by Tzompantli
Everyone - thanks for responding to my post.Balance - Yes, I am referring to the actual physical die being unbalanced. The game mechanic is quite neat really.
Sample size - presumably 100 rolls is too small for a proper test. But there is only so much time and effort I am willing to invest in such a silly issue. After my little test I was more concerned with the deviation of the wounds (observed = 40%; expected = 25%) and blank face results (observed = 36%; expected = 50%). Those discrepancies are what explains the results of David's chi-square test. I have my doubts those results would improve with a larger sample size.
Josh - I likely will not be in Providence the weekend of Temple Con. But if I am and attend the conference, I will stop on by. Thanks for the invite.
Here is the actual die in question. The photos are pretty lousy, but should suffice.
Considering how much material is removed from each face to get the icon imprinted and then the irregularity of the paint reintroduced, I would imagine the die has to be unbalanced. My ill-informed guess is that with all of the material removed from the faces with icons the blank faces have more weight and are more likely to continue to roll and not settle (hence my observed results).
On one hand to quibble about dice balance (of the physical sort) in a game like Dead of Winter overlooks what really matters in this game. On the other hand, it is useful to know if you should expect about 1/2 of your rolls to be trouble or about 2/3. That will affect how you approach the game. David's comment on playtesting is quite appropriate. My guess is they did the bulk of play testing using pre-production components, so not the die that is packaged with the game. But perhaps I am wrong.
For folks really obsessed with dice, here is an interesting post that circulated in the wargaming circles a while back:
http://natfka.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-quest-for-holy-grail-...