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| My Sicherman dice |
At first glance you might think these are just ordinary six-siders... but notice the "8" on the left die and the two "2"s on different faces of the right hand die.
These are true math rocks. And, almost, totally pointless in a gaming situation.
They only work as a pair (so I must be careful not to mix them up with my many, many other six-siders).
One die has faces numbered 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and the other is numbered 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4.
Invented by Colonel George Sicherman of Buffalo, New York, in 1978, these dice have exactly the same probability of generating each number between 2 and 12 as a normal pair of six-sided dice (e.g. one in 36 for a total of two; two in 36 for a total of three etc).
Sicherman dice are the only other design of a pair of six-sided dice that replicate the probabilities of 'normal dice' (while using positive numbers).
Except for doubles - you're screwed there as the probabilities are clearly not the same.
So, what's the point of these dice? Who knows? It's just playing craps with probabilities, a mental exercise.
But they're funky dice I didn't have, so I had to add them to my ever-expanding dice pool.
I guess you could use them for Traveller (or any other 2d6 system where it's the total that counts, and doubles don't give you any bonuses).
I'm pretty sure it was the prodigious Simon Miles, of Dunromin University Press, who first introduced me to these special dice at some point last year, during a commentary on - surprisingly - RPG dice. But from the moment I saw the Sicherman dice, I knew I had to own a pair.
However, I fear this may have opened a fiery portal to the world of other obscure math rocks...
