 Editor in Chief Bill   | 30 Jan 2010 9:30 p.m. PST |
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| Kampfgruppe Cottrell | 31 Jan 2010 2:43 a.m. PST |
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| Privateer4hire | 31 Jan 2010 7:23 a.m. PST |
Anybody found an e-tailer what sells GS's d6s? I found one but seems they're almost always out of stock. |
| Acharnement | 31 Jan 2010 7:55 a.m. PST |
That was great! I have some Gamescience but now I need (not want- need!) more! I am looking at all my other dice with suspicion now. Rock on, Lou! |
| Acharnement | 31 Jan 2010 7:58 a.m. PST |
Privateer4hire: This link should take you to a page with Gamescience d6's:
link |
| Kevin Cook | 31 Jan 2010 9:52 a.m. PST |
The link presented by Acharnement is THE place to find GS dice … as GameStaion and GameScience are now sibling companies owned by the same person |
| ajbartman | 31 Jan 2010 12:01 p.m. PST |
Interesting. So know I can truly blame the dice for rolling all those 1's. |
| Gonsalvo | 31 Jan 2010 6:07 p.m. PST |
I found that quite fascinating! |
| emckinney | 31 Jan 2010 6:26 p.m. PST |
Lou Zocchi is certainly passionate about his products :) His description certainly sounds plausible (and I have some dice that crumbled at the edges just that way that he describes). I'd like to hear responses from some other dice manufacturers. (I never trust accounts of battles from just one side, either.) Of course, some testing by doing large numbers of die rolls would tell whether these factor matter enough to, well, matter!* There was an article in an old issue of Dragon magazine titled, "Be Thy Dice Ill-Wrought?" that gave the formula (Chi squared test???) for figuring out whether or not your dice were "fair." * In other words, the difference could be statistically insignificant. On the other hand, when someone says, "Wait, I need my lucky d10!" they may be right about it being "lucky." |
| Rudysnelson | 01 Feb 2010 9:11 a.m. PST |
I represented Lou Zocchi's company by selling his Gamescience products at a number of conventions back in the 1980s. His distributor company was also the main source for my boardgame stock as well. He always provided the products at a good price and was always willing to discuss game industry issues. I even worked for him one summer to help set up his retail shop near the AFB back in 1985. I watch a lot of his dice consistancy and durability tests. His tests ran from simply scattering dice from different companies on the roud to banging each one with the smasher cylinder to test them. I remember that while in San Francisco, picking up cases of a d4 dice that was simply a d8 marked with 1-4 twice. He had bought the guy and all the prototypes out. He taught me a lot about dice and how production factors could unbalance dice results. The presence of air bubbles, clumped additives like glitter. varying composition of material density (such as what it takes to make marble dice, the rolling process (usee to round edges) etc.
I even knew where the secret plant was located that had his hardness formula to make the dice. Another interesting fact about this period was that this was the time that he was doing the research on making the Zocchihedron (100 sided die). His office was full of balls and geometric shapes with markers and/or pins stuck on them. |
| Kelroy was here | 09 Apr 2010 1:41 p.m. PST |
Colonel Zocchi is the (almost-)last of an old breed: the old school gamer. I always loved hearing his spiels at cons. He mixes incredibly competent salesmanship and product knowledge with seriously under-whelming display presentations. I love the cardboard boxes holding his dice. His is just the generation that doesn't feel the need to jazz it up unnecessarily. |
