Jump down to the custom die generator
Stone Librande teaches game design in addition to being a professional game designer. He has an exercise in which he has his student create custom six-sided dice.
The rules for the custom dice is each side should be numbered with an integer that is 0 or greater and the sum of the numbers on the six sides should add up to 21 (which is the sum of the sides on a standard six-sided die: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6). Then the students pair up and have a matchup between their two six-sided dice, higher roll wins.
Rolling two standard six-sided dice against one another would give both players a 15/36 chance of winning and a 6/36 chance of having a tie:
Custom dice, however, changes the odds. For example, the blue die in the following matchup would win 58% of the time:
As an exercise, create a couple of custom dice (or use the dice generator below) that follow Stone’s rules (the sides are numbered 0 or greater and add up to 21). Roll the dice against one another a few times. Once you have a feel for the dice, try to guess which one has the better chance of winning the matchup. See if you guess correctly by creating a matchup matrix along the lines of the ones shown above.
Custom Dice Generator
| Die 1 | Die 2 | |
|---|---|---|
Two players alternate turns.