Throw dice

No dice in sight? How will you then be able to play your favourite board game? You could go all the way to the shop and buy a packet of dice. Another solution to the problem is to simply use the dice throwing tool on this page.

Dice are used in many popular board games to add a level of unpredictability. In games such as chess, where no dice are used, there is a high risk that the best player wins each time. The game designers often include dice throwing to even out the differences between beginners and more experienced players so that everyone can feel they have a chance of winning.

The most common die has six sides numbered from one to six with the help of dots in such a way that the sum of two opposite sides are always seven. Some games use other type of dice with a higher (or smaller) number of sides. Dice with many sides often have the numbers written out with digits instead of dots because it can be difficult to quickly see how many dots there are if there are too many of them. One drawback with digits is that they might land upside down and some numbers (e.g. 6 and 9) might have to be marked to not get confused.

There are physical limitations to how many sides a real die can have. If the die has too many sides it might not be stable enough. It also becomes more important that the surface is even so that it doesn't get stuck halfway between two sides. These limitations don't exist when the die is thrown with the help of a computer. The tool can handle dice with thousands of sides, but numbers bigger than twelve are always written with digits regardless of settings.

In some games it is only the sum of all the dice that matters. That doesn't mean many dice can be substituted for a single die with more sides because that would affect the probability distribution. For example, with a twelve-sided die all outcomes 1-12 are equally likely, but for two six-sided dice the numbers in the middle of the range are more probable and a sum of one is not even possible.

Similar tools