This guy should be the model for humanity. So many people in the world come from a mentality of lack, instead of abundance, so they will hold their "secrets" of their craft or work, but not a true master, like Col. Zocchi! Thanks for the great video.
Here's my method, which is very quick and easy. I use acrylic paint. You can use the Citadel paints from Games Workshop, or Apple Barrel Multi-Surface paints they sell in craft stores. You also need a Q-Tip and a sheet of paper kitchen towel. Put the paper towel on a hard flat surface, such as a table top. Dip the Q-Tip in some paint, and put a good sized blob of paint over one of the numerals of the die. Hold the kitchen towel down with one hand, and with the other hand, firmly swipe the face of the die you just painted along the kitchen towel. This will remove all the excess paint, leaving paint only in the numeral. Repeat this for each face of the die. Use a fresh section of the paper towel each time, so you're not swiping the die back through wet paint. If you're using white paint, a blue shop towel works great, because you can see the areas that already have paint on them. When all the faces are done, leave it to dry for about 30 mins or so, enough for the paint to dry, but not fully harden. Then, use a paper towel to remove any remaining excess paint by rubbing the die firmly against it. The paper towel is abrasive enough to rub the excess paint away. The process is easier and faster to do than it is to explain. You can do a d6 in less than a minute, and even a d20 only takes a couple of minutes. It's fast because you don't have to be accurate when applying the paint. The flat paper towel removes the excess paint perfectly, while not touching the paint you want to keep. The paint itself is extremely durable once fully dried, just as good as a factory paint job. The paints are far cheaper than buying paint pens, and are available in more colors. The paints can also be mixed to create custom colors if desired.
Fantastic video! Not only did I learn a ton from it, it was also published on my birthday, which I didn’t notice until after it was finished. I’m looking forward to inking my first set of GSD in the very near future!
Thank You for all the insight, sir. I've learn so much with your videos. I'm currently "fixing" some old dice sets and I've been doing some research on the internet on how to do it properly. Now thanks to your videos I can scratch all that bad info and do it the right way. To tell you the truth, after testing my dice with a wrench and after doing the salt/water test, I was a bit sad. It takes away the "magic", but at least now I know why some dice always tend to roll one way or the other. Thanks again. Hope to see and learn more about dice :)
Mr. Zocchi, as both a lover of table top RPG's, mathematics, and science I must say that I find your work riveting. Thank you for your lifelong commitment to quality. Your kinda my hero. That said, at the end of your video you discussed your d5 and various rolling surfaces. Rolling on a traditional felt top surface was not mentioned. Could you please address this. Also while I love the design of your d3, why did you not apply the same principals of your "Microhedra™ d20 0-9 2x?" to a d6? I have been doing this for a very longtime. I mean to submit these questions respectfully and personally would enjoy to hear more from you on the topic of dice science. Thank you for everything!
+Nate Magnum Dear Nate Magnum, We tested the D-5 on a 6mm thick plastic surface, and repeated the 5000 rolls on 12mm thick plastic. Both tests resulted in the same outcome. I sent the Doctor of Mathematics a 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, l8, 19 and 20mm thick prototype, to be tested in his dice rolling machine. When he told me I had to make the shape I sought 13.85 mm thick, I pointed out that 1mm is not very big. And he is asking me to trim a 15th of 1 mm off of my 14mm prototype. I asked him to explain how he got 13.85 as the thickness. He told me that after he gave 5,000 rolls to the 10mm prototype, he plotted its performance on a graph. Then he tested the 11mm thick prototype and plotted its performance on the graph. Then he did the same with the 12, 13, and 14mm prototypes. His graph indicated that 13.85 was the ideal thickness. I was bragging about how this die would roll its triangle face 2 times and its edges 3 times, to a hobby shop owner. To prove my point, I rolled a D-5 on the top of her glass show case. To my surprise, that die came up 1 or 5, 10 times out of the 10 rolls. I thought about this problem and came to the conclusion that we never tested the die on glass, metal, felt, etc. Plastic and wood surfaces provide the die with a bounce back energy, which results in its ability to roll all 5 of its digits. A fabric covered wooden table will change the dynamics of what the die can do. The table cloth absorbs some of the dice energy and filters the bounce back the die gets from the wood, which is under the table cloth. We never tested the die on a felt topped craps table, or any other thing you can think up. A science professor rolled 10 D-5's into a felt hat and reported on the computer, that these dice failed to provide the outcomes I claimed it would produce. I confess that it never crossed my mind to test the D-5, on freshly buttered pancakes, or anything other than the 6 and 12 mm thick plastic and plain wooden surfaces. 5 years earlier, I produced a D-5 by putting 1-5 in both hemispheres of my D-10 shape. No one bought them. I used to think that rolling dice into an over turned box lid was nifty because it stopped the dice from rolling off of the table. Now, I am wondering if the performance dynamics of all polyhedra shapes, is modified by the surfaces upon which the dice are rolled. On 14 February 2013, a dice performance contest with a Gamescience D-20 and a Chessex D-20' was conducted. results of their test, is on computer. Please enter d20 randomness test . They ave both dice 10,000 test rolls on a professional craps table. If the law of averages did what we expect, every face on the die should come up 500 times. They went on to say that a roll of 33 over or under the target number of 500, would a of 500. The Chessex die had only 1 number which met the 33 over or under criteria. and was counted.think The Gamescience 20 had 10 faces that rolled within 10 points of the 500 target and 13 faces within the 33 over or under. I used to tell people that the clip mark on every die, was unimportant to how it rolled. The Gamescience D-20 they used, had a protruding blemish on its #7, which caused the opposite face, #21 to come up with only 285 rolls. I don't remember the exact numbers but you can check them out when you look at this study. Anyway, I now make sure that no clip marked face has any protruding blemish. The people running this test said that both dice had to bounce off of the back board in order for their out comes to be listed. Kevin Cook, the man who is in the Guiness book of records as having the worlds largest dice collection (50,000+), condemned the test. He asks, how many gamers have a felt topped dice table, to play on! While I feel that Kevin has a good point, the fact that a protruding clip mark dramatically changed the number of 14 and 7 sided dice rolls, has caused me to take extra steps to eliminate protrusions on every gate faced die. Another interesting study will be found if you tell your computer to search out how true are your d20's. Thanks for your support. We have gotten back my first video which was viewed by 225,000 gamers before it was removed from the computer. James Means has put it back on the computer, but I don't remember under what name. I also asked him to put it on the Gamescience web site, but because I don't speak computer, I don't know what to tell my computer, to bring it up. Louis Zocchi
+Gamescience Dice thanks louis for the detailed reply! I roll all my dice in a felt lined box for ease of use (so they dont get to out of hand or end up under the sofa) never on my pancakes!
Wow I am astonished about the deep knoledge about the matter. Thank you Sir for the videos. I will order in my country Gamescience dices and check by myself. Thank you for all the topics mentioned in the video. Its worth watching with pen and paper! Kudos
Mr. Zocchi, I just received my shipment of dice, and I am thrilled! I wanted to thank you for your dedication to your product and to your customers. I had an issue with my order, and actually talked to a real person who solved my problem easily. Additionally, the blemishes people seem to complain about were virtually nonexistent! I do have a couple of questions for you if you have time: Would you recommend inking a 0-9 2x D20 in the same arrangement as the +/- D20? I notice old Armory precision D30 sell for a lot on eBay. Have you considered producing your own D30? Thanks again, sir! You've made a raving fan of this gamer.
+Doctor Mushroom There are two options on the 0-9 2x d20, we ink all the same color and then roll a d6 to signify 1-10 and11-20 (for example 1-2-3 equals low number and 4-5-6 equals high numbers) or we will ink one set of number one color signifying low number and the second set a different color signifying high numbers.Yes, stay tuned.
Gamescience Dice, A better d3 is is to make a six-sided die numbered 1-3 twice. The same is true for a d4 on an eight-sided (perfect octohedron) die, and a d5 on a ten-sided die. It's the same principle as your d20 0-9 dice. The shapes are more regular, and they are much easier to roll and pick up again off the table. This is especially true for the d4, as the standard tetrahedral d4s are nearly impossible to pick up. Also, there are fewer worries about the surface material. By the way, I still have my circa 1980 set of Gamescience dice, and they still look great.
Looking at this video now and thinking that 10 years ago I inked my dice correctly without even knowing. The very same techniques I used and I had never done it before. My 14-sided dice got the excess ink treatment and it was perfectly painted. Now that morning/evening was brilliant. Also the D5, I always dropped it and not tossed it, that pretty much garantees the desired effect in my opinion. Finally, Colonel, is the latest dice usage sheet available in digital format somewhere on a website? Since I bought mine so long ago I didn't the chance to receive that sheet.
Heh, I've been using those Deco paint markers for my game science dice for years. Guess I had the right idea then. Also, Deco make all kinds of other colors too, so you can have pretty much whatever color numbering you want.
So many people use cork and felt in dice trays and dice towers to absorb shock and stop bouncing out of the tray. Is this not recommended with your d5 because you're relying on some amount of bounce factor rather than purely rolling? Interesting stuff!
This guy should be the model for humanity. So many people in the world come from a mentality of lack, instead of abundance, so they will hold their "secrets" of their craft or work, but not a true master, like Col. Zocchi! Thanks for the great video.
Here's my method, which is very quick and easy.
I use acrylic paint. You can use the Citadel paints from Games Workshop, or Apple Barrel Multi-Surface paints they sell in craft stores.
You also need a Q-Tip and a sheet of paper kitchen towel.
Put the paper towel on a hard flat surface, such as a table top.
Dip the Q-Tip in some paint, and put a good sized blob of paint over one of the numerals of the die.
Hold the kitchen towel down with one hand, and with the other hand, firmly swipe the face of the die you just painted along the kitchen towel.
This will remove all the excess paint, leaving paint only in the numeral.
Repeat this for each face of the die. Use a fresh section of the paper towel each time, so you're not swiping the die back through wet paint. If you're using white paint, a blue shop towel works great, because you can see the areas that already have paint on them.
When all the faces are done, leave it to dry for about 30 mins or so, enough for the paint to dry, but not fully harden.
Then, use a paper towel to remove any remaining excess paint by rubbing the die firmly against it. The paper towel is abrasive enough to rub the excess paint away.
The process is easier and faster to do than it is to explain. You can do a d6 in less than a minute, and even a d20 only takes a couple of minutes.
It's fast because you don't have to be accurate when applying the paint.
The flat paper towel removes the excess paint perfectly, while not touching the paint you want to keep.
The paint itself is extremely durable once fully dried, just as good as a factory paint job.
The paints are far cheaper than buying paint pens, and are available in more colors. The paints can also be mixed to create custom colors if desired.
You know a true master when they make things look so simple.
Fantastic video! Not only did I learn a ton from it, it was also published on my birthday, which I didn’t notice until after it was finished.
I’m looking forward to inking my first set of GSD in the very near future!
Thank You for all the insight, sir.
I've learn so much with your videos. I'm currently "fixing" some old dice sets and I've been doing some research on the internet on how to do it properly. Now thanks to your videos I can scratch all that bad info and do it the right way.
To tell you the truth, after testing my dice with a wrench and after doing the salt/water test, I was a bit sad. It takes away the "magic", but at least now I know why some dice always tend to roll one way or the other.
Thanks again. Hope to see and learn more about dice :)
Mr. Zocchi, as both a lover of table top RPG's, mathematics, and science I must say that I find your work riveting. Thank you for your lifelong commitment to quality. Your kinda my hero. That said, at the end of your video you discussed your d5 and various rolling surfaces. Rolling on a traditional felt top surface was not mentioned. Could you please address this. Also while I love the design of your d3, why did you not apply the same principals of your "Microhedra™ d20 0-9 2x?" to a d6? I have been doing this for a very longtime. I mean to submit these questions respectfully and personally would enjoy to hear more from you on the topic of dice science. Thank you for everything!
+Nate Magnum Dear Nate Magnum, We tested the D-5 on a 6mm thick plastic surface, and repeated the 5000 rolls on 12mm thick plastic. Both tests resulted in the same outcome. I sent the Doctor of Mathematics a 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, l8, 19 and 20mm thick prototype, to be tested in his dice rolling machine. When he told me I had to make the shape I sought 13.85 mm thick, I pointed out that 1mm is not very big. And he is asking me to trim a
15th of 1 mm off of my 14mm prototype. I asked him to explain how he got 13.85 as the thickness. He told me that after he gave 5,000 rolls to
the 10mm prototype, he plotted its performance on a graph. Then he tested the 11mm thick prototype and plotted its performance on the graph. Then he did the same with the 12, 13, and 14mm prototypes. His graph indicated that 13.85 was the ideal thickness. I was bragging about how this die would roll its triangle face 2 times and its edges 3 times, to a hobby shop owner. To prove my point, I rolled a D-5 on the top of her glass show case. To my surprise, that die came up 1 or 5, 10 times out of the 10 rolls. I thought about this problem and came to the conclusion that we never tested the die on glass, metal, felt, etc. Plastic and wood surfaces provide the die with a bounce back energy, which results in its ability to roll all 5 of its digits. A fabric covered wooden table will change the dynamics of what the die can do. The table cloth absorbs some of the dice energy and filters the bounce back the die gets from the wood, which is under the table cloth. We never tested the die on a felt topped craps table, or any other thing you can think up. A science professor rolled 10 D-5's into a felt hat and reported on the computer, that these dice failed to provide the outcomes I claimed it would produce. I confess that it never crossed my mind to test the D-5, on freshly buttered pancakes, or anything other than the 6 and 12 mm thick plastic and plain wooden surfaces. 5 years earlier, I produced a D-5 by putting 1-5 in both hemispheres of my D-10 shape.
No one bought them. I used to think that rolling dice into an over turned box lid was nifty because it stopped the dice from rolling off of the table.
Now, I am wondering if the performance dynamics of all polyhedra shapes, is modified by the surfaces upon which the dice are rolled.
On 14 February 2013, a dice performance contest with a Gamescience D-20 and a Chessex D-20' was conducted. results of their test, is on computer. Please enter d20 randomness test . They ave both dice 10,000 test rolls on a professional craps table. If the law of averages did what we expect, every face on the die should come up 500 times. They went on to say that a roll of 33 over or under the target number of 500, would a of 500. The Chessex die had only 1 number which met the 33 over or under criteria. and was counted.think The Gamescience 20 had 10 faces that rolled within 10 points of the 500 target and 13 faces within the 33 over or under. I used to tell people that the clip mark on every die, was unimportant to how it rolled. The Gamescience D-20 they used, had a protruding blemish on its #7, which caused the opposite face, #21 to come up with only 285 rolls. I don't remember the exact numbers but you can check them out when you look at this study. Anyway, I now make sure that no clip marked face has any protruding blemish. The people running this test said that both dice had to bounce off of the back board in order for their out comes to be listed. Kevin Cook, the man who is in the Guiness book of records as having the worlds largest dice collection (50,000+), condemned the test. He asks, how many gamers have a felt topped dice table, to play on! While I feel that Kevin has a good point, the fact that a protruding clip mark dramatically changed the number of 14 and 7 sided dice rolls, has caused me to take extra steps to eliminate protrusions on every gate faced die.
Another interesting study will be found if you tell your computer to search out how true are your d20's. Thanks for your support. We have gotten back my first video which was viewed by 225,000 gamers before it was removed from the computer. James Means has put it back on the computer, but I don't remember under what name. I also asked him to put it on the Gamescience web site, but because I don't speak computer,
I don't know what to tell my computer, to bring it up. Louis Zocchi
+Gamescience Dice thanks louis for the detailed reply! I roll all my dice in a felt lined box for ease of use (so they dont get to out of hand or end up under the sofa) never on my pancakes!
Wow I am astonished about the deep knoledge about the matter. Thank you Sir for the videos. I will order in my country Gamescience dices and check by myself. Thank you for all the topics mentioned in the video. Its worth watching with pen and paper! Kudos
Mr. Zocchi,
I just received my shipment of dice, and I am thrilled! I wanted to thank you for your dedication to your product and to your customers. I had an issue with my order, and actually talked to a real person who solved my problem easily.
Additionally, the blemishes people seem to complain about were virtually nonexistent!
I do have a couple of questions for you if you have time:
Would you recommend inking a 0-9 2x D20 in the same arrangement as the +/- D20?
I notice old Armory precision D30 sell for a lot on eBay. Have you considered producing your own D30?
Thanks again, sir! You've made a raving fan of this gamer.
+Doctor Mushroom There are two options on the 0-9 2x d20, we ink all the same color and then roll a d6 to signify 1-10 and11-20 (for example 1-2-3 equals low number and 4-5-6 equals high numbers) or we will ink one set of number one color signifying low number and the second set a different color signifying high numbers.Yes, stay tuned.
Gamescience Dice, A better d3 is is to make a six-sided die numbered 1-3 twice. The same is true for a d4 on an eight-sided (perfect octohedron) die, and a d5 on a ten-sided die. It's the same principle as your d20 0-9 dice. The shapes are more regular, and they are much easier to roll and pick up again off the table. This is especially true for the d4, as the standard tetrahedral d4s are nearly impossible to pick up. Also, there are fewer worries about the surface material.
By the way, I still have my circa 1980 set of Gamescience dice, and they still look great.
Great video, very knowledgeable. Everything has a purpose.
Looking at this video now and thinking that 10 years ago I inked my dice correctly without even knowing. The very same techniques I used and I had never done it before. My 14-sided dice got the excess ink treatment and it was perfectly painted. Now that morning/evening was brilliant. Also the D5, I always dropped it and not tossed it, that pretty much garantees the desired effect in my opinion. Finally, Colonel, is the latest dice usage sheet available in digital format somewhere on a website? Since I bought mine so long ago I didn't the chance to receive that sheet.
Heh, I've been using those Deco paint markers for my game science dice for years. Guess I had the right idea then. Also, Deco make all kinds of other colors too, so you can have pretty much whatever color numbering you want.
doing it with a brush and Games Workshop works fairly well.
also i REALY want to get my hands on a pound o` dice
37:40 - He says use wood then on 37:48 says wood does not perform well? Next he says use wood again at 38:26....I am confused
So many people use cork and felt in dice trays and dice towers to absorb shock and stop bouncing out of the tray. Is this not recommended with your d5 because you're relying on some amount of bounce factor rather than purely rolling? Interesting stuff!
Have you tried Pigma micron pens as well as the Sharpee ultra fine pens?
Semper Fi, Colonel.
Absolute legend
The pearl 12 set just sold out the day before I was going to buy it ;-;.. so i bought a pound of dice >:D
zocchi: veteran and lord of dice
jesus christ the nazareen: pacifist and layabout do-nothing