and WorldOfDarkness games!) not in superstition, but in mockery, and chooses dice solely based on 1)how pretty the dice are, and 2)based on a color scheme decided at whim, only bothering to switch dice when he gets bored with the current ones (or switches characters). For the RandomNumberGod is not a jealous god, nor a kindly god, nor a vengeful god...nay, the RNG is, in fact, the kind of god who just loves to laugh, whether with you or at you. In the event of a high-enough or low-enough stake roll, the number that comes up will thus be the one with the highest comedic potential.

Yup. Completely. This troper was making a critical roll in an attempt to save the universe. She'd already failed twice. Third time's the charm, right? Just before letting the dice fly she said: "I'm about ready to give up." CRITICAL FAILURE. The universe went BOOM. The RNG has a malicious sense of humor.

In a stark contrast, this troper once played in a [=DnD=] Campaign where, in the very first encounter of the game, the Rogue snuck up on the Incarnation of All Evil and attacked with 2 Natural 20's in a row. The GM says keep rolling, he has a special critical hit chart. He rolls a third 20. CRITICAL SUCCESS. And the universe went BOOM. Malicious sense of humor, indeed.

The epiphany for the previous troper actually came as a result of STing. The situation: a player who annoyed the ST standing in front of a squad of mafia mooks wielding fully-loaded submachine guns (no, not tommy-guns). They open fire, ten guys, ten guns, full-auto, buttload of ten-sided dice (capped at 70 for convenience), difficulty lowered for near point-blank range. ''They miss''.

Oh, absolutely. Dice have a sense of humor. I was once in a Star Wars game (the old West End system) where my mechanic character was trying to open a hangar door. First, I try hotwiring it. This results in a blast door sliding down OVER the door I was trying to open, a la Han at the Endor bunker. Frustrated, I shoot the control panel with my blaster... which causes both doors to open, just like that.

This Troper just rolled three sixes on a random throw while reading this page. What this means is something he will leave to the rest of the HiveMind to puzzle out.

Random Number Satan, obviously.

This troper's once rolled ''thirty-two'' consecutive misses during a brawl. Against ''hobgoblins with AC 17''. While attacking at a ''+3 bonus''. Immediately afterward, I tried to heal a downed ally, and rolled a 20.

As stated earlier, the result of a die roll is inversely proportional to the importance of the result.

The Random Number God giveth, and the Random Number God taketh away. Once, during a Star Wars campaign, this troper was attempting to escape from an Imperial base and ran into Darth Vader. He took a mighty swing with his lightsaber... and somehow managed to hit, rolled almost maximum damage, and actually killed Darth Vader in a single blow. But the escape wasn't over yet - he still had to reach his ship. And as he did so, a foot away from the ramp, he critically failed to block a single stormtrooper blaster bolt, took the last bit of damage he needed to fall unconscious, and was recaptured.

Another time, when he was running a D&D game, one of the party members had just completed an assassination mission with a level 11 Ranger - with broken stats - that involved killing a number of dangerous high-level agents. On the way out of the building, he was hit with a crossbow by the (level 1) desk clerk. He decided to attack the clerk. When he finally killed the clerk some seven or eight rounds later, he had been shot (again), stabbed, stabbed in an open wound with a letter opener, buried a sword in the desk, lost his OTHER sword bouncing it off the wall, and nearly destroyed his calculator in a fit of rage (we were using Ti-83s to roll dice). This troper had rolled nothing but 18-20 with the clerk and his friend had rolled nothing but 1-3 with the Ranger. The fight had lasted significantly longer than any other fight in the entire mission, and to this day bringing up the Legend of the Invincible Desk Clerk still makes anyone who was there crack up.

There is also the matter of how to throw the dice, not just how to treat them. If you place them in your hand with "1" pointing up, then tilt your hand weakly enough, the chance that they will land on snake eyes is very small. It's also possible to try to merely invert them from this position, but that looks rather suspect to anyone else at the table.

This is not a superstition. You are, in fact, cheating.

ThisTroper just tried it and got a one and a three on a pair of d6s, so is inclined to believe this method doesn't even work anyway.

Not a superstition, but this troper seems to recall a study done on the effects of dice side weights on roll results. The theory being that most dice, being engraved, were lighter on certain sides due to more material being removed to show certain numbers, thus the lower and therefore heavier sides were more likely to show up on bottom. This troper isn't sure, but he thinks they proved 20's are actually statistically more likely than 1's.

That makes sense, but would it be statistically significant amount? Or would it be like having a 5.000000012% chance of rolling a twenty instead of a straight 5%?

This troper usually throws a pretty average die. That is, unless he sits still with the dice in his hand, closing his eye and concentrating on the desired roll - in which case he is invincible. Leading to a Risk-related incident where a friend of his picked up a guitar and composed the song "He Is Yoda's Friend" spontaneously, chronicling how I returned from the US having undergone Jedi training. Highlight of the game.

This troper is known as "The Dice Cthulhu" among his circle. Whenever he touches a die, that die becomes horribly tainted and will forevermore fail its user. This has been actually ''tested'', by me buying two identical dice, but only touching one of them, then handing both to two fellow players. The die I touched never rolled above an 8. It's become customary for my partners to try to sneak some of my dice to the DM in big fights, and for the DM to ask "Okay, David, did you touch any of these?" before critical rolls. Thankfully, I have one single die that seems immune to my powers - a single old black d20 which keeps to the laws of probability even when used by me. Needless to say, I love that little die to bits.

This troper would like to point out that if I really NEED a 20 I GET a 20.

And sometimes if I don't need a 20, I get a 20. Anyway. At one time, I was playing a were-tiger, in a desert, in a high mountain pass. Out of boredom, I start digging a hole. For shits and giggles, I roll a D20. I get a ''WTF????'' NATURAL 20. The DM '''HAS''' to roll for something ''because'' it was a natural 20. '''HE''' rolls up boots of water breathing. What does that tell you?

Uh, that the next time you find an oasis in that desert you'll catch your breath, and stop yourself from dying of dehydration?

This troper owns an oddly shaped d6 that resembles a football which he uses for critical rolls, which come up a lot since he plays Orks in Warhammer 40,000 and Orks have several luck-based weapons, since it's easier to manipulate due to a high "Dice Dexterity" score.

This troper sternly rebukes the rest of you above him, and says there's no magic trick to having good dice. Just have faith, o unbelievers - faith in your dice, and faith in the RNG to bear you through. In the games I've played, we have faith in the dice, and the dice always roll for maximum dramatic effect. The once-epic paladin is attempting to buff herself (with chance of failure) for one last battle? She'll roll critical success on spells. Eight goblins are in a pipe with a wall of water rushing in? One will get stuck in the single exit. The party has one and only one charge of Teleport? They'll get the destination wrong, and be stranded thousands of miles from home. Always trust the dice to do what they think is best for the story; only then will you know true enlightenment.

Then again, the same troper also has problems with including dragons in the game he [=DMs=], because every time a dragon threatens the party it rolls a 1 on a critical saving throw.

Yes... Believe in the heart of the dice!

Yours is the die that will pierce the Heavens!

Not a dice example, but it is widely known that collectible cards within unopened packs are in a state of constant flux. Some believe the cards may continue to change even after the pack has been opened, as long as no one has looked at them yet.

Schrodinger's Cards? Interesting theory, that.

By that theory isn't this technically true?

Schrodinger's point was that cats don't work that way. Cards might, though.

A friend of ThisTroper once confided that when he bought his Pokemon (And later Yu-gi-oh) cards, he would always compare the two packs by dropping them from an equal height, the theory being that the pack that gave a flat impact without bouncing was more likely to contain a foil card.

When playing {{World of Warcraft}} and rolling for loot, this troper avoids going first, as it would indicate too much eagerness. Second or third roll is best, as that is after the RNG knows what to give you to grant your prayers, but before you can fill in the gaps between high and low rolls. Going last is marginally better than first, but will more often lead to filling in the gaps, unless someone has previously rolled in the 90s. By rolling towards the end, you can provide the RNGs vengeance against those who roll high and celebrate prematurely. Also, typing out /random 1-100 indicates the seriousness of the roll, increasing the likelihood of success.

This Troper has rolled 100's on rare loot frequently enough to make his guild-mates wonder if he wrote a "LoadedDice" mod.

When playing ''MarioParty'' for the first time in ''years'' against his brother and two of his brother's friends, This Troper had a strong run of 10s in a row on the game's 10-sided virtual die... only to have it end the moment rolling a 10 would have been disadvantageous. He was accused of using his "video game skills" to deliberately cheat the die. (Which, even if true, wouldn't have explained why This Troper's brother was the one who won the game.)

When playing MarioParty 4 with his sister, this editor became fed up with how she would squeeze the zits on his face whenever she lost every other mingame, and told her that if he lost the next minigame, he would squeeze some of ''her'' zits. Right after I said this, one of the computer players landed on a Battle Game space and chose the Bowser's Big Blast game, a luck-based game in which the players take turns choosing one from a set of dynamite plungers and hopes not to have the Bowser-shaped bomb blow up on them. As soon as the minigame started, this editor set the controller down with the intention to lose. The countdown on the timer went to zero and this editor automatically chose the rightmost plunger in front of him...and the bomb never blew up. The computer players got eliminated, leaving only the editor and his sister, who chose the rightmost plunger and set of the bomb. He won the minigame ''without touching the controller''.

This troper is known as "that damn plumber" whenever he plays Mario Kart 64. He had once managed to get 24 stars ''in a row'', during a battle game.

This troper uses quantum, per-frame manipulation of RN 'seeds' to guarantee that die rolls hit the upper half of his luck range. He also manipulates his real-world luck, with less impressive results due to the sheer quantity of RNs that need to be controlled. Also, I keep all my dice together to "dilute" bad luck, so the minimum failure rate is reduced to a lower common denominator.

This troper doesn't play any tabletop games, but inexplicably owns a d20. When reading this article, he rolled the die a few times. Here are the results.

13

17

Fell off desk

3

19

Fell off desk

11

12

13

1

11

11

I have a character who was, in her backstory, described as having incredibly bad luck, with examples. However, this inexplicably carried over to gameplay. She died in her first combat due to a combination of newbie ignorance and bad luck, and she's failed a good portion of important rolls since her first of many resurrections. Even the DM's random rolls tended to hit her early and often, and merely thinking of her can cause low rolls.

This troper plays D&D with a girl who consistently rolls high. I got to the point where we don't allow her to take Improved Initiative when she plays rogues, simply to give everyone else a chance to go first in the initiative order.

This troper works in an office where 4-digit personal ID numbers must be manually generated. He brought in percentile dice and wondered aloud whether or not they were truly random. After generating and recording a couple of thousand PINs it was noted that NOT A SINGLE ONE started with the number '4'.

This Troper once was with a group that ran into a horde of goblins. The players were so cursed by the RNG that they'd *always* miss and hit each other. Eventually, someone got smart and convinced his friends to attack each other instead. The goblin horde was then quickly decimated.

This trope reverses "the result of a die roll is inversely proportional to the importance of the result." For example, at summer camp one time, we were playing a randomly drawn up game of having two teams of marines fight each other. I found a box, first step, I opened it. It contained the following: a grenade, two levers, and a button. What did I do? Simple, "I'm going to push the button" "Roll the dice" "I got a 19". Main screen turns on, pick location for incoming air strike. "I hold each lever down for about half a second." "Roll twice" "I got a 20 and 18". "You destroy the entire enemy team, those not killed are horribly wounded, and the one guy not in the building was already being killed by your allies" This sort of luck continues to always be true, if the roll is against random mook number 78, expect it to miss or be just enough. If it's against the big bad? Expect a 20.

Da_Nuke is currently working on a computer RPG. And even though he uses the cryptographically strongest random number generators out there -- as in, an entropy collector feeding a Mersenne twister feeding an ISAAC -- he still has an in-game method of praying to the Random Number God.

This troper's bad dice luck when it comes to Warmachine is legendary. Needing to roll a 3 or better on two dice to Thunder Strike a Defense 10 Juggernaut? Rolled a 2. A Combined Melee Attack with 6 Daughters of the Flame on a Feast Lord where I need a 3 or better to hit and guarantee a kill? Rolled a 2. Knocked down Warlock and 3 focus on a Redeemer for 3 Skyhammer shots? Rolled a 2 on all 3 and deviated the [=AoE=] off on each and every shot for no damage. When this troper fails, he fails SPECTACULARLY. This is in contrast to my housemate, who will pull maximum damage rolls and lands criticals on damn near every pair/trio of dice he throws.

This troper has a ritual of sorts picked up at a Warhammer Gaming Club. When your roll will succeed on a roll of a two or higher, you never ever EVER say 'OK, anything but a one'. You say a two plus, a two or higher, at least a two... Or you will definitely roll that one. Oh, the 2+ armour saves I've failed...

OK, that one's already been put up there.

This troper has found that the best way to get the RNG to give him what he wants in KingdomOfLoathing is just to ask the RNG in chat.

Nuffle, the aspect of the RNG who oversees the game of BloodBowl is definitely of the TricksterArchetype persuasion. Key to this is that Blood Bowl generally requires you to make sequences of dice rolls. So, with scores tied and two turns on the clock, you might find your team having to do something like this:

Dodge into two tackle zones on a 5+

Pick up the ball which has fallen into the middle of the scrum on a 5+

Dodge away to clear space on a 3+

"Go For It" to move extra space on a 2+

Throw a long pass to a waiting catcher on a 5+

Catch the ball with a catcher, on a 3+ with a skill reroll.

and which one of those rolls will fail? Either the "go for it", or ''both'' catch rolls.

Also, rolling double-sixes to break armour immediately heralds a low roll for injury.

After tonight's session, the group thinks my dice (which have been serving as the group's dice) are cursed. The events of this session were set off by our airship rolling a natural 1 with its cannon and blowing open a flying iceberg encasing a demon ship. In the resulting fight, two more cannons rolled natural 1s and blew open two more icebergs (no more demon ships, fortunately), one of our ballistas rolled a natural 1 and shot me, our ranger rolled a natural 1 while firing into melee and shot the party's Chaotic Good devil for maximum damage (with that last one having been preceded by DM confirmation that it would only happen on a natural 1), and we were generally plagued by 2s, 3s, and 4s. Naturally, all this happened to the dice belonging to the guy who doesn't believe in the Random Number God. Perhaps that is stupid of me, as it is far from the first time I have seen the DM declare that only a natural 1 could fail and one of my dice oblige, and one character in a (separate) short campaign hit me in the face three times.

And last night I followed it up by, in a battle with a lich and its legion of zombies, rolling a stream of 1s and 4s and hurting myself more than all other sources combined. The group has now determined which d20 is the "good" one. Interestingly, it is my oldest. Lucky veterans?

In one of the few D&D games this troper ever played, he was a barbarian with extremely low intelligence. When he met another PC that was a bard, he wanted to fight the bard (because he's stupid). He rolled a d20, with 4 (maybe 6) or up resulting in a hit. This troper rolled a 2. The bard rolled a 20, scoring a rabbit punch which resulted in an instant knockout.

This troper, in a [=DnD=] session with his brother and cousin, witnessed a military officer lower a pistol to the chest of his brother's character (Provoked by a surprisingly well timed 'Your Mom' joke, no less.), point blank, and pull the trigger three times. And miss. All three times. Yeah. In addition, this troper always seems to get rolls just barely outside of the realm of hitting, causing much frustration and dice throwing.

This troper has generally below average dice rolling luck... but which is balanced by almost literally Million to One chance rolls, usually linked to certain units. Problem with this is that he doesn't want to believe that such things are possible.

For an example, I play Warhammer 40,000 and had a squad of Space Marine Terminators that came under fire from half a Tau army. They needed to make Thirty-two 2+ save rolls and eight 5+ save rolls (on D6, of course) during that turn. Not one failed - the odds of that sit at about two and a quarter million to one. You can imagine the incredulous looks on both the faces of me and my opponent - and this is not the only time the unit has weathered that kind of firepower.

As a real bonus, this effect increases the more determined my opponent is !

Not to mention my Striking Scorpion Exarch in my Eldar army, who seems to do disproportionate damage.

However, in Warhammer, my Empire Pistoliers suffered from such poor luck I eventually had to scrap the unit.

While we're on the subject, there was an occasion that my opponent managed to blunt my shooting by wearing a plastic colander on his head. The worrying thing is, it stopped working when he accidentally forgot to put it on one turn.

This other troper has had five people comment separately on his insanely lucky Skeleton Warrior to-hit rolls. 5+ to hit, roll 20 dice, 14 hits, anyone?

This troper was into the {{Pokemon}} TGC several years ago. During one game, he had a massive advantage, but was waiting for the draw he needed to use the Energy Transfer/Big Eggsplosion combo that his deck was based on before he ended the game. Finally getting it, he shifted all his energy cards (and by this point he had drawn every one in the deck) to his Exeggutor and attacked. The defending Pokemon had 60 hp, so he only needed three of the 25 coins he was about to flip to come up heads to win. Defying hundreds-of-thousands-to-one odds, he got 23 tails, lost his Exeggutor to the counterattack, and lost the game.

In an online PBP game of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons, this troper flubbed three consecutive Theivery checks to try and steal an important item, and my ally's purse (to make it look good). When I got spotted, I decided to make a spectacle out of attacking my party memeber and running away with the goods before regrouping, and decided to actually roll an attack for kneeing him in the groin, to make it look real. Rolled a 20, critical hit. After three consecutive Thievery failures. Clearly, the Random Number God has a very juvenile sense of humor.

the random number gods frown on this troper's brother. That doesn't stop him. He rolls a one on his hide check, and gets a 17. he rolls a 5 on bluff, and fools his friends into thinking he is Pablo Picasso.

Both this troper and two of his friends recently needed dice for an Warhammer 40K tourney. I bought one of the new Dice Cubes Games-Workshop has released, while my friends bought non-GW dice. I rolled the worst both me and my opponents have ever seen (I regularly rolled ones when I needed 2+, and once missed every shot when rolling 10 dice - Something you'd expect from Orks, but I play Tau), while my friends both did fine. Our conclusion? Games-Workshop casts evil charms on their dice before shipping them out. So, I have not found the Random Number God quite yet, but the Random Number Demons have found me.

In ''{{Fallout}} 3'', This Troper used VATS to target a Deathclaw charging him. He was using Lincoln's Repeater, and had a 95% chance of hitting. He cues up 3 shots, fires, misses THREE TIMES, and is torn apart by said Deathclaw. Then, he reloads, tries again, and misses the three shots AGAIN, hitting a friendly who was behind said Deathclaw, got a critical hit, and blew his head off. The Number God}} RNG hates me...

There was a post on a BoardGameGeek forum years back, in a thread about dice rituals, about a player who, when a certain die had been giving him repeatedly bad rolls, set the die on fire. The best part, though, was that he ''lined up all his other dice and made them watch.''

That guy's here. Or, the story is. Look up near the top.

This troper is famed for his, um, 'talent' with one specific task - successfully rolling a 4+ save on a d6. It only works if the save can't be modified in any (common) way, and as soon as one has been failed in a given game the skill is lost. As as example, my friend and I played a game of Warhammer Fantasy, where my General had a 4+ Ward save. I made a grand total of eighty-seven saves succesfully before losing the first one. Of the next batch of six, I failed five. The worst part is that my opponents are aware of this, and have given me the option of swapping any 4+ unmodifiable into a 3+ unmodifiable instead. I don't take them up on their offer - it would guarantee failure, after all.

This Troper has a friend who has an uncanny ability to roll natural 20's in a pinch. We've managed to bluff our way past devils several levels higher than us and convince them to break their bindings with their summoner lest they meet our wrath. And yet I have this little clear die, aptly nicknamed "The Red Die of Doom", which has repeatedly rolled multiple natural 20's against him in an encounter while sparing the rest of the party the worst of it.

This Troper is fairly well known among the local Warhammer 40k and Warhammer circles to be a catspaw of the RNG. Having a warmachine misfire and blow itself up on turn one? Done it repeatedly. Wizards fatally miscasting the first or second time they try and do anything? Check. Rolling ones for saves and boxcars for morale? Frequently. On the 40k side of things it was actually worse - playing against me meant that the other guys luck would get massively better. Blew the range guess for your artillery? No worries, the drift die will guide it to one of my units. Orks shooting like Space Marines? Frequently. It hit a peak in one game: my Imperial Guard VRS his Deathwing Terminators. Over the course of the game my guardsmen forced him to make over 200 armor saves VRS lasgun fire(yes, I kept track) and he made every single one of them. I had enough units with heavy weapons that I was more annoyed than worried for the first few turns, then one of his squads Deep Striked right in front of a Leman Russ Demolisher - a tank with a Big Gun powerful enough to ignore their armor saving throw. The drift die sent the template back far enough that it clipped the big tank itself, but still covered the entire enemy squad. End result? Six totally unscratched Deathwing, a smoking crater where the tank had been, and half a dozen Guard dead from the tank's explosion. Then on the next turn, every single plasma gun in my army blew up when the owner tried to fire it - some of the explosions delayed a turn as I stopped using them halfway through the shooting phase only to blow up the next turn. His only casualties the entire game? 4 Terminators from Lascannon fire, one tank, and two terminators stabbed to death by my commander's powersword.

This troper tends to have insanely good luck with his Guardsmen when they're in rapid-fire range, up to and including killing a terminator with only 18 lasgun shots, but heavy weapons teams never have line of sight to anything (except the heavy bolters, but it's almost always a tank) and all tanks except the Vanquisher will utterly fail to kill much of anything (or be rammed by a Vindicator that's had all it's weapons shot off and detonate with enough force to kill my Techpriest). However, my Master of Ordinance, who calls in artillery strikes will always miss the enemy and land the shot on top of my Chimera APCs, but this is negated by the fact that the Chimeras will only ever be immobilized/lose one weapon or lose two weapons in any given game.

This troper once gave one of his dice to another player during a D&D game. The die was passed with the blessing of "May it bring you better luck than mine." I have both seen this work (the 3.5 fighter FINALLY made the will save with my die) and fail spectacularly. "It's not the dice, it's me!" Said the other player, after rolling another 4 with my die.

I also refuse to use certain dice that I have and have thrown some dice into the trash. I now test roll dice before buying them instead of buying dice that look pretty.

While playing a 3.5 D&D game, the halfling archer was placed under an "Unluck" spell, which forced her to make two rolls for each attack roll and take the lower. She rolled double 20s and then confirmed the crit. She also maintained a streak of hits even though she should have started missing due to the effects of unluck.

This Troper once Tempted Fate against a very powerful hydra in a "run or be TotalPartyKill ed" situation. After the DM said the enemy had a +17 fort save when he was rolling the DC 15 Massive Damage Save, I stated "It can still fail on a 1!". And it did!

4E D&D actually makes it a little too hard to die. Unless you're my cleric, who died before he even got to act during one mod. 3 regular hits, 1 crit and high damage rolls ended his participation in the mod. On the other end of the spectrum, Darlphog the Invincible gained her title of "The Invincible" by rolling multiple 20s on death saves, thus surviving where she should have died. During the same session where my cleric had died.

Oh, and keeping all your dice on the highest number? Doesn't really work for me.

Rolling three twenties in a row results in the attack dealing instant death. We opened a door- in the Tomb of Horrors, no less- and set off a javelin trap. The DM rolled two twenties, announced that instant death would result if this next roll came up twenty, and rolled in front of the screen so that everyone could see. The dice rolled ''over the head of the character's mini whose fate it was deciding'', and came up twenty.

In the next session of the same campaign, the DM had to borrow some dice, as he had forgotten his. Again, the third roll was made in view of the players, and, again, it came up twenty. Which just goes to show that the dice themselves do not matter; it is who rolls them. Luckily, the party's wizard had memorised Alter Fortune that morning.

This troper finds his luck tends to balance out in the long run. On the one hand, his bad luck with war machines in WHFB has to be seen to be believed; on the other hand, nobody at all believes how well the Instability checks for Great Unclean Ones tend to roll. These are the most broken daemons in the game, it has to be admitted, but rolling no higher than a 4 on 2D6, five checks in a row?

Any game with exploding sixes is bound to have this result more often than not. One member of a small group, playing exploding-sixes Mage, attempted to sense magic in the vicinity. Not a difficult task. He makes the roll, and discovers an unidentifiable magical effect in the area. He then atttempts to eat the magic. EAT THE MAGIC. The DM nods and makes the roll. This is a character with 2 gnosis and 3 prime. He's got five dice. It's not possible, but the DM decides to tempt the RNG anyway. The roll comes out, after several exploding sixes, at nine successes off of five dice. He eats the magic.

this trooper once rolled 6 double sixes in the first round in a game against a teacher playing the united states army (we were the Comanches bad asses of the plains) in a supposed lose/lose situation game where we were supposed to experience the agony of being a defeated Indian tribe on a reservation, double sixes were the only possible "winning" roll for our tribe and she kept throwing them out! the united states army did not have unlimited resources, we were killing them! why why why!? we eventually lost after raiding all other tribes for slaves and provisions to continue our battle and having all our subsequent winning rolls (there were many)ignored too. Moral: the RandomNumberGods favor the brave but can be thwarted by the dishonorable and the tricky.

This troper seems to have either markedly bad or incredibly good luck, and hasn't found any way to control which one. Case in point: while rolling my last D&D character (roll 5d6, reroll all ones, take highest 3, one free optional reroll), I initially ended up with a modifier total around +8 or +9 as I recall. I just recall lots of 11s and 13s. DM brought up a rule that, since I and another player had rolled modifiers more than 5 below the other two players, we could ask for permission to reroll. We both decided to; the other guy rolled much better and ended up around average. I rolled three 18s, two 17s, and a 14 that I rerolled into a 15. I more than doubled my original modifiers, dumbfounded everyone at the table, and my character is now known as the wizard who does everything.

This troper has a distinctive green-speckled die that he threatened to smash with a sledge once in a ''BattleTech'' game unless it gave him a critical hit with his next shot. The result was a center rear armor puncture three-critical engine hit on an otherwise untouched Mad Cat, destroying it instantly. Since that time when used for rolling for criticals in any game, the die has only failed to deliever the most devistating possiblity twice. He is no longer allowed to use it at Game Towne.

This troper frequents an Internet forum that often runs play-by-post versions of TabletopGames. It has its own IRC channel, with its own dicebot. Apparently, the bot likes to kill.

This Troper just recently checked out this website (which claims to be the only true random number generator, since it uses atmospheric noise to generate it). I gave it a spin to see what it was about. My first try? 42.

I saw this and decided to have a look. Random number between 1 and 100- ''''42.''''

I was just browsing down this and tried it on a lark. 42.

First try for me... 43.

This troper tried it and got 8. Came back a little later, tried again, and got 8.

This troper tried it... and got 100. Doing it again now... 6. Again? 92. Then, 16. I think the Random Number God gets confused when you aren't gaming.

This troper got 33 on his first try. Then he tried again and got 42.

This Troper got 52, 100, and 72 on three consecutive rolls.

This troper's first try? 42.

The Random Number Generator hates each and every single member of ThisTroper's ''WorldOfWarcraft'' guild. Raid epics are routinely won by rolls as low as 18.

ThisTroper subscribes to a simple superstition. Before each session, when picking his d20 for the game, he'll roll each one a couple of times. The d20, you see, has moods. If it rolls high when you test it, it'll be in a good mood for the rest of the game session, and if it rolls poorly, it clearly wants a break and should be left alone (or slipped to the GM if possible). Other than that, he doesn't tend to care too much.

This troper owns a card game called "Mwahahaha!!" that comes with 20 d6s for Risk-style conflict resolution. These dice ''love'' him. He almost never loses the game while everyone else gets hosed quite frequently. He strongly suspects it's because he really gets into the game, overacting and doing his best to play along with the spirit of the game, which involves evil geniuses racing to conquer the world. The dice appreciate his dedication to the proper behavior. Or maybe he's just appeasing the forces of Chaos and Chance. Time to go play out a ChaoticNeutral character in another game to test this out...

Nothing to do with dice, but this troper once predicted the lottery. Except she was ten at the time and her parents didn't trust her enough to actually buy the ticket.

My dad has legendary skills at failing armour saves in both Warhammer and Warhammer 40k- he routinely loses Chaos Warriors or Chaos Space Marines to piddling little anti-infantry weapons. However, in a doubles campaign where he and I were the only team with an army that was both fully painted and a sensible alliance, we completely wiped the floor with everyone, despite our army being possible even without the Doubles rules- helped along the way by some very fortunate rolls. Most notable? A few Tzeentch Horrors (one of the less effective troops in melee) holding up some Kroxigor (Ogre-sized crocodile-man-things) for about four turns, and even killing a couple...

This troper still has the original Monopoly board game before all of these new knockoffs came about. The box for the game is falling apart everywhere and I think we're missing the battleship. However, this troper theorises that the older a die is, the more power it contains, and the dice that the game came with has not let me down. Unlike those dice that came with risk. Damn traitors.

I always send up a little prayer to the Number God, asking for whatever it is that would hurt me most. The Number God hates me, and gives me the opposite of what I ask for, leading to many good rolls. Apparently the Number God is kind of stupid.

This troper's most recent D&D session wound up with us spending ''two hours'' - ''in game'' - trying to kill an air elemental. Granted, we probably would've gotten done faster if one of us hadn't just sat around and watched it, but most of it was due to us rolling horribly, ludicrously badly. (At one point, I summoned a celestial badger. It did *no* damage, for the whole three rounds it was around. And our main fighter kept dealing five or six points of damage, for one hit - and only getting one hit in, each round.) This was made worse by the fact that the session was online - so we couldn't even switch out the dice! At least the XP was decent, once we finally killed it...

This troper regularly pours libations to the Dice Gods when playing D&D and rolling badly. They seem to like Dr Pepper the best.

This troper's Warhammer orcs are usually lucky (killing important characters with rock lobbas or unit champions a speciality)...I just have to shout "WAAAGH!" while charging into combat, bring at least two rock lobbas, and trust to Gork and Mork, an' evryfink iz gonna go real good.

Playing Wesnoth once, I surrounded the last enemy NPC with 6 fighters and set them all to kill him. Each swing had a 30% chance of hitting. They swung and missed 36 consecutive times. I was convinced by that point that the NPC was just invincible, but karma struck and someone finally killed him.

I've been playing D&D 3.5 since about a month ago, and there is an NPC Dragon that follows us. Much to the frustration of This Troper's GM, an NPC Dragon rolled triple twenties ''three times in a row''. And those are the only three attacks it has ever made. Additionally, the first attack made on it did over fifty damage, and the dragon failed its fortitude save to not die. The possibility of rolling nine twenties in a row is 1:512,000,000,000 against, by the way.

Matched dice seem to work better together. I have a set of four d6s with roman numerals in place of regular numbers or pips. I use them for rolling stats for all my D&D characters, and as the foundation for all rolls I make in Shadowrun -- always those 4d6, plus extras as necessary. And they roll beautifully together. Much less so when separated. Unfortunately, the numbers are painted on, not carved in, so they're getting worn off far too swiftly.

ThisTroper pays no tribute to the random number god. I joke that I'm a dice pagan; I believe that individual dice have spirits that you must appease. I got a transparent grey set for my birthday that roll normally unless in my hands, and only when I'm GM. When I'm playing, They alternate between rolling spectacularly, and rolling horrifically. We're talking "crit a demigod through a wall three turns in a row" in M&M, and on the other side, fail completely to affect a DC 15 magic circle with my INT 16 Genasi Warlord, whose Arcana bonus at the time was ''+11''

''DragonQuestV''(the DS version) seems to employ one of several [=RNGs=] to determine just what happens in any given situation. Through liberal use of save states, I discovered that when you start a bet for the monster arena, the result of the coming battle is decided the very moment you talk to the guy at the desk and answer "yes" to see what monsters are in the next battle. No matter which one you bet on, or how many tickets you buy, the same monster will always come out on top. Naturally, if you abuse save states to take advantage of this you can rake in some serious tokens (but once your winnings hit 10,000 or more, you have to cash in). The slime race minigame's results seem not to be fixed, as the outcome of the race might change if you save a state while setting up your bet, start and watch the race, then reload and try again. A much more predictable RNG appears to determine your actual chances of recruiting monsters that you defeat. It will not give you a chance to recruit one unless you're not actively trying to get any. I spent upwards of an hour running around the outside of Abovitall Tower trying to get a healslime, and even though (according to a bestiary guide on GameFAQs) the supposed chance of recruiting one is 1-in-32, I've killed well over 40 of them without any results. The way I see it, unless I try something else, all of my other monsters will have hit their maximum levels by the time I get a healslime. At least the infamous monsters in ''DragonQuestVIII'' were guaranteed recruits.

This troper was playing a D&D 3.5 campaign with some friends, two of whom (a fighter and a cleric) had charged into a room and were cornered at the door by dire rats and a named rat (so, they were pretty much screwed - everyone was 1st level). The two players decided to high-tail it, so the fighter tried moving up to the cleric, provoking three attacks of opportunity in doing so. The result? ''All three'' scored criticals (just rolling three consecutive 20s is a 1-in-8000 chance, and they have to confirm each one as well), reducing his HP from 4 to exactly -10. So lesson learned, kiddies: never provoke attacks of opportunity. (the DM did decide his death was dicky enough that he let it slide as a near-death experience, but that's another story).

Although point this out will almost certainly get him the attention of the RNG god, this troper feels he should point out that the RNG's attention is finite. It's why these things come in large waves and then sink into seas of normality. RNG can only look so many places at once.

This Troper recently played his first game of D&D, albeit a demo/taster session. The DM seemed to have some really cool dice, black and white with Hazard Symbols for the highest number. Too bad he rolled at least 5 natural 1s. Also, one of the group idiots, Ethan, attempted to use intimidate on a dragon. He rolled a natural 20, and still didn't manage it. He ended up dazed for a round. This Troper is also hoping to score some dice tomorrow, when I go back for another session.

This Troper came to edit this page, so he went to the homepage, clicked "Random Page" and arrived... Here. He came here to say, from a game of this here, an encounter summary, as the OPIGS system relies heavily on luck, ended up as: "5 guys ambush an APC,and one of the soldiers guarding it fires a burst that recoils his weapon into the sky.While he is watching the sky,the guy at his back accidentally shoots his rifle before raising it,and shoots his own leg.Meanwhile,the other attacker manages to miss a guy who is as big as a wardrobe,and the third attacker just grazes his arm.That makes the huge guy so angry that he punches through the shooters head.Meanwhile,a lady with a sniper misses a soldier who is just a few feet away from her,but that one is disposed by a bullet from the fourth soldier.While that is going on,the APC turns its turret,and fires a burst past one of the guys in the front,while the other runs away horrified.The first defender finaly lowers his gun,but too much,and shoots his own toe.The guy that shot his own leg is screaming and flailing his gun,managing to shoot his other leg.The lady with the sniper takes pitty on him,and shoots him through the eye,to put him out of his misery.And the only remaining attacker has the misfortune of his gun exploding in his hands."

I've threatened to throw dice, games, etc. into the furnace if they don't comply within a certain amount of rolls/turns/etc. My Fire Red actually gave me four shinies within one month, two of them within an hour of each other, after a few threats. And dice start rolling well for me shortly after a death threat

i've come up with a system for this 1/ always have dice that match your charater. 2/ never say that a roll will decide the fate of the whole party. 3/ always keep a good luck charm the way that clerics keep their holy symbol. 4/ if a roll is important say a short line that helps the mood.

This troper owns a blue d10 that will roll 6+ on any roll except a Spot check or equivalent, where it will always roll 4-. The GM of the last campaign I played owned a dice that would critically fail at least once a session.

While this troper has as yet had little interaction with the RNG, she has seen dice-related superstitions develop ''spontaneously'' and apparently in a vacuum. This happened to her brother, who has no previous experience with [=RPG=]s. While rolling character stats for [=DragonRaid=]:In which players use a d10 and the AM uses a d8; we have one of each, which came with the game., he insisted that on rolling the d8 every time the d10 was rolled, even though it was irrelevant, so that the two dice would start the game with the same number of rolls. Later, he joked about rolling one character using the d8, and actually rolled a couple of the stats without writing them down. When we rolled the stats for real using the d10, 8s predominated, and there were no 9s or 10s, leading him to comment that the character was "cursed by the [=ShadowStone=]."

This troper's friend smashed a die which rolled poorly with a hammer in the presence of all of his other dice and then scolded them that if they did not roll well, then they would be smashed as well. His dice rolled surprisingly well after that.

In the online RPG ''Arcuz'' there are special reagents needed to enchant items, and Murphy's law dictates that the reagent you need to create a desired effect will be the one you're missing. Once - out of frustration - I took out of my storage one of each reagent I had a surplus before going on a quest, and guess what? I managed to find the one reagent I was missing. (Since then I continued to practise this procedure, and it seems to work. Well, except when it doesn't.)

A recent death victimizing this troper in {{NetHack}}: Find a leprechaun in the Gnomish Mines. Okay, that's common. I want to beat him up to get gold because I'm low on it (the Mines aren't really that far into the game). Now, I put my gold away so he can't steal it and then teleport god-knows-where. Usually all you have to do then is chase him around and beat his arse until he's dead; they're not tough, and a low-level character in a melee class shouldn't usually have trouble. And usually, they don't have anything crazy as an escape mechanism, but sometimes they'll have a wand of digging and keep digging down to run away. But that's the ''usual'' case. In this particular Mines level, there was a polymorph trap I didn't know about (polymorph traps aren't terribly common in the Mines, but they're there). The leprechaun knew it was there, and ''intentionally jumped into it'', thereby morphing into a hill giant. Well, at this point, I was leveled up enough that I could conceivably take on a hill giant, if I was careful. And oh, if he hadn't had a cursed scroll of create monster on him, and read it to create somewhere between 13-17 monsters right next to him and me. Now, a lot of what there is to survival in [=NetHack=] largely hinges on your ability to make like Sir Robin and run away. But here's the catch: the RandomNumberGod will not always bring catastrophe on you instantly: it will do its best to sucker-punch you into believing just one more turn couldn't hurt until it's too late....

ThisTroper had a friend who slept with some of his dice. (Not a euphemism for sex, but still creepy) The day after he rolled pretty much non-stop 18+ on a d20. Some dice need to be shown love.

This troper has concluded that the ''card'' RandomNumberGod for Skip-Bo hates him with the fury of a thousand exploding stars.

One member of ThisTroper's tabletop group owns a set of small dice made from steel. When he uses them, they (especially the d20) roll very, very well. It is a standing rule in the group that whenever he is the GM, he must show us that he is putting the steel dice in a bag where they will not be used during that session.

I've heard that there are some people who attempt to train their dice: they roll them until they get the highest number possible, and then stop rolling them for a while to reward them for their "good behavior".

For a reason I can't fathom, I roll very well during games of 40k for the first two turns. Afterwards, got worse}} it gets a lot worse...and that is on a good day!

Now subverted: I've played two games and managed to win both with a very impressive result (the last one was against the new Dark Eldar codex and I lost about half my army to ONE model, but I managed to win, as that was just about the only losses I took. The first one, I lost very few models). The funny part? It was just after I purchased a squad of Devastators and built them up, finally making my army 1,500pts. To be fair, I also changed my strategy so that troops deployed close together, which results in more dice on one target than my previous strategy.

Now double-subverted, although, to be fair, I was playing against the new Grey Knights, who were led by Draigo and, as well as him, was made up to two squads of Paladins and 6 grey knights in a strike squad. Guess what I decided would be necessary to win next time...TANKS!

ThisTroper participated in one of his friends' early D&D games, where the central plot for one adventure dealt with a city where the military was hypnotizing people through food. The troper's Thief character managed to roll well enough on his Bluff check multiple times, meaning he got a guided tour of the military base where the magic ovens used to make the hypnotizing food were made, and had the whole plot explained to him as if he ''weren't'' some random guy who infiltrated. It probably helped matters that the guide was a female soldier who seemed attracted to the Thief, but 90% of it was Bluff rolls.

ThisTroper tried to run a KillerGameMaster variant of MaidRPG, where if any character rolled a 1 they had to roll a second time, and if they rolled a 1/2 on that their action was such a disaster they managed to die. Anyone of the mathematical sort could tell you this means that any action, even the ones you're a master at, ''has a 1 in 18 chance of killing you.'' For the first session I then threw a boss at them, forcing them to make in excess of 50 rolls over the whole session. Final result? ''No casualties.'' The RNG paid me back, though, and later sessions featured a tournament where two competitors killed themselves instantly, and one maid who was ''stabbed through the heart by a carrot.''

ThisTroper had recently played a game of Axis and Allies: War at Sea, a game in which you decide all damage, initiative, etc. with assorted d6s. It was a balanced game, 173 points for his opponent and 174 points for himself. At one point he rolled 5 dice 5 times in a row, on 3 different turns for some destroyer attacks. Each time everything was a 6. That's a ''1:28,430,288,029,929,701,376 chance.''

ThisTroper had a curious inversion of the "Painted Models are luckier" superstition of Warhammer. My friend only ever painted one unit of Necron Warriors and his lord, Hilariously neither of the two ever scored a single wound against me. His unpainted, dust-collecting second Warrior Squad has scored more kills in one round than the aforementioned painted ones ever could. Hilariously, this friend insists that "Painted Models are luckier" and proceeds to replace all unpainted models with dead but painted ones. HilarityEnsues as he looses the game every time.

ThisTroper found a shiny Electrike in Pokèmon Sapphire. A few days later, he found another one. Same Pokèmon and color.

This Troper has only owned 5 shinies in his life. The Red Gyarados is Gold, the Red Gyarados in Crystal, the Red Gyarados and Pikachu-Colored Pichu in Heart Gold, and a PINK WOOPER IN PEARL! (The first four are Guaranteed Shinies, for those who missed the reference). Of course, any other time, the Random Number God - and any gods in general - seem to hate him. The Pearl Version he caught that Wooper in? Lost within the month.

I was trying to catch Rayquaza in Emerald, which, as anyone who has experience with legendaries, is annoying as hell. I decided to try one more time before just giving up until after I beat the Elite 4 (which was the whole reason I was trying to get Rayquaza). First, I used Ice Beam (forgetting that Rayquaza is VERY weak against), which dropped it down to 1 hp. Then, after a few failed Ultra Balls, it flew up to take me out. I threw another ultra ball and caught it (which had a ~12% chance of happening).

Playing Battle of Wesnoth, in a fight between two characters with an equal chance to hit, the computer with land blows about two to three times as often as this Tropers unit.]

My friends forum's chat room has a dice rolling thing, and we use it to play games with-whether it is truth or dare (whoever rolls the highest makes up the dare or question, whoever rolls lowest has to do it), or just whoever rolls the highest wins (we are a strange bunch)...but mine seems to be centered around 666-am I evil for that? If I roll a 6, I will roll 6 the next two times too. The admin is unlucky, and mostly rolls low numbers, but moderators are luckiest.

I seem to be favoured by the Random Number God as a savior. Basically, if I need to get a good roll to save someone from harm after they get a bad roll then 9 times out of 10 I will get it. To compensate, when I get a bad roll, its a really bad roll and there's no saving me.

Playing an indie system called Horror, I immediately attempted to have my character chat up the teacher. The roll to distract the male teacher next to her needed a 1 on a d10 to pass, which I proceeded to score. I paid back with shit rolls for the rest of the session. Better still, though, was a later roll where a player tried to fire a water pistol containing acid. He rolled a 10, meaning a flub, so had to roll again to determine his fumble; he ended up shooting at himself for one hit as he dropped the weapon. ThisTroper walked by, said "I bet you roll a critical." He did, and proceeded to kill himself in one shot.

My dice must be masochistic because I only use them once a year on average. They roll better if I throw them against a wall. HARD.

My players have succeeded an inordinate number of times due to enemy spellcasters blowing their Concentration checks. Even with maxed-out Concentration and Combat Casting. How do I make my dice behave?

This troper has figured out the unfortunate truth to rituals to placate the RandomNumberGod. Namely, for ''every single die'', you have to try multiple rituals until you hit upon one that actually works. Why can't you rely on a single ritual guaranteed to work? Because the Random Number God randomizes which ritual works on each die.

This Troper Plays the WorldOfDarkness System, and his character rolls 10+ die when driving and shooting. I can't hold all the dice in my hand properly all at once, so I can't really shake them so... This Troper is thinking about using a plastic cup like in Yahtzee.

This Troper's very first D&D role ''ever'' was a 1. I got the last initiative for a party of 8, and I was ''the tank''. Lampooned to hell and back by said party.

I have a friend that has pretty much convinced me of the existence of the Random Number God (or Pagan Dice God, we call it), and he is her favourite person ever. Any game involving dice, expect him to get the best rolls. Ever. (Without cheating. We've tried. We've rolled the dice FOR HIM, with any combination of dice from a huge bowl, for fear that he somehow knew how to roll the dice in a particular manner to get good rolls, but the Dice God still smiled upon him.) This has been going on for years. He and his friend were playing a game of Necromunda for a Statistics project once, and his rolls were so statistically staggering that they ended up putting HIM down as one of the variables that undermined the validity of the experiment. (Just don't get him to play anything with cards. Apparently if the Dice God likes you, then the Card God despises you.)

When playing {{Fallout2}}, I have a tendency to roll critical hits for 6-8 HitPoint worth of damage when going for the eyes against punks wearing leather jackets while going for their eyes, and then, when they are "almost dead", killin them with a critical hit dealing more than 30 hit points of damage. I also have a tendency to roll zero damage lethal critical hits while boxing (the boxer is then dead, but, as far as the script is concerned, he is still alive, and so I'm stuck on the ring!)

The RNG was against This Troper during one D&D session. Not many rolls were made, it was mostly Role-Playing throughout. But later we were faced with a demon general who was currently invading our plane. Eventually he challenged me to a one on one fight. I had the first move... And rolled a 5. Luckily my scythe had the Lucky enchantement, so I rerolled... And got a 4. And to make it even clearer that he hated me, the Random Number God decided to give the demon a critical. And then another. And a third. Insta-kill.

Invoked by this troper before a game session, when he said: ->"Before we begin, I think it would be a good idea for us to take a moment and say a prayer to the RandomNumberGod. In light of your performance in the last game, [name of a girl who is notorious for rolling badly, no matter what dice she uses], you can lead us."

I was a Dervish attacking a large demon in one of my buddies custom campaigns and managed to roll a critical hit. I rolled my 2d6 for damage and got snake eyes. "It's cool," I said, "I get another attack." I roll attack again and get yet another crit. "See, the RNG is a merciful being.", I said just before I rolled snake eyes again...