At first glance Cheerio appear straightforward, until you realize you’ve missed out on the bonus up top and your plan falls apart. To win, you need to form poker hands using regular dice like straights or full houses. However, what is happening behind the scenes are something most people do not see: arithmetic. There are … Read more

They drop onto table in a flurry of chaos. The dice bounce, tumble, and for a brief instant, you don’t know what you’ve thrown. That’s when it happens; that’s where fate is won or lost. You know this because it’s nothing more than a familiar-looking six-sided die, except the numbers are painted on different. Red, … Read more

Five dice clatter on the wood. You catch yourself getting good at translating that sound into something more than noise. The potential that comes with those falling dice dissapears as soon as they do. At first glance there are random numbers in front of you and your brain needs to absorb pattern fast. In three … Read more

Tabletop gamers eventually reach a point at which they recognize their gut instinct around dice probably isnt correct. “I roll more dice, so I get more,” or “I add a flat modifier, so everything move up.” But it’s not like that. A histogram helps make sense of probability by giving it a visual representation. It … Read more

You roll a 1 on your d20 and miss the target. That’s variance. Variances excite players at the table they also infuriate them. How much do things differ? What does that mean about your character? That’s where standard deviation come into play. Standard deviation show you how much variation there is in results. Does everything … Read more

Dice fall with a definitive clack on gaming table. That clatter represents uncertainty, and players often find themselves questioning their luck when things go wrong. Roll for defense, roll for attack, roll for bragging rights. But under the rattle are the gear of mathematics that few player consider unless they’re losing their skins off. Whether … Read more

Rolling two sixes is easy enough to think through, right? Well… not so fast. How do you account for that possibility? It’s got to be two sixes, nothing else… No three, no four. (If it was any number greater than one then we’d just say “two or more.”) That’s important since most of us conflate … Read more