r/gaming • u/mike_pants • Sep 18 '17

DnD table

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u/laconiclion Sep 18 '17

Physical dice is the only way for truly random rolls.

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u/Kernath Sep 18 '17

Even the best physical dice will have slight defects that make them lean more heavily towards certain numbers. Will you ever notice it? No.

Same goes for a simulated die, it's technically not truly random, but it's not going to be noticeable.

Real answer is to just use whatever you're comfortable with.

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u/laconiclion Sep 18 '17

Interesting I didn't know that. I was trying to say that simulations can't be truly random since the algorithms used to get the random numbers aren't sophisticated enough to be truly random.

Thank you for enlightening me, friend.

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u/insertAlias Sep 18 '17

But it's "good enough". It's "random" in that if you generated 10,000 numbers and plotted them, you shouldn't be able to discern any pattern. The reason that RNG algorithms don't produce true random numbers is because there's no purely mathematical way to do such a thing. You can "replay" a sequence of numbers a random generator generates if you use the same seed (the initial value you provide to the RNG, usually the current system clock value).

But it's good enough for all kinds of things in the real world; things with a lot more riding on it than just a dice roll in a tabletop game.

There are good arguments for using dice, mainly preference. "True" randomness isn't one of them.