24
votes
What makes a good alternative to flipping a coin for 50/50 randomness?
Use a coinflip app, or physical 4- or 6-sided dice (calling odd/even or above/below half instead of heads/tails).
Both solutions fulfill all your criteria. You can further secure dice against falling ...
- 52.3k
14
votes
What makes a good alternative to flipping a coin for 50/50 randomness?
If you have a phone which has a sufficiently accurate stopwatch (probably hundredths of a second is good enough, thousandths would be better) such that you can't reliably stop the stopwatch on any ...
- 273
11
votes
Token Drawing [All At Once (per player) vs Round Robin] -- Mathematician / Statistician needed for a question
No player has a greater chance of drawing an even or uneven distribution than any other.
One way of looking at it is to consider permutations of the tokens, where they are laid out in some sequence ...
- 83.3k
9
votes
Does it really matter if dice are randomized?
As of the July 2021 Magic Tournament Rules Release Notes, spindowns are prohibited from being used as a randomized die at Competitive REL (though are seemingly being okay in casual play):
Spindown ...
- 937
9
votes
What makes a good alternative to flipping a coin for 50/50 randomness?
Prologue: Why Randomness Is (Not) Hard in Real Life
Disclaimer: I might have designed too many probability theory basics exam questions in my life; whether this left permanent damage is up to you to ...
- 190
5
votes
What makes a good alternative to flipping a coin for 50/50 randomness?
Using either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, the formula =RANDBETWEEN(0,1) will give you 50/50 odds of a 0 or 1. On a PC, hit the delete key on an empty cell to re-roll (or F9 works in Excel too). ...
- 51
4
votes
What makes a good alternative to flipping a coin for 50/50 randomness?
A wonderfully horrible solution for RNG is an old-fashioned dice popper. They make for a literal pushbutton solution to RNG, with no dice falling off tables. They also make a sound that is either ...
- 371
4
votes
Token Drawing [All At Once (per player) vs Round Robin] -- Mathematician / Statistician needed for a question
Your sampling sequence is an example of an exchangeable sampling sequence. Exchangeable sequences are not independent. The outcome of earlier samples does affect the outcome of later samples.
...
- 5,464
4
votes
Is either player at a disadvantage when cards "aren't' shuffled well enough"?
Your wife is confusing 'random' with 'balanced'
Human beings, in general, have a terrible understanding of probability.
There's a rather popular probability demo that teachers use, where they'll ...
- 12.6k
4
votes
Can bridge-style duplicate play work for Magic and other CCGs?
Not sure this is an answer, but it certainly isn't a comment. Sentences in [brackets] are ignorable side-notes.
In team-of-four bridge events, including the world championships, the two tables in the ...
- 3,323
3
votes
Accepted
Can bridge-style duplicate play work for Magic and other CCGs?
Deckbuilding is part of playing a CCG. Playing a game of Magic with a deck you had no control over is like playing a round of Bridge where someone else did the bidding for you.
Any proposal for ...
- 12.6k
3
votes
Can bridge-style duplicate play work for Magic and other CCGs?
One of the things that makes duplicate bridge work is that, once the cards are dealt, the random factors are mostly fixed. The decisions people make in the middle of the game don't tend to change ...
- 2,797
3
votes
How do I create a deck of cards that generates a dungeon of an average particular size?
This game mechanic introduces the problem of trying to establish the expected result of a dynamic series of events that can't be readily repeated. For common terms through out, I'll be using the ...
- 3,902
2
votes
What makes a good alternative to flipping a coin for 50/50 randomness?
Use a spinner, like the one that comes with the popular "Game of Life" board game, except each of the numbers alternates with "heads" or "tails" (or whatever 2 categories ...
- 230
2
votes
What makes a good alternative to flipping a coin for 50/50 randomness?
A very simple low-tech solution:
Use one or more decks of cards
Shuffle the cards and lay face down.
Turn the top card for a random 50/50 decision: red or black.
Place in a discarded pile.
Shuffle ...
- 451
2
votes
Can bridge-style duplicate play work for Magic and other CCGs?
Duplicate bridge exists because bridge is a highly random game - if you don’t, then the deal determines who wins far more than the play. The deal is zero sum - opponents rarely have evenly matched ...
- 4,482
2
votes
Accepted
How do I create a deck of cards that generates a dungeon of an average particular size?
I've been working on an Excel sheet, and I think I'm ready to post it now. Here is the link, and you'll need to download it and enable macros.
Here's how to use it:
Enter the number of cards in the ...
- 197
2
votes
Accepted
Board games with random maps not revealed at the beginning of the game and exploration
I believe Mage Knight Board Game does what you are asking, if I can understand the question.
The game uses tiles with 7 hexes on them. You can explore to reveal additional tiles and place them next to ...
- 36
2
votes
How to simulate random events without repetition (no cards)
To choose 7 discrete events from a table of 36:
Roll two dice to choose the first event. The first dice chooses a cluster of six events, the second chooses the event from within those 6.
Each time ...
- 121
1
vote
Board games with random maps not revealed at the beginning of the game and exploration
Forbidden Desert uses all 3 of these mechanics. Players start on a grid of randomly dealt tiles which are placed face down, and players need to move to unexplored tiles and reveal them. Among the 24 ...
- 3,564
1
vote
Board games with random maps not revealed at the beginning of the game and exploration
You can reduce the random factor by not having one tile but a cluster of them that are physical connected. This solves the balancing problem of adding too much random in a single tile. Depending of ...
- 1,864
1
vote
Can bridge-style duplicate play work for Magic and other CCGs?
First, duplicate bridge is played in teams of two because bridge itself is played in teams of 2. It is a feature of the game, not the duplicate tournament style, so there is not necessarily a reason ...
- 83.3k
1
vote
How do I create a deck of cards that generates a dungeon of an average particular size?
You can't have it totally random, but you can make it random with slight boundaries.
This all depends on the number of doors left in the maze/Labyrinth/dungeon. You start with X on the first tile and ...
- 134
1
vote
How do I create a deck of cards that generates a dungeon of an average particular size?
I doubt you can keep your dungeon to a small range of sizes if you are drawing randomly. Even if you start with an entry card with three exits, the next three cards you draw might be dead end rooms ...
- 119
1
vote
Token Drawing [All At Once (per player) vs Round Robin] -- Mathematician / Statistician needed for a question
Imagine that we drew the tokens face down. The first player draws their six tokens, but don't look at these tokens and don't show them to the other players. Then the second player also draws their six ...
- 397
1
vote
Is either player at a disadvantage when cards "aren't' shuffled well enough"?
There is no need for card runs to be long or for one person to have deck knowledge for a "shuffle" to be unfair for one player.
Consider the case where high cards are placed on top of low cards ...
- 12.4k
1
vote
Is either player at a disadvantage when cards "aren't' shuffled well enough"?
Since I don’t know Skip-Bo, I will give a more general answer:
In deck-building games (like dominion) it is absolutely possible that a player benefits from a bad shuffle of their individual deck, ...
- 355
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